WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 126: Room 107, Gate Room - Fourth Trial (17)
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Episode 126: Room 107, Gate Room - ‘The Secret of the Esper’ (17)
[User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)
Date: Day 45
Current Location: Level 1, Room 107 (Gate Room)
Sage’s Advice: 1]
Crew members had arrived to kidnap Pero.
While everyone panicked, Song-i thought on her feet and helped Pero escape through the window.
A-ri spoke with a fascinated look.
“You told it to stay outside?”
“Yeah.”
“You reacted fast in such a short time. But do you have any way to meet it again?”
“That worries me too. Everything happened so suddenly, so I only told it to get out of there for now. Pero’s smart, so won’t it come back at the right time?”
It wasn’t an ordinary parrot, so it probably had enough intelligence for that.
The chaos that had started in the morning settled down.
We ordered room service, brought back some snacks, and had lunch.
Grandpa Mook-seong spoke in an amused tone.
“Do you know one interesting thing about the hotel?”
“What is it?”
“It almost never makes things hard by keeping you from eating. The hotel itself always gives you incredible meals, and even in Curse Rooms or Gate Rooms like this one, it never comes up with some excuse to starve you. This ship has that strange restriction about not bothering us too much during the day, so we can eat without much trouble.”
“Now that you mention it, you’re right.”
“Once you work for the Management Bureau for a while, you’ll understand what a huge mercy it is that the hotel doesn’t bother you while you eat. When you do rough work, it’s normal to spend three or four days on the move, chewing through a few biscuits that are hard to chew.”
“I told you, I’m not planning to work for the Management Bureau...”
Grandpa just laughed like he found it funny. A-ri joined the conversation too.
“Worry about what happens after we get out when the time comes. Still, what Grandpa said does make me a little worried.”
“Why?”
“We’ve been through all sorts of things in the hotel, but like Grandpa said, we’ve always eaten well, so we don’t really stay alert during meals. Which means that if they start playing games with our food, we’re definitely going to get hit hard the first time.”
Everyone fell silent at that.
...
At least there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with this meal.
As if to change the ominous subject, Grandpa spoke again.
“More importantly, not being able to use our Inheritances is a lot of pressure. Did you see earlier? The moment that employee merely handled a handgun, it became hard to respond.”
“And a lot of the employees on this ship have guns.”
“That’s exactly what I mean. We still don’t know how the fourth trial will play out, but if we end up fighting, our lack of firepower will become a serious problem. Pero alone isn’t enough.”
Song-i offered an optimistic thought.
“The ship’s crew and passengers are all human, right? If things get bad, couldn’t Elena take care of all of them? Back during the Common Sense-Altering Media event, she even blocked bullets when she started using Justice.”
Elena’s Justice. If she could use Justice, handguns didn’t seem like they would be much of a problem.
Still, could Elena use Justice right now?
When I looked at her, Elena seemed to read my thoughts and answered right away.
“Not yet.”
That figured. Whether they were passengers or crew, they only gave off an unsettling feeling. We still had no idea what evil deeds they had committed.
At the very least, they needed to commit some evil we could recognize before she could use Justice.
Grandpa Mook-seong stroked his chin.
“We need to create a situation where Elena can use Justice somehow.”
“We need to find proof that the people on this ship have done something evil, right?”
“Right. If we wait, they’ll probably attack us on their own eventually, but that’s dangerous. If Elena dies before she can use Justice, we’ll all be wiped out.”
After lunch, we decided to look around the ship until the Dinner Party.
* * *
Only after we started exploring the ship in earnest did I begin to understand what Grandpa meant by its absurd size.
There were restaurants and ballrooms, of course, along with a swimming pool and bowling alley. There was even a small botanical garden.
The ship was so large that there was no way we had time to inspect every place in detail.
We spent around two hours exploring, only noting the existence of each facility.
Then we sat down in a park-like area and rested for a while as we looked out at the vast ocean and sky.
A-ri spoke first.
“This feels strange.”
“What does?”
“This is way too different from other cruises.”
“This is my first time on a cruise, so I have no idea what other cruises are like.”
“You don’t have to have been on one to know. How should I put it? The interior and everything feels a little...”
What was she talking about?
I wondered what she meant, but Elena understood her.
“The interior doesn’t feel modern, does it? And if you pay attention, the way people are dressed is the same.”
“Could the setting itself be from a long time ago? The 1950s?”
Grandpa Mook-seong objected.
“I thought that at first too, but look at this. I picked it up on the way here.”
Grandpa took out an old newspaper, yellowed and shriveled with age. The date printed on it was August 2003.
“It’s a newspaper from 2003, but it’s decayed like this. The time in this setting must be at least 2004 or 2005. It’s earlier than the era we lived in, but it isn’t the 1950s.”
Song-i gave her opinion.
“Could it have drifted at sea for a very long time? The scenario title is The Secret of the Esper, after all. Maybe it’s a ghost ship that has been drifting on the ocean for decades?”
“I don’t think it’s a ghost ship. If it were, it would mean we’re seeing some kind of illusion, but the scenery doesn’t change at all even with my Filter on.”
A passenger happened to walk by nearby, so we naturally stopped talking and continued thinking in silence.
The ship’s interior and the passengers’ clothing seemed to be separated from the setting’s time period by several decades. Had the Esper been drifting on the ocean for decades?
The first story that came to mind was a ghost ship like Song-i had mentioned, but there didn’t seem to be any illusion involved.
With only that much information, the time for the Dinner Party slowly approached.
Everyone became more anxious as time passed. It would have been better if we knew nothing, but according to the scenario, another crisis was already set to strike at midnight tonight.
Yet we still had no clue what this ship’s secret was, and Elena, our greatest source of strength, still couldn’t use Justice.
Was it because the pressure to do something had become too strong?
Before we left for the ballroom, Grandpa Mook-seong made an extreme suggestion.
“How about we wreck the party?”
Everyone stared at Grandpa in surprise.
“Don’t look at me like that. I think the party itself is suspicious. This isn’t just a hunch. The scenario keeps mentioning the Dinner Party, and on our first day aboard the ship, an employee came to tell us to attend it as soon as we arrived. Even today, I noticed it.”
Hearing that, I thought back on what had happened today.
After lunch, we had wandered around the ship and naturally met crew members and passengers.
We acted friendly, smiled, chatted a little, and went our separate ways. Yet every time, the crew members or passengers made sure to mention the Dinner Party.
It felt like they were hammering the Dinner Party into our heads.
Song-i offered a slightly different opinion.
“The people on the ship are potential enemies, right? If they’re trying to push us into the party, wouldn’t it be better not to go?”
“That was my first thought too. But if we don’t go, we have no way of learning what secret the party is hiding. You don’t survive the hotel by avoiding dangerous places. Besides, the scenario openly tells us to gather information at the Dinner Party.”
The more I listened, the stranger it sounded.
“I understand that the party is suspicious. I even understand that we have to go despite that. But how did you get from there to the conclusion that we should wreck the place while we’re at it?”
“Call it intuition rather than logic. I have a feeling the party itself is their sore spot.”
Intuition. It was vague. Normally, I didn’t think I would’ve been persuaded by something like that.
Still, another crisis at midnight was certain. It was time to take action.
In the end, everyone agreed to shake things up at the party in their own way.
* * *
The Dinner Party began.
At first, it wasn’t much different from yesterday.
The ship’s passengers gathered around us, confusing us with all sorts of gifts and embarrassing praise while slipping in pointed questions.
Was the party’s purpose to learn information about us? Or was there something more to it?
For now, they seemed curious about my age and where I was from.
...
I had a strange experience. Since the passengers were curious about our personal information, I deliberately gave them false details.
I’d heard that Westerners couldn’t easily guess an East Asian person’s age just from their appearance.
I added about three years and claimed I was from Hunan, China.
They didn’t seem convinced. They smiled lightly as if they were leaving, then came back and asked me the exact same questions.
It was as if they had realized my previous answers were lies.
Han Ga-in: They’re curious about my age and hometown. I tried lying, but I think they know.
Yoo Song-i: Same experience. I didn’t answer about my age and said I was born in Japan, but they weren’t fooled.
Elena: Are you all idiots? Forget detecting lies, we’ve all been speaking Korean from the beginning.
Oh. Right.
Now that I thought about it, the ship’s employees and passengers were of mixed ethnicities, but everyone had been speaking Korean from the start.
It probably felt like the hotel had set the language to Korean because we couldn’t gather information if we couldn’t even communicate.
Either way, it wasn’t convincing for an East Asian person speaking Korean to claim they were Chinese or Japanese.
A-ri gave another opinion.
Kim A-ri: The nationality part makes sense, but it’s strange that they aren’t fooled about our ages.
She was right. Nationality was obvious because of the language, but they hadn’t been fooled about our ages either.
It was strange that they could tell someone’s age within one or two years just by looking at them.
Eventually, we all gathered around a table.
Just like yesterday, everyone around us reacted to every word and action we made.
Grandpa Mook-seong slowly got started.
--- Crash~!
He slammed a bottle onto the table with a loud noise.
“Buuurp! Hey, I’m drunk! Ga-in! Go get us some beer!”
To match the mood, I rushed around, saying I was getting alcohol and snacks.
An employee hurried toward us, unable to hide their flustered expression.
“Sir, I think you’ve had too much to drink. Please get up and leave -”
--- Clatter!
Grandpa shoved the table forward, knocking over the employee who had been talking across from him!
What? He was suddenly beating up an employee? Was it okay to go this far?
--- Whoosh! Thud!
“Oops!”
“Ahh! What’s wrong with that guy?”
Grandpa smashed three more bottles, then started throwing round bread like discs at the passengers around us.
By the time the crew and passengers had all gathered around our table in a panic, Grandpa climbed onto it.
“Ah, you’re someone I can’t trust~𝅘𝅥𝅮 Ah, you’re such a childish person~𝅘𝅥𝅮”
I was completely out of it, and the Chat Window began flooding with messages.
Elena: Do we really have to go this far?
Yoo Song-i: What era is that song from?
Kim A-ri: It’s a recent song from the singer’s perspective.
In the middle of the chaos, the people around us could only stand there with their mouths open, staring at Grandpa.
“Today, wild chrysanthemums~𝅘𝅥𝅮 Tomorrow, roses~𝅘𝅥𝅮”
At this point, it was just funny. I started laughing because it was so ridiculous.
“Now I’m tired, bumblebee~𝅘𝅥𝅮”
“Bumblebee!”
I turned around in disbelief. A-ri was shouting, “Bumblebee!”
“I’m tired of waiting, bumblebee~𝅘𝅥𝅮”
“Bumblebee!”
Ah, whatever. I joined in too. Bumblebee!
Something was bound to happen. It would be stranger if nothing happened after we caused this much of a scene.
[Sage’s Advice: 1 -> 0]
The Crisis Alert activated.
Footnotes:
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