WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 172: A Happy Evening, What Was Room 201 Really? (1)
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- Han Ga-in
The superpower Elena had gained, Ominous Imagination, was this exhausting?!
I covered Elena's mouth so she couldn't make any more strange noises.
Was that fortunate? Anyone could tell from the wolf's howl that something was seriously wrong, so the people ahead noticed and came back for us.
“Ga-in! What the hell is going on? There weren't any wolf-like things before!”
“I think Elena made it!”
“What?”
“I'll explain when we get downstairs. Let's go first!”
Our roles were quickly decided.
Eun-sol, who was wearing a Protective Suit, picked Elena up with one hand and ran ahead. Jin-cheol took up position at the rear, keeping watch for an attack from the wolf.
...
The wolf never attacked us. Instead, something even more absurd happened.
--- Ding! Dong!
“Everyone, get in! To the elevator... Song-i? What's that?”
“Eun-sol, isn't it cute? I named it Snow.”
“Forget Snow! That's a monster wolf!”
“Let's get inside first, sis.”
Fortunately, the hotel elevator worked perfectly even with all of us and the monster wolf inside.
Ignoring Elena, its creator, the enormous wolf eagerly licked Song-i's hand. Song-i had Affinity.
The wolf's body wasn't flesh made of protein. It was made of snow.
Not long after we arrived on the first floor, a scream rang out.
...
“Huh? Huhhh? Snow? What's wrong with you?”
“... Nothing's wrong with it. It's a wolf made of snow, so it's just melting.”
“Elena, can't you do anything?”
Elena awkwardly turned her head away.
The wolf soon vanished, and Song-i became deeply depressed.
Pero diligently rubbed its beak against her, but it couldn't fill the void Snow had left behind.
It struck me again that Song-i was a truly unusual high school girl.
In the middle of all this, A-ri asked Elena, “Can you make other monsters too? Like Snow 2?”
“Don't try to replace Snow!”
“Elena only made it out of snow, didn't she? She could make Snow 3 and Snow 4 whenever she wants.”
“Agh!”
“Ah! Don't kick me!”
Elena, who had been silent until then, sighed.
“I'm still figuring out Ominous Imagination in real time, but it's a little different from the power Beatrix used in the Cube. For example, the monsters Beatrix created existed indefinitely, but the monsters I make disappear on their own after some time.”
“That sounds more like an advantage than a disadvantage.”
“Does it?”
Elena's expression brightened slightly as she stared intently at something like a framed picture in the corridor.
“Agh!”
“Eek! G-Ga-in?”
I tore off one of the blankets we'd used to make improvised winter clothes and covered Elena's eyes.
Seeing that, Eun-sol caught on and grabbed Elena's hand, starting to pull her away.
“Good call. Elena, stop having strange thoughts and go to Room 105 to sleep.”
Whatever had been about to leap out of the frame faded away again.
A-ri and I spoke at the same time.
“This is going to be exhausting for a while...”
“This is going to be fun for a while!”
A-ri looked incredibly pleased. I wanted to kick her too.
* * *
As always, everyone's expressions brightened the moment they saw the table overflowing with incredible food.
“Eun-sol? Where's Elena?”
“She said she was too tired and would just go to sleep.”
Naturally, the topic everyone wanted to discuss over the pleasant meal was Room 201.
Eun-sol took a bite of garlic bread and asked first.
“Ga-in, explain it properly now. How exactly did you resolve it? We heard the general outline on the way here, but it was hard to understand even then.”
“Hmm... I'll briefly go over the facts, then we can discuss the parts that are hard to understand.”
“Sounds good.”
“In the 1980s, the Zero-Dimensional Eye appeared in the world and began causing enormous damage. The Management Bureau decided it couldn't defeat the entity through force. At that point, the Chief Researcher came up with an idea. The Zero-Dimensional Eye enjoyed seeing humans suffer cruelly, so they would create a small hell where that cruel suffering repeated endlessly and offer it as a gift. There was a great deal of opposition, but they went through with it, and surprisingly, it worked.”
“It worked?”
“According to the memories, the Zero-Dimensional Eye shut itself away inside that small hell, the Cube.”
A-ri poked me.
“Don't stop. Next, next.”
“Still, operating that hell gradually reached its limit. Internally, there were naturally people asking, ‘Haven't we crossed the line?’ Patrick was their representative. Externally, the Zero-Dimensional Eye began showing signs that it wanted to go outside. The Chief Researcher concluded that the Zero-Dimensional Eye had grown bored.”
Jin-cheol, who looked fed up himself, asked, “Is that where that damn Beatrix comes in?”
“Right. Beatrix herself seemed to be an entity that came into existence separately from the Zero-Dimensional Eye and the Cube, but the Chief Researcher saw Beatrix as something that could solve the Cube's problems. What did I say those problems were?”
A-ri answered.
“Two things. First, skeptics appeared among the operators who thought they'd crossed the line. Second, the audience started getting bored with this alone.”
“The Chief Researcher saw Beatrix as the answer to both problems. First, if the monsters Beatrix created replaced the killing facilities inside the Cube, far fewer people would be needed to operate it. Second, Beatrix could kill people in all sorts of ways no one could imagine, so the Zero-Dimensional Eye would be more satisfied. That was the idea.”
The others listened in a daze, looking stunned.
Jin-cheol couldn't take it anymore.
“I've never heard a story this insane in my life.”
“Neither have I.”
“Old man, say something. Has the Management Bureau really been doing things like this?”
Mook-seong wore a bewildered expression for a long time before answering.
“I swear on my name, though my name isn't worth much, I've never heard of a case this extreme.”
A-ri began to look puzzled.
Eun-sol nudged me again.
“Even if it happened, this isn't something we can argue about here. Ga-in, keep going.”
“There was one critical mistake in the Chief Researcher's grand plan. His distinctive way of thinking, where he treated every human as a tool, made him miss it. Beatrix wasn't just a demon that created monsters. Beatrix was a girl who wanted freedom and happiness in her own way.”
“... I never got the impression that Beatrix was an ordinary girl.”
“I'm saying that side existed too. There must have been a cruel side as well. Either way, Beatrix had no intention of becoming a slave who made monsters forever in the Cube. Once the Chief Researcher realized that, he left only Beatrix's brain and threw it into the Sealed Area.”
Song-i spat out the meat she had been eating.
“This story just keeps getting more nauseating. I don't think this was something we should've discussed while eating.”
Eun-sol had been listening intently when she asked, “But it looks like the rebellion succeeded in the end?”
“It did. Beatrix couldn't rebel alone, but Patrick's cooperation made the problem much bigger. The Chief Researcher had anticipated a rebellion by Beatrix and prepared countermeasures, but Patrick had been a longtime confidant. He never thought Patrick would go as far as starting a rebellion. Eventually, the Zero-Dimensional Eye's Sealed Area fell into the hands of Beatrix and Patrick. Some time after that, we entered Room 201.”
“I understand what happened in the middle. We did it ourselves, after all. To sum it up, we tore through the Cube, found the TV connected to the Research Lab at Headquarters, crossed over to the lab, caused a mess, and woke the Chief Researcher again. What happened after that?”
“It wasn't anything special. It was basically putting down the rebellion. We took out most of the rebels, and most of the remnants died when the Zero-Dimensional Eye descended. This time, the reawakened Chief Researcher locked Beatrix's brain inside the Cube, in a box with no door leading outside, so Beatrix couldn't even think about rebelling again.”
“Beatrix makes monsters endlessly in that box, and the Management Bureau feeds people into it?”
“Something like that.”
A-ri, who had been listening quietly for a while, spoke up.
“This may sound strange, but if you strip away the sensational parts, it's a fairly simple story.”
Everyone's eyes turned to A-ri.
“Forget the murder traps and feeding humans to monsters. Think about it plainly. A Sealing facility holding an Evil God had fallen into rebel hands. The Management Bureau took it back, and that resolved the situation.”
It was an extremely rough summary, but it made sense.
Song-i, who had stopped eating a while ago, tilted her head.
“So... what exactly was the ‘curse’ in Room 201? At first, I thought it was the Cube, but it turned out that the Cube was a Sealing facility. We resolved it by restoring the Cube perfectly, didn't we?”
A-ri answered simply.
“The Source of the Curse was the Zero-Dimensional Eye, and maybe the problem we had to solve was that the Cube containing it had fallen into rebel hands?”
Was that how we had to interpret it? Based only on what had been revealed, it didn't seem wrong, but something about it still didn't sit right with me.
While everyone thought it over, Eun-sol, who had been quietly considering it for a while, spoke.
“I think we've been interpreting Room 201 too much from the Chief Researcher's perspective. Since we're talking about it, let's consider a completely different point. The Chief Researcher admitted that his own answer was an incomplete resolution by the Hotel's standards, right?”
I added an explanation.
“Yes. He thought it was a thirty out of a hundred solution by the Hotel's standards. It was originally my thought, but by then I had fused more than halfway with the original Chief Researcher, so it was fair to call it his thought too.”
“Why would the score be so low?”
Jin-cheol answered in disbelief.
“Is that even a question? Wouldn't it be stranger if a solution that endlessly throws people in as demon food got a high score? I'm more amazed that such a method was judged to be a ‘resolution’ at all.”
“No, think about it more carefully. The Hotel is the one evaluating it. Do you really think this Hotel values human lives?”
...
It felt like someone had struck the back of my head with a hammer, and everyone fell silent.
“I've never seen a place that treats human lives as lightly as this Hotel. Would the Hotel really consider feeding a few dozen or a few hundred ‘mere humans’ to a demon a serious problem?”
...
“There was another strange part from the beginning. According to the Chief Researcher, the Zero-Dimensional Eye enjoyed watching people die in pain. If that was truly the kind of entity it was, why would it willingly enter something as small as the Cube and be satisfied? I can't understand the mind of a psychopathic god, but wouldn't it be more entertaining to watch eight billion humans suffer across the entire Earth than a few hundred people die inside a cramped Cube?”
...
“Those were the parts I found difficult to understand. Maybe I'm not used to the Management Bureau's way of thinking in overly ‘occult’ terms and am looking at this too much from a business perspective...”
A-ri summarized.
“So this is what you mean. First, there's nowhere that takes human life as lightly as the Hotel. If the Chief Researcher was saving Earth, he might have to grind up a few people. Why would the Hotel give such a low score over something so minor? Second, why would an Evil God that enjoys humanity's suffering watch one little Cube instead of playing with the whole Earth?”
“That's right.”
Song-i lowered her head.
“I'm having a hard time following this conversation...”
Eun-sol and A-ri, on the other hand, seemed to be getting more and more absorbed.
“I thought of one line of reasoning that could resolve these questions.”
A-ri asked with an intensely curious expression.
“What is it? I've been thinking this for a while, but when you leave the Hotel, you should quit that boring Daeyang Group work and join us.”
“... I'll think about that when the time comes. I think the Zero-Dimensional Eye's strange behavior becomes surprisingly simple if we understand it from a business perspective. The Chief Researcher fell into a trap because he interpreted it in overly ‘occult’ terms. That's why the Hotel gave him such a stingy score.”
Footnotes:
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