WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 229: Room 202, Curse Room - ‘The Little Mermaid’ (7)
──────
[User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)
Date: Day 100
Current Location: Level 2, Room 202 - Curse Room ‘The Little Mermaid’
Sage’s Advice: 0]
- Han Ga-in
After leaving the cave and returning to the government building, we went back to the limousine for another meeting.
“Ah, fuck! Agh! Doctor, is my arm really going to be okay?”
... That was when I realized Jin-cheol had far more patience for pain than I’d expected. Even with the Regeneration he’d gained from enhancing his blessing, I’d wondered whether his arm could really reattach after he picked it up off the floor and pressed it back on like clay.
As expected, though, it hadn’t finished regenerating on the spot. He’d only endured the pain because he didn’t want to show weakness in front of the enemy.
“The skin, bones, and nerves seem to have roughly joined together. The problem is that they only joined together roughly.”
“What does that mean? Ughhh...”
“If it heals like this, your arms will be different lengths. You said a monster cut it off, right? Why would a monster cut it cleanly enough to make reattaching it easy?”
“Son of a bitch...”
“All I can tell you is to endure it. Once we leave this room, the hotel will fix it properly.”
While the Doctor examined Jin-cheol’s arm again and adjusted the wound, the rest of us sank into thought.
Eun-sol spoke with a tired expression.
“It feels like we’ve learned a lot, but we still don’t know anything. We can’t locate Elena again.”
I brought up something I’d been wondering about too.
“Actually, there’s something I’ve been wondering for a while. What exactly is the curse in Room 202?”
Everyone fell silent in thought.
“It can’t just be that Lee Su-ho was assassinated by someone. The hotel wouldn’t call that a curse.”
“From what we’ve experienced, the curse in a Curse Room is usually something that threatens all of human civilization. The hotel wouldn’t call one or two deaths a curse.”
“That’s why I don’t understand. Who in this scenario is threatening the world?”
Grandfather joined in.
“Well, perhaps whatever threatens the world hasn’t awakened yet. Haven’t we already learned the name of a transcendent being?”
“You mean Kadarudah?”
Song-i turned to A-ri.
“You said you can read Merfolk writing. Do you know anything?”
“Not at all. The Merfolk I know and the Merfolk in this scenario are far too different. The Merfolk from the reality I knew were just intelligent fish. At best, they looked like manatees. They weren’t humanoids with scales like the Merfolk here.”
“But you said their writing was the same.”
“The hotel always rearranges writing and languages however it wants. Maybe it changed it into writing I knew for convenience.”
“Is that so...”
Silence settled over the limousine for a moment.
I didn’t know. We’d gathered a lot of information and formed all sorts of hypotheses, but we still knew nothing about the room’s essential element.
What was Room 202’s curse? What secret was the Daughter of the Sea God, or beyond her, the Sea God, hiding? What was even happening right now? Where was Elena?
...
Just as I began to feel tired, everyone suddenly shot to their feet.
Park Seung-yeop: Can you hear me? Do I need to get closer?
Seung-yeop, who should have been in Busan, had entered the Chat Window’s range!
* * *
- Park Seung-yeop
Busan was in chaos, with everything being swept away by the tsunami.
When Riringanor told me to retrieve the Flute beyond the waves that were calmly rolling in, I had no idea what I was supposed to say!
“So I just have to get the Flute caught in that tire?”
“That’s right!”
“Wait here. I’ll bring it back soon.”
Screw it! I just said I’d do it.
If I trusted Heavenly Fortune and jumped in, wouldn’t there be a turtle waiting underwater, as if it had expected me?
Just as I turned to leap onto the water to live up to the girl’s expectant gaze, I realized a tragic fact.
The universe’s blessing that had filled my body was leaving me. The exhilaration that had swelled within my heart faded like a match going out.
Heavenly Fortune had ended!
The shock made me scream inwardly. Why now?! I’d confidently said I’d bring it back, and this was happening now? If I’d only had five more seconds, I might’ve managed something!
“...”
“...”
“...”
“Master? Shouldn’t you hurry? The car is getting farther away.”
A desperate crisis! There was only one being I could trust in this situation!
I grabbed the Grotesque tightly by the neck and whispered into its ear.
“You see the Flute, right? Get itgetitgetitgetitgetitgetitgetitgetit-”
--- You stupid idiot!
Did I hear that wrong? It sounded way too different from its usual chirping. No, that couldn’t be it, right?
In the end, the Grotesque made an annoyed sound, shoved us into a nearby building, then transformed into a parrot and flew over the obstacles toward the Flute.
Riringanor’s eyes widened as she watched the astounding sight of a giant bird the size of a car transform into a parrot before her eyes.
“Th-That! That! That’s the first time I’ve ever seen such an amazing bird! Is it a bird raised by the Management Bureau?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Is it a bird passed down through your martial sect for generations? A legendary divine bird?”
“Definitely not.”
She was a Daughter of the Sea God and honestly looked older than me, but the atmosphere somehow made it feel natural to speak casually. Riringanor accepted it without question.
“I’m sorry about earlier.”
???
“What are you apologizing for-”
“Now that I think about it, Master must have used Void Stepping repeatedly and expended a great deal of spiritual power commanding that mysterious bird. Naturally, you couldn’t use the art of Crossing the River on a Reed as well! Fortunately, that mysterious bird is bringing the Flute back.”
I didn’t understand any of the words she kept using! What was Void Tramping? Crossing the River on Two Reeds? Earlier, she’d said something about Wind-Wrangling Spring Bull too!
As Pero returned with the Flute amid my confusion, the girl smiled brightly.
“If you’re from the Management Bureau, you came to save people anyway, right? Please help me!”
* * *
As I helped the girl for nearly half a day afterward, I kept thinking.
Why had my Heavenly Fortune been used?
At first, I thought it had activated because I was about to be eaten by the Ragworm. Yet now I was riding on Kong-i’s back, rescuing people. In other words, the Ragworm attacking us hadn’t been a crisis.
Even if Heavenly Fortune hadn’t activated, Riringanor would have rescued us. If anything, when I climbed onto Kong-i’s back, Riringanor slipped from the Ragworm in surprise, creating a danger that hadn’t existed before.
It activated because I thought it was dangerous, even though it wasn’t a real crisis?
After considering it for a moment, I pushed that possibility aside. When I used it myself, I might be influenced by my own misconceptions. But when Heavenly Fortune activated on its own, like earlier, it had nothing to do with my perception. It had even activated by itself the first time I entered Room 101, when I wasn’t conscious of my blessing at all.
...
There was one thing I understood now.
Riringanor, the third Daughter of the Sea God, who was rescuing people alongside me, firmly believed I was a superhuman affiliated with the Management Bureau.
Heavenly Fortune had ended long ago, so I hadn’t displayed any particularly amazing abilities for quite some time. Still, she’d already watched me fly through the air and flip in midair, and an endlessly mysterious bird was helping me.
That situation had given her imagination free rein.
I still had no idea what terms like “old-returning, child-becoming” and “yellow bones, shedding the shell” meant, but I could roughly guess. Riringanor seemed to think I was hiding my true identity, or that I’d expended spiritual power commanding Pero and couldn’t use my other abilities.
Either way, a strange relationship had formed. After helping Riringanor rescue people for half a day, we’d become fairly close.
It seemed that the result Heavenly Fortune had created was this close relationship between me and a Daughter of the Sea God.
How was I supposed to use that?
...
While I was thinking, the Ragworm, which had been working so hard all this time, finally seemed exhausted and slipped underwater. We naturally began resting atop a tall building that looked relatively safe.
“I’ve been wondering, what’s that Flute? A sacred relic given by the Sea God?”
“Something like that.”
“Can you control animals with it?”
“Um... it doesn’t work on just any animal. It only works on special children of the sea who’ve received Kadarudah’s grace.”
“Like that Ragworm?”
“Yes. But the Flute’s original purpose has nothing to do with controlling animals. This is closer to a use my sisters and I developed after using the Flute for a long time.”
“Its original purpose?”
“It was originally meant to soothe nightmares.”
Nightmares. It felt like an important word.
“Who has nightmares so bad that they need a sacred relic?”
Riringanor suddenly fell silent. She looked out over the sea with a distant expression and murmured.
“Everyone.”
“Everyone?”
“All Merfolk have nightmares every night. No one knows why we must endure such hardship. Children and elders, men and women, those of high status and low. Regardless of age, gender, or status, all Merfolk are always plagued by nightmares. Even the god we serve is tormented by nightmares. It is a trial we must endure forever.”
“Do you have nightmares too?”
“Last night, I dreamed I became a fish and died flopping about on land. Of course I couldn’t breathe, and no matter how hard I flopped, I couldn’t reach the water. In the end, I felt pain like my lungs, no, my gills were bursting, and then I lost consciousness.”
The pain of drowning? Was this the opposite case? Either way, that was far too horrible!
“About three days ago, I had a nightmare where a shark ate me alive. I ran and ran, but it eventually ate me.”
“All Merfolk have nightmares like that every day?”
She shook her head.
“Not everyone’s are that severe. If they were, all Merfolk would lose their minds together. Most only feel something unpleasant, and the details are vague. It’s probably not much different from an ordinary person’s nightmare. Of course, even that kind of nightmare is quite painful when you suffer through it every night.”
“Then why are yours so vivid-”
“More precisely, it isn’t just mine. It’s the Daughters of the Sea God’s. That’s one of the qualifications for becoming a Daughter of the Sea God.”
What did that mean?
Perhaps sensing my confusion, Riringanor smiled slightly and explained.
“Me, Sister Serenade, and Sister Elena-”
“Elena?”
“Yes?”
“... It’s nothing. I just recognized the name. Go on.”
“The position of Daughter of the Sea God isn’t inherited through bloodlines. My parents were ordinary civil servants.”
“Then how is it inherited?”
“These endless nightmares suffered by the Merfolk, we interpret them as memories experienced by our distant ancestors. In truth, the content of most nightmares is the suffering fish experience.”
Ancestral Memories.
“Most Merfolk only accept a tiny fraction of those Ancestral Memories, living with vague and clumsy nightmares. But sometimes, a Merfolk remembers a large part of the Primordial Memory. Those who become closer to their ancestors gain various powers in exchange. And the Merfolk who gain those powers receive the admiration of their people.”
Riringanor smiled faintly after saying that.
The climate was gradually stabilizing. The tsunami was receding. The Daughter of the Sea God was slowly drying off.
Under the sun that had pushed away the clouds as if announcing the disaster’s end, Riringanor seemed astonishingly mysterious.
“Have many of your questions been answered now, peerless master of the Management Bureau? Does this count as sufficient payment for helping me?”
Footnotes:
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