WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈

Episode 244: Room 202, Curse Room - ‘The Little Mermaid’ (22)

──────

- Park Seung-yeop

The parrot that suddenly came flying in, smashing through the window, transformed into a monster in an instant, then crushed two restaurant employees near the wall.

“Argh!”

As I recoiled in shock, something strange happened. Guns sprang from the restaurant employees’ waistbands! Wait, restaurant employees carried guns these days?

When I looked across the table, the director calmly pulled a gun from his jacket and aimed it at me despite the chaos. I stared blankly as the pistol’s trigger was about to be pulled, as if it were happening in slow motion-

--- Thud!

I flew into the air. In that brief instant, I realized the Grotesque had knocked me away with a ‘headbutt.’

The director’s expression twisted, and the restaurant employees all aimed their guns at the Grotesque. Unlike my mind, which had gone completely blank, my hands were pretty smart. Thanks to all the fights I’d been through with Pero, they’d naturally covered my ears!

--- KRAAAAAA!

A surging roar shook the entire building!

Even though I’d braced myself and covered my ears, I was suddenly gripped by violent excitement and kicked over a table with my leg. I barely got myself together, turned, and ran outside.

They were enemies. I didn’t know why, but the Management Bureau was my enemy now!

Why? How could this happen? I couldn’t understand it at all. Feeling like a rabbit fleeing from a wolf, I frantically rushed out of the room where I’d been with the director and burst into the restaurant hall.

--- Click!

The door I’d passed earlier was about to open. Already? They’d been caught in Pero’s roar and recovered this quickly? What do I do? What do I do? What do I-

--- Splash!

“Ah, hot! Fuck, fuck, fuck! Why is it so hot?!”

“GAAAAAAH!”

“I’m sorry!”

I wasn’t sorry at all, but the apology came out instinctively!

There happened to be a steaming bowl of seafood stew in front of me. I grabbed it with my bare hands and threw it, and it felt like my hands would melt in that short moment. Naturally, the director, who had the bowl dumped over his head, fell to the floor and rolled around.

I ran desperately. I shoved aside the chairs and tables scattered everywhere, running and running toward the restaurant entrance. Once I got outside, I’d head somewhere crowded-

--- Bang!

Ah...

Was this what it felt like to be struck by lightning? It felt as though a red-hot iron rod were tearing through my body.

Movie protagonists got shot once or twice, wrapped themselves in bandages, and still pulled off all kinds of action scenes. I guess I wasn’t a protagonist. I seemed to have been hit in the shoulder, but all the strength drained from my body, even my legs, and I collapsed on the slick ground.

--- Shhhhh!

Rain fell from the sky. Soft, pattering footsteps came from the restaurant.

It hurt. It hurt so much. At that moment, the pain felt far worse than the fear that everything might end when I died. Please, please, I desperately prayed for this pain to end...

“Mom...”

“...”

“Mom... Mom... Sob...”

“I’m sorry. I’ll put you at ease soon.”

Then the streetlight went out. Had my eyes, with death closing in, become unable to see light?

The next moment, the streetlight across the road went out too. Then every light around me disappeared. Darkness settled over the deserted alley, which was eerie enough even without a soul in sight.

--- Click.

Beneath the dim night sky, footsteps came through the sound of the pouring rain and wind. Strangely, even the pain that had felt like lightning scorching my entire body fell silent as I sensed ‘someone’ approaching.

“What other strange-”

The director, who had tilted his head in confusion and was trying to take a step toward me, stiffened ‘like stone.’

Someone was approaching. They were about my size at most. Were they wearing a raincoat? Their steps weren’t very fast either. They looked no more than a little girl.

“Hello?”

“...”

I didn’t have the strength to answer. The girl who emerged from the darkness looked at the director, frozen like stone.

“Ah! Mister. I saw you in my dream last night. Su-ho oppa was quite afraid of you.”

The girl’s gaze shifted slightly upward. From above the director, the rain-soaked restaurant sign began to make a strange sound.

“Mister. Whenever I see a run-down restaurant sign like this, I always think about something. What if the sign suddenly falls? It’s not that absurd, is it? Every year, people in Korea get hurt by falling icicles.”

--- Creak!

Something was strange. There had definitely been Management Bureau employees inside the restaurant, and they must have been stationed around here too...

Yet not one of them came near. Was it because the girl’s sinister imagination had covered the dark street?

The old sign above the restaurant began to sway. The director couldn’t move a single finger. Seeing that, the girl slowly walked over and moved the director’s stone-stiff face ‘upward.’

“Watch carefully. Even if you’re leaving, you should know what happens, shouldn’t you? Otherwise, you’ll be frustrated.”

Slowly, the tilting sign finally fell and crushed the director into a lump of meat. Until that very moment, he couldn’t take a single step.

--- Click.

“Hi!”

“...”

“You don’t have the strength to talk? Seung-yeop... Hmm. It’ll be hard for Seung-yeop to survive. What a shame. You might have lived if you’d gone straight to a hospital.”

“...”

“I had a dream last night. A very... very old dream. I heard a voice. I heard the screams of my compatriots filling the whole world. And I gained new ears.”

“...”

“It’s strange. The moment I woke up from the dream, I realized my ears were completely useless. They couldn’t hear a single sound I really needed to hear. Why didn’t I realize something so obvious until now? So I tore off those useless ears. Now... now I can hear. Seung-yeop, can you hear the voice too?”

Only then did I realize both of the girl’s ears had been torn off.

“Father! My Father. Can You hear our prayers? Only now can I hear Your voice. Grant me Your grace. As You did for Lee Su-ho, grant me grace as well.”

With those words, the girl’s hands went to her own eyes. I shut my eyes. Soon, a horrible sound reached my ears.

Riringanor had torn off her ears to hear ‘sounds she could not hear.’ Had she now gouged out her eyes to see ‘something she could not see’?

Her footsteps moved away from me. Around then, every sound slowly began to fade. I felt my end approaching too...

...

What was she, exactly? The final trial of this room? The Sea God’s final card in preparation for Lee Su-ho’s failure? I didn’t know.

At the same time, I felt a little betrayed. Riringanor might not remember it, but during the first attempt, we’d grown quite close while saving the people of Busan from danger...

Had all of that just been an act?

Or perhaps she hadn’t known her own role until Lee Su-ho failed. Of course, that could just be my futile hope.

I stopped thinking about it there. Every prediction would only matter if we had a Next Chance. As my consciousness faded, I desperately hoped there would be a ‘next’ for me, for us.

* * *

- Elena

Early in the morning, someone suddenly shook me awake. Before I could even clear my head, I heard shocking news. Director Park Jin-seong, the man effectively in charge of the Research Lab, had died in an absurd accident!

“Uh... So what was he doing when he died?”

“A restaurant sign fell on him during a mission.”

For a moment, I was speechless.

Of course, people could die from choking while eating or tripping over a rock on the street. Still, I never expected someone as high-ranking as a Management Bureau director to die so pointlessly.

As I shared Serenade’s disbelief and assessed the situation amid the confusion, I realized a truly alarming change had begun.

“Rudah are emitting Aberrant Waves! The Daughters need to act quickly!”

At the urgent cry of an employee rushing over, the Research Lab’s three Daughters of the Sea God, Serenade, Imelda, and I, hurried toward the tanks holding the snails without even being able to properly change our clothes.

Sure enough, the Rudah were all writhing as they emitted bizarre sound waves, and those waves caused intense pain in the ‘Advanced Humans’ throughout the Research Lab.

Something even stranger was that our control over the Rudah had become useless. Even Imelda, who was the most skilled among us at controlling them, couldn’t stop the Rudah from emitting the Aberrant Waves.

Far from stopping, the waves began to affect us too. Just as I started to feel the dreadful sensation of ‘something’ stirring beneath my skin, I realized the moment of ruin had finally arrived.

Thinking about it, it was obvious. Why hadn’t a resolution or escape appeared even after the Sea God’s Descent had stopped with Lee Su-ho’s death?

The Sea God still had one bullet left.

There had clearly been another unknown method, one final move kept in reserve for Descent. I knew that bullet had now pierced the entire world.

The reason the Rudah had escaped our control was obvious too. Something with stronger control over them must be controlling them now.

...

So there was no need to hold back any longer.

“Why won’t these things listen?”

“Imelda. Don’t you have something prepared for an emergency? You didn’t conduct every kind of experiment on these suspicious supernatural organisms without preparing even one last resort, did you?”

“Of course I do. But the people in charge of the Research Lab need to hold a meeting and-”

“Elena, I have a rough idea what that method is.”

Serenade cut Imelda off and looked at me. Over the last few days, I’d thought I was the only one exploring this Research Lab. Had Serenade been up to something too?

Serenade gave me a meaningful look. I found myself feeling oddly amused as well.

“What are you suddenly-”

The next moment, Imelda hardened as though she had turned to stone.

“Imelda, for someone who showed such great resolve to secretly collude with the Management Bureau, why are you so careless? Did you become stupid after staying in this safe Research Lab for too long?”

Was Serenade still resentful about when the Management Bureau ambushed her and dragged her here unconscious? She ground Imelda’s foot beneath her heel.

--- Bang!

One gunshot. The end of the former Saintess, who had suffered through nightmares for so long and wished for a peaceful, safe life, was more anticlimactic than expected.

“Elena, you’ll laugh when you see the ‘last resort’ they prepared in this Research Lab. It’s a surprisingly familiar thing.”

“A familiar thing?”

“Yeah. You know it well too. The Management Bureau simply ‘improved’ it significantly. I was impressed by their creativity.”

Screams came from every direction.

Amid the Aberrant Waves filling the Research Lab, all the beings who had called themselves ‘Advanced Humans,’ ‘the future of humanity,’ and ‘the hope of Homo sapiens’ writhed across the floor like insects.

I sensed that the second attempt was slowly coming to an end too. I would probably be the final survivor.

Could I escape?

Footnotes:

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