WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 247: Room 202, Curse Room - ‘The Little Mermaid’ (25)
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[User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)
Date: Day 106
Current Location: Level 2, Corridor
Sage’s Advice: 3]
- Han Ga-in
It took Elena about thirty seconds to come to her senses after suddenly screaming and running away. She returned with an awkward expression and apologized to A-ri. Apparently, she'd seen something so horrific right before escaping that she seemed to have lost her mind.
After that, we had to talk for quite a long time. The party had split up, and Seung-yeop and Elena had each gathered different information under different circumstances. Everyone's information was a complete mess, so it took a while to sort through it all.
Elena had practically handled the latter half of the second attempt alone. As we listened to what had happened, we soon found ourselves gaping. Nearly every room in the hotel had something grotesque and horrifying in it, but even taking that into account, what Elena had gone through was no small thing.
Just as everyone was beginning to feel a little overwhelmed by the scattered information, Eun-sol, who had been thinking quietly, stood in front of the whiteboard.
“I think we've figured out most of Room 202's scenario. Let's stop talking about what each of us experienced and arrange the events of Room 202 in chronological order. It'll be clearer that way.”
Soon, the events began appearing on the board in order.
1. Eight hundred years ago, poor coastal fishermen accepted Rudah, Sea God's kin, and became Merfolk. Later, it was revealed that a side effect of becoming Merfolk was transforming into marine life.
The Merfolk couldn't accept that fate. Those who harbored high-ranking individuals of Rudah, a colonial organism, namely the Daughters of the Sea God, used their abilities to allow the Merfolk to remain on land.
2. Twenty years ago, Imelda, the former Saintess of the Deep who had long been plagued by nightmares, made a deal with the Management Bureau and sold Rudah as test subjects.
The Management Bureau devised a plan to improve humans using Rudah. Enraged by this betrayal, the Sea God made the nightmares suffered by the Merfolk far harsher.
3. In the present day, the Sea God rose from the depths to judge sin and prepared Lee Su-ho and Riringanor. Judging by the circumstances, Lee Su-ho would act first, with Riringanor stepping in if he failed.
That seemed to cover the major events. Eun-sol continued.
“We can frame this around ‘sin,’ which was Room 202's key point. Number one concerns the Merfolk's first sin, ‘rejecting life in the sea.’ Number two is the Second Sin, ‘handing over a god's Servants as test subjects.’ The last one is the Sea God's response to that. If there's anything you don't understand, say it now.”
Jin-cheol raised his hand first.
“I've been wondering about this since we went through it twice. The bridge leading onto Haesin Island. Who do you think put the fog curse on it?”
“We should think about what that fog was for. It was clearly a curse intended to kill us. There aren't many forces in the scenario capable of using that kind of power. Serenade, the Management Bureau, and perhaps Lee Su-ho and Riringanor.”
“It wasn't the Management Bureau. At that point, we didn't know about the Project, so they had no reason to purge us.”
“It wasn't Serenade either. What do you think the Management Bureau would do if its agents heading for Haesin Island were suddenly wiped out? She wouldn't do something like that, if only because she'd be afraid of the backlash.”
“Then it was Lee Su-ho or Riringanor. The two of them wouldn't need to worry about any backlash when the Sea God was going to Descend the next day anyway. Was their goal to stop the Management Bureau from intervening right before the Sea God's Descent?”
“Probably. The tsunami in Busan may have had the same purpose. We entered the island before getting swept away by it, so we didn't notice.”
The moment Riringanor came up, Seung-yeop raised his hand.
“Did Riringanor know her fate from the beginning?”
I could tell what he meant just by looking at his expression. During the first attempt, Seung-yeop had seemed to grow fairly close to Riringanor. That connection had disappeared as we repeated the attempts, but not the memories.
Instead of Eun-sol, who couldn't easily answer, A-ri spoke up.
“There's no way to know. But either way, that girl is a major threat. We'll probably have to kill her.”
I thought the same. She might have known from the beginning that she was a tool for the Sea God's resurrection, or perhaps the Sea God had awakened her through dreams after Lee Su-ho died. Either way, she was extremely dangerous to us.
Elena carefully raised her hand.
“You remember the messages the Sea God gave us, right? ‘Give me an end to my suffering,’ which Ga-in heard during the first attempt. Then, during the second attempt, I heard, ‘One more time,’ and, ‘You're almost there. Why are you a Merfolk?’ What do you think those words meant?”
Grandpa gave his opinion.
“Give me an end to my suffering. Isn't that asking us to stop the Management Bureau from experimenting on Rudah? Or it could mean the Sea God wants us to resolve this room and let the Sea God rest.”
Like the Prisoner of Room 103, perhaps the Sea God was a being who wanted peace.
“‘One more time,’ and ‘You're almost there.’ That probably means we're close to resolving it, but we're just a little short, so we should try a little harder. The last sentence is the real mystery. Why are you a Merfolk? How does that sound to you?”
Silence fell around us for a moment. I cautiously offered my thoughts.
“In context, ‘you’ is obviously Elena, right? ‘Why is Elena a Merfolk?’...”
Why are you a Merfolk? Was that why we couldn't end it, and why a human was needed?
Or did Elena being a Merfolk have some meaning of its own, one that we needed to understand?
It wasn't easy. Silence settled over us again.
Then Eun-sol, standing in front of the whiteboard, raised her hand.
“There's actually something I don't understand either. Isn't the Flute strange?”
The Flute held quite a few mysteries.
According to what Elena had realized during the second attempt, as her mind drew closer to the Sea God's, the Flute felt like a pleasant lullaby made to calm the Sea God's own madness and pain. We had also heard that when the Flute's melody rang out, the Sea God seemed to regain sanity.
Elena tilted her head.
“What seems strange? That the Sea God gave the Merfolk an item meant to ease the Sea God's own suffering instead of using it personally?”
Eun-sol shook her head.
“No. That's easy. The Flute was meant for the Sea God, but it was useful to the Merfolk too, wasn't it? It weakened their nightmares. The Sea God could give it to followers because it was a treasure useful to them as well. What feels strange to me is the timing.”
“The timing?”
Perhaps to gather her thoughts, Eun-sol walked around for a moment.
“The Sea God is suffering. That's clear. The Sea God even told Ga-in, ‘Give me an end to my suffering.’ What caused that suffering?”
Grandpa answered.
“Wasn't it Rudah being taken by the Management Bureau and experimented on? The Sea God's Servants were dragged away by the Management Bureau and turned into lab rats. If a god suffered something like that, it'd naturally be incredibly painful.”
“Probably. Lee Su-ho, whose mind had actually become closer to Rudah than to humans, asked Elena to take revenge, didn't he? And according to the information we got on Haesin Island, the Daughters of the Sea God noticed several problems, including the nightmares having worsened starting twenty years ago.”
“Eun-sol, so what's strange about it?”
“The Sea God's suffering began twenty years ago, when the Management Bureau started using Rudah as test subjects. But when did the Sea God give them the Flute? Elena?”
Elena's eyes widened.
“Uh... I'm not sure exactly. It's been passed down through generations, so I think it's been hundreds of years.”
The Sea God's suffering had begun twenty years ago, yet the Flute intended to calm that suffering had been made hundreds of years earlier. How could a cure be made before the disease? Only then did I understand the contradiction in the timeline that Eun-sol had noticed.
Around then, A-ri slapped the table.
“I think we're digging too deeply into minor details. We don't need to solve every mystery in Room 202 to resolve it. I think we can resolve it with the information we've already found.”
Grandpa seemed to agree.
“In the end, don't we just need to stop the Sea God's Descent? The question was what cards the Sea God had prepared, but now we know them all. First, Lee Su-ho, who was thought to be dead but was perfectly alive. Second, Riringanor, who seemed like a quiet child but turned out to be an absurd monster. We just need to eliminate those two.”
I understood what A-ri and Grandpa meant. If we had a month, we could have discussed every question we could imagine whenever we had time. But we had to enter again tomorrow. We didn't have time to cling endlessly to questions that gave us no answers no matter how much we thought about them.
It was time to consider what we needed to do when we entered tomorrow. We began making plans, one step at a time.
How to deal with Lee Su-ho, who was plotting something on Haesin Island. How to deal with Riringanor, who wielded all sorts of supernatural abilities.
And if all those plans failed, the final escape method of using the large number of Living Flutes created by the Management Bureau!
Our discussion of the last option naturally led to the original Flutes held by the Daughters of the Sea God, which the Living Flutes had imitated.
“The Living Flutes are knockoffs copied by the Management Bureau. The originals were items bestowed by the Sea God. Wouldn't the Flutes given by the Sea God be more powerful?”
Elena seemed to think differently.
“I don't necessarily think so. The Living Flutes made by the Management Bureau... I feel a little bad saying this, but they could be mass-produced. They may have been inferior in quality to the originals given by the Sea God, but there were more than enough of them to make up for that with numbers.”
“Either way, if we can secure the original Flutes, let's make sure to take them. Even if things go as badly as possible, calming the Sea God's rage with the Flutes would count as escaping, so they're extremely valuable.”
If we failed to obtain the original Flutes, we would have to use the Living Flutes. I asked Elena.
“The original Flutes seem pretty easy to use, but the mass-produced Living Flutes from the Management Bureau look difficult to use. It seems like we need to control a conductor snail... Elena, could you make that moth monster again?”
Elena suddenly stared at me with wide eyes.
...
For a moment, I felt so uncomfortable that I lowered my gaze, only to find that where I looked was even more uncomfortable.
“Never.”
“Pardon?”
“I'll never make one again.”
“Ah.”
“Never. Never. Never!”
“O-okay.”
A-ri snickered.
“Right. Let's proceed by securing the original Flutes if possible. We don't need to make another monster that's difficult to control. Riringanor has one, and Serenade has one too, right? Elena, don't you have one?”
We spent quite a while filling in the details of the plan like that.
Then I realized Eun-sol had been quiet for a while.
“Eun-sol? What are you thinking about so hard?”
“Hmm... Something just clicked.”
“Clicked?”
“I think I just figured out what the Sea God's final words meant.”
“‘Why are you a Merfolk,’ you mean?”
“Ga-in, your Sage’s Advice has recharged again, right?”
...
...
...
The next day, we entered Room 202 again for the third attempt.
Footnotes:
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