WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 250: Room 202, Curse Room - ‘The Little Mermaid’ (28)
──────
- Han Ga-in
The first thing I did after coming to my senses was look around.
An unknown place beyond the door. What could it be?
The body I was inhabiting looked like that of a boy in his mid-teens. He was painfully thin, as though he hadn't eaten well, but his clothes appeared to be made of expensive silk. The wooden structure I'd vaguely seen before looked like a small house.
Up to that point, the scenery was relatively ordinary.
Everything else was strange. The surroundings were nothing but shades of gray, as if I'd stepped into a black-and-white film. Though the sun should still have been up, this place was oddly dim. Still, it didn't feel like night.
I walked toward the door as A-ri had instructed. One step, then two.
“...Of course it wouldn't be that easy.”
If this had been me when I first entered the hotel, I would've fallen for it. For some unknown reason, my body had just moved not toward the door, but in the opposite direction.
It headed toward the passage behind the house, the one A-ri had warned me never to enter, where an unknown light glowed. After some thought, I took another step, and once again, my body moved toward the passage behind the house.
What kind of trick was this?
I was clearly moving toward the door, so why was I heading for the tunnel? Was my perception distorted? Had space itself warped? Too many possibilities came to mind for me to settle on any one answer. What should I do?
If it was a problem caused by distorted senses or a loss of control over the body, I figured I could solve it through the power of the Avatar.
My consciousness rose again. My mind, having surpassed the limits of flesh, seemed to reach a ‘higher realm.’ A black thread stretched straight out and touched the body.
The boy's slowly moving body no longer wandered. It headed in the right direction, toward the door.
Then the door dividing the two spaces slowly opened.
--- Srrrk!
“Hmm?”
I heard something strange.
Something flowing. An unknown liquid dripping drop by drop. Fine droplets soaking into the stone floor.
Something whose identity I couldn't possibly determine-
“Good work. You can return to your body now.”
At a moment when extreme unease washed over me, A-ri remained strangely calm.
* * *
[User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)
Date: Day 107
Current Location: Level 2, Room 202 - Curse Room ‘The Little Mermaid’
Sage’s Advice: 3]
“...I'm back.”
At the same time, the boy's body I'd inhabited until moments ago collapsed onto the grass.
A-ri watched as the boy slowly twitched, then silently approached him.
The boy muttered with a confused expression.
“Where is this...? Right now-”
“Thank you for all your hard work.”
“Pardon?”
“You must have suffered greatly all this time. You probably lived without even understanding what had happened to you. My name is Kim A-ri. Thank you once again.”
“What on earth-”
It took less than a second for the boy's neck to snap.
For an instant, pain filled his eyes. Then they peacefully closed.
“...Who was that?”
Instead of answering, A-ri closed the boy's eyes.
A-ri, whose eyes always seemed to hold a trace of mischief no matter the situation, was exceptionally serious at that moment. Her treatment of the dead boy was even respectful.
“Ga-in.”
“Yeah?”
“You have a lot of questions, don't you?”
“Of course I do-”
“Ask now. From now until the day we die, I'll answer one or two of your questions.”
For a moment, I was speechless.
Until the day we died?
...
Only then did I notice the world changing in some strange way.
The sky was turning gray. Every blade of grass on the ground withered, and the air began to smell acrid.
“Looks like we can't make it out alive, huh?”
“If you and I could move faster than sound, we could make it out alive.”
That meant we were dead.
Apparently, there truly was no way to survive, because even Danger Alert didn't react. Then the ground began to writhe. There wasn't much time left.
“If you'd told me in advance, I could've at least prepared myself.”
“I didn't know what was inside until I opened it either. There were quite a few possibilities. There are plenty of things we could escape from alive as we are now. It just so happened that there was one we couldn't escape alive from. Sorry.”
“What is that door? A prison that keeps monsters contained?”
“Something like that.”
--- Shiiiiiik!
A sound like cloth being torn apart rang out from the air.
“Something like that? Can't you explain it a little more? Lately, I've been thinking that I'll probably work for the Management Bureau once I get out anyway. Think of it as a little advance study and teach your junior something.”
A-ri looked up at the sky.
Following her gaze, I realized an unknown black fissure had formed in the sky. The crack slowly began to open, and something whose shape I couldn't properly make out lay within it.
“We.”
“...”
“We have always corrected endings we did not like.”
“What does that-”
“Sometimes, we observed where despair began and prevented an incident. Other times, we removed people who would accelerate destruction before they could do so. When neither was possible, we even forcibly changed the direction things took right before the ending.”
“...”
“But there is also such a thing as an ‘Inevitable Ending’ in this world. An ending that can't be changed no matter how much money and manpower you pour into it. That door is where such endings are kept. You could call it a trash bin full of Bad Endings.”
I didn't understand.
At the same time, I felt like I did.
For some reason, what A-ri was telling me felt familiar.
“Don't worry too much. There are many trash bins like this, and we only opened one of them. The Korean Branch can handle this much. But... they'll invest an enormous amount of resources to stop it. In that gap, Eun-sol and Jin-cheol will achieve their goals. Everything will work out. So let's rest together now.”
A-ri slowly approached me.
A silver flash gleamed from her fingertips.
That was my last memory.
* * *
- Lee Eun-sol
The man knelt on the cold asphalt and prayed.
Naturally, there were no cars around to honk at him and ask what he thought he was doing in the middle of the road. We were moving with dozens of military vehicles carrying hundreds of armed soldiers.
Watching Cha Jin-cheol kneel and begin to pray, followed by soldiers stopping beside him and offering irreverent prayers, made reality itself feel distant.
“Sis, should I use the bracelet again?”
Song-i, who had periodically protected Jin-cheol with the bracelet, now wondered if there was any point to it.
“It doesn't seem to mean much anymore.”
“...But he was still communicating with us until just now.”
“He'll probably answer if you talk to him even now.”
The answer was clear once I thought of Lee Su-ho, who had crossed the line completely. Lee Su-ho had been eroded by Rudah for far longer than Jin-cheol, yet until the moment he died, he still retained strange feelings for Elena, his former lover.
Being eroded did not mean a human ego disappeared completely. Their values simply shifted bit by bit.
Who was Jin-cheol praying to, and for what?
“Sis, can you see the people around us?”
At Song-i's words, I looked around.
The busy district stretching from Gangnam Station to Seocho Station was overflowing with so many people that they were impossible to count, despite the rain pouring down in sheets.
Some sat on the ground, wailing.
Some desperately prayed while clutching crosses or rosaries.
Some screamed like mad that Judgment Day was near.
Something was slowly approaching us.
As though someone had spilled murky paint across the canvas called the world, a gray light slowly stained everything from the sky to the ground.
The blue light in the sky began to fade. An irreverent aurora flickered, shaking everyone's hearts. Strange stones continued to rise from the ground. Inside the stones that burst through the hard asphalt were unknown masses of red flesh.
--- Kurrumble!
The salvation craved by those who prayed arrived with thunder.
From the western sky, from the opposite side of the grayness, more ‘power of civilization’ than could be taken in at a glance flew toward us.
--- Beeeeeep!
A harsh sound pierced my ears.
The intense wave seemed to shake everything from my skin to my organs. I staggered, and Song-i beside me caught me.
My head hurt.
Was it because I had been watching the strange phenomenon occurring in the distant sky through my ‘eyes’ since earlier? It felt as though needles were digging through my head.
It was a strange battle.
No missiles flew, and no bullets were fired. To begin with, I couldn't understand what kind of being that ‘enemy,’ which Ga-in and A-ri appeared to have released, even was.
Yet the Management Bureau was clearly fighting it.
They destroyed enemies that could be destroyed. They confronted incomprehensible enemies with incomprehensible means.
A little. Just a little. The world returned to its proper color.
Only then did I understand what it meant to fight the Management Bureau. I also deeply understood why A-ri had found it difficult to accept my words about the Management Bureau's responsibility for what had happened in Room 202.
They had truly protected the world.
And I had made a hole in the enormous wall they had protected.
It felt as though I couldn't breathe. My heart pounded violently. I...
“Sis.”
“Y-Yeah?”
“Focus on the current situation. A moment ago, Jin-cheol shouted and ran off. His role will end soon.”
“...”
“We should do what we need to do too. And-”
Song-i hesitated as if considering whether to say more, then added one sentence.
“Don't get too emotionally invested in what happened inside the room. Also, separate from the fact that those people protected the world, they repeatedly made wrong decisions in matters related to the Sea God.”
That was right.
At Song-i's words, my heart settled coldly.
The heroic side they were showing now and the scenario of Room 202 were separate matters. It was time to stay calm. Song-i and I still had things to do.
Just as the people traveling in the limousine had their own roles left to play.
Footnotes:
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