WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 260: Party Time - Reflections on the Mirror Room, Meeting for the Next Room (6)
──────
[User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)
Date: Day 110
Current Location: Level 2, Corridor
Sage’s Advice: 2]
- Han Ga-in
“I can’t believe there’s only one day of rest left.”
“That’s why we’re relaxing today.”
Lying in a hammock we’d found while searching Level 2, lazily swaying as I took in the view of the lavish hotel, was pretty fun. I felt like I could keep doing this for ten hours straight.
A-ri had been watching me gently sway in the hammock, when the hammock -
“Don’t flip it!”
“I haven’t done anything yet.”
“You were going to.”
A-ri giggled, then suddenly brought up something serious.
“Have you talked to Seung-yeop?”
“A little. It sounds like he got some strange enhancement.”
“Did you understand what kind of enhancement it was?”
“Not at all.”
I really hadn’t understood it at all. Seung-yeop himself didn’t even know what power he’d gained. He’d told us at length about the mysterious vision his Sponsor had shown him, but it still made no sense.
When you had no idea what something was, the surest way to find out was to try using it. Unfortunately, his Sponsor had told him not to use it while his companions were around, so he couldn’t test it. We gave up on thinking about it any further.
“I think his Sponsor deliberately explained it in a way Seung-yeop would have trouble understanding.”
“Because he’d become weaker if he understood it?”
“Exactly. The more you talk about it, the funnier that power gets. Doesn’t it feel like a power where you get dumber the more you study, or weaker the more you work out?”
It certainly did feel that way. A power that grew weaker the more you trained and understood it. The more I learned about Luck, the more I wondered what kind of ability this was.
“Putting together everything Seung-yeop has heard, he’ll probably use that new power in the next room. We’ll naturally figure it out then.”
“That’s true. Oh, I realized something interesting while talking to Song-i earlier.”
“About the Mirror Room?”
“They say that when you enter that place, all sorts of wishes a person holds are reflected in the mirrors. Listening to Song-i made me wonder about something.”
“Wonder about what?”
“In Song-i’s case, such diverse images appeared that dozens of mirrors were each filled with a different illusion. What does that mean?”
“The human heart is very complicated.”
“That’s true too, but I’m talking about the Mirror Room itself. I’ll give you the conclusion first. The Mirror Room doesn’t just scrape at the surface of a person’s consciousness. It seems to scrape all the way down into their deepest inner self.”
“Don’t just give me the conclusion. Tell me how you got there.”
“Here’s what I mean. Of course, countless desires are hidden in people’s hearts. But not all those desires rise to the surface of consciousness at once. The human brain isn’t good at multitasking to begin with. At most, you can only think of one or two things at a time.”
I thought I understood what she meant.
Like Song-i said, she probably had all sorts of desires in her heart. A desire to succeed, a desire to rest, a longing for a simple life, a pursuit of the path to transcendence. Still, she wouldn’t think of all those desires at once.
“Now that you mention it, that makes sense. The Mirror Room doesn’t just scrape out what someone is currently thinking. It scrapes through their whole brain and reads even the desires hidden deep in their heart.”
“I think so. That’s why the Mirror Room is harder to use. A lot of the methods we use probably won’t work.”
“The methods we use...”
“For example, my Suggestion probably wouldn’t mean much. Suggestion only temporarily controls surface-level psychology, just like its name says. It isn’t a power that can erase all the countless desires hidden inside someone. If it were, the side effects would be far too severe.”
“What about Clear Mirror, Still Water or the Flute?”
“Those abilities aren’t really related in the first place. They both remove damage caused by magical madness. They don’t erase desire itself. The fact that people’s hearts are bundles of desires isn’t a mental illness.”
What made the Mirror Room difficult to use was human desire itself. Desire wasn’t a mental illness, so the Flute or Clear Mirror, Still Water couldn’t solve it.
As I listened, I began to get a vague sense of it.
“We need a much more powerful means of mental control.”
“That’s it. We’d need a power that completely ‘redesigns’ a person’s mind. A robot with a soul might be able to use the Mirror Room easily.”
A-ri fell quiet at that point. It felt like I had to fill the silence.
“Let’s take some time to think about it. We don’t have a Ticket right now anyway, so we have no way to revive Mi-ro.”
“It isn’t just because of Mi-ro.”
“There’s another reason?”
“The Management Bureau’s purpose I mentioned before. Power for the sake of the world. Don’t you think that power might be in the Mirror Room? We could make something like that by making a wish in the Mirror Room.”
It seemed possible. Honestly, given the nature of the Mirror Room, anything sounded plausible.
“If you’re right, we’d need to gather two Tickets. One to save your mother, and one to obtain the power to save the world.”
“There’s also the free wish. Since Song-i gave up, it’ll go to the next person who enters the room.”
“Wouldn’t that most likely be used to restore Mi-ro’s mind?”
“Mi-ro’s mind...”
A-ri wore a somewhat vacant expression as she muttered.
“Why did Mi-ro lose her mind in the first place?”
“Didn’t she pay that price when she made a wish in the Mirror Room?”
“I thought so too, but Song-i said that definitely wasn’t it.”
“Huh? But the Mi-ro we met in Frozen Hell said, ‘I tried to achieve many goals, but in return, I lost everything.’”
“When I told her that, Song-i said she thought Mi-ro never understood the Mirror Room properly, even at the moment she died.”
After she said that much, I had nothing more to add.
Mi-ro had fallen into the Mirror Room’s trap and lost her mind, while Song-i entered the Mirror Room and came out completely fine. At least when it came to matters related to the Mirror Room, it seemed reasonable to consider Song-i more reliable.
“Why does she think that?”
“The Mirror Room isn’t a place that demands a separate price. The first wish is free, and Tickets are required thereafter. She said it strictly follows that rule, so there’d be no reason for it to demand something like human intelligence. That means...”
I could guess the rest without hearing it.
The Mirror Room did not demand human intelligence as a price. It strictly gave the first wish for free, then required Tickets thereafter. Therefore, losing one’s intelligence wasn’t the price of making a wish in the Mirror Room.
Then why had she lost her intelligence? It couldn’t have been something she wanted, could it?
My thoughts grew more tangled. Around then, I remembered something I’d forgotten.
“Come to think of it, didn’t you get some kind of enhancement too? What sort of ability is it?”
“I’ll show you later.”
“Show me?”
“It’s a fun ability!”
A-ri’s expression was alarmingly bright. What kind of ability was it?
Lee Eun-sol: Come to the snack table!
Tomorrow was the end of our rest. It was about time to discuss which room we should enter next.
* * *
Everyone gathered in front of a table laden with drinks and snacks. As always, my sister was the first to speak.
“Honestly, I thought we obviously had to go to Room 203, so I didn’t see the need for a meeting. There wasn’t any particular reason we had to go to Room 203, but there was no reason to go to another room either.”
That was true. There was no great reason we had planned to proceed through Rooms 201, 202, and 203 in that order. We simply hadn’t found a reason to break the sequence.
“But A-ri said something a little different. It sounded convincing.”
“I’ll keep it simple. First, there is a room among the remaining ones that isn’t a Curse Room. I think it’s probably a Mission Room, but we won’t know until we see it. Second, the final Curse Room is harder than the other Curse Rooms. And now, ‘The Unremarkable Girl’ activates!”
A-ri’s explanation was quite interesting. According to her Sponsor, there was a room among the remaining rooms that wasn’t a Curse Room, and the final Curse Room was harder than the others.
“That made us start thinking about the order of the rooms. Also, Room 207 seems to be the Gate Room again this time.”
As she spoke, 203, 204, 205, and 206 were written on the whiteboard. The Doctor, who had been drinking a cocktail across from us, offered an opinion.
“Rooms 205 and 206. One of those is highly likely to be a ‘very difficult room.’”
“Sang-hyeon, it’s possible neither Room 205 nor Room 206 is a Curse Room. On the first floor, neither Room 105 nor Room 106 was a Curse Room, remember?”
“Seung-yeop, middle schoolers shouldn’t drink coffee yet.”
“Hmm... I don’t think Level 2 will have a Rest Room like Level 1 did.”
I thought the same. Was there any need to make two Rest Rooms in a hotel where we could freely travel back and forth by elevator? There was no point.
“Huh? Why is my cup suddenly empty?”
“I agree with the Doctor. There’s no need to make two Rest Rooms, is there? There might only be a Mission Room. Of course, there could also be a third type of room we don’t know about yet.”
“Eun-sol, why are you drinking during a meeting? I’ll throw this away.”
“Ga-in and Sang-hyeon think there might only be a Mission Room, right? If you’re correct, then the final Curse Room would be Room 205 or 206. We should avoid those two rooms... What? Where did my cocktail go?”
Though rooms had no sequence, it was naturally better to enter the hardest room later. In that sense, the rooms farther down the line, especially 205 or 206, were dangerous.
“Let’s put off Rooms 205 and 206 if possible. Then we only need to consider Rooms 203 and 204. Come to think of it, we heard some warnings about Room 203, right? Seung-yeop?”
Seung-yeop, who had been rustling around beside us, reacted a beat late to my words.
“Huh? Oh! In the middle of Room 201, some unidentified being spoke to me. It said that if I lacked the qualifications, I’d fall apart in Room 203. And...”
“Seung-yeop isn’t focusing on the meeting because he’s shelling peanuts. I’ll eat the peanuts. You shelled them well.”
“Ah, I remember! My Sponsor also said Room 203 would be both a crisis and an opportunity for me, and that I needed a special enhancement. Huh?”
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Oh, it’s nothing. Where did the peanuts go?”
“By special enhancement, you mean the ability you got this time? Even though we don’t know what it is.”
“Yes.”
Listening to that, I noticed something a little strange.
“The information Seung-yeop received and the information A-ri received are subtly different. The unidentified someone in Room 201 and Seung-yeop’s Sponsor both warned Seung-yeop about the danger in Room 203. A-ri’s Sponsor, on the other hand, warned her about the ‘final Curse Room.’”
“Ah! I’ll explain that. The warnings Seung-yeop and I heard had slightly different nuances...”
“What does everyone think?”
“... Are you all not listening to me at all? This is getting annoying. Ga-in, stop drinking so much cola. Do you think that’s water? There!”
Footnotes:
Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried
