WeTried Translations

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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈

Episode 273: A Time Full of Hardship

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[User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)

Date: Day 131

Current Location: Level 1, Room 105 - Rest Room

Sage’s Advice: 3]

- Han Ga-in

--- Crunch!

The wonderful sound in my mouth made me happy. It was the sound of the perfectly textured crust, formed by just the right Maillard reaction on a properly grilled steak, breaking apart. Once my tongue and teeth broke through the crust, an ocean of juice followed.

The pink interior of the thick beef crumbled apart, hot juices moistening my tongue. After carefully chewing and swallowing a bite, I took a sip of the cola filling my glass.

If food was this good, then my score would be...

I'd have to go with, “I don't know.” It felt like I'd need to eat it all day to truly understand its flavor!

With my face practically buried in the table, I cut steak, swallowed pork cutlets, ate spaghetti, and worked my way through the motley spread of food for a long while.

It was a slightly early lunch. We had moved to Room 105 as soon as we came out of Curse Room 203, and for over twenty minutes, everyone had done nothing but eat in silence.

Only then did my companions start coming to their senses and raise their heads one by one.

“W-wow, this is insanely good! Was hotel food always this delicious?”

“I think this is the first time in my life I've eaten anything this good. Ah! I think I'm going to cry...”

It wasn't a joke. Song-i actually started sniffling.

“Here, eat this and stop crying!”

A-ri held out a spoonful of white rice topped with a slice of Spam and stir-fried kimchi. Song-i accepted it through her tears. Were we starving refugees or something?

Of course, I was also struggling to shove even one more piece of meat into my mouth, only to get scolded by Grandpa, who told me the meat wasn't going anywhere and to eat slowly.

Eun-sol, who had been inhaling bulgogi like a madwoman until moments ago, seemed to have come to her senses enough to say something dignified.

“Even while we were walking through the corridor, we said we should talk about what happened, but as soon as food appeared in front of us, everyone lost their minds!”

“Eun-sol, swallow the bulgogi you're chewing before you talk.”

“I can't. Bulgogi has to be eaten nonstop.”

“No... What the hell happened to all of you for you to be like this?”

The one person who couldn't relate to this atmosphere at all, A-ri, waved her hands as though she were the precious daughter of a wealthy family from a developed country thrown among a pack of ravenous people.

“You seriously should've experienced it too, A-ri! Do you know what the first meal I got as soon as I started in Room 203 was?”

“What was it?”

“Larvae! I'm not exaggerating at all! They brought larvae on leaves and called it a precious special meal!”

Grandpa snorted at Eun-sol's words.

“Larvae are still meat, aren't they? You got treated well. They brought me a handful of tree fruit with even less substance than acorns and called it a meal.”

“They boiled tree bark and ants in water for me... Apparently, that was the tribe's traditional health food.”

Sang-hyeon, who had been listening, added as though he couldn't stay quiet any longer.

“At least you all had something to eat. The tribe I was with simply went hungry with no recourse. It looked like they might start eating each other, so I had to risk my life to find food first.”

“Eating each other! Don't say such scary things.... I went through something truly horrible, you know? I absolutely have to tell you about it.”

“If it was so horrible, why do you have to tell us?”

“I wouldn't know if I hadn't experienced it, but since I did, everyone has to know!”

As A-ri gaped at Song-i's absurd words, Song-i began telling another story so absurd it made me laugh helplessly.

“I woke up on incredibly rough straw. At first, I looked around, wondering where I was, and some old man came over to congratulate me on waking up. Then he suddenly brought me hot meat.”

“Meat?”

“At first, I didn't know any better, so I thanked him and ate about three bites. Then Pero suddenly flew in from outside and knocked the plate away. Right then, I felt that something was wrong.”

...I thought I knew what that meat had been.

“It turned out those bastards had grilled the wrist of a warrior who died while hunting and served it to me! Then they told me not to worry because it was still fresh, and I nearly passed out!”

That was the kind of thing we'd all gone through.

For a long time afterward, we continued competing over who had suffered more. So many bizarre stories poured out that I never got a chance to speak. After listening to them, disgusting meat porridge that smelled gamey seemed close to a feast, so I couldn't really bring it up.

We had eaten food like that for over ten days. The other tribespeople were scavenging even worse garbage, so we couldn't complain to anyone. We just endured every meal for more than ten days while feeling half ready to throw up.

Then there was this feast spread out before us. No wonder everyone lost their minds.

Around then, Seung-yeop, who had silently demolished five pork cutlets, quietly raised his head. Silence immediately fell over the room.

Why did it feel like the likely winner of this miserable contest over who had suffered more had just raised his head?

“S-Seung-yeop, come to think of it, how did you manage? Everyone was really worried about you.”

“I had a... very interesting time.”

Silence filled the room.

“Thinking back, they didn't really respect me from the start. At best, they treated me like a shaman. There was a separate warrior leader who led the tribe, and they told me to divine a place with water and food because the weather was getting colder.”

“Divine?”

“They caught something like an armadillo, skinned it, smeared my blood on the hide, then scorched it with fire. Then the tribe moved according to the direction the hide split.”

“What the hell... Is that some kind of oracle bone script? Why are these primitive bastards so creative?”

“But it was wrong three or four times in a row. Maybe it would've worked if my blessing had been fine? I don't know about that. Anyway, every time it was wrong, they took more and more of my blood to smear on it.”

The story was already becoming disgusting.

“Obviously, it was completely useless. When they smeared an entire bowl of my blood on an armadillo hide, I seriously thought I was going to die. But that wasn't the end.”

“Come to think of it... Elena said you were hanging from a pole.”

“The fourth divination failed too. Honestly, I still don't know what signs those ignorant people thought they read from that burnt armadillo hide. Was it the fourth day? The fifth? The result of the fourth divination said we had to walk almost a full day northwest.”

“So those bastards actually walked for a whole day?”

“Yes. After walking for an entire day, we reached a wasteland without a drop of water. By then, some of the exhausted tribespeople started collapsing and dying.”

“...Don't tell me.”

“Then the warrior leader named Wolf That Runs Across the Plains made a declaration. The ancestors were enraged by the Divine Human's corruption, incompetence, greed, and foolishness. The only way to soothe that anger was through the Divine Human's blood.”

“...”

“While I was hanging from the pole, the warriors went off to find something to light a fire with. This is the funny part. The wasteland was so barren that they had a hard time finding kindling, so it took them a very long time to start the fire.”

Naturally, nobody laughed. Seung-yeop suddenly shot to his feet from the table.

“Then, at that very moment! An angel flew down from the sky, wiped out all the evil tribespeople, and saved me. Of course, that angel was a little crazy!”

“...Make sure you tell Elena that story later. I'm sure it'll help her a lot.”

“Okay. But Elena isn't eating?”

When Elena came up, everyone's expressions darkened. She had suffered a greater mental shock than Seung-yeop. None of us had expected this to happen....

After pushing Ominous Imagination to its limit in the mountain range, Elena had gradually regained her senses once the cause of her madness disappeared. Yet she remembered nothing from the time when she had lost her mind. Honestly, I thought that was a huge relief. There were things she was better off not knowing.

But once we came out of Room 203, everyone's blessings recovered, and Clear Mirror, Still Water began healing even that convenient amnesia. As Elena's mind returned to being truly normal, she realized the slaughter she had committed. She stood there blankly for a long time, then said she wanted to sleep and went into the bedroom.

I didn't know how to comfort her.

It might have been a somewhat unethical thought, but part of me hoped she wouldn't dwell on it too much. After all, once we escaped the Curse Room, the evil she had committed might as well have vanished. If we went back in, the people who died would be alive again.

Strictly speaking, once we achieved our final goal of resolving the room, every NPC would disappear. Considering that, I didn't think their lives could be considered equal to the lives of real humans.

Of course, that was just my opinion. It was something Elena had to overcome herself.

In the end, until lunch was completely over, we couldn't even begin to have a serious discussion about resolving the room.

* * *

I walked through the corridor alone, thinking deeply. First of all, the room number confirmed after escaping had been none other than 203. If it was a coincidence, it was an awfully strange one.

The party had split into two large groups.

Jin-cheol, Doctor, Grandpa Mook-seong, Elena, Seung-yeop, and I had joined up midway and headed for the mountain range. We were the “mountain range group.” Eun-sol and Song-i, meanwhile, had somehow discovered the trail left by the bizarre creature in the sky and followed its shadow. For convenience, I called them the “shadow group.”

Of the two, the group that succeeded in escaping was the shadow group. They said that after following the shadow for around ten days, an escape notification suddenly appeared and they came outside.

Absurdly enough, the people who had escaped didn't understand what they had escaped from or why. They only said that the escape notification had suddenly appeared at a completely unexpected moment.

Still, the timing of their escape was similar to the time when the mountain range group encountered A-ri firing beams in the mountains and was wiped out. I was certain it wasn't a coincidence.

What we did in the mountains had clearly affected the shadow group's escape, even though they had been dozens of kilometers away and steadily moving farther from the mountain range. Of course, I had no idea what effect it had had. And then...

--- Tap!

“You're thinking deeply by yourself.”

“Ah, Doctor?”

“I called to you from behind, but you didn't answer, so please forgive the interruption.”

“I'm sorry.”

“It's fine. In any case, this isn't easy. I think we should hold another meeting tonight. I've gathered information from the others here and there, but it's rare for something to be this incomprehensible.”

“Yeah....”

“Who is the Adversary? Is it Miss A-ri, who appeared in the city? But that has no meaning, since we don't know who is controlling Miss A-ri. We sometimes clear rooms without knowing the Prisoner, so we can accept that much. But what is the curse threatening Room 203?”

“I don't know.”

“Of course, we've learned quite a lot too. We learned that there are ruins of a destroyed ancient civilization beyond the mountain range. We learned that Miss A-ri, whose body was taken by an evil being, is there. It also seems Seung-yeop saw something strange at the end.”

Something strange?

“Let's talk about it later. Still, I have an opinion. I came to tell you in advance.”

“An opinion?”

The Doctor, who wore an exhausted expression, let out a sigh.

“Let's go to the next room.”

“...”

“Room 203 is an absurdly difficult room, even counting the first hotel I experienced.”

“Difficult....”

“Is Room 203 especially dangerous compared to other rooms? No. In terms of danger, Room 202, where disaster came only a day after entering, and Room 104, where the Prisoner rampaged around trying to eat us, were much worse. Compared to them, Room 203 gives us plenty of time. We stayed in Room 203 for over ten days, yet we still don't even know what curse threatens the world. What does that mean?”

“It means there are more than ten days left before the curse strikes.”

“In terms of time, I think it may be more forgiving than any other room. But in terms of difficulty, it's the opposite. Mentally, it is hell just because it forcibly separated us from companions we could trust and rely on.”

In Room 203, everyone in the hotel party had to fight alone in different places.

“I don't need to mention the physical aspect, do I? Let's put aside such luxuries as cars and air conditioning. Before any of that, Room 203 doesn't even have food fit for people to eat. The water is all filthy.”

“The more we talk about it, the more horrifying it gets.”

“So I intend to propose it during tonight's meeting. Let's go to the next room.”

“...”

“I'm not saying we should abandon Room 203 forever. Let's resolve places that are less painful for both body and mind, recover together, build up our strength, and then come back. Speaking as a psychiatric professional, Seung-yeop and Elena, whose conditions are especially poor among us, will probably tremble at the mere sight of the number 203 for a while.”

My thoughts became complicated again. Would going to the next room really make things easier?

Still, it was true that Room 203 was excessively difficult. Even compared to other Curse Rooms, this extreme primitive environment, where every companion was completely separated, was something we had experienced for the first time in Room 203. I thought we needed to talk it over with everyone.

Footnotes:

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