WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈

Episode 296: Room 204, Mission Room - ‘Hotel Cinema’ (18)

──────

- Kim Mook-seong

The moment I left the eerie kitchen, I ran into Park Sang-ho.

“Hm? Why are you coming out of there?”

“What? No, I...”

Park Sang-ho's brow immediately furrowed as he looked toward the kitchen.

“Don't tell me they made you work?”

“No. I just went in to see if there was anything I could help with, but Mother said it was fine and told me to go rest in the room...”

My answer eased his expression a little.

“I see. You're just too kind-hearted!”

“... Oh, stop it~!”

Ah, fuck! Do I seriously have to say lines like that?

As if that skin-crawling conversation wasn't enough, Park Sang-ho came over and took my hand. I was practically trembling all over every second.

“You don't need to get even a drop of water on your hands! Got it? Just go rest in the room. Who in the world uses a flower to wipe dirt?”

Was this really what the nineties were like? Honestly, wasn't that a shitty thing to say even by nineties standards? Fine, he's a newlywed who absolutely adores his wife, but if kitchen work is such a lowly job that gets dirt on you, then he shouldn't make his mother and older sister do it either!

There wasn't much else to do after that. Every time I came out of the room, everyone scolded me and told me to go rest. What was I supposed to do? After eating a delicious dinner so good it made me wonder whether it had really been prepared in the countryside, I did nothing until the sun went down.

* * *

Late at night, as darkness fell, there was one thing that gave me fucking chills. It was ten times creepier than any monster that might appear later.

Surely this ‘husband’ wasn't going to try something like that, right?

Sorry, but I couldn't tolerate that. Even if I could, my Arm of an Abras Warrior definitely wouldn't.

Fortunately, Park Sang-ho didn't seem to have any intention of doing something so loud in a country house with poor soundproofing. He quietly fell asleep beside me, while I stayed awake until dawn because I was afraid this bastard might try something.

...

--- Creeeak!

What was that? Was it finally starting?

I turned only my eyes toward the flimsy door covered in hanji paper and saw someone peeking into the room.

Who was it? A killer? A monster? Those bizarre villagers?

I needed to check, but I was nervous about going myself. What if I got close and they suddenly stabbed me? Right. A man should handle dangerous work like that.

--- Tap!

“Mmh... What-”

“Shh! Someone's outside.”

Park Sang-ho's eyes flew open, and he looked toward the door. Unlike me, who couldn't tell who it was, he recognized the person at once.

“That bastard, seriously!”

My careful warning became meaningless. Park Sang-ho immediately got up, ran outside shouting loudly enough to echo through the dark night, and someone frantically tried to flee before being caught and beaten.

“You bastard, what the hell are you doing?”

“Ghk!”

The sound of someone being beaten went on for a while. As I listened, I became confused.

Something was strange. That had definitely felt like a crisis just now, hadn't it? Wasn't that guy supposed to attack with a knife? Was it really going this smoothly-

--- Grab!

The next moment, something truly unimaginable happened. A ‘wall’ suddenly flipped over, and a strong hand shot out from behind me!

I never imagined there would be a trick like this in a country house. I immediately flexed the Arm of an Abras Warrior and-

Flexed it? What was I supposed to do with it? Crush the limbs of whoever was trying to kidnap me? Wouldn't people call that a stupid development if I went that route?

That very hesitation led me into the trap. The cloth covering my mouth had been soaked in a powerful sleeping drug, and I lost consciousness in less than a minute.

... As my consciousness faded, I realized something.

So this was why Elena got taken out in the romance film. Even so, I had no idea how I was supposed to deal with it.

* * *

--- Splash!

“Girl! Wake up now!”

The moment cold water was dumped over me, I realized that the movie was moving incredibly fast.

I didn't mean that physical time was passing quickly. That ‘benefit’ had disappeared. Still, most of the events I'd experienced so far would surely take no more than ten minutes in the film.

At the very beginning, I spoke with my husband and decided to visit his family.

I arrived at his family's home, received an enthusiastic welcome, and experienced something strange in the kitchen.

Then I woke during the night after sensing a strange gaze and got kidnapped.

It really was a three-line summary. The story was progressing so absurdly fast because four short stories made up one film.

“City girl, are you awake now?”

When I opened my eyes, I saw the in-laws who had behaved strangely since yesterday. My body was hanging from the wall with both hands bound in chains, and my mother-in-law was sharpening a knife.

--- Shing!

“... I'm having quite the unusual experience.”

“Oh my, I thought you'd scream the moment you woke up! Why don't you look to your right?”

I turned my head and let out a hollow laugh. Human skin was hanging limp from the ceiling.

... Seriously, this hotel was the worst possible influence on children.

“Sang-ho really did well. I don't know how he managed to bring home such a pretty girl.”

“Ha ha! Aren't you scaring her too much? What if the city girl pisses herself? Are you going to clean it up?”

“Oh my, what are you saying? Girl! Don't be too frightened. Tonight will be very long. You'll have to see with your own eyes what's beneath the skin.”

At some point, I simply stopped listening. The two in-laws were busy rambling about cruel things and telling stories about the people they had captured before.

They probably wanted to hear me cry and beg for my life. Instead of giving them the reaction they wanted, I thought it over carefully.

Where had I made a mistake?

Let's go back to the beginning of the film. Park Su-mi, the owner of these memories, had escaped alive and made it all the way to the coffee shop. What did that mean?

It meant this was a scenario that even a woman in her twenties with no special supernatural abilities could escape from. The reason I was now tied up by both arms, reduced to a toy for an elderly couple obsessed with torture and murder, was because I'd missed something.

“I don't know.”

“I'll definitely gouge out your eyeballs - What?”

“I said I don't know, you senile bitch!”

“Y-you!”

“Hey! Are you listening? I'm just going to force my way through this, so you guys study it properly and solve it intelligently.”

“What's this all of a sudden-”

--- Rumble! Clank!

The stone wall behind me burst apart, and the chains ripped apart with it. The elderly couple gaped at the surreal sight, and I spoke to them.

“You aren't even that much older than me, so what's with all this ‘girl, girl’ bullshit? And what? You're going to skin me? Slice me up alive? You worthless assholes are all talk...”

“W-what is this-”

Unlike my mother-in-law, who fell to the floor in shock, my father-in-law rushed at me with a knife because he fancied himself a man. Just looking at his movements made me laugh. He was clearly a worm who'd never thrown a proper punch in his life.

I extended the Arm of an Abras Warrior, grabbed the knife, and squeezed hard. The blade broke into three pieces and fell to the ground.

“Father, knives are dangerous. Please put it down.”

Next, I grabbed the old man's shoulder and applied a little force. His arm bent at an angle it had never reached in his entire life.

“G-gaaaaaah!”

“Father, doesn't that feel refreshing? I'm very good at massages.”

Since the normal story had already gone to hell, should I take it in this direction? Come to think of it, there were quite a few movies these days where the victim got satisfying revenge on the killer.

I tore the old man's ear clean off to the right. His skin ripped apart, and white cartilage scattered everywhere. By then, he was already foaming blood at the mouth and passed out.

“You talked such a big game, so why are you so weak? Mother, would you like to come over too?”

“Eek! Y-you monster!”

“Come to think of it, where's Sang-ho?”

My mother-in-law had already lost her mind and begun screaming. She still hadn't regained her senses by the time I walked over and grabbed her head.

As I slowly twisted it, wondering whether this would be enough for the hotel to acknowledge it, I heard a voice outside.

“S-Su-mi!”

“...”

In a horror movie, that guy would be the companion who acted without thinking early on and got killed by the murderer... But since the story had twisted so wildly, things had ended up like this.

So I gave him a random explanation.

“Sang-ho. Do you see those human skins over there?”

The man looked around with a completely vacant expression.

“Your ‘unusual’ family members were probably cannibals. So I had no choice but to kill them all.”

“You... You... What are you...?”

“An agent of a secret organization?”

Wasn't there an organization here like the Management Bureau?

“T-the one from the Holy See I'd only ever heard about...!”

“A cardinal.”

“A c-cardinal? B-but you're only twenty-three!”

“Hey, cardinals aren't chosen by age. They're chosen by skill. Just accept that. And how much of an idiot are you if you didn't even know what kind of people your family were?”

“S-Su-mi?”

“Will you shut up?”

After that, I just winged it.

Honestly, once I felt like I'd already fucked it up, all my energy drained away. I had no desire to keep acting properly. I went outside, figured it wasn't my body anyway, smoked a cigarette, and looked up at the sky until the space began to shake.

* * *

“In the end, I beat my mother-in-law and father-in-law to death and escaped with my husband.”

“Excuse me? Just like that?”

“Yes. Actually, I'm a cardinal of the Holy See.”

“Excuse me?”

“Cardinals are chosen by skill.”

“W-well... I was hoping you could take this a bit more seriously.”

“Writer, didn't you say you wouldn't question us after hearing our stories?”

“... I'm sorry. Still, this story feels a little... like you just said whatever came to mind. Let's try again later.”

Something absurd happened when I returned to the coffee shop. Park Su-mi told the story exactly as I'd forced it along.

The murderous elderly couple had suddenly been beaten to death through sheer strength, and the ridiculous explanation was that I could do that because I was a cardinal of the Holy See. Do In-ho couldn't hide his bewilderment.

As expected, this was a failure. The writer's words, “Let's try again later,” sounded meaningful.

At that moment, Han Yu-ri, a beautiful woman in her twenties who had been waiting for her turn, spoke up.

“That can happen. We've experienced things that strange, after all. Writer, may I tell my story now?”

“Of course. Miss Yu-ri, would you tell us?”

“This is a memory from my high school days. Um... It's embarrassing to say it myself, but I was pretty popular in school.”

“It does seem that way. Aren't you still popular now?”

“Writer! Anyway, it was normal for my shoe locker to be filled with confession letters whenever I came to school. But that day was a little unusual.”

The space began to twist.

* * *

- Second Story, The Bewitching Girl

--- Ding! Dong! Daeng! Dong!

As the high school's lunch bell rang all around me, I sighed. Right, this was already the second time. There was no need to make a big deal about being in a female student's body.

“Yu-ri! Are you free tomorrow? I got tickets to a Blackeye concert, so-”

A girl named Saerom was chattering beside me, eagerly asking me to go to a concert with her tomorrow. She seemed to be a friend, but this film's genre was horror.

“... Don't stay too close to me.”

“Huh?”

“You won't live long.”

“What?”

The starting point was near the shoe lockers. A girl who received tons of confessions, standing by the shoe lockers. Honestly, even I knew this one. Kids stuffed all kinds of things in here, didn't they?

When I opened the locker, it was filled with paper just as expected. Five white sheets had been crammed inside, but there was something absurd mixed in with them.

“What is this? Jelly?”

Saerom, the girl beside me, looked equally dumbfounded.

“It's Slime? How did someone even put this in there?”

It was a giant jelly-like toy. It wasn't as though the admirer was a kindergartener, so where had a high school student even gotten something like this? More importantly, how had they shoved it into the shoe locker?

I pulled it out in disbelief and stretched it out. Inside was a paper slip that read, ‘I love you.’

“What a fucking idiot. They put this in here and turned my shoe locker into a mess!”

“Exactly! It was probably some pathetic loser. Yu-ri, just throw it away.”

I could roughly guess what they had been thinking. So many people put confession letters into her locker that they must've thought their own letter would be buried among the others.

So, after thinking about what would stand out more than paper, they decided to put in this stupid Slime.

... It definitely stood out. I felt like reporting a jelly attack to the police.

“Haaah... Is this how people confess these days? Seriously, whoever did this isn't some loser who can't even make eye contact with a girl. Who calls this kind of terrorism a confession-”

--- Bang!

A heavy chunk of metal struck me in the head.

“D-don't make fun of me! You, huh? Who do you think you are, making fun of me? D-do you know how hard I worked to make that?”

That was my last memory from the horror film.

* * *

The theater fell silent the moment Kim Mook-seong died, only one minute after the second story began. A-ri, who had unusually been drooling from the corner of her mouth, came to her senses a moment later.

“D-did Mook-seong just get beaten to death with a fire extinguisher? H-he was killed because he rejected a confession? Are kids these days all that scary?”

The ‘kids these days’ who heard A-ri fell silent together.

Footnotes:

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