WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 316: Mi-ro (1)
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- Kim A-ri
My vision blurred. Tears I had not shed in a very long time ran down my cheeks.
I knew. I had suspected it.
My irrational obsession with Mi-ro might not have been a natural emotion. I had thought that countless times.
I was an agent of the Management Bureau. After encountering so many incomprehensible beings and powers that tampered with human emotions, it would have been stranger not to consider that possibility.
But... ‘It might be true’ and ‘It is true’ were quite different.
--- Hummmm!
With a strange sound, the mirrors around me began displaying different images again. My heart must have wavered after seeing Mi-ro’s wish just now.
As I wiped away my tears, I recalled the conversation I had with Ga-in earlier.
What is the beginning of love? Genes.
Acts of care and support among family members, along with sociocultural pressure emphasizing affection between parents and children, are only forces that sustain love that has already been created.
That was right. Love began as a program. Therefore, love created by a wish was not greatly different from love created by genes.
That was what I believed. What I decided to believe.
Fortunately, my memories of Mi-ro were not all that bad. She was not a good person, and honestly, she was not a good mother either, but...
She was certainly someone who loved me.
Even in her final moments, Mi-ro gave me a means of escape and let me escape in her place.
Once more, the wavering images in the mirrors faded, leaving only one. As if it had been waiting, a notification appeared.
「Would you like to make a wish? Press ‘Yes,’ and your wish will come true.」
My hand touched the notification in midair.
* * *
[User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)
Date: Day 137
Current Location: Level 1, Corridor
Sage’s Advice: 3]
- Han Ga-in
“To put it simply...”
“Yaaawn!”
“Don’t yawn!”
“Hey, it’s four in the morning...”
Grandfather kept spamming me with Personal Notifications, so I had no choice but to get up. When I came outside, Grandfather yawned and went back in, while A-ri waited for me.
“So you succeeded in making a wish to restore Mi-ro’s mind?”
“That’s right.”
“That’s good. But why did you specifically wake only me up?”
Anything involving Mi-ro was important, so I could understand waking me up. What puzzled me was that she had called out only me.
“Well... things went a little differently from what I first thought.”
“I’ll listen carefully this time, so tell me again.”
“Okay. The problem began with Mi-ro’s ‘second wish.’”
“Second wish? You said her first wish was the wish that created you.”
“That’s right. The problem is that on the day I was born, Mi-ro made not one wish in the Mirror Room, but two.”
“Hmmm... Did she make the first discoverer’s free wish, then immediately use a Ticket for another? More importantly, how did you find that out? Did the Mirror Room tell you?”
“It did. And yes, she made them one after the other.”
“What about the Ticket? Right, she had passed the first floor, so there must have been a Ticket. Did Mi-ro obtain it?”
“... She might have obtained it, or she might have taken it from someone.”
After a brief silence, I spoke again.
“I guess no one outside knew that. You had just been born, so you would not have known anything, and the person who made the wish had regressed into infancy, so there was no way for her to know either. Fine, why was that second wish a problem?”
“Because that wish made Mi-ro lose her intellect.”
This was connected to what Song-i had said before. The hotel did not accept human intellect as payment, so we had previously considered that the loss of intellect itself might have been the result of a wish.
There was something I could not understand.
“That’s strange. When we ended Mi-ro’s Nightmare in Frozen Hell, we met adult Mi-ro, didn’t we?”
“We did.”
“At the time, while explaining the Mirror Room, Mi-ro said, ‘I tried to achieve many goals there, but I lost everything in return.’”
Instead of answering, A-ri stood there with her mouth half open for a moment.
“What is it?”
“No, when was that? How do you remember the exact sentence?”
“... It left a strong impression. Anyway, think about what she said. No matter how I look at it, it doesn’t sound like she intended to lose her intellect, does it?”
“That’s right. It wasn’t Mi-ro’s intention. It’s a matter of perspective.”
“A matter of perspective?”
“From Mi-ro’s perspective, a huge disaster happened. From the Mirror Room’s perspective, it granted her wish. The second wish was...”
A-ri stopped there, seemingly trying to choose her words.
“I want to fix my weakness?”
“Mi-ro’s weakness?”
“I want to gain greater power?”
“Hey! What exactly was the wish?”
“I want to put it into a single sentence too, but it’s difficult. As you know, the Mirror Room isn’t a place that grants whatever you say aloud. Mi-ro herself said, ‘Please fix my weakness.’”
“But what she truly wanted was different?”
“It would be more accurate to say she wanted many things at once. Look at the situation again. The party Mi-ro was with when she entered the Mirror Room had relationships that were already falling apart, right?”
“It did.”
“Mi-ro thought she herself was partly responsible for those broken relationships.”
“... ‘Partly’?”
“At that point, Mi-ro seemed to believe she could not progress any further, so she needed to somehow secure a means of escape for one person, leave the hotel, and then enter again.”
“She intended to come back after escaping... She really was something else in every way.”
“The problem was this. If Mi-ro herself was part of the reason the party fell apart, then even if she entered again, another party could fall apart because of her.”
“So she tried to fix the problem with herself? I understand why she made the wish, but I don’t understand how that led to her losing her intellect.”
A-ri suddenly gave a hollow laugh.
“Ga-in, why do you think the party from the Hotel of the Deep Sea fell apart?”
“The Doctor told us, didn’t he? Your mother’s... self-righteous side played a big part. She tried to brainwash people and control them.”
“How should that be solved?”
“Communicate through rational conversation and improve the relationships between everyone? That would be the standard answer, right? It feels embarrassing to say it myself, but like us now.”
“There was another way.”
“What?”
“If Mi-ro could snap her fingers and completely overpower every other companion, how many people would risk their lives to defy her in that situation?”
“...”
“Mi-ro thought her greatest problem was a ‘Blessing she could not use as she pleased.’”
I thought I understood. Leadership was not always built through communication.
In fact, the method famous rulers throughout human history and modern dictators preferred was control through overwhelming power.
I was starting to vaguely understand the full story of what had happened that day.
The Mirror Room was a place that recognized countless impulses dwelling in a participant’s heart at once. Looking back on the party that had fallen apart at the Hotel of the Deep Sea, Mi-ro must have thought this.
I was also part of the cause, so it means nothing even if I leave and come back. What is my problem?
My Blessing, ‘Justice,’ is incredibly powerful, but it has many difficult conditions. My Blessing has many weaknesses, so even though I obtained multiple Inheritances, there are still gaps in my strength.
What if I could use my Blessing as I pleased? What if I could ignore its conditions and wield Justice’s unimaginable power according to my will?
No one would be able to stand against me.
“Was that how it went?”
“... Probably.”
“In the end, we had it backward about your mother, A-ri. She didn’t wield Justice as she pleased because she lost her intellect. She lost her intellect because she wanted to wield Justice as she pleased.”
“She probably didn’t know she would lose her intellect as a result. She vaguely wished she could wield her Blessing as she pleased, and it turned out that regressing into infancy was necessary for that.”
We had found the answer to the biggest question surrounding Mi-ro: why she had lost her intellect. Mi-ro had wished for her weakness to disappear and believed that weakness was her inability to use her Blessing as she pleased.
The Mirror Room made Mi-ro into someone capable of freely using her Blessing.
“Now you understand why Mi-ro’s loss of intellect was the result of her own wish. This is where the problem arose. I didn’t know before making my wish either, but the Mirror Room has one restriction.”
“A restriction?”
“You cannot change someone else’s wish with a wish.”
“Ah!”
“That’s why restoring Mi-ro’s mind ‘to adulthood’ was impossible.”
“Th-then what are we supposed to do? You’re not saying you plan to let her live as a child, are you? Of course, even if the current Mi-ro were revived, she wouldn’t be able to wield Justice...”
“Listen. Restoring her ‘to adulthood’ was impossible. There are three versions of Mi-ro that the hotel knows, right?”
One was Mi-ro after regressing into infancy, who was practically a mass of disaster. Another was adult Mi-ro, who was no less dangerous.
The last one was...
“No way. Middle school Mi-ro from Frozen Hell?”
“That’s it. There was no problem restoring that self. Perhaps the Mirror Room recognizes each individual self as a separate being... Or perhaps it judged that it was allowing a being separate from the Mi-ro who made the wish to inhabit Mi-ro’s body.”
As my mouth fell half open, A-ri lightly bowed her head.
“When Mi-ro wakes up, she’ll recognize you as well as me. Please help her adjust.”
That was how our conversation at dawn ended.
* * *
The next morning, A-ri gathered everyone and briefly explained the situation.
She explained why Mi-ro’s mind had collapsed, the Mirror Room’s limitation that a wish could not undo another person’s wish, and why it had been necessary to awaken middle school Mi-ro’s mind instead to get around that limitation.
At first, the companions were bewildered by what they were hearing and bombarded A-ri with questions. By the time everyone understood the situation, some showed an unexpected reaction.
“That’s a relief.”
It was Eun-sol. I turned to see what she meant, and surprisingly, even the Doctor was nodding along.
Jin-cheol asked in confusion.
“A relief? Isn’t this an extremely confusing situation?”
“It is confusing, but isn’t it also a huge relief? Look at the situation.”
As she spoke, Eun-sol wrote three phrases on the whiteboard as she always did.
‘Mentally Unstable Mi-ro’
‘Adult Mi-ro’
‘Middle School Mi-ro’
“Now, choose one of these three. Which one is the scariest?”
“...”
“...”
“Even A-ri said, ‘This is a little...’ about mentally unstable Mi-ro, so she isn’t even worth discussing. What about adult Mi-ro? She’s scary in a different way, isn’t she?”
Several people nodded emphatically at the same time.
“That’s true.”
“Honestly, I was terrified of her. I only had no choice but to put up with it because she was A-ri’s mother. Who knows what crazy stunt she might pull! It was obvious she was full of schemes.”
“Cough!”
“A-ri, I’m sorry! But you already restored the third Mi-ro anyway, right?”
“Yeah...”
“Middle school Mi-ro is the best option. Ga-in said she was fairly cute and kind, didn’t he?”
“Well... Aside from using psychic powers as naturally as breathing, she wasn’t evil or anything.”
“That won’t be a major threat to us now.”
A Flute appeared in Eun-sol’s hand. Seeing the confidence on her face put my mind at ease too.
“All right! Then go now!”
A shining piece of paper flew across the table into A-ri’s hands. As A-ri flinched, Eun-sol spoke firmly.
“What are you waiting for? You planned to wake her up someday anyway, didn’t you? Her intellect has been restored, so there’s no need to delay any longer.”
Holding the Ticket, A-ri stood with an uncharacteristically awkward demeanor, then slowly bowed to everyone. Only when she left the table did everyone finally realize it.
Our tenth companion, perhaps the last companion we would welcome in the hotel, was about to awaken.
* * *
- Mi-ro
...
...
...
I had a strange dream.
It was a long, very long dream. I went to school and played happily with my friends every day.
At the end of it...
Santa was always there. A being dressed in blood-red clothes, piling up mountains of corpses.
That being was my end and the beginning of my eternal Nightmare.
Every day, I happily played with my friends, died together with them, and forgot everything. Only in that fleeting moment between death and life did I vaguely regain my senses. Each time, I thought:
So this is my fate. How did I fall into this incomprehensible hell?
Then one day, the dream changed for the first time.
A friend who looked strangely like me, adorable just to look at, appeared alongside a boy hiding a mysterious secret. And... and...
Now, I woke within a hazy fog.
“... What is this?”
「Choose your second fate.」
Before me stood a table covered with various pieces.
Footnotes:
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