WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 396: A Midsummer Night's Dream (12)
──────
- Kim Sang-hyeon
I often felt this while talking to my companions at the hotel.
Every one of them, including Elena, who was born in Russia, lived in Korea.
Because of that, there were quite a few differences from my American experience.
For example, they saw civilians fighting monsters in a completely different light.
Excluding the two agents, who rarely joined conversations like this, Song-i had surprisingly experienced the most dangerous environment among my companions.
Yet even Song-i believed that Management Bureau soldiers naturally dealt with monsters.
Installing security equipment such as Laser Turrets at individual homes was one thing, but actively hunting monsters was the Management Bureau's job.
That was common sense in Korea, not in America.
What kind of country was America?
Wasn't it the kind of place where people handled home defense themselves before the police arrived?
There was no need to bring up old-fashioned talk about the frontier spirit, Puritan ideas, or the Founding Fathers to explain the difference.
In many regions, it was a country where you couldn't count on the police or the Management Bureau arriving within an hour.
That was enough time for a monster to eat an entire family, boil their bones into soup, and eat that too.
So civilians had to be able to deal with minor monsters too.
Anyone who couldn't had already been eaten.
* * *
It was a dark night in a world where even the moon had vanished.
The Texas night was so dark I couldn't even see my own hands.
Still, something faintly glowing ahead kept drawing my attention.
--- Click!
I checked the shotgun again.
Mama Sherry hadn't maintained it very well, so it looked filthy, but it still worked without issue.
“...”
When I stopped to check the gun, it stopped too.
It was acting as if it wanted to lure me somewhere.
Should I follow it?
If I could use Final Flash, I wouldn't have had to think about it, but I couldn't use it this time either.
It looked like Mi-ro had used my laser again at the hotel.
Of course, she must've needed it, but it caught me off guard.
After chasing it for around twenty minutes, the vaguely glowing figure entered a forest on the outskirts of Austin.
“... This isn't right.”
There was no forest like this in the Austin I knew.
The terrain was completely unfamiliar. It might even have been created by some unknown entity.
In the end, I returned that first night without learning anything.
* * *
Early the next morning.
Mama listened to me over breakfast, nodded, and spoke.
“Johnny, if the place you're talking about is where I think it is, it's probably near Asterlake.”
Asterlake again.
The school that replaced the high school I attended was called Asterlake High School too.
“People in Austin often go there for walks, so why don't you visit during the day? It's a large lake, the water's clean, and the scenery is beautiful.”
“Are there any Chaos Entities there?”
“Chaos Entities? Demons? Well, from what you're saying, it sounds like that glowing thing was heading toward the lake...”
Sherry tilted her head and stressed that Asterlake was a safe place where hundreds of people went walking every day.
That made me start to wonder too.
“I'll report it to the Management Bureau once more. It probably won't help much, though. They're busy fighting the Kraken in New Orleans right now.”
“...”
It had already been on the news all morning.
An enormous octopus monster, with legs over three hundred meters long, had attacked the Louisiana port city of New Orleans and killed more than one hundred and twenty people in an hour.
“... That's unbelievable.”
With things like that running wild everywhere, would they have time to worry about a glowing fake fairy?
The newscaster was saying that even after Seahawk attack helicopters shredded all the Kraken's legs with their cannons, it had regenerated every one of them within a minute.
“How are they even supposed to kill something like that? Do they need to drop a nuke on it?”
“I don't know... I heard they dealt with one that appeared in Mexico recently using some kind of virus bomb.”
How were people living in a world as hellish as this?
As I sighed without realizing it, kids began gathering at Mama's house.
“Toby, Josh, Peter, Tice too?”
“Mama, hello again!”
Most of the kids were Hispanic teenagers in their mid-to-late teens. Sherry fed them and gave them spending money, so that was probably why they gathered here so often.
It was similar to what I remembered.
I turned down spending money, but I often got meals here.
“It's morning. What about school?”
“We don't have school today!”
“What? It's not even Sunday.”
One of the boys snickered, then suddenly punched the wall of the house.
“You hear that, right? This sound?”
“I hear it.”
“This sound kept coming from the school walls. In the end, they tore open part of the wall, and then...”
The girl beside him suddenly raised both arms.
“Meow!”
“Meow?”
“There's a huge cat wandering around, so the teachers are trying to catch it today.”
So a cat monster had appeared at the school, and they had the day off.
What was more, the ones trying to catch the monster weren't Management Bureau soldiers, but school staff.
It was such a peaceful school scene that I let out a hollow laugh.
Then one of the boys looked at me.
“Who are you, mister?”
I was at a loss for words, but Mama answered simply.
“He's unemployed.”
“...”
That wasn't wrong.
“Wow! My dad hasn't had a job for twenty years either!”
“...”
I had even less to say after that.
When a child didn't have money, it was usually the parents' problem.
Mama soon added a few ingredients to yesterday's leftover gumbo and started boiling it again, while the kids began playing among themselves.
Would asking them get me an answer?
“Kids, mister has a question.”
An unknown glowing entity outside the window late at night.
One of the children understood what I meant.
“Oh, did it move toward the forest?”
“Asterlake?”
“Yes.”
“That's right. It went that way. Do you know something?”
“My mom once said there were fairies in Asterlake! I've seen one too.”
“Fairies.”
Mama Sherry came over carrying a pot of hot soup and answered firmly.
“Tice, there are no fairies in this world. Unless you mean a monster that looks like a fairy and eats people.”
“But nobody has died, right?”
“It only started appearing recently. I saw it for the first time a month ago, and last night was the second time.”
“My mom saw it three months ago.”
From the circumstances, the unknown entity seemed to have appeared recently.
At most, it had been around for half a year. Even if there had been no victims yet, it was too early to relax.
I asked Tice again.
“Why did your mother say it was a fairy?”
“She saw it through binoculars, and she said it looked like a tiny person.”
“A tiny person? Do you know anything else?”
The girl shook her head.
“Has anyone seen it during the day?”
“I think it only appears at night.”
Then there was still time.
* * *
After the kids left, I paced around the living room and thought.
Last night, I had charged out there with courage that was surprising even to me.
Thinking about it again, it had been a fairly dangerous decision.
Maybe it was a bad habit I'd developed while clearing the hotel, where I could revive even after death.
Was there anyone I could take with me?
“It'll be hard to get help from the Management Bureau.”
I agreed with that much.
The news was still showing that damned Kraken.
“What about the police?”
“... You know. They're scared of monsters.”
At that point, I decided to tell a well-intentioned lie.
“What if we ask for their cooperation by saying a Management Bureau agent will be coming with us?”
“They'd come if you did that, but an agent? Not just an ordinary employee? I hear agents are really rare...”
--- Snap!
I lightly snapped my fingers and created a flame.
Then I pushed my hand a little way into and out of Mama's shoulder.
Mama stared at me with her mouth hanging open.
“J-Johnny! Did you, did you work for the Management Bureau?”
“I'm retired. There were various circumstances.”
I would pretend to be a retired agent.
I would return to the hotel in about five days anyway, so there was no need to think about cleaning up the lie afterward.
Proof of an agent's identity? Nothing was more convincing than supernatural powers.
“You know a police officer, right? James?”
“Of course!”
“Please contact him for me. Oh, and ask for decent equipment too.”
* * *
Around evening, three young, brave police officers gathered at Mama's house.
One of them was the man I had met yesterday.
“Ahem, um, I'm sorry about yesterday. I didn't realize you were an agent...”
“It's fine.”
He was James, the officer who had killed the hypnotizing deer in front of me.
Another man, Rupert, carefully approached.
“I trust Sherry, but could you show us?”
“Of course.”
When I showed them the ability I had shown Mama, their eyes filled with admiration.
Soon, we put on the clothes and armed ourselves with the firearms they had brought, then headed for Asterlake.
“How many years did you work there?”
“...”
“I've seen employees and soldiers often, but this is my first time seeing an agent.”
“...”
“I've always wondered, how many agents are there in this world?”
“...”
After I ignored every question, the questions eventually stopped.
I didn't know the answers either.
It struck me again how mysterious A-ri and Mook-seong, whom I met every day at the hotel, were by ordinary standards.
Regular Management Bureau employees and Assault Team members were common enough, but seeing an agent was something that might happen only once in a lifetime.
Nobody even knew how someone became an agent in the first place.
Did you need supernatural powers?
That was what most people believed, so when I showed the power of my blessing, they accepted that I was an agent.
Yet before the real agent Kim Mook-seong entered the hotel, he had no supernatural powers at all.
“Whew... Still, this is a relief. We'd talked among ourselves about checking the lake too.”
“...”
“It's reassuring to have you with us, Agent.”
“...”
I felt sorry for the officers following me, trusting me completely, but the supernatural powers they were putting such faith in weren't operating normally.
The power of Diligence hadn't vanished completely, but its output had dropped drastically.
The ability to light a cigarette or slightly pass through skin was honestly useless.
The AR-15 I was carrying was a hundred times more reliable than such half-baked supernatural powers.
As the sun set, the pale glow I had seen yesterday appeared again.
“Hup!”
“Let's follow it.”
* * *
This time, we didn't stop near the forest. We followed it all the way.
And then...
“K-Kid? What are you doing in a place like this?”
What had Tice's mother said after observing the glowing figure?
That it looked like a tiny person?
She was right.
The glowing entity was a boy with a bizarre appearance.
Something was wrong with him, though.
His skin was as thin as paper, making the veins beneath it and even the movement of his organs faintly visible.
Where his irises should have been, something spun like a vortex and gave off light.
A soft glow also radiated from his entire body. At this point, I couldn't tell whether he was human or a fairy.
Then James muttered in shock.
“Timothy?”
“Do you know him?”
“There's a church near Rivervill. He's the child of a deacon there. He went missing early this year, and the whole neighborhood was in an uproar.”
A boy who had gone missing early this year?
“D-Don't you think we should treat him first?”
I agreed with that much.
Anyone could see the boy in front of us wasn't normal.
... I wasn't even sure he was human.
Then James looked at me with worried eyes.
“Before you tell the Management Bureau, how about we take a look ourselves?”
“...”
Seeing the fear in the officers' eyes, I understood the situation.
They were afraid I would report the discovery of this child to the Management Bureau.
Because the Management Bureau I knew would kill this child without a moment's hesitation.
“T-Timothy disappeared, and the deacon was truly devastated. Please, just consider how he feels...”
“Sherry may have told you, but I'm retired. There's nothing for me to report.”
The officers' expressions brightened a little.
“Hehe!”
The boy smiled faintly.
He looked fairly cute, but there was no denying something unsettling about him.
Footnotes:
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