WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 430: A Family of Distinction (6)
──────
- Han Ga-in
Elena acted as though she had been possessed by Han Min-sang, who was trapped inside the jar.
Not long afterward, my great-grandfather broke down mentally and began apologizing like a man out of his mind.
Anyone could see he wasn't normal.
In the end, Attorney Park, who had served the family for many years, and the other employees escorted my great-grandfather to his bedroom.
Of course, Elena and I had learned quite a few things before then.
* * *
“Let's organize what we found out. First, the Name Tag Snatching Game.”
“A game?”
“I've seen plenty of similar things on variety shows.”
“...”
“Of course, on variety shows, having your Name Tag taken doesn't make your soul leave your body.”
The jar that an ancestor had supposedly brought back from Japan had brought wealth to the family, but it hadn't come free.
It demanded that one soul remain trapped in the jar, suffering in a frozen hell.
It was essentially a treasure that produced wealth through human sacrifice.
The Name Tag Snatching Game was the process used to choose that sacrifice.
“The rules are so simple, there's barely anything to think about.”
“Exactly.”
Still, I thought it was worth organizing them, so I scribbled them down with a writing utensil I found lying around.
1. The Name Tag Snatching Game begins when the jar opens.
As soon as it begins, the surrounding area turns into a sealed space, so no one can freely enter or leave.
2. The people nearby become participants, while the sacrifice that had been inside the jar becomes the tagger.
3. When the tagger takes one participant's Name Tag and places it inside the jar, the game ends.
The entity placed inside becomes the next sacrifice.
“According to Han Jin-seong, this game happened once about seventy-five years ago.”
“...”
“The tagger at the time, meaning the sacrifice trapped in the jar, was a boy who couldn't speak Korean. He was probably Japanese.”
That meant the damned jar had been harming people for a very long time.
“Han Jin-seong, his family, and Ga-in's ancestors obviously couldn't respond properly. They wouldn't have known the rules of the game at all back then. They probably didn't even know what Name Tags meant.”
Han Jin-seong himself hadn't understood the rules at the time.
He only understood them well enough to explain them to us much later.
He had probably compared his own memories with information from Japan that he learned while working for the Management Bureau.
“Apparently, the tagger at the time trapped the soul of Han Jin-seong's younger brother, Han Min-sang, in the jar, then possessed Han Min-sang's body and ran away. Han Jin-seong says he doesn't know what happened after that.”
“... Considering his age, he may already be dead.”
“The interesting part, no, it's tragic, so not interesting, but...”
“It's okay.”
“Ahem! The important thing is that Han Jin-seong's testimony differs greatly from what Han Min-sang told Ga-in.”
“...”
According to my great-grandfather, his younger brother had stood in the tagger's way to protect his family amid terror worse than a nightmare.
He remembered it as a tragic sacrifice in which his younger brother gave up his body to save the family.
On the other hand, Han Min-sang, who had come out of the jar, said this.
‘Do you think that's worth the same as my childhood body?’
‘I feel sorry for this kid too!’
‘Dear brother Jin-seong, how could I watch you die such a pointless death?’
‘You got the better of me, but you think a little brat like you can?’
I hadn't understood it well at the time, but looking back now...
It clearly sounded as though Han Jin-seong had set a trap for him and imprisoned him in the jar.
In fact, Han Min-sang had pushed Han Jin-seong's soul into the jar without hiding his deep hostility.
Elena tilted her head.
“Do you think one of them is lying?”
“...”
A thought came to me.
“I think neither of them understood what really happened.”
“What?”
Han Jin-seong believed that his younger brother had sacrificed himself for the family and that this was the highest form of love.
Han Min-sang believed that his older brother had trapped him and thrown him into the hellish jar.
Taking a step back, both memories contained inconsistencies.
First, Han Jin-seong's memory didn't make sense.
Han Min-sang had only been in his early teens when the incident happened.
A young boy, chased by a ghost, suddenly chose to get caught for his family?
He wasn't old enough to have developed that kind of sense of responsibility, and more importantly, he had no idea what the ghost from the jar wanted.
“Everyone must've been frightened when a monster came out of the jar and run away. Then Han Min-sang got caught. It wasn't some heroic sacrifice. He was simply caught because he was young and weak.”
“...”
“Still, it must've been a lifelong nightmare for my great-grandfather. Maybe, to escape the guilt of abandoning his younger brother and running away, he created the fantasy that his brother had sacrificed himself.”
“That makes sense. Then what about Han Min-sang's memory?”
Second, in a similar sense, Han Min-sang's claim that Han Jin-seong had trapped him in the jar was strange as well.
“It's wrong too. My great-grandfather didn't know the rules of the Name Tag Snatching Game at the time, so there's no way he could have known that trapping his brother in the jar would let him survive.”
As I said, my great-grandfather only learned the rules of the game after a very long time had passed.
Elena nodded with a bitter expression.
“They were both just young boys, so they must've run away together. Then the younger, weaker brother was caught, while the older brother survived in terror.”
“My conclusion is that the older brother who survived rationalized it by believing his brother had made a moving sacrifice, while the younger brother was trapped in that painful place and fell into the delusion that his brother had set him up.”
Once we finished sorting it out, Elena and I both looked gloomy.
It would have been heartbreaking even if it had happened to complete strangers, but when I thought about the pain my great-grandfather and his younger brother had suffered, a few tears slipped from my eyes.
Elena patted my shoulder.
When I looked up, I saw Elena, who had become an early teen to play the role of my younger sister.
Elena as a child, so different from how she was now.
She was incredibly pretty and cute.
As I looked at her, every thought about my great-grandfather and all that vanished from my head.
“Are you okay?”
“...”
“Ga-in?”
“L-let's make a plan first! The past is the past, and we'll need to resolve this Dream properly if we want to get something from the Painter!”
* * *
Late at night, I looked up at the sky, where a crescent moon hung, and considered one final question.
How could we win the Name Tag Snatching Game?
I had considered stopping the game from happening in the first place.
I knew it would be a problem to destroy the jar recklessly, but we didn't necessarily need to destroy it.
What if we reported it to the Management Bureau?
The Management Bureau in this world had less of a presence than the Management Bureau A-ri knew, but they would still handle supernatural incidents.
There was an easier option too.
Elena and I could simply leave the hanok for a day or two.
Chaos would break out inside, but nothing would happen to us.
After thinking it over, I gave up on that approach.
This was my ‘most terrible memory,’ so preventing it from happening would clearly make things completely different from actual history.
The Painter probably wouldn't accept it as a proper ending.
So we had to play the game, and we had to win.
--- Whoosh! Bang!
With the sound of wind, the hanok's doors slammed shut.
Elena, who had been leaning against the wall, raised her emerald-like eyes, and I immediately got to my feet.
A Name Tag had appeared on my chest. [Han Ga-in].
It had begun.
* * *
--- Hwoooooo!
The moment a bizarre wail filled the hanok, the children who had stayed awake at Elena's and my instructions all began showing fear.
We had explained a few things to them, but one look at their faces told me they would be no help at all.
That was fine.
We hadn't planned on relying on these children anyway.
--- Rattle!
An unexpected wind blew through the hanok, and the whole building began to shake.
Just moments ago, moonlight had softly illuminated the inside of the hanok, but now the central hall, the rooms, and the maze-like corridors had all gone dark.
An unknown force had separated the inside of the hanok from the outside.
--- Creak! Creak!
Doors began opening all over the hanok.
Han Min-sang, who had come out of the jar, was looking for the children.
Elena and I had gathered all the children into one room.
“Children... Where are you?”
His voice was like sharp nails scraping across a blackboard.
The frightened children couldn't hold back any longer.
“W-waaaah!”
I didn't bother telling them to be quiet.
The hanok didn't have an infinite number of rooms, so the ghost would find this one eventually.
Instead, I pressed my ear against the thin paper-covered wall and thought.
What state was Han Min-sang in just after coming out of the jar, before taking someone's body?
We had sprinkled water everywhere beforehand, but there wasn't the slightest sound of splashing.
At least, he didn't seem to be walking around.
“Are you in here?”
--- Creak! Creak!
The fact that he was opening doors meant he could exert some physical force even before taking a body.
And then...
--- Creak!
At last, the door to the room where all the children were hiding opened.
“Hahaha! Here you are!”
Han Min-sang appeared as something like swirling, whitish smoke.
Without a body, his form vaguely resembled a person, but it writhed unpredictably like irregular mist or smoke.
His face was especially unnatural. His eyes were black like dead stars that had lost their light, and cold smoke escaped his mouth whenever he spoke.
Naturally, the children who faced such horror couldn't keep their sanity and screamed wildly.
“Eeeek!”
“Waaah!”
“S-save us!”
Apparently finding the terrified children amusing, Han Min-sang giggled and stretched out his hand.
The boy at the front, Min-seok, became his first target for Possession.
“You'll do nicely!”
Soon, the Name Tag [Han Min-seok] on Min-seok's chest fell to the floor, and [Han Min-sang] appeared in its place.
“Hoo... How, how long has it been!”
Had the bitter remorse he felt after being trapped in the jar for decades, perhaps even longer, run that deep?
Han Min-sang, having taken the child's body, couldn't hide his joy.
“No, no! There was a better body. Now then... Children. One of you is named ‘Han Ga-in,’ right? Where are you... Huh? What? This string...”
The moment Han Min-sang, who had taken Min-seok's body, noticed the string wrapped around his neck, Elena and I no longer needed to wait.
--- Squeeze!
“Gaaah!”
As Han Min-sang screamed, I thought to myself.
The one who taught me that a single string could be used to toy with a person at will was that bastard.
That was why Elena and I had tied strings around every child's neck in advance.
So we could strangle the ghost the instant it took a body!
Footnotes:
Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried
