WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 445: Room 206, Curse Room - The Demon King Who Revives After 100 Days Re (10)
──────
- Kim A-ri
「The next stop is Sashimi Slicing, Sashimi Slicing Station. Dear passengers, please remove your clothes and expose your bare skin.」
“What are these perverted bastards saying now?”
As Cha Jin-cheol shouted in disbelief, a thought struck me.
The ‘wriggling white shape’ from earlier, and the announcement from the train: ‘The next stop is Sashimi Slicing Station.’
Hadn't I heard both of those somewhere before?
They were incredibly famous Japanese urban legends!
The first was Kunekune, and the second was Monkey Dream.
I vaguely remembered the details of the stories too.
“If this is Monkey Dream!”
“What dream? Don't start talking like you're the only one who knows what's going on, A-ri.”
“There'll be monsters with knives beyond that door! They-”
--- Screeeech!
The door to the rear car opened.
Sure enough, just as the Monkey Dream story described, dwarves in bizarre cone-shaped hats appeared.
They had playful yet cruel expressions, wore messy clothes like scraps of rags, and held bluish gleaming blades in both hands!
“Hmph! You think I'm scared just because they have tiny knives?”
Not only Cha Jin-cheol, but even Seung-yeop didn't seem very frightened.
We'd long passed the point of being scared by a few knife-wielding dwarves.
Besides, we hadn't come here unarmed.
--- Bang! Bang!
As Seung-yeop pressed himself against the wall, Jin-cheol and I repeatedly pulled the triggers of the rifles we'd brought from Paradise.
The dwarves were disgusting, grinning even as they became lumps of flesh, but that didn't make the rifles any less powerful.
“What was that thing you said earlier? What dream?”
“Monkey Dream.”
“That was nothing. What a waste of bullets.”
“The bullets really are a waste. It's a dream in the first place, so there's no need to fight-”
「This is another announcement. The next stop is Sashimi Slicing, Sashimi Slicing Station.」
“...”
“...”
It wasn't over.
The entire train began rattling, and vibrations started coming from the rear again, accompanied by a foul stench.
“I think... another monster is coming.”
This one was definitely bigger!
“Everyone, listen! This is a dream. We're trapped in a nightmare right now!”
“A dream? Is that why you kept saying Monkey Dream? Th-Then do we have to wake up? How do we wake up?”
Maybe because we'd only recently experienced being trapped in an unknown nightmare, everyone reacted quickly.
To hammer the fact that this was a dream into our minds, we all began doing RC checks, or Reality Checks.
Chaos broke out as everyone twisted each other's fingers into bizarre angles or held their noses shut and tried to breathe, attempting actions impossible in reality.
Reality Checks were a method even Management Bureau agents who frequently encountered supernatural phenomena used, so there was nothing wrong with our response.
The problem was Jin-cheol's fingers, which regenerated as if nothing had happened even after being broken twice, and Yumi, who started breathing through her skin after holding her nose shut. What had this girl done to her body?
After some time spent unintentionally admiring how monstrous everyone else was, our expressions hardened.
“No matter how unusual our bodies are, is it normal that we still can't wake up?”
“... No. The problem is the Monkey Dream story itself.”
“What do you mean?”
In the Monkey Dream urban legend, the narrator was someone who could freely wake up after realizing they were dreaming.
However, the narrator caught in the nightmare couldn't wake up easily.
“... The story includes the part where it's hard to wake up even after you realize it's a dream.”
“Fuck!”
「This is another announcement. The next stop is Sashimi Slicing, Sashimi Slicing Station.」
The ominous announcement rang out again.
At last, Yumi grabbed Seung-yeop's hand with a tense expression.
“Huh? Y-Yumi?”
“Looks like we need shock therapy to wake up. It might be different if we break the fingers of someone with a normal body.”
“Huh? Huh?”
“I'm going to break them.”
“W-Wait! Th-This isn't-”
“Prince, wake up first and wake the rest of us.”
“Aaaagh!”
Just as the girl prepared to break poor Seung-yeop's fingers with a cold expression, a bright light suddenly appeared behind us, and Eun-sol collapsed onto the floor.
“Huh? Sis?”
“What? Hey! A-ri! Why did Eun-sol collapse?”
“The monster hasn't even entered our car yet, so what the-”
--- Pinch!
“Huh?”
It felt like someone had pinched me hard.
Soon, Jin-cheol and Seung-yeop widened their eyes and rubbed their cheeks as well.
I was clearly here, and no one was touching me, yet I could distinctly feel the sensation of being pinched.
That meant...
Eun-sol had woken up.
‘Everyone, wake up!’
...
“Ah.”
When I came to, I was lying amid the wreckage of rusted metal.
Eun-sol was going around waking each person sprawled on the ground.
“Eun-sol, how did you wake up just now?”
A moment ago, even though we knew we were dreaming, we couldn't wake up easily.
That was because ‘it's hard to wake up even when you know it's a dream’ was part of Monkey Dream's story.
So how had Eun-sol woken up?
“With the butterfly's power.”
“Butterfly Dream?”
“You said the problem was that the dream itself was hard to wake from.”
“Right.”
“So I put the butterfly inside my body and changed the nightmare's contents.”
“Changed it to what?”
“A dream where I fell from a building. I woke up the moment my head hit the ground.”
It seemed Eun-sol had basically become a full-fledged Management Bureau agent.
* * *
Was it because Seung-yeop possessed Luck?
Monkey Dream had given us trouble, but Seung-yeop's suggestion to investigate the train had paid off.
There really was a half-rotted route map inside.
“... This makes no sense. It's just paper, isn't it? Didn't you say contact with the underground was cut off over a hundred years ago?”
It was strange, just as Eun-sol said, but the route map was still readable.
Thanks to that, we knew which way to go through the underground city filled with darkness.
Basically, we would follow the tracks. Whenever they branched off, we could refer to the route map.
“The white shape Eun-sol saw earlier was Kunekune. The train just now was Monkey Dream. They're both famous Japanese urban legends. Has anyone heard of them?”
Everyone shook their heads.
I didn't know whether it was because we'd all lived in different worlds or simply because nobody had been interested in urban legends before entering the Hotel.
Then Eun-sol gave a bitter smile.
“Kunikuni? I don't know that one, but I know that.”
“That?”
“That.”
About a minute later, we found out what Eun-sol meant.
A beautiful woman in a pure white dress, utterly out of place in the dark, murky underground city.
She appeared wearing a Red Mask.
Cha Jin-cheol stepped forward.
“Ho ho ho...!”
“...”
“Excuse me... Mister. I-”
“Are you going to ask if you're pretty?”
“...”
“Are you asking if you're pretty? That's what you were going to ask, right?”
“Am I pretty?”
“No. You're fucking ugly.”
“Whaaat-”
--- Thud!
“Look in a mirror! Look in a mirror, you bitch! Look at that hideous face of yours-”
While that ridiculous scuffle unfolded in front of us, I continued talking with Eun-sol.
“Kunekune, Monkey Dream, and now Red Mask. Isn't that too strange?”
“What’s strange? I mean, Ga-in told us about his experience fighting the Demon King.”
“A whirlpool of endless impulses, a collection of malicious imaginations.”
“Right. That was how it felt. The Demon King seems like something that can wield humanity's horrible imaginations as if they were magic. If these are famous urban legends, couldn't it bring them into reality?”
“Eun-sol, I'm not surprised because the Demon King can do this.”
“What?”
“What year is it in this world right now?”
According to Paradise's history, the known world had been destroyed around 180 years ago.
This world was Earth's twisted future, so the current era was around the 2200s.
Only then did Eun-sol understand what I meant.
“Monkey Dream and Kunekune were probably famous in the 2000s... So from Paradise's point of view, they were stories famous two hundred years ago. At that point, they're completely in the realm of classics, aren't they?”
“Why aren't any ‘modern’ urban legends appearing? Paradise must have created all kinds of urban legends to fit its dystopian reality.”
“...”
I could be certain of it.
People of this era, people in Paradise, had no idea what those urban legends were.
Stories created somewhere on the internet and passed around wouldn't survive for hundreds of years.
So why were urban legends from centuries ago becoming real only now in this underground city?
“This one's ridiculously weak! Let's get moving!”
Then I remembered something strange we'd noticed when we first entered the underground.
Human remains that still had flesh on them, as if they'd died only weeks ago, despite contact having been cut off for over a hundred years.
The paper route map we'd just found, its contents still legible.
The underground city where urban legends from centuries ago had appeared so late.
“... I feel like I almost understand.”
* * *
[User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)
Date: Day 466
Current Location: Room 206, Curse Room - ‘The Demon King Who Revives After 100 Days’
Sage’s Advice: 3]
- Han Ga-in
‘Lord... May today pass safely-’
‘We give thanks to our Father in Heaven-’
‘It is a joy to share in this glorious moment as the Prophet leads the Cult-’
Every hour, every minute, every second.
Compared to before, I could hear vastly more voices of praise.
Teacher Sang-hyeon's words that these voices might shake my mind made sense, but one thing was clear. The Han Ga-in Cult was thriving.
The Sacred Sun had also begun to feel heavy at some point.
They had offered faith rather than their souls themselves, so it wasn't fully charged yet, but it had reached the point where it could easily create small miracles.
That was an excellent result.
It wasn't just me. The others were doing their best too.
Song-i was governing the city even more thoroughly than the dead mayor had.
She also made sure to regularly offer the ‘reactionaries’ she arrested under various pretexts to Indomitable Reason.
Teacher Sang-hyeon and Elena had done their best as well. Thanks to them, Song-i and I were constantly devouring the city from above and below.
Yeah, everything was fine up to that point. Fine, but...
We were in serious trouble.
No matter how I thought about it, we'd run into a massive crisis.
“... According to the Status Window, it's Day 466.”
“When did we enter Room 206?”
“Day 380. It's been eighty-six days since we entered the room.”
“... When did the others go underground?”
“Day 400, I think.”
More than two months had passed since the others left for the underground.
“Are they all alive?”
“Surprisingly, every one of them is still alive.”
“Th-Then why haven't they contacted us or come back out?”
“Exactly.”
The title of Room 206 was The Demon King Who Revives After 100 Days.
There were now fourteen days left until the Demon King's resurrection.
“Ga-in, I think we're really in big trouble.”
“... I know.”
We needed to take drastic measures.
Footnotes:
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