WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 520: Room 207, Gate Room - Fourth Trial ‘The Fallen King’ (6)
──────
- Han Ga-in
It was 2 p.m., just after lunch.
Min-a and I arrived at a quiet café near the Church of Horus.
For about five minutes afterward, neither of us said a word.
It seemed we were both waiting for the other to speak first.
Of course, no silence lasts forever.
--- Tap!
Min-a took a phone from her pocket and set it on the table.
“What’s that?”
“It’s a little noisy around here.”
We’d picked a quiet café, but we weren’t the only people there.
“Then we should keep our voices down-”
“There’s no need.”
For a moment, I didn’t understand what she meant.
As if to show me, Min-a tapped the phone screen a few times. A simple message soon appeared.
「Setting up a Level 3 Security Space.」
“Level 3 Security Space?”
“Watch.”
「It will take approximately three minutes. Please be cautious until the setup is complete. The Security Space will remain active for approximately fifteen minutes.」
Something strange happened soon after.
The group of three seated behind us got up, saying they should head back to the office early.
The man and woman eating cake at the third table on the right suddenly seemed to have something urgent to do. They left nearly half their cake behind.
The students near the kiosk left to play table tennis, and the elderly couple in the corner hurried out, saying they thought they hadn’t turned off the gas valve.
Finally, even the café employee left without a moment’s hesitation, despite us still being inside!
Thanks to all the strange experiences I’d accumulated at the Hotel, I immediately understood.
The people who left the café probably believed they’d done so of their own will.
Something urgent had come up at work. The cake didn’t taste good. They wanted to play table tennis. They thought they hadn’t turned off the gas valve.
They’d mistake those things for the reason, but they weren’t.
The real cause was the bizarre phenomenon created by the phone in front of me!
“What is this?”
“I got promoted. I’m not a trainee anymore.”
“What?”
“It’s a tool I received when I became a full agent. You can use it in all sorts of ways, like this.”
“How does it work? Did it brainwash everyone in the café?”
“Pfft! It’s not that dramatic.”
“...”
“Have you heard this before? People are creatures who rationalize.”
“Rationalize?”
“When something happens, people tend to come up with plausible reasons for it. Ancient people saw lightning and imagined a god of thunder. Modern people see bad luck and think of secret organizations plotting behind the scenes.”
“...”
“Think of it that way. They received the thought, ‘Leave the café,’ and each of them simply came up with a reason that fit.”
It was a subtly chilling explanation.
Did the Management Bureau in the real world use methods like this to manipulate the world too?
In the now-silent café, Min-a spoke calmly.
“Let’s be honest. That strange book Ji-eun summoned. You have it now, don’t you?”
If she already knew this much, lying would only waste time.
Judging from the circumstances, Min-a seemed to suspect that I was a mage, yet she hadn’t reported me to the Holy See.
What did that mean?
“Let me ask one thing before we talk. How likely is the Holy See to become suspicious that you and I are speaking?”
“I’ll handle that, so you don’t need to worry about it.”
--- Tap!
When I summoned the Book of the Avatar and placed it on the table, Min-a’s expression grew complicated.
“Don’t open it.”
“What happens if I open it and read it? Do I die? Or do my eyes melt and my brain spill out?”
“...”
That would happen to ordinary people, but A-ri had been fine.
What about this girl?
“Listen.”
Min-a began talking about herself.
She’d become an agent around seven or eight years ago, and she had no memories from before that.
She’d asked the Holy See about her past many times, but never received a proper answer.
So she’d half given up and kept living that way, until the Hotel High incident occurred.
“I didn’t realize it at first, but after thinking over what happened that day, I figured it out. Ah, Cha Eun-ho was the one behind it, wasn’t he?”
That wasn’t what happened, so I hurried to correct her.
“I think you’re mistaken. Ji-eun did most of what happened that day herself. I-”
“I guessed as much. You probably only handled the cleanup at the end. But where do you think Ji-eun got this book?”
“...”
For an instant, I felt a great deal of tension.
Was she saying I’d given a Grimoire to a girl named Ji-eun, causing many people to die?
That was seriously unfair-
“Well, it doesn’t matter now.”
“...?”
“Maybe it wasn’t you. The book itself might have craved human lives. Demonic entities are violent by nature and difficult to control.”
“Uh-”
“What matters is the memories I recalled while thinking about you.”
Min-a didn’t mention the Hotel High incident again.
Instead, she continued the story she’d brought up at the beginning, about her memories of the past.
“As I thought about you, memories from my past that I couldn’t recall on my own kept coming back.”
In those memories, she’d eaten with someone who looked like me in a place as luxurious as a five-star hotel and had snowball fights in a snowy field.
They were memories of the Hotel.
The person who looked like me was obviously me, before my appearance changed slightly in Room 207.
“I thought about it from every angle, but no matter how I look at it, you seem like the key to my memories. What do you think?”
“... Let me ask you one thing.”
“Go ahead.”
“Why didn’t you report me to the Holy See?”
She pulled a small photograph from her clothes, looking somewhat dazed.
“Look.”
The photo showed Min-a walking down a street, looking almost exactly as she did now. But the scenery around her was very different from the present day.
“It was taken in the 1980s. I found it by chance while trying to recover my memories.”
“...”
“I didn’t tell the Holy See. I thought they might burn the photo and erase my memories.”
At that point, I vaguely understood the situation.
As expected, there was a high chance this girl was A-ri, who had lost her memories.
For some reason, she’d been captured by the Holy See. The Holy See was periodically erasing Min-a’s memories and using her as a tool, an agent.
Min-a herself had vaguely realized that.
While she was becoming suspicious of the Holy See, she met me and recovered part of her memories. Those memories told her I was her companion, so she decided to trust me instead of the Holy See and came to find me.
That was why she hadn’t reported me to the Holy See or pressed further about what happened at school.
“Ah, looking at you reminded me of something else. You liked Zero Coke more than coffee, didn’t you?”
“... That’s right.”
It was strange.
The more Min-a talked with me, the more she seemed to recall fragments of A-ri’s memories in real time.
It wasn’t a bad thing that she already seemed convinced I was her companion, but...
I was only becoming more confused.
Nearly every piece of evidence said Min-a was A-ri, who had lost her memories.
Their similar appearance, the situation where she’d lost her memories and was being used by the Holy See, and even A-ri’s memories returning.
There was only one problem: her soul.
“...”
I drew on the Grimoire’s power again and examined her.
A faint white line drifted through the air, brushing across Min-a’s soul and body before relaying the information it had already given me many times.
This was not A-ri.
“What’s wrong?”
“... It’s nothing.”
There were two possibilities.
First, Min-a was not A-ri, but someone who had acquired A-ri’s memories.
What if the real A-ri was in the hands of the Holy See?
Even approaching Min-a could be a trap laid by the Holy See!
Second, Min-a really was A-ri, but her soul had been warped.
If that was true, what kind of being could have twisted her soul enough for the Book of the Avatar to judge her as a different person?
It had to be a being so exalted that a human could not dare comprehend it.
“Just in case, have you ever tried summoning a mysterious object?”
“What?”
“A dark red, glowing polyhedron.”
“I don’t know.”
“Then what about your blood? Does it have some kind of mysterious power?”
“Hmm... My regeneration is better than an ordinary person’s. I’m athletic too.”
“...”
Could she not use an Inheritance because she wasn’t A-ri?
Or was she A-ri, but had forgotten how to use her Inheritance because of her memory loss?
My head hurt more and more.
Either way, I couldn’t keep thinking about this forever, so I made a decision.
“Min-a, there’s something I need to do now. Maybe you’ll find answers too in the process...”
“What is it?”
* * *
Whatever Min-a’s identity was, one thing was certain.
She was helping me greatly.
“So you didn’t come to the Church of Horus to find me?”
“I was only carrying out a mission. Meeting you was a coincidence.”
The Holy See had been monitoring the Church of Horus, and Min-a’s assignment was part of that.
I didn’t know whether meeting me at the church had been a coincidence or some inexplicable twist of fate, but at least it hadn’t been Min-a’s intention.
“The Church of Horus only began appearing in earnest in the 1900s. That’s old for a new religion, but it can’t compare to Christianity and the like. Even so, it expanded its influence at an astonishing rate.”
“And there were miracles behind that?”
“That’s what the Holy See thinks. There’s some evidence too. As you know, in this world, ‘miracles’ are usually synonymous with demons or magic.”
The Holy See was convinced that some unknown miracle had been involved in the Church of Horus’s rapid expansion.
The moment I heard the word miracle, I thought of the Sacred Sun.
The Sacred Sun had allowed a mine worker with neither influence nor status, the me from Room 206, to become a cult leader who shook an entire city.
What if an organization with money, influence, and enough time had the Sacred Sun?
It could become a global religion that shook the entire Earth in a short time.
“You said the Holy See had some evidence of the Church of Horus’s miracles?”
“Agents who infiltrated the organization obtained a few photographs and testimonies.”
“Did anyone happen to see a floating ball of fire?”
“A ball of fire?”
Seeing Min-a tilt her head, it seemed none of the agents had seen the Sacred Sun.
It had to be somewhere within the Church of Horus.
Were they using it in secret?
“I don’t know about a ball of fire, but I saw this.”
Min-a took out a pen and drew a simple picture on a napkin.
It seemed she couldn’t show me a photo directly for security reasons.
The drawing alone was enough.
I found the Kingdom of Dreams!
“Ah...!”
“You know it? I heard it’s hanging on the outer wall of a secret room in the Korean diocese.”
The moment I saw it, I couldn’t help but marvel.
The Kingdom of Dreams had been hidden somewhere in the Korean diocese!
If I recovered this painting, I could contact my companions, who were surely still alive somewhere in the world.
And...
“What’s wrong? Why are you staring at me all of a sudden?”
The Kingdom of Dreams might be able to tell me whether this girl was really A-ri.
I immediately revised my short-term goal.
Rather than the Sacred Sun, whose location I didn’t know, I would first secure the Kingdom of Dreams, whose location had already been confirmed.
“I need that painting. Where exactly is it hidden?”
“I can tell you the location itself. I’ve already tried it, so I roughly know how to get in too. But...”
Min-a wore a somewhat subtle expression.
It was an even mix of unease and curiosity.
“The question is whether it’s possible to get in and come back out unharmed.”
“...”
“The leaders of the Church of Horus are strange beings.”
“Strange? Do they have supernatural abilities? Or magic? I suppose that’s basically the same thing-”
“No, I’m not talking about their abilities.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know if those bastards are even human.”
“... That elderly person I met yesterday, was their name Hong Go-hak? What about them?”
“I don’t know.”
The mysterious cult that worshipped me as a god was clearly not a normal religion, and it seemed its leaders were not even human.
I let out a hollow laugh, feeling strangely unsettled.
The next day, Min-a and I infiltrated the Church of Horus in earnest.
Footnotes:
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