WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 552: School Alone (2)
──────
- Park Seung-yeop
My first thought was, ‘The hotel tricked me!’
“Y-you told me to rest for a year...”
It had clearly spoken through the Merchant and told me to rest for a year, acting like nothing would happen!
I took a deep breath and calmed myself down.
Now that it had happened, there was no point blaming anyone.
“You're oddly calm in a crisis.”
Sophia's matter-of-fact voice made me feel a little steadier.
Whether we were close or not, I was glad I wasn't the only one caught up in this strange phenomenon.
“What happened while I was asleep?”
“Don't know.”
“... What?”
“I don't know, sir.”
“I wasn't criticizing how you said it. I was asking why you don't know.”
“Because I was asleep too.”
“...”
That left me with nothing to say.
So you could sleep inside the Soul Box.
Still, was it really a coincidence that something happened while both Sophia and I were asleep?
“Could sleeping together be some kind of condition?”
“It might be... Let's look around.”
* * *
Once we examined the classroom, we found plenty of strange things besides the fact that everyone else had disappeared.
“This is a little different from the Bangbae Middle School I know.”
“It is.”
For example, there were no air conditioners on the ceiling.
Instead, several old fans that looked half-broken hung there. They were incredibly outdated.
“Look at that! It's a fan you turn on by pulling a string.”
“...”
“I've never even seen one like that.”
“Even among mechanical fans, that's an exceptionally old model.”
It didn't take long to confirm our suspicions.
The desks, chairs, and lockers at the back of the classroom had all been replaced with old wooden furniture.
“Sophia, I think this place is...”
“...”
“Bangbae Middle School from at least several decades ago.”
* * *
--- Rattle!
“It won't open.”
Every route out of the school was blocked, including the main entrance and the back door near the first-floor faculty office.
Was it padlocked?
That didn't seem right. Even when I slammed into the glass door, it didn't budge in the slightest.
“Fortuna, can't you open it with your power?”
Sophia was currently bound to the Soul Box.
If she used destructive magic recklessly, her remaining time would rapidly decrease.
That was why she was asking me.
“I told you, I'm not Fortuna anymore! Move.”
After taking a deep breath, scorching heat surged from my heart, filling my whole body with vitality.
The stage where I drew out Aksha’s Soul!
“Hah!”
“What was that?”
“In the past, even my success rate at the first stage of drawing out power was only around twenty percent!”
“... Can you really say you mastered it? You were just an apprentice.”
“That’s true.”
Thinking about it now, it was a stretch to say my past self had learned martial arts.
Like Sophia said, I was just an apprentice.
“Haaah!”
The instant my hand shot out like a bolt of lightning and struck the glass door.
--- Rumble!
A tremendous impact shook not only the glass door, but the entire area where Sophia and I stood.
Yet there wasn't even a crack in the glass.
“... What?”
It wasn't natural.
Padlocked or not, the main entrance was just opaque glass.
It shouldn't have been made of anything that could withstand enough force to shake everything within several meters!
“There must be a magical barrier.”
My gaze shifted to one corner of my vision.
My second wish granted by Dream.
「Awakening」
Just once.
I could become the Greatest Martial Artist Under Heaven, capable of splitting the sky!
“Don't use it.”
“... What are you suddenly-”
“Don't use it if I tell you not to. It’s a one-use power, isn’t it? Don't waste it on something trivial.”
“I, I wasn't going to use it.”
“Let's search the school more thoroughly.”
* * *
We searched everywhere from the first floor to the third.
We checked every classroom and faculty office, and fiddled with a phone even though it couldn't find a signal.
Sophia and I did everything we could to escape the incomprehensible phenomenon of waking up in a middle school from decades ago after taking a nap.
Then, past the third floor, we reached the stairwell on the fourth floor leading to the rooftop.
“... That smell.”
“Ugh! It's incredibly strong!”
What was that smell?
Had every secretion a human body could produce been mixed together and left to ferment?
I was almost afraid to put it any more explicitly than that.
“There must be something on the roof.”
Sophia looked tense.
I gripped the wooden stick I'd found while searching.
It was nothing special, but if I added my martial arts to it, I was confident I could beat a gorilla to death.
--- Creak!
The door to the roof wasn't locked.
* * *
--- Rustle!
The first thing I found was an endless amount of trash.
A mountain of garbage made up of snack wrappers, empty plastic bottles, and aluminum foil.
There was so much that it filled the entire rooftop, too much to count.
Quite a few plastic bottles and plastic bags contained “human secretions,” but I couldn't bring myself to inspect them any further.
A shabby tent, or perhaps a shack, stood in the center of the roof.
By then, I'd realized something.
“Someone must be living in that tent.”
“For a very... long time.”
The stench filling the rooftop was evidence that someone had been living there.
I pushed aside the trash with my wooden stick to make a path.
“Oh!”
“What is it?”
“I thought you'd be gagging and flailing around, but you're surprisingly calm.”
“...”
What did Sophia really think I was?
I was the Greatest Martial Artist Under Heaven!
Besides, Sophia was acting calm too, despite looking like a classic blonde beauty straight out of a movie.
Was it only natural, considering she was really a witch who'd endured for hundreds of years?
“Hmm. You're not very smart, but at least you have some initiative.”
“Stop insulting me out of habit...”
Even A-ri wasn't this bad!
I tapped the tent with my stick.
“Uuugh... Uuugh...”
Weak groans came from inside.
“Whoever it is, they don't seem healthy.”
“No human would be healthy in an environment like this. They'd be a monster.”
With no other choice, I pulled aside the shabby tent flap and went inside. The sight before me left me speechless for a moment.
“...”
An elderly person in ragged clothes.
Their arms and legs were gaunt, and their skin was covered in black spots.
One eye also seemed useless from cataracts.
They didn't look like they could live much longer even if left alone.
“Hello?”
“Uuugh...”
Their one good eye slowly moved toward me.
Five seconds of silence passed.
Then the elderly person's eyes widened.
“F-finally!”
“...”
“Y-you came...! You came to save me from this, this hell!”
“...”
What was I supposed to say?
Would they be disappointed if I told them I hadn't come to save them, that I'd been trapped here too?
No, they might die of shock, not just disappointment.
“T-this isn't the time! What, what time is it now?”
“The time? It's almost evening-”
“Get inside! In here, now!”
“...”
The tent was cramped even for one person.
I was already inside, but Sophia was leaning against the entrance to the shabby tent-like shack.
“Y-you there, Agent! Y-you need to close the door!”
Sophia smiled awkwardly.
Putting aside the fact that we weren't agents, the elderly person smelled unbelievably awful.
Compared to the stench coming from them, the trash heap outside could have been called a flower garden.
It took real determination to stay in that enclosed shack with them.
“W-when the sun sets! When the sun sets, it's dangerous! Not just the school, but this entire world-”
- Shhhhh...!
As if it had been waiting, a strange sound of breathing came from somewhere.
Sophia immediately shut the entrance and came inside.
“Is that enough?”
“F-from now on, stay quiet...”
“...”
I thought in silence.
An elderly person who seemed to have survived for at least several years in this bizarre world.
I was curious how they got food and water, but more important was how they had survived.
“Hmm... This is the rooftop. Did you use this shack to prevent direct exposure to whatever is outside?”
“Uuugh...”
The elderly person seemed to have already run out of strength after that brief conversation.
“Um... Seung-yeop, sir.”
“What kind of sir is that? Go back.”
Unable to bear the smell any longer, Sophia returned to the Soul Box.
It wasn't a major problem since it didn't look like we'd have to fight right away.
“Uuugh... Uuugh...”
It was just painful to be left alone in a stench-filled shack with a dying elderly person.
* * *
- Kim A-ri
“A-ri! You, you understand what I said, right? Seung-yeop-”
“I know. Stay home and wait.”
--- Click!
It was already the third call from Mi-ro.
She kept saying the same thing, so Mi-ro must have lost her composure.
Then again, Mi-ro had never been particularly calm to begin with.
“...”
Seung-yeop and Sophia had suddenly disappeared.
The school was already in chaos, and Seung-yeop's parents, whom he'd summoned through Dream, had arrived at the school.
The teachers and even Seung-yeop's parents suspected that the immature boy might have suddenly run away.
It made me laugh. He really didn't inspire trust in those around him.
“Pfft! This isn't the time to laugh.”
Seung-yeop and Mi-ro might not know it, but they weren't the first.
Ga-in and Eun-sol were first.
Then Seung-yeop and Mi-ro. Right, Mi-ro hadn't been caught up in it yet, had she?
Either way, over the past week or two, my companions had been swept up in Chaos Disasters one after another.
Could that really be a coincidence?
Was reality simply this much of a mess?
No way!
Chaos Disasters were like traffic accidents.
On a national scale, at least a double-digit number occurred every day, and as an agent, it sometimes felt like the entire world was full of Chaos Disasters...
But for an individual Korean citizen, they might experience two or three in their lifetime, if that.
“...”
Was there an invisible hand attacking us?
I didn't know.
If someone poisoned us or shot us with a gun, that would be one thing, but could anyone deliberately make us get swept up in Chaos Disasters?
Besides, if there were such malicious interference, the hotel wouldn't have told us to rest for a year...
“Phew...”
My companions complained that I, a Management Bureau agent, always tried to hide things from them, but this was hard for me too.
Everything was too confusing.
Then.
--- Ring!
An emergency alert appeared on my Management Bureau smartphone.
「The escaped entity, ‘Lucky Boy (M - 3274),’ has made contact with a Sacrifice!」
“... Seung-yeop, did you already get yourself into trouble?”
It was so like him that I wasn't surprised.
「There may be a problem with the Containment procedure for ‘Pale Breath,’ so if necessary, dispose of Lucky Boy-」
Dispose of him? Dispose of him!
I contacted someone at once.
The other party was Park Hyun-min, head of the Management Bureau Korea Branch.
--- Click!
“Agent Kim A-ri, did you see the emergency alert? We will soon dispatch the Assault Team-”
“Cancel it.”
“What?”
“Cancel the disposal order, and cancel the order to dispatch the Assault Team.”
“... If there is a problem with the Containment procedure for Pale Breath-”
“I'll go handle it, so do as I say.”
“...”
Park Hyun-min couldn't hide his discomfort.
As head of the Management Bureau Korea Branch, very few people had the authority to give him orders, at least nominally.
Naturally, I, an agent, was not one of them.
But I knew this man well.
Like many people in the Management Bureau, Park Hyun-min dreamed of rising to a higher position and gaining more authority and secrets.
That was why he couldn't stand up to anyone important, or anyone who would soon become important.
“Very well. But Agent Kim A-ri, mind your manners. Even if you are on the candidate list for The Silent!”
It was time to leave and rescue my companion.
Footnotes:
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