WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 575: The Management Bureau Is an Elephant (5) Fin
──────
- Han Ga-in
I walked along a path filled with silvery-gray mist.
The Kingdom of Dreams was a tool for traveling through my companions' dreams and unconscious minds.
Without saying a word, A-ri led me into “A-ri's dream.”
Did she have something to tell me?
Why did she need to say it in A-ri's dream instead of mine?
...
After crossing the boundary, I arrived in A-ri's dream.
The dreamscape was a coffee shop in a bustling district, but as I looked around, I noticed a few strange things.
A photo booth resembling an instant photo studio stood in one corner.
A huge frame hung on the wall, but a black cloth covered it, hiding the picture inside.
Had A-ri prepared this in advance?
“Ga-in~! I missed you!”
Agh!
Who was this?
You're not Kim A-ri, are you?
Are you Mi-ro with your hair dyed black?
The moment A-ri used an impossibly cute voice I'd never heard from her before, I stopped breathing.
She even clung to me and l-linked, linked arms with me!
--- Squeeze!
The unfamiliar soft sensation made half my thoughts grind to a halt!
What? What? What? What? What?
No, wait, could it be that crazy-popular-guy Han Ga-in's charm had finally won over A-ri, the mysterious self-proclaimed bearer of Secret, and-
“What are you thinking about right now?”
“...”
“Dating? Marriage? Don't tell me... beyond that?”
Don't underestimate me.
My imagination hadn't made it as far as marriage yet.
“Pfft! Idiot. You're still shocked by something like this? It's not even the first time!”
A-ri smiled as she said this wasn't the first time, and only then did Cold Heart awaken.
This was the first time something like this had happened between us.
That meant A-ri was lying.
Was someone, or some unknown power, watching A-ri?
I couldn't take anything A-ri said at face value from now on.
...
I couldn't help feeling a little disappointed.
“Dreams are such a shame. Even if something mysterious happens, you forget it all when you wake up. If you don't want to forget, you have to focus your entire mind.”
Interpretation.
Listen closely to what comes next.
“...”
“...”
It seemed like she was about to say something, but nearly a minute passed in silence.
--- Tap!
The sound of a finger tapping the table.
“Ah, we've been too quiet, haven't we?”
“... Yeah. Maybe because it's been a while since we met?”
Silence...
A-ri, you'd gotten promoted.
“Our coffee's ready. I'll get it.”
“Uh, okay.”
Soon, A-ri returned with a refreshing iced Americano.
“This one's yours.”
“Ah, thanks.”
--- Tap!
Once again, she lightly tapped the table with her finger.
Was that some kind of signal?
Did anything said after she tapped the table matter?
“I was going to bring them all, but carrying multiple cups is heavy. You bring the other people's coffees.”
“... All right.”
Interpretation.
It was too much of a burden for A-ri to pass information directly to several people.
She would only tell me, and I had to organize it and tell the others.
“How have you been lately?”
“... I've been going to work. You know, the place I told you about.”
“Be careful. I've been hearing bad things about it.”
Was this a warning that my gathering Faith through Sunrise couldn't stay hidden from the Management Bureau forever?
Jin-cheol had helped me cover it up once, but the crisis might come again.
I needed to quickly finish the ‘automatic Faith farm’ and get out.
“Ah, have you met that girlfriend you mentioned before?”
The topic suddenly changed.
That aside, a girlfriend...
I should just go along with it.
“I haven't seen her yet. I-I'm not mentally ready...”
“Idiot. Ga-young must be frustrated too!”
“...”
When had I even told her about Ga-young?
“What about you? Have you ever dated anyone?”
“Dating? I've done it a looot!”
It sounded like a lie the moment I heard it.
“...”
“...”
“Um, to be honest, almost never. My appearance was probably the problem.”
“Your appearance?”
“I look young, so I often attended school to maintain my cover identity. Think about it. They were all kids.”
“Compared to you, I guess they would be.”
She could talk freely about her time as “Agent Kim A-ri.”
Was it fine to openly mention things at that level, while only the information she learned as one of The Silent had to be kept secret?
I needed to understand the limits A-ri couldn't cross too, so I could talk to her more easily. I decided to probe a little.
“Putting aside your cover identity as a student, have you ever dated as an agent?”
“Not really. For the record, agents almost never date other agents.”
“Why? You spend a long time together-”
“That's why we don't. If you're around each other too long, all the fantasy disappears. And it'd be hard to deal with things after dating and breaking up.”
“Because you'd have to keep seeing each other after the breakup? It's kind of like workplace dating.”
“Workplace dating where you can never quit. Dating needs some fantasy. And it can't last too long.”
This part didn't seem like a lie meant to convey information. It sounded sincere.
She hadn't tapped the table either-
--- Tap!
“I learned something strange while digging through your dream before.”
“...”
When did you dig through it?
You even did it secretly, without me knowing?
Well, I had dug through Mi-ro's dream too-
“...”
I had also been caught digging through A-ri and Song-i's dreams-
“...”
Thinking about it, maybe it was fine for companions to dig through each other's dreams.
“It's about Ga-young. Your ex-girlfriend, ah, you never got as far as dating, so maybe your ex-girlfriend candidate?”
“... I was the one who rejected her.”
“Really? Anyway, something was strange.”
“What was strange?”
“Ga-in, your memories...”
“My memories?”
“They felt as though they'd been arbitrarily made up somehow.”
“I don't really understand what you mean.”
“Human memory is inherently unreliable. Maybe the youthful memories you remember are a mixture of forgetting and distortion.”
A-ri, this was important, right?
You started it by tapping the table.
“Try thinking carefully about the past. You might remember something unexpected.”
“...”
What did that mean?
“Finished your drink?”
“Ah, yeah.”
“We have something we absolutely need to do.”
Once the coffee cup was empty, A-ri led me to one corner of the coffee shop.
“Ga-in, you know what this is, right?”
“Isn't it a sticker photo booth?”
“I've always wanted to take pictures like this. Let's do it!”
Again, her soft arm wrapped around mine, and I felt that soft sensation.
--- Click!
With a loud noise and a whirring sound, a small photograph of A-ri and me popped out.
--- Tap!
A signal to focus.
A-ri soon wrote the following on the photograph.
「Ahri ♥ Cain」
“How is it? Cute, right?”
“Yeah.”
My English name was Han Ga-in, not Han Cain.
Had A-ri mixed that up?
“Come to think of it, is your younger brother doing well?”
“... Doing well.”
I didn't have a younger brother. I had a younger sister, and not only my companions but A-ri knew that well.
‘Cain’ and ‘younger brother’ weren't mistakes.
“...”
Was she invoking the biblical myth of Cain and Abel?
Then A-ri began walking through the coffee shop with me.
“Walking with you brings back some old memories.”
“Old memories?”
“Our memories from the Hotel.”
“Which part?”
“Um, Room 206?”
Room 206, The Demon King Who Revives After 100 Days.
“Even now, that room is terrifying to think about! Wasn't the Demon King the strongest being among all the Prisoners?”
“I don't know. It's hard for people at our level to tell. To a rabbit, wolves and tigers probably look about the same.”
“The way the Order of Reason sealed the Demon King in Room 206 was horrifying too, wasn't it?”
There were three main methods the Order of Reason used to seal the Demon King in Room 206, right?
The spiritual mass of all surviving humanity, created by building a city over the Demon King fragment.
The power that Indomitable Reason emitted through human sacrifice, suppressing supernatural abilities.
The time distortion of the Time Ruler.
--- Tap!
This was the signal that something important was coming.
“Isn't it terrifying just to imagine? If the Demon King existed in reality-”
At that moment.
--- Rumble!
Thunder sounded outside the coffee shop.
Wondering what this was, I looked at A-ri and saw that her face had gone pale in an instant.
“...”
This wasn't what A-ri intended.
Soon, A-ri bit her lip, her expression becoming resolute as she continued.
“If the Demon King existed in reality, it would be truly terrifying.”
“... Yeah.”
Interpretation.
There was something in reality that corresponded to the Demon King.
There were many Prisoners from other rooms, so why specifically mention the Demon King?
Because its sealing method resembled the one used in Room 206?
“Maybe you know the Demon King's identity better than I do. Because you've actually seen it.”
I knew the Demon King better than A-ri did.
I had actually seen it.
Put another way, did that mean A-ri had never actually seen it?
--- Slash!
A-ri's lips split open, and her wrist was gouged deeply.
It felt like a warning from someone telling her not to cross the line.
“...”
As though nothing had happened, she smiled and continued.
“Ga-in, you like movies and novels too, right?”
“I do. I like them a lot.”
“Me too. After coming out of the Deep Sea Hotel, I watched a lot of them.”
“That must have been fun.”
“Among them, I especially liked loop stories and endless regression stories.”
“...”
“Comparing them to my own experiences made them insanely fun.”
“Really?”
“But do you know this?”
“What?”
“A lot of regression and loop stories have logical inconsistencies. I only learned that recently.”
“... I don't really know.”
“Here's an example. I'll compare it to a Japanese-style otherworld story. If a protagonist fell into a fantasy world, what problem do you think would logically come up?”
“Uh... I don't really read those, so I don't know.”
“The language would usually be different. There are countless languages even on Earth, so there's no way they'd speak Japanese in another world.”
“That makes sense.”
“But you never see a protagonist struggling to learn the language. For one reason or another, the otherworld's language is often Japanese. Why do you think that is?”
The answer was obvious.
Scenes where the protagonist spent two or three years learning a language wouldn't be fun, so the author skipped them.
Readers probably understood that too, but no one wanted to watch a protagonist study a language for three years, so they didn't complain.
“Because it's a convenient device... maybe? If you think about it, the Hotel unified languages too.”
“Right. It's a convenient device. And regression stories have things like that too.”
--- Rumble!
Thunder sounded again.
“If actual regression happened in reality, there is something that could occur.”
“...”
“Maybe something that must happen, but is conveniently skipped over... Hhh...”
By then, A-ri's top was stained with blood.
At this point, even A-ri seemed to be struggling to endure the pain, and she began gasping.
“...”
Something that would very likely have to happen if regression or a Loop existed in reality rather than fiction.
Yet something most fictional stories never described.
I felt like I vaguely understood, but I couldn't quite grasp it.
It would be too much to ask her to explain further, wouldn't it?
“L-last one. Over there... Let's go over there.”
A-ri looked close to breathing her last, so I quickly moved beside her and supported her.
We arrived in front of the huge frame I had seen as soon as I arrived.
The black cloth still covered it.
“... Take it off.”
The moment I stepped forward and grabbed the cloth.
--- Rumble! Boom!
“...”
A chilling feeling made me stop.
A frame would of course contain a photograph or a painting.
Could A-ri remain unharmed even after I saw it?
“Take it off.”
“...”
When I instinctively turned to look at A-ri, I saw unwavering resolve in her eyes.
It would be disrespectful to A-ri to hesitate any longer.
--- Flutter!
It was a mysterious painting, yet one I couldn't understand.
The background resembled a Greek or Roman temple.
Within the frame at the center of the painting, a ship sailed forward with the sun at its back.
The temple floor and the water inside the frame reflected their surroundings with unnatural clarity, like a mirror.
The moment I understood that much.
--- Rumble!
With a tremendous clap of thunder unlike anything before, the entire space began to shake!
“Agh!”
A destructive force surged forward without restraint, collapsing the coffee shop in an instant. An incomprehensible eye appeared in the sky.
That eye!
Was it the being I had encountered long ago, when I first obtained the Kingdom of Dreams?
“Goodness!”
The eye was bleeding.
Frenzied chains invading from “outside” were binding the eye!
Could that eye have been blocking much of the external invasion?
Perhaps A-ri had thought something similar, because she smiled faintly and murmured.
“Thank you. I wondered why I was still holding up despite crossing the line so many times... It was thanks to you.”
The bleeding eye looked at me.
There were no words or writing, but instinctively, I understood what the Kingdom of Dreams was trying to tell me.
‘Leave this woman's dream.’
‘Get out, and return to your dream. It is safe there.’
--- Rumble!
The girl leaning against me lightly pushed me away.
“Ugh!”
“Ga-in, do as it says. Go back to your dream.”
“Come with me, come with-”
“You know that’s not possible, right?”
I stopped breathing.
“... A-ri.”
“It'll be okay. It probably will.”
“What if it isn't? If you've crossed the line too many times-”
A-ri's lips curved into a gentle arc.
“If that happens, Ga-in.”
Something soft lightly touched my forehead.
“Let's meet in the next world!”
--- Rumble!
That was my last memory.
Footnotes:
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