Escaping the Mystery Hotel - Chapter 579

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈

Episode 578: A Trip Down Memory Lane (2)

──────

「User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)

Date: Day 114

Current Location: Searching...

Sage’s Advice: 3」

- Han Ga-in

A trip down memory lane, both to bond with my companions and check on my past while I was at it.

Our first stop was Saetbyeol Elementary School, the school I graduated from, because no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't remember anything from before elementary school.

Naturally, after so many Loops, the elementary school I graduated from no longer existed.

A rather flashy building now stood in its place, but there was nothing unusual about it from the outside.

... At least, I thought it was ordinary until I slipped through the entrance and checked the Status Window.

“Th-the location's acting strange again.”

“Oppa, I think it changes when we open the door and take a step inside.”

“Go farther in?!”

“Who knows what's in there?”

As we lingered at the entrance, a security guard approached us.

The moment the guard saw Mi-ro and Song-i, the guard's eyes went wide, but the guard soon said what needed to be said.

“Hey, don't cause a commotion! This isn't a place to fool around.”

The two of them looked at me, asking what we should do.

「Advice: 3 -> 2」

‘Do we need to go inside?’

「You don't need to involve yourself in every problem in the world.」

The answer was close to what I was already thinking.

In the past, I might have followed Mi-ro's lead, gone farther in, and searched the whole place.

I might've made a huge fuss about uncovering the secret of the building as it turned into an Otherworld.

“Sorry. We'll leave.”

I didn't intend to do that anymore.

Just as the Owl had said, I didn't need to solve every problem in the world.

And since Sage’s Advice was telling me not to go in, there probably weren't any memories worth recalling there either.

“Mi-ro, report it to the Management Bureau.”

“Okay.”

That was enough.

“Wouldn't going inside help you remember more, Oppa?”

“It's pointless. I barely remember elementary school to begin with, and the school is gone. Let's go to the next place.”

“Ga-in, isn't it strange?”

“What is?”

“The space inside the building is warped, right? That makes it a Chaos Disaster.”

“Right.”

“Are Chaos Disasters really common enough that we run into one just by walking around the neighborhood?”

Had Chaos Disasters always been this common?

A-ri had answered that question several times.

They were common from the perspective of the Management Bureau, which covered the entire Earth, but to any one of eight billion people, a Chaos Disaster was something they might experience once or twice in their lifetime, if ever.

So...

“Maybe how common they are now is a bad sign.”

“Wow! You really sounded like a prophet just now!”

* * *

Oddly enough, the middle school was still exactly where I remembered it.

“Maybe there are only so many places in Seoul where you can build a school?”

It was a reasonable thought.

“Can we go in?”

“A lot of schools ban outsiders these days, so-”

“Ga-in! We got permission!”

When I looked blankly ahead, the security guard was waving a hand and gesturing for us to come in.

The guard's hazy eyes and vacant expression made the answer obvious.

“...”

Mi-ro had used Voice.

“Mi-ro, you...”

“You wanted to go in, didn't you?”

She smiled bashfully, making it hard to scold her.

Besides, I'd done plenty of similar things, or worse, at Sunrise. It would be strange for me to criticize Mi-ro.

“Let's just take a quick look.”

We walked around the field, then slipped inside the school.

That was when we realized that only the location was the same. The school's name and even its interior layout were different.

It was practically a different school.

Then a young woman approached us from a distance.

“Hey, kids! You're not students here, are you? You can't come in!”

A teacher?

Song-i stepped forward.

“There was a security guard, so how could we-”

“Ma'am, I graduated from Saebit Middle School two years ago!”

“Oh? I-I see?”

Even if a school banned outsiders, it was only human nature to hesitate before being harsh with a graduate.

“What about the others-”

“She's my friend, and this oppa is...”

“Oh my! Your boyfriend?”

At that moment, all three of us fell silent and looked at each other.

I'd pretended to be Song-i's fiancé once in Room 206, so I could understand it...

But Mi-ro's expression had openly stiffened.

“That's right.”

Soon, the teacher said she'd let it slide this time, but not next time, then walked away.

The two immediately began bickering.

“... You said something weird.”

“What did I say?”

“Wh-what boyfriend? I could've just sent her away-”

“You were going to use Voice again? Idiot. Didn't A-ri tell you not to overuse supernatural powers?”

“...”

It must have been true, because Mi-ro could only fumble for an answer.

Song-i giggled and patted Mi-ro's head.

“Idiot. Anyway, Oppa, do you remember anything? You've been quiet for a while.”

“...”

This wasn't the middle school I had graduated from.

I hadn't expected much because of that...

Yet, for the first time, I felt something was off.

What was this? Something felt like it was about to come back to me, but I couldn't grasp it.

「Advice: 2 -> 1」

‘A simple hint! We've found the place, so please tell me just a little.’

「Were you the only one who attended school?」

“Was I the only one who attended school?”

“Oppa?”

“...”

I remembered.

“My younger sibling.”

“Huh?”

“I had a younger sister.”

“I know. What was her name again? Han Hee-gang?”

“She was three years younger than me.”

“I think you've told me that too.”

“When I was in my third year of middle school, my sister was in her first year.”

“...”

Song-i fell silent.

Soon, Mi-ro also noticed something strange.

“That's weird. If she was three years younger, shouldn't your sister have been in elementary school when you were in your third year of middle school?”

It was a contradiction in my memories that was hard to understand.

Was I remembering the past incorrectly?

I'd spent a long time in the Hotel. It wouldn't be strange if my memories of the past had become blurred.

Then Song-i spoke.

“Oppa, the next place we were going to visit was your high school, right?”

“Right.”

“Listening to you made me remember something too. Let's change locations. Um, where was it in Jeollanam-do? The place where your great-grandfather lived.”

“...”

“Let's go there first. We've got a lead, and if we visit somewhere else first, your memories might get fuzzy again.”

“Okay.”

* * *

By the time we arrived at our destination, it was dark after sunset.

This was the setting of A Family with Deep Roots, the event I experienced after meeting the Painter in the Hotel.

“As expected, the country house is gone. Where should we go...?”

A green tea processing business had been built where the country house once stood, and there was a tea house nearby that seemed to be run by the company.

“The stream looks exactly like it did in the museum event, A Family with Deep Roots. Maybe it's because it's natural terrain?”

“Do you remember anything?”

“I'm thinking.”

“Ugh... Oppa, hurry up and remember. It's really cold here!”

“Yeah!”

Standing beside a stream on a winter night really was freezing.

“Hmm... What about you? You said you remembered something.”

“Oh, right. When we entered your memories at the museum, every attempt always began beside this stream. You remember, right?”

“Yeah.”

Fragments of those memories came back to me.

It had started with me playing with my younger relatives by the stream.

“Back then, we went in one at a time to help you, right?”

“Though it turned out we were interfering.”

“That makes me sad. Everyone was trying to help!”

“... Let's say I misspoke.”

It was true that they had interfered, though!

“The people who entered played the role of your younger sibling, right?”

“They did.”

“But nobody entered during the first attempt or the last one. That means we saw your sibling before they were replaced by us.”

“Did we?”

During the first and last attempts, my companions hadn't intervened.

Had they noticed something strange from an outsider's perspective?

“It was similar to what you felt earlier. You said Hee-gang was three years younger, but the Hee-gang I saw was just a little kid.”

“...”

“You were in your first or second year of middle school, right? You would've been fourteen or fifteen, so a sister three years younger should have been in her early teens...”

“How old did she look?”

“Six or seven at most.”

“...”

This time, the age difference between my sister and me was at least six years.

Mi-ro couldn't hold back any longer.

“First it was three years, then two years, and now six years? You didn't have three younger sisters, did you?”

“...”

At this point, it was certain that my memories of the past contained contradictions.

I felt the need to reveal one of my secrets to the two of them.

“Song-i, Mi-ro. Listen carefully. There's something strange I learned during the museum event.”

Maybe she sensed that something interesting was coming. Mi-ro's eyes were already sparkling.

“During the final attempt, I... was killed by an agent.”

After a brief silence, both of them stared at me with round eyes.

“Ehh?”

“W-what are you talking about? Why is an agent suddenly appearing in a story about your grandfather?”

“...”

Someone had appeared during the final attempt, which my companions hadn't seen.

Agent KD, Kim Do-hyeon.

He wasn't connected to the country house where A Family with Deep Roots took place. He belonged to the Management Bureau.

He appeared like a deus ex machina at the end, solved every problem at once, and killed me when I was young.

“Ga-in, isn't that memory really strange? If you died when you were fourteen, what are your memories of going to high school, taking the College Scholastic Ability Test, and starting university?”

“If Ga-in died then, how did you even come to the Hotel?”

Song-i and Mi-ro reacted intensely.

It made sense. Unlike my sister's age, this contradiction couldn't be dismissed as me simply being confused.

“... There's one answer.”

I recalled KD's final words.

‘Death is the end for ordinary humans. But it seems you'll have more chances.’

A thought I'd vaguely entertained since then.

“An answer?”

It was a contradiction that seemed impossible to understand at first, but one assumption resolved it immediately.

“I was a Regressor before I entered the Hotel.”

The past I remembered wasn't one lifetime.

* * *

Late at night.

The three of us sat around a round table in a shabby motel room nearby that we'd booked in advance.

Song-i and I had been staring at Mi-ro for a while.

“...”

“S-stop staring at me!”

Once I formed the hypothesis that I'd been a Regressor before entering the Hotel, the problem of my contradictory memories had been resolved.

But there still wasn't enough information to take it any further.

To begin with, there was more we didn't know about regressions in reality than we did.

Aside from A-ri, there was only one other person who might have answers.

“Mi-ro, try harder. I came here trusting only you.”

“Liar! You came trusting G-Ghost Story Mi-ro, not me!”

“The two of you are one.”

Gramps is an agent too, of course, but Mi-ro from the Deep Sea Hotel would know more than him.

That was all well and good, but summoning Ghost Story Mi-ro proved harder than expected.

“Tell us the condition for summoning Ghost Story Mi-ro again.”

“Th-there's an elephant doll next to the pillow in my room.”

“Okay.”

“Was it last week? I was looking at the e-elephant doll while trying to sleep, and it suddenly looked like it came alive and moved! I got scared and screamed, then-”

In short, she'd gotten frightened after looking at a doll while trying to sleep one night, and Ghost Story Mi-ro had appeared.

So we assumed Ghost Story Mi-ro appeared whenever Mi-ro was terrified.

After hearing that, Song-i became annoyed.

“Ah, this is so frustrating. Then why isn't she coming out now?”

“...”

“I've been showing you tons of terrifying illusions this whole time!”

“... I know they're illusions, so they aren't scary.”

It was a reasonable point.

Even if I were Mi-ro, I don't think I'd be terrified just because Song-i showed me illusions beside me.

Would it be easier if we left Mi-ro alone?

She said she got scared just looking at an elephant doll at night when she was alone.

“Song-i, come outside for a moment.”