Escaping the Mystery Hotel - Chapter 580

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈

Episode 579: A Trip Down Memory Lane (3)

──────

- Mi-ro

Creak!

A rustling sound.

The sound of someone moving stealthily.

Was Song-i sneaking out of the bedroom without telling me?

“...”

I carefully got up and slipped out from under the covers too.

When I peeked through the crack in the already-open door, I saw Song-i darting past in the distance.

She was heading toward one of the other companions’ rooms.

“...”

Song-i wouldn’t do something like that, but I couldn’t suppress my curiosity. I quietly followed after her.

--- Creak!

Despite thinking she wouldn’t do such a thing, Song-i was going into Ga-in’s room...

Maybe they were just discussing the travel itinerary?

... Without me?

Maybe they were discussing big plans involving the Management Bureau or the Light That Calls the End?

... Without me?

Strange thoughts kept coming to mind.

I felt like I should turn back and go to sleep, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep at all.

Unable to hold back any longer, I quietly approached the door and found a narrow gap where it was slightly open.

T-this isn’t peeping!

Song-i was the one who didn’t lock the door properly!

I’ll just check what those two are doing.

...

Aah!

“Eeeeeek!”

The moment a shock fierce enough to make my heart burst seized my soul!

My mind went hazy as dizziness washed over me.

* * *

「User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)

Date: Day 115

Current Location: 42, Jangcheon 9-gil, Suncheon-si, Jeollanam-do

Sage’s Advice: 0」

- Han Ga-in

The moment dark bluish-black mist poured out of Mi-ro’s body, Song-i and I shouted at the same time.

“She’s here! She’s really here, right?”

“I think it worked!”

What a relief!

Still, did we have to put on a show like this every time we summoned Ghost Story Mi-ro?

“Wow... This is fascinating?”

Mi-ro looked half-conscious as living mist writhed around her.

Soon, the eerie energy gathered into one and consumed Mi-ro’s body.

About three seconds later, clarity returned to Mi-ro’s hazy eyes.

“... What are you two doing - Ah-ha! It was an illusion.”

That was my first meeting with Ghost Story Mi-ro.

* * *

Looking back, we’d known about Mi-ro’s existence for a very long time.

After the two agents being punished in Room 102 joined us, didn’t it feel like several months passed before A-ri truly opened up to us?

If I remembered correctly, it was the day Seung-yeop had been bewitched by a strange butterfly.

That day, A-ri and I had our first sincere conversation in Seung-yeop’s mental world.

Anyway, my first impression of Mi-ro had been terrible.

Even A-ri, who wanted to save Mi-ro, didn’t deny that Mi-ro had serious personality problems.

The stories Sang-hyeon told us after joining made us even more wary.

Even so, we didn’t want to lose A-ri, so we agreed to revive Mi-ro.

...

The revived Mi-ro was completely different from the sinister Mi-ro we’d been wary of. She was closer to an innocent girl.

It was enough to make me question how the Management Bureau had raised a girl like her.

Of course, the innocent girl still had the darkness called Midnight Mi-ro inside her, but it wasn’t enough to conceal her own innocence.

Then, after so many things had happened, Ghost Story Mi-ro appeared.

She was, in a sense, the final outcome the Deep-Sea Hotel or Midnight Mi-ro we had been wary of for so long had reached.

Ghost Story Mi-ro had lost a great deal.

She had become less a living being and more like a demon, a spirit, or a ‘phenomenon,’ so the summoning process was necessary.

She was still bizarrely strong, but much weaker than at her peak, when she wielded the Blessing of Justice and three Inheritances.

More than anything, she said she had permanently lost the Blessing of Justice.

She had weakened to the point of being little more than a shadow of her former self...

Yet she had achieved her most important goal.

She had finally escaped into reality, free from the constraints of time.

In any case, as long as she wasn’t compared with her former self, she was still an overwhelmingly powerful being.

* * *

After listening to Song-i and me explain for a while, she answered.

“There are three questions. First, what I saw in the past and what my specific goal was, right? The second is about Regressors, and the last is advice for the future?”

“That’s right.”

“...”

After a brief silence, she looked at me with a strange gaze.

“Do you think I’ll just answer your questions so willingly?”

“I do.”

“Why?”

From here on, I needed to set aside needless psychological sparring and persuade her to cooperate with us.

I even had a reason prepared.

“First, you’re half-bound to Young Mi-ro right now. Young Mi-ro is my companion. So it makes sense for you to cooperate, if only for your own sake.”

“Go on.”

The corners of her mouth curved up.

She looked more amused than serious.

“Second, we plan to establish our relationship with the Management Bureau and, beyond that, stop the incomprehensible disasters happening in reality. Your goal seems similar. Isn’t it?”

“... Yes. It is.”

That reason seemed to strike closer to home than the first.

Still, it didn’t seem sufficient.

Just as I was wondering how to persuade her...

“Pfft!”

Mi-ro suddenly laughed.

“Fine, fine. I was going to tell you anyway.”

“You were?”

“I trust all of you now.”

“...!”

Seriously, that answer genuinely shocked me!

What? She trusted someone? Mi-ro trusted us?

Did the concept of trusting others actually exist in this woman’s head?

Song-i also muttered with her mouth half-open.

“D-don’t say something like that so suddenly!”

“Why are you so surprised?”

“I-I always thought you were the kind of person who brainwashed her parents the moment she learned to speak at five, then offered them as sacrifices to the Management Bureau!”

This time, Mi-ro looked stunned.

“... You know my past, so I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

That was true.

Ghost Story Mi-ro’s childhood was the same Young Mi-ro who had just collapsed screaming.

Soon, Mi-ro wore a somewhat sentimental expression.

“A-ri...”

“A-ri?”

“My precious daughter. My most perfect creation. My everything...”

Her voice trembled pitifully.

The weight of emotion behind those words startled Song-i and me at the same time.

Was she always like this?

Maybe her personality had changed through Ghost Story Transformation.

Beings like evil spirits often clung desperately to the obsessions and grudges they had in life.

“You think I’m being sentimental.”

“...”

“That isn’t wrong, but I know A-ri better than anyone in the world.”

We had spent far more time with A-ri.

Still, could we say we knew her better than her creator simply because we had spent longer with her?

“That child’s essence is the same as mine.”

Song-i immediately argued back.

“Honestly, your personalities are completely different.”

“She ironed out many of my personality flaws. In a sense, she’s the Mi-ro I wanted to become.”

A-ri, the other Mi-ro Mi-ro had wanted to become.

“That child... finally went farther than I ever did.”

“...”

Unlike Mi-ro, A-ri had broken through the second floor of the Hotel and escaped.

Unlike Mi-ro, she had even become one of The Silent, the pinnacle of the Management Bureau.

“Someone like me. Someone who kept my strengths and cast away my weaknesses. Someone who loves me, and whom I love.”

“...”

“And someone who went farther than I did. That’s A-ri.”

“...”

“That’s why I trust A-ri’s judgment. I believe her judgment is more accurate than my own.”

I vaguely understood what Mi-ro was trying to say.

“An A-ri like that risked her life to find you. So I believe all of you are qualified too.”

It was about the right to know secrets, something Mi-ro had mentioned before.

She believed that we now had that right too.

Her sense of being chosen hadn’t disappeared, but she believed the Hotel Party had been chosen as well.

Was that why?

Mi-ro gave us information she never would have shared in the past.

“What the old me experienced. I’ll skip the complicated background explanation. It’s all in the past. To put it simply, I learned that a substantial number of The Silent weren’t human.”

I had guessed that much already.

“It wasn’t merely that they weren’t human. It was far worse than that. Their very purpose wasn’t for humanity’s prosperity.”

This was even more serious than the Reptilian princess in Room 207.

At least Aedia had loved humanity.

“I want you to be precise. When you say ‘a substantial number’ aren’t human, you mean some of them are human, right?”

“Probably.”

“Then we can’t see all of them as traitors...”

“That’s a civilian’s way of thinking.”

“...”

Mi-ro was a Celestial Realm Agent, so I had to think like an agent.

A civilian would see mold on part of a loaf of bread and think only that portion needed to be cut away.

The Management Bureau’s way of thinking was that if mold was visible in one part, invisible contamination had spread around it too.

So agents would be ready to cut away a broad section, even if it meant throwing out half the loaf.

If the same standard was applied to the Management Bureau’s highest ranks, once some of them had fallen to Corruption, all of them should be cut away.

To Mi-ro, that was the only consistent attitude.

Once I understood that, I could somewhat understand why Mi-ro had been so excessively secretive.

Who could she trust when the people she intended to turn a knife on were the Management Bureau’s leadership?

“Is that why you volunteered for the Hotel infiltration mission? To use the power you gained from the Hotel to oppose The Silent?”

“Something like that. Though I failed.”

The first question and its answer had ended.

“... That was what I thought in the past.”

There was more?

“Now, I have another thought. Why didn’t A-ri warn you?”

“Huh?”

“A-ri knew all the Management Bureau’s secrets. She knew even more truths than I do now. If The Silent had fallen to Corruption, A-ri would have known too.”

“...”

“And she would have warned you. She would’ve said the Management Bureau was the enemy and had to be stopped. She would’ve also given you information that could keep them in check.”

“... That’s true. A-ri never said anything like that.”

“She must have believed the Management Bureau wasn’t our enemy. So now, I don’t know.”

Mi-ro now trusted A-ri’s judgment more than her own.

A-ri was someone like her, but someone who had gone farther than her.

...

A substantial number of The Silent weren’t human.

Their purpose wasn’t humanity’s prosperity either.

Yet A-ri had believed they weren’t enemies.

I felt like I almost understood, like I’d seen a similar situation in a Curse Room...

But the answer didn’t come to me right away.

“Your next question was about your memories, right? Something came to mind the moment I heard it.”

“Tell me.”

“The simplest explanation is that you’re an Incomplete Regressor.”

An Incomplete Regressor.

“How do agents endure Loops? I don’t know that part exactly either. I can only vaguely guess it’s because their Soul Rank is high. Anyway, let’s say an agent is a ten, while an ordinary person is a one.”

“You mean there are beings who are around a three or four?”

“Huh? You already knew?”

If agents were tens, then people born with the talent of a three or four were Incomplete Regressors.

Sang-hyeon had told me about them in the past.

He met someone called Mama in reality, and she vaguely remembered Sang-hyeon’s past, even though it had already been erased from reality.

“I was an Incomplete Regressor?”

“Doesn’t that explain it? Your memories of your younger sibling differ because they were simply a different person each time. Their name and appearance were probably from one of the many younger siblings you had throughout the regression process, the one you remembered most clearly.”

“...”

“It also explains why the memory of being killed by an agent in middle school is mixed together with the memory of taking the College Scholastic Ability Test.”

“...”

“Not recognizing regressions and mistaking contradictory memories for one lifetime are common traits of Incomplete Regressors.”

The person Sang-hyeon met, Mama, had been the same.

She didn’t recognize the regressions, nor did she notice that her memories contradicted one another.

It sounded reasonable, and I was about to nod.

Then Mi-ro’s eyes sharpened.

“Still, while listening to you, I noticed one truly strange thing.”

“What?”

“Why don’t you have any memories of attending university?”

“What?”

“Isn’t it strange? Let’s say you lived many lives as an Incomplete Regressor before coming to the Hotel. Maybe you died young a few times through bad luck, but in many of those lives, you must have lived until you died of old age.”

“...”

“Then why don’t you have memories from after you turned twenty? For reference, I barely remember my childhood, and that’s normally how it should be.”

“...”

“You’re like someone who never made it past twenty in any of their lives.”

Since I began speaking with Mi-ro, there had never been a moment as chilling as this one.

I had felt doubt in the memories that existed. Mi-ro had felt doubt in the memories that didn’t.

Maybe that was simply the difference in our experience with regression.

“I think that’s enough for the answer to your second question. The last question was what you should do from now on, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Easy. Stop digging through your childhood memories and focus on memories from around when you were twenty.”

“...”

“If someone had repeatedly managed to kill you before you turned twenty, if you have an enemy who can’t tolerate you reaching twenty...”

“...”

“Then Han Ga-in near the age of twenty must have been in an extremely dangerous state from that enemy’s perspective. In other words, when you were about nineteen, they must have tried to kill you by doing every insane thing they could.”

“...”

“They must have caused some big commotion. Try to remember it. You said you gained the power of Insight, so use that power actively too.”

“...”

“Is that enough?”

“Thank you. I mean it.”

“That’s good. It was getting hard for me to endure too!”

As our conversation ended, Ghost Story Mi-ro turned into mist again and returned to the Domain of Nothingness.

The innocent girl, having regained control of her body...

“Eeeek! G-Ga-in, I really hate you!”

She grabbed me by the neck and shook me while tears streamed down her face!

W-what was this all of a sudden?

“W-what did you do to Song-i?!”