WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 580: A Trip Down Memory Lane (4) Fin
──────
「User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)
Date: Day 120
Current Location: 71 Gomurae-ro, Seocho District, Seoul
Sage’s Advice: 3」
- Han Ga-in
Early in the morning, I checked the date as we walked toward our destination.
“Today’s the 120th day.”
Song-i replied.
“Has it been four months since we left the Hotel?”
“Hmm...”
Wouldn’t four months be 122 days rather than 120?
The first and third months had thirty-one days.
“Ah, do we have to wait two more days?”
“Who knows...”
We had begun our trip on Day 114, so nearly a week had already passed.
We visited several tourist spots during that time, and I thought the three of us had grown closer than before.
“Yawn...! So, is today the last day?”
“Today or tomorrow will probably be the last. Or maybe not.”
Mi-ro murmured regretfully.
“I want to have fun a little longer.”
“Then let’s do that. We still have time before things really begin.”
“Oppa, don’t you think you moved on from your old house too easily?”
“...”
A few days ago, Ghost Story Mi-ro had advised me to search through memories from around when I was twenty.
The first place I went was my old home in Seocho-dong, where I had lived for years.
“It wasn’t the residential neighborhood I knew. It had turned into some unrelated apartment complex.”
“Hmm...”
“It was like how some random building stood where my elementary school should’ve been. There was nothing that could bring back my old memories.”
Now that the power of my blessing had been divided and weakened, Insight had fallen from powerful predictions to the realm of alert intuition.
Still, when I arrived at the right place or obtained plausible information, I could feel something faintly.
I had felt something strange at the middle school, used Sage’s Advice, and found the keyword “younger sibling.” That proved it.
The residential neighborhood hadn’t been right.
I hadn’t felt anything there.
“We’re here.”
“This is the high school you graduated from, right? The one you attended with that girl or whatever-”
“... Let’s go in.”
“Didn’t you say someone confessed to you or something?”
“Pfft!”
“Wow...! Song-i, did you see Ga-in just now?”
“I can’t believe you’re laughing, oppa! I’ve received way more confessions than that!”
“Pfft!”
“Why does Ga-in keep obnoxiously going pfft, pfft?”
“That’s just how guys are. Having someone confess to them is the greatest brag of their lives!”
No matter what those two said, one truth remained unchanged.
I was Han Ga-in, the winner.
* * *
I graduated from Shinbanpo High School.
Then an incredibly long time passed.
After the beginning and end of the world had repeated many times, I finally returned to my alma mater.
“...”
Strangely enough, it had the same name, but that was the only thing it had in common.
Just like the middle school, Shinbanpo High School wasn’t the school I knew.
A school was still a school, though.
Classrooms, a field, students, teachers. Those basic similarities seemed to gently tickle my mind.
“Ga-in, does anything come back to you?”
“... Let’s go inside.”
“Looks like entry is restricted. Then again, when have we ever cared about that?”
--- Ding! Ding!
A bell seemed to ring softly in my ears.
When I looked around, I almost felt as if I had returned to my old school.
My steps naturally came to a stop.
I looked up and saw the words Class 5, Third Year.
Had I been in Class 5, Third Year?
I couldn’t be certain even of that.
My high school memories were unbelievably long ago to me now.
--- Creak!
When I opened the classroom door, there were a couple of students inside.
“Uh? W-who are you- Aah!”
The students who had looked startled upon seeing me gaped when they saw Song-i and Mi-ro entering behind me.
The two of them could deal with ordinary people on their own, so I needed to focus.
When I silently sat in the center of the classroom, another sound brushed past my ears.
「The twenty-first graduation ceremony of Shinbanpo High School will begin shortly. Graduates-」
“...”
「Ga-in! Congratulations!」
My parents’ voices?
Thinking about it made me feel bitter.
If I had lived more than one life, then I must have had more than one set of parents too.
There was a strong possibility that my memories of my parents were a mixture of memories about many different people.
I only recognized those whose faces and names I remembered clearly as my parents.
“Uh? A-a drama shoot? I didn’t hear anything about-”
“Not a drama, um, an XX University film club project! Sorry!”
“O-oh, it’s fine.”
Maybe because she made it up on the spot, it was an awfully flimsy lie.
An XX University film club?
Mi-ro didn’t look like a college student at all.
Still, the male students staring at Song-i with bright red faces didn’t seem to have any problem with it.
「Hey, hey! Hurry up!」
“...”
A friend’s faint voice reached me.
I could also see friends around me snickering.
「What? Did you guys set up some kind of event?」
That was my voice.
“Guys, let’s go.”
“Did you remember something?”
“... I think I’m about to.”
“Huh?”
“I think I’ll remember if we go to the field.”
“What do you-”
“Mi-ro, don’t interrupt oppa. He’s probably confused too.”
“Y-yeah.”
* * *
Once we reached the field, my feet began moving on their own.
As if they knew exactly where to go.
“Song-i.”
“Yes?”
“Could you walk toward me from the main gate over there?”
“Uh... Okay.”
Song-i tilted her head and went over to the main gate.
At that point, my body went rigid as stone.
Song-i began walking toward me!
“...!”
A blurry illusion created by memory overlaid Song-i.
She was my age, slightly taller than Song-i.
Her wavy dark brown hair fell just below her shoulders.
She wasn’t the kind of beauty who made passersby stop in their tracks, like A-ri, Mi-ro, or Elena. She was even less pretty than Song-i was now...
Which made her someone who could exist in real life!
The legendary regional A-Class beauty of Banpo Middle School, who had wrapped dozens of boys around her finger with a single gesture-
“Aah!”
“O-oppa?”
“Aaaaaah!”
“Ga-in? Why are you suddenly-”
“Eeeeeek!”
“Why is he yelling so loud? My ears hurt!”
Ah...
I understood.
I realized it.
The truth buried deep in my heart had come to light!
At that moment, I truly resented the power of Insight.
If not for this intuition beyond human limits, this illusion wouldn’t be standing before my eyes!
Please! My memories! Just stop here!
I’ll just believe this!
* * *
- Yoo Song-i
“Ga-in oppa?”
“Ga-in?”
“...”
What was wrong with him?
I still had no idea what happened in high school to leave Ga-in oppa half out of his mind.
Anyone would think some cosmic demon had appeared and melted his brain!
I was so dumbfounded that I waved my hand in front of Ga-in oppa’s face.
“Oppa! Can you see? Can you see my hand?”
“...”
“Ga-in oppa is an idiot!”
Harder?
“Ga-in is stupid!”
Still not enough?
“Ga-in, say, ‘I’m sorry, Song-i noona.’”
“I’m sorry.”
“Huh? What? Really?”
“... Sorry.”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“I realized a shocking truth.”
“What is it? You found out you have another younger sibling?”
Mi-ro joined in with an excited expression.
“Maybe you actually went to school with A-ri?”
Oh, that was a fresh hypothesis-
“Gasp!”
The moment Mi-ro said, “You went to school with A-ri,” Ga-in oppa looked horrified.
“S-so that’s why...”
“Oppa?”
“I wondered why A-ri felt something strange about my memories. That was it...”
“What?”
“There couldn’t possibly be photos of A-ri and me together from before we came to the Hotel!”
What was he talking about?
Photos with A-ri from before the Hotel?
“Ah, seriously, what’s the problem?”
“...”
He couldn’t bring himself to speak at all.
Ga-in oppa did sometimes hide information from us, but this didn’t feel like that.
Rather than concealing something important...
He looked like a boy who wanted to hide an embarrassing past.
At last, Ga-in oppa lowered his head and muttered.
“... Song-i, have you ever dated anyone before coming to the Hotel?”
“Aah!”
Han Ga-in, you idiot!
D-don’t suddenly ask sensitive questions like that!
“I-I was planning to date once I got to university.”
Really!
There hadn’t even been any handsome guys around me to begin with.
“... Let’s say there’s a guy.”
He was obviously talking about himself.
“Let’s say there’s a guy who has nothing to do with Ga-in oppa.”
“Even though he’d never dated, for some reason, he went around telling people that he had a girlfriend.”
Oppa, did you actually do that?
“... Something like that happened. No, let’s say there was a guy like that.”
“But then... the fake girlfriend found out the truth later.”
“Aaaah!”
“...”
“Go on.”
So, from the girl’s point of view, some weird guy carried around her photo and went around saying, “She’s my girlfriend,” right?
And she even found out about it!
“What should he do?”
Just imagining it was enough to make me lose my mind!
Only one answer came to me.
“Erase her memories.”
“...”
“Erase that girl’s memories, then erase your own too.”
“...”
“You can do it, can’t you? Just do it already!”
“W-what if the girl is too strong to erase her memories?”
“Don’t tell me it’s A-ri? This is driving me crazy! Seriously! Did you really go to the same school as A-ri before coming to the Hotel?”
You went around showing people A-ri’s photo and saying, “She’s my girlfriend”?!
“Th-that’s not it-”
“Then just kill yourself! Go kill yourself!”
“...”
--- Clap!
Mi-ro took out her phone.
“Sorry, both of you. I can’t take this anymore.”
“...”
“This has a mass hypnosis function. It’s a phone the Management Bureau gave me.”
“The Holy See phone in Room 207 had a function like that too.”
“I don’t know about A-ri, but let’s erase our memories first. This is hard for me too.”
Mi-ro operated her phone, and a strange signal tone began to sound from it...
None of us stopped her.
There was one sad fact.
The hypnosis function installed in the Management Bureau phone only worked on ordinary people.
It only made me a little sleepy, and judging by the circumstances, the other two were the same.
Still, from that moment on, I decided to believe that the conversation we had just shared never happened.
* * *
It was late.
Since the only result of our visit to the school was “a memory everyone decided to forget,” we decided to travel a little longer.
Then oppa’s expression changed as he used Sage’s Advice while staring into empty space.
“Oppa? Did you find something?”
“... Damn! I overlooked something so simple-”
Before Ga-in oppa could explain, Mi-ro quickly cut in.
“Stop right there!”
“...”
“Ga-in, think before you say it! I don’t want to hear about your ex-girlfriend, or about you getting dumped.”
“Th-that’s not it-”
“Maybe your ex cheated on you, or maybe you had two girlfriends! I don’t want to hear about that either-”
“I told you it isn’t that!”
“Then what is it?”
“My actual final memory.”
Your actual final memory?
“Didn’t you say you attended Shinbanpo High School?”
“I did, then I took the College Scholastic Ability Test.”
“Ah, was the place where you took the test the last place?”
“No, there was more. I got five questions wrong on the test and-”
He got five questions wrong on the College Scholastic Ability Test.
That was him bragging, right?
“I got into K University.”
“We heard up to that part.”
“We had a celebration party, and a banner was even put up at the school.”
“...”
“My mother was so happy she cried, and my father got teary-eyed too-”
“I don’t want to hear any more of Ga-in’s bragging either.”
“Then I went backpacking until university began.”
Backpacking?
“I got plenty of travel money, so I traveled pretty comfortably. At the end, I stayed at a hotel on Jeju Island.”
“...”
“Let’s go. The moment I thought of the words ‘hotel on Jeju Island,’ I knew. This is the final keyword.”
“Did the Owl give you that keyword? If it had given it sooner, we wouldn’t have had to go to that stupid school.”
“...”
“Maybe even Ga-in’s Sponsor found it hard to endure!”
“... It was Sage’s Advice that cost three uses.”
* * *
「User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)
Date: Day 125
Current Location: Geonip-dong, Jeju City, Jeju Special Self-Governing Province
Sage’s Advice: 3」
- Han Ga-in
Ah...
The moment we arrived, I knew.
This was it.
This was the final piece of my memories, the place where the most important secret was hidden.
If I had remembered this place from the beginning, I could’ve saved time. No, that wasn’t right.
The trip had also been about enjoying ourselves purely, so none of it had been a waste of time.
It was just that something unexpected had happened at the high school. Forget it.
What happened at the high school didn’t exist, either between us or in my life.
... Was it in A-ri’s memories?
“...”
I had a strange dream.
It was a February evening, when a cool breeze was blowing.
The College Scholastic Ability Test was over, and I was a third-year high school student taking a brief rest before university began.
Wasn’t that one of the golden periods of life that only came a few times?
After sightseeing all day, I fell asleep in the hotel, exhausted in both body and mind. Immediately afterward, something strange happened.
...
No, it was a little earlier than this.
“... Ah.”
Insight hadn’t been able to do its job because I hadn’t been at the right place until now!
At last, images began flashing before my eyes like a panorama.
Footnotes:
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