WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 590: The Stolen World (5)
──────
- Mi-ro
How did the sand on a beach come to be?
According to what I learned in school, it was originally made up of large stones and rocks.
For tens of thousands, even hundreds of millions of years, waves battered those stones and rocks without end.
In the end, they split and split again, ground down and ground down again, until vast beaches of sand were formed.
Waves of information battered me without end.
A storm of knowledge raged on, unceasing and eternal, without a single moment's pause.
Here, the fragile human mind was like soft clay.
It wouldn't take hundreds of millions of years. In just a few months, it would be broken into tiny grains of sand.
...
I felt a solid wall protecting me.
Unlike the precarious contents called “Mi-ro,” the vessel holding me was incomparably sturdier than any stone or rock.
It was a flame that wouldn't go out even in the deep sea, ice that wouldn't melt even in lava.
The power of Immutability was protecting me!
--- Flash!
My vision brightened.
* * *
“... Huh?”
I woke up somewhere that looked like an empty classroom.
Honestly, I don't really like schools...
As I looked around and walked, I sensed someone behind me.
“Who are you?”
When I turned around, I saw a girl with attractive black hair flowing below her waist.
She looked around sixteen or seventeen, and somehow familiar...
“F-Foresight!”
It was that girl from the glass tube!
She had looked around twelve just now, so I hadn't recognized her right away.
She smiled slightly, as if amused.
“Foresight? You know my blessing? Hmm... You seem familiar, but I can't quite place you. For the record, that isn't my name. I'm ○■☆.”
“...”
Only the part where she said her name was unintelligible.
Seeing my confused expression, the girl looked incredulous.
“Want to try saying your own name this time?”
“M-Mi-ro! I'm Mi-ro!”
She answered with a faintly bitter smile.
“I can't understand it.”
“Huh? My name is-”
“No, that's enough. Just call me Foresight. What's your blessing?”
“... Immutability.”
“Then I'll call you Immutability. Stay here for a moment.”
Foresight soon stepped outside the classroom and shouted loudly.
“Don't come in!”
Were there other people here?
The moment Foresight returned, I asked.
“A-Are there people here besides you and me?”
“Of course. There are several others.”
“Where is this that-”
“Stop. Immutability, I'm telling you this for your own sake. Don't entertain unnecessary curiosity.”
“...”
“There's a reason you're here, isn't there? Why did you come to see me?”
I didn't know what was going on, but it was true that I had come to see Foresight.
“I have a question...”
“What is it?”
“Y-You were supposed to already know?!”
Foresight tilted her head.
“So the one who wants to ask isn't you? Someone else sent you in their place?”
“That's right.”
“Did they say I'd know the question?”
“Yeah.”
This was what Dominion had told me.
“... What am I supposed to ask?”
“I believe she will answer on her own. We have already asked her countless questions.”
Hearing about Dominion, Foresight laughed as though amused.
“So Dominion is someone who escaped from School? It seems that person knows almost nothing about me. Is that only natural for someone cowardly enough to send another person in their place?”
School?
“School? Um, Dominion is also one of The Silent.”
“The Silent? What's that?”
She didn't know about The Silent?
“The Management Bureau's leadership!”
“What's the Management Bureau?”
“Uh... Guardians who protect a world repeating in a Loop? That's putting it too generously-”
“Eeeek!”
“F-Foresight?”
“Don't casually drop a bombshell out of nowhere! What did you say? A world repeating in a Loop? A secret organization that manages it?!”
“...”
This was strange.
According to Dominion, Foresight had been in reality for a very long time...
Why didn't she know about the Loop or the Management Bureau?
I'd heard that even Ga-in, before entering the Hotel, at least knew the Management Bureau existed.
Could she be from even earlier than Ga-in?
From an age when the Management Bureau completely hid its very existence from ordinary people?
“Ha! I feel like I'm going insane. Anyway, you said I should answer on my own, so I'll say whatever I want. About myself!”
A story about Foresight herself.
“I don't think I'm a very well-behaved student here. I keep trying to look beyond the limits of my ability.”
“What do you mean?”
“My blessing, Foresight, is an extremely dangerous power. Depending on how it's used, it can bring someone close to omniscience, but...”
“But?”
“Neither a human nor even my Sponsor can bear all that knowledge.”
“...”
“My Sponsor warned me again and again. Too much is as bad as too little. Stay within what you can handle.”
“Shouldn't you do what they said?”
“I was trying to. Until just before I spoke with you.”
“Huh?”
Foresight stretched a hand into the air with a dazed expression.
Just from that gesture, I could vaguely feel it.
Foresight was moving into dangerous territory!
“It's impossible now. How could I stop? Just one step further, and every secret in the world is waiting for me!”
“No-”
“Listening to you now is driving me mad. The world repeats in a Loop? There's a secret organization managing that world? After hearing something so incredible, you're telling me to hold back?”
“D-Don't do this-”
“Maybe a completely mad version of me is waiting at the end of this road. Still, it can't be helped. It really can't! I have no intention of becoming a coward who fears a price far in the future!”
--- Rumble!
I heard thunder.
It was the sound announcing that the conversation at “this point in time” had ended.
It was also the grieving wail of a Sponsor who had realized that their participant's doom was now certain.
...
As I returned to the whirlpool full of endless information, I vaguely understood what had just happened.
I had met Foresight during the time when the Hotel was called “School,” while she and her friends were overcoming School's trials.
There was a simple reason Foresight knew neither the Management Bureau's questions nor anything about reality.
At “this point in time,” Foresight hadn't even escaped the second floor yet!
And I had stirred the curiosity of Foresight, who had been trying to endure by accepting her Sponsor's warning, and sent her down the road to madness!
I had met Foresight after she had become a mad god in her pursuit of the extreme, but the reason Foresight went mad was that she had met me in the past?
Foresight had gone insane long ago, but the cause of her madness was me from the future?
I couldn't understand it.
I also knew I shouldn't try to understand it.
* * *
The next place I woke up was a cave-like area full of strange machines and black wires.
Before I had even taken two steps, I sensed someone beside me.
“It's been a long time.”
“... Foresight?”
“Yeah. I look a little different, don't I?”
This time, she looked to be in her late twenties or thirties.
If not for the similarity of the situation, I might have found it difficult to believe she was the same person.
“I-I understand the situation now!”
“The situation?”
“Several versions of you from different points in time are appearing before me right now, aren't they? At first, it was you from the past-”
“That's a matter of perspective.”
“What?”
“From your perspective, Immutability, it may seem as though versions of me from several points in time are appearing before you. From my perspective, you've been suddenly appearing like a ghost over a long period of time.”
“...”
“It must have been frustrating before. You came here under orders to get the answer to a question, right? Yet I didn't even know what the question was.”
“Do you know what it is now?”
“I do. What the Management Bureau wants to know from me is simple. How to delay the Moon's Awakening.”
Information we had learned after coming out into reality.
There was a Moon beneath the Earth, and the Moon was a being like the Demon King.
Compared to a Curse Room, the Moon corresponded to reality's Prisoner.
What the Management Bureau wanted from Foresight was a way to delay the Moon's Awakening!
“Whenever the Management Bureau sensed signs that the Moon Demon was about to awaken, they built an Ark and fled to the next Loop. But the Management Bureau learned one terrifying fact.”
“W-What is it?”
“The time of the Moon's Awakening is getting earlier.”
“Huh?”
“They say that in Loops from a very long time ago, it happened after the twenty-fifth century. But it kept getting earlier, and by your time, it was already the twenty-first century.”
“...”
“What if it comes even earlier?”
“Th-Then...”
“That's the worst Bad Ending the Management Bureau can imagine. They escape to the next Loop aboard the Ark, only to find that the Moon Demon has already awakened at the point of arrival.”
“...”
“The Ark arrives right in front of the Prisoner. Crunch! The Management Bureau's history ends there.”
I couldn't breathe.
“D-Do you know? A way to delay when the Moon awakens?”
Foresight looked somehow hollow.
“... First.”
“First?”
“Unless you go much further back into the ancient past, it's already too late at the point in time you came from. There is no way.”
“Uh-”
“Second.”
“Second?”
“Advice for you rather than the Management Bureau. Just let the world be destroyed.”
“What-”
“See what happens after it is destroyed. Maybe the answer is there...”
“What do you mean, ‘maybe’?! Don't you know anything more?”
Then Foresight smiled bitterly.
“Sorry. I don't know the answer either. Because...”
“Because?”
“This is a domain where the Bad Ending was completed because no one found the answer.”
What-
Foresight smiled brightly and operated the machines on the wall. With a hiss, mechanical noises and another strange sound came from all directions.
“C-Crying? It sounds like-”
“A baby crying.”
“A baby?”
“You could call it the last survivor...”
The last survivor?
At that moment, the ceiling of the cave opened.
Ah...!
I saw it.
I saw it after all.
The only source of light illuminating the dark sky, a crimson moon.
This was a world of complete silence.
An empty land where even the traces of intelligence capable of feeling pain, sorrow, or despair had vanished.
When the Moon's overwhelming pressure forced me to my knees, Foresight whispered.
“I'm waiting here for the final touch.”
“... A touch?”
“The final mercy of the one who weeps for the Three Thousand Worlds.”
The one who weeps for the Three Thousand Worlds?
“We will soon be collected by his hand. You should leave this place before then.”
--- Rumble!
At the final moment, I saw a giant hand reaching out from beyond the empty sky.
I saw Foresight kneeling and crying at the sight of that hand.
Even at the worst of the worst, when every attempt by humanity had failed, there still seemed to be one final chance.
...
With the sound of the sky rumbling again, my consciousness blurred.
There was still one more journey left.
* * *
“...”
I woke up in front of the familiar glass tube.
Before me stood a twelve-year-old girl with unfocused eyes.
Had I returned to the “present” again?
“Mi-ro.”
Foresight knew my name now.
“I'll tell you the third story. It's a story about your unrequited love.”
Footnotes:
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