WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 614: The Stolen World (29)
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- Five Seconds Earlier, Ghost Story Mi-ro
What was happening to me right now?
Let's retrace it slowly.
Even after Eun-sol used the Flute of Rest, nothing changed.
As I watched from behind Young Mi-ro's consciousness, I realized that the Flute would only work if a hole was punched through the “frame.”
I regained my body for the first time in a while and pierced the Veil with the Spear of Mortality.
Then this bizarre phenomenon began!
The first thing I noticed was that everything had stopped.
It was as if someone had pressed pause on the video called the world.
Me, stabbing the air with the Spear of Mortality.
Lee Eun-sol, playing the Flute.
The Holy Mother, poised for battle.
The three of us stood frozen like stone in the stopped world.
I couldn't move a finger or even a single strand of hair.
...
...
...
After what felt like three hours, I realized that the Holy Mother had fired an unknown violet flash from her fingertip, aimed at Eun-sol.
Why target Eun-sol before me?
She was probably trying to take out the weaker opponent first!
It was a serious crisis, yet it didn't feel like one.
Because the flash was slow.
I only called it a “flash” because it gave off light. It moved like a slowly drifting balloon.
Some unknown force seemed to have stopped everyone, but the Time Lender could be used without moving a finger.
I gave a smug inward chuckle and Dismissed Eun-sol.
...
...
...
After what felt like twelve hours, the violet flash had only reached about halfway between the Holy Mother and Eun-sol. Eun-sol was still standing unharmed at the edge of my vision.
Why had I failed to Dismiss her?
The Time Lender couldn't reject my command, could it?
Only then did I understand.
My body hadn't frozen. Time around me had slowed.
Or perhaps only the speed of my thoughts had become incredibly fast.
In reality, that violet flash was probably moving at an incredible speed, incomparable to the speed of sound even if it wasn't quite light speed.
That was why, even with the whole world frozen, it looked no faster than a slowly drifting balloon.
The Time Lender was the same.
Its needle was still moving normally, following my command.
It only felt incredibly slow to me.
I couldn't turn my head to check, but maybe the needle had moved around 0.01 millimeters?
...
...
...
After what felt like a full day, unfortunately, the flash proved faster than the Time Lender's needle.
It struck before I could Dismiss Eun-sol.
The flash very “slowly” pierced Eun-sol's head.
The moment Eun-sol's head vanished, I sincerely thanked the Holy Mother.
Because she had aimed for Eun-sol's head, Eun-sol's pain would end within thirty seconds at most.
What if she had cut off an arm or leg as a threat?
I didn't even want to imagine it.
I didn't really consider anyone besides A-ri a companion, but I still had basic human sympathy.
How far had the needle moved by now? 0.1 millimeters?
The Time Lender still hadn't made a single click.
I was beginning to envy the dead.
...
...
...
I didn't know how much time had passed.
Then a thought occurred to me.
Why couldn't Immutability protect me?
I thought back to what happened in Room 206, “The Demon King Who Awakens After 100 Days.”
Back then, the “young me” could move while ignoring the time delay in Deep Paradise.
Immutability could resist time delays.
Then why couldn't it resist this?
Fortunately, I had an enormous amount of time to think, and eventually I found the answer.
First, what I was experiencing wasn't a time delay.
If time itself had truly slowed, nobody except an outside observer should have noticed it.
My thoughts should have slowed along with the world.
The world had stopped while my thoughts remained normal. This was something completely different from time delay.
Something more horrible and wicked.
Second, Immutability was resisting even now.
I had thought the Time Lender was ignoring my command.
It wasn't ignoring my command; its needle was simply moving incredibly slowly.
The same applied here.
Immutability was resisting even now, and this was all it could manage.
That meant Aedia must have been suffering through something far worse than I was.
I was trapped in the Hell of Eternity.
...
...
...
It hurt.
I wanted to die.
Please, anyone, kill me.
I envied Eun-sol, who had escaped this pain through death.
I envied everyone who wasn't suffering through this.
Endless rage welled up inside me.
I wanted to tear Song-i apart for trying to uncover the truth.
What? She learned the Moon's truth through Diverse Perspectives?
If she'd really gone through this phenomenon, she would have stood still and gone mad in one second.
She'd only felt something like, “It kind of feels like something bizarre is happening!”
I wanted to burn Ga-in alive for bringing me into this hell.
He was always acting so superior with that damn Insight of his!
If you're the leader, how can you let your companion go through this?
You're worse trash than The Silent...!
That wasn't all.
I felt hatred toward A-ri, who still hadn't saved me.
I felt disgust toward Mook-seong, who still hadn't used One More Chance.
And still -
The truth was, I knew.
No one knew this kind of hell would be waiting after the dream realm was stripped away.
It wasn't Song-i's fault, and it wasn't Ga-in's fault.
It was even less the fault of A-ri or Mook-seong, who weren't here.
I knew something else, too.
Even knowing my anger was meaningless, I would spend an immeasurable length of time blaming everyone else.
I would blame them, realize it was meaningless, despair, and repeat the cycle of lamentation.
...
...
...
My vision darkened.
It was nothing special. People naturally closed and opened their eyes at intervals, and it was simply time to close mine.
I would be trapped in darkness for months now.
Perhaps the darkness had sharpened my senses, giving me a strange ability.
I could feel the Time Lender's needle making tiny movements without looking at it.
I could feel those minute movements.
Song-i in the morning.
Eun-sol at noon.
A-ri in the evening.
Ga-in at midnight.
The needle had passed Song-i, reached Eun-sol, and was moving toward A-ri.
After another span roughly thirty times as long as what I had already endured, I could summon A-ri.
I wanted to die.
...
...
...
With so much time to think, a realization came naturally.
For example, this.
Did the same thing happen in other Arks?
Did every soul captured by an Ark go through this process?
No.
A-ri, who knew Arks well, had never mentioned a phenomenon like this.
It was unique to the Moon.
The Moon was different from the other Arks.
Why would it do this?
Why give such a terrible hell to the souls it had swallowed?
Simple torture?
An expression of a cruel nature?
Because it was a sadistic being?
No.
The Moon had a clear purpose.
...
...
...
A story about eternity.
Far to the north, there was a land called Svithjod. In that land stood a rock.
It was one hundred miles high and one hundred miles wide.
Once every thousand years, a small bird came to sharpen its beak against that rock.
When the rock had completely worn away, one second of eternity would finally have passed.
Each grain of sand on a beach was once part of the Earth's crust or mantle.
Over eons, waves had ceaselessly worn down the rocks until grains of sand were born.
Mountains had individuality and distinctive traits, but grains of sand did not.
Every grain of sand was just a grain of sand.
Eternity was the process of turning mountains into grains of sand.
Ah...
I understood.
The Moon had created this Hell of Eternity to “purify” the souls it swallowed.
It was a process of returning souls stamped with the individuality of life to their primordial state.
I was beginning to forget “myself.”
...
...
...
The things I remembered about myself.
As a child, I was attacked by a monster that looked like Santa Claus and rescued by the Management Bureau.
While working as an agent, I learned that a great many of The Silent had fallen into Corruption, so I decided to wipe out the Management Bureau's upper ranks.
I climbed the Hotel with that resolve and failed.
Still, an arrangement called “A-ri” somehow worked out, giving me a Next Chance.
Even then, the “one hour” remaining in the Time Lender was all I had...
With the help of the Great One curled up in Room 207, the Practitioner, I escaped the time restriction.
After that, I uncovered reality's secrets and arrived inside the Moon.
Was that truly the truth?
Or did it even have meaning?
At some point, specific memories became blurry, and I could no longer recall them clearly.
Even shocking information I thought I would never forget remained only as vague afterimages.
Maybe all that information was a delusion I had imagined.
Maybe I had never escaped the Hotel and was still trapped in Frozen Hell, having a nightmare.
Maybe even the memory of being trapped in Frozen Hell was just another delusion.
Then what was I?
What kind of being was this “me” who was suffering?
Maybe even the thought of pain was an illusion.
Perhaps I had always been a being in a still photograph, and some anomaly had given me the ability to think.
...
...
...
In that one second that would never end, I thought countless times about returning control of consciousness to Young Mi-ro.
Young Mi-ro must have vaguely sensed what was happening, too, but only vaguely.
Unlike me, who felt the pain of eternity in full, she would probably experience it as nothing more than a bizarre dream.
I wanted to wake Young Mi-ro and fall asleep again.
I wanted to escape this pain of eternity.
But I thought of something else as well.
Even I, with my long career as an agent and experience in the Hotel's hells, was suffering this much...
Could Young Mi-ro endure the Dream of Eternity?
This despair had pushed even Immutability to its limit. The young me couldn't bear it.
Like the countless souls the Moon had swallowed until now, she would lose her sense of self in an instant and become unable to properly remember who she was.
I mustn't forget.
Young Mi-ro was the only “real” one.
I was a Wraith dwelling in Mi-ro's body, nothing more than a ghost story phenomenon.
I had to endure it.
If someone had to go mad, it had to be me. If someone had to turn to ash, it had to be me.
Only then would “we” have a Next Chance.
...
When my thoughts reached that point, I heard someone's whisper, one I thought I would never hear again.
「Long ago, when I saw you, only a dark and murky fate awaited you.」
The Practitioner?
「I pondered whether to send you out or grant you eternal rest. Which would be Salvation?」
Was this a hallucination created by my despair?
「Child, if you wish it, I shall grant you rest even now.」
Or was it an arrangement left behind by the Practitioner, who had imperfectly read the distant future?
My consciousness scattered like bubbles as I thought.
Rest. What a sweet temptation.
I had already cried out countless times that I wanted to die.
Did I truly want to die?
...
I wasn't a good person.
Sacrificing the few for the many was routine for me. I was a murderer no less than the butchers history remembered.
I was a failure.
I was a loser who couldn't even properly lead fewer than ten ordinary people in the Deep Sea Hotel.
I was self-righteous, foolish, and worse than the daughter I had gained through a wish.
I wasn't even human anymore.
I was a ghost story, a phenomenon, a Chaos Entity.
Nothing more than a ghost parasitizing Young Mi-ro.
But.
I wasn't something that died easily.
At least, I wouldn't accept my end yet.
I wouldn't vanish like this before I could even properly drive my spear into someone once!
That was why I could answer the Practitioner.
“I don't need any rest!”
Pain is existence.
I suffer.
Therefore, I exist.
At that moment, I sensed someone's smile.
「As expected, you are my work. A fake better than the original.」
I saw an invisible hand.
It was a contradictory expression, but I couldn't find any better words.
That hand grabbed the Time Lender's needle, which had been leisurely moving between noon and evening, and forcibly moved it!
--- Clank!
At last, the Time Lender's needle reached “A-ri in the evening.”
I felt sorry for my daughter, who was about to appear.
I pitied her because I knew the pain she would suffer for “a very long time.”
Once again, an eternal second passed.
...
The spatial containment of the “Irregular Polyhedron” sealed the gap pierced by the Spear of Mortality.
That meant the end of all suffering.
...
The five seconds that had lasted longer than a lifetime were over.
Footnotes:
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