WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 646: The First Wish (2)
──────
- Kim A-ri
A mysterious train of unknown origin.
--- Clatter! Clatter!
What was this place?
It was a place that remained in the hazy memories of my past.
--- Hooooonk...!
A booming horn sounded in the distance.
Sitting in a soft seat and looking out the window, I could not help but marvel.
I had ridden countless trains over my not-so-short life and seen plenty of beautiful scenery, but...
Even so, the view beyond the window was truly astonishing.
Who in the world would ever get to ride a train that crossed the Milky Way and ran forever?
“...”
I slowly gathered myself and cleared my hazy mind.
First, until just a moment ago, I had been at Hotel Delight. I had boarded an elevator to reach Pioneer’s third floor.
What happened next? I remembered someone pressing the 〚Third Floor: Celestial Realm〛 button, but everything after that was foggy.
I must have lost consciousness not long after the button was pressed...
Second, I had ridden this train, the Interstellar Train Running Across the Milky Way, once before. What exactly had happened back then?
Before long, the air seemed to warp, and Ga-in and Mook-seong appeared.
“A-ri! So you were here!”
“How did you get here... Ah, Kingdom of Dreams?”
“That’s right.”
I thought it every time, but the Kingdom of Dreams was an incredibly useful tool.
* * *
.
..
...
“Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
After listening to Ga-in’s explanation for a few minutes, I understood the situation.
“Outside the dream, we’re already on the third floor, but everyone except you and Mook-seong is dreaming.”
“That’s right.”
“According to the Manager’s hint, we’re dreaming so we can become aware of our individual wishes?”
“Probably.”
“So this place is connected to my First Wish.”
“Did you realize something?”
Ga-in and Mook-seong both looked at me, but I could not give them a satisfying answer.
“...That’s strange.”
“What part?”
It had been when Elder Wisdom told us about First Wishes.
During that conversation, I had suddenly come to vaguely understand what my First Wish had been.
* * *
What wish had I made?
Normally, one would think it was Mi-ro’s resurrection or stability for the world, right?
Then a thought crossed my mind.
Of course, I had wished for those things, but there had been something else too.
A somewhat personal wish.
Not something for the world or Mi-ro, but something for myself.
It seemed there had been a moment that even I had forgotten.
* * *
“If you’re asking whether I realized what my wish was, I already knew.”
“...”
“At some point, I naturally came to realize it.”
It was my memory to begin with, was it not?
Even if I had forgotten it, the right trigger could bring it back.
After a brief silence, Ga-in and Mook-seong looked at me.
“Why? Curious about what my wish was?”
“Yes.”
“It wasn’t anything special. Nothing like peace for humanity, just a slightly personal wish.”
“A personal wish?”
“While working as an agent, I saw and experienced countless mysteries hidden beneath the Veil. At some point during all that, I began to think that I wanted to solve the mysteries of all things.”
At that moment, Ga-in’s eyes sharpened.
“What you just said could also be phrased as wanting to know the secrets of all things.”
My First Wish, to know the secrets of all things.
“What’s the difference?”
“I rephrased the sentence using the word ‘secret.’”
Secret seemed to refer to my blessing.
“Is there a connection between each person’s wish and blessing?”
“It’s just a guess. We’ll have to check everyone else’s wishes too.”
--- Clatter!
Mook-seong, noticing the sound of the train, asked, “A-ri, you said you already knew what your wish was?”
“Probably...”
“Then why is the Hotel showing you this memory?”
Why was it showing me this memory when I already knew what my wish was?
The answer came to me right away.
“I think what the Hotel means by ‘becoming aware of your wish’ is more complex than that.”
“More complex?”
Ga-in answered next.
“It’s not enough to simply know what the wish is. It seems to want us to understand the circumstances that gave rise to it.”
“...”
“If you use me as an example, knowing only the phrase, ‘I wanted to become a god,’ doesn’t mean I’ve become aware of my wish. I need to understand everything Aleph went through in the past.”
“You mean?”
“To understand your wish, you need to understand this train too. What is this place?”
“The Interstellar Train Running Across the Milky Way.”
“What’s that? I’ve never heard of it.”
“...It’s not the first time. You probably saw it briefly once before too.”
“What?”
A vague memory of the Hotel surfaced.
Room 107, the Gate Room’s fourth trial, The Secret of the Esper.
“It must have been during Room 107’s fourth trial.”
“The Secret of the Esper?”
“That was when I realized, ‘Oh, that happened too.’”
“Hmm... I don’t remember.”
“Ah, were you unconscious then?”
Mook-seong frowned.
“Interstellar Train Running Across the Milky Way. I feel like I’ve heard that somewhere before.”
“It’s a fairly famous anomaly.”
Ga-in gave a bitter smile.
“It’s strange to call an anomaly ‘famous.’ Like calling a secret organization famous. Anyway, what does this train do? It looks like you’ve been here once, A-ri.”
“...It periodically appears in places all over Earth. Usually, it replaces an actual train or subway.”
“Does it abduct people who board it thinking it’s an ordinary train?”
“That’s right. Then it vanishes without a trace. After it happened several times, they narrowed down the places where the Milky Way Train might appear and dispatched agents.”
“That was you? What happened next?”
“...I don’t know.”
“What?”
“I forgot most of my memories from the train.”
“Did the Management Bureau erase them?”
“No. I had already forgotten by the time I got off the train.”
“Hmm... Do you vaguely remember anything?”
“I fought something unknown?”
“...”
--- Clatter!
When the clattering sound came right after I said I had fought something, Ga-in looked around with a meaningful expression.
Still, we could only hear the sound. Nothing else appeared.
“It doesn’t seem like it wants to show us the next scene.”
“That is the Hotel’s style. It gives you only hints at first, then makes you figure out the details yourself.”
“...Could one of the third floor’s Curse Rooms be hiding a secret related to this train?”
“Probably...”
“Let’s go to the next person’s dream for now.”
* * *
The next person was Cha Jin-cheol.
“What? How did you get here... Ah, you used the painting?”
Like me, Cha Jin-cheol was conscious, but his expression was not very bright.
“Yes. Hyung, where is this? Is that building a gym?”
“...As you know, I used to be a mixed martial arts fighter. I had a few actual bouts too.”
“...”
“This memory... It’s probably from when I was on a four-loss streak.”
“I see.”
The sky, full of dark clouds, seemed to reflect Cha Jin-cheol’s mood.
It was a past long gone, but he probably still felt a trace of bitterness.
After Ga-in explained the situation, Cha Jin-cheol soon nodded.
“So the Hotel is showing me a memory related to my First Wish?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, I think I know.”
Unlike me, it did not feel like he had known from the start. It felt as though he had just naturally realized it.
“I wanted to succeed. I wanted to improve. Wouldn’t it have been something like that?”
“That would make sense in this context. To put it more convincingly...”
“More convincingly?”
“The Courage to overcome fear and keep moving forward?”
Once again, Ga-in linked it to a blessing, but Mook-seong tilted his head.
“Didn’t Jin-cheol just lose because he lacked ability? What does overcoming fear have to do with it?”
Cha Jin-cheol frowned slightly at that.
“Now that you mention it, what Ga-in said makes sense. Back then, I was obsessed with the thought, ‘I want to win no matter what it takes.’”
The phrase “no matter what it takes” made everyone flinch.
Of course, Cha Jin-cheol was neither a Hotel participant nor a Management Bureau agent at the time, so there were only so many things he could have done.
“Hyung, don’t you have any other memories?”
“Other memories?”
“Supernatural memories. Like a train cutting across the universe appearing, violet light filling the arena, or tentacles inside your opponent’s mouth...”
“Stop, stop! Nothing like that. I barely experienced anything supernatural before coming to the Hotel.”
“Really?”
“I only saw Chaos Disasters on the news. I just got beaten up in a few matches, felt depressed by myself, and drank soju. That was all.”
“Hmm...”
Was that really true?
Cha Jin-cheol seemed to remember this period as an utterly ordinary situation, but there was one question.
“That’s strange.”
“What’s strange?”
“It wasn’t just once or twice that you got beaten up.”
“...That was a little too harsh.”
“Sorry.”
“You don’t look sorry at all.”
“You must have felt depressed near the gym many times.”
“Honestly, that was true. More than a hundred times, probably.”
“Out of those hundred-plus bad days, why do you think the Hotel is showing only this one?”
“...”
Only then did Cha Jin-cheol begin frowning and looking around.
It seemed he was examining a “special day” from the past, one whose strangeness he himself had not realized.
And then...
The dream reset once more, and the scenery around us began to disappear.
“Whoa!”
“It’s openly hiding the next scene.”
It was as though it were saying, “That’s as much as we’ll give away for free!”
It was similar to what I had experienced earlier.
It seemed to be telling us that we would have to enter the Curse Room and discover the next scene, the next information, ourselves.
“Nothing we can do. Let’s move on to the next person.”
“Sang-hyeon’s dream is right next door. Let’s go there.”
* * *
--- Clatter! Clatter!
Kim Sang-hyeon’s dream was taking place in a location we had experienced once before.
“This is a train too?”
“This too? Was the last place a train as well?”
“Ah, A-ri’s dream was...”
As Jin-cheol and Mook-seong spoke, I frowned at Ga-in.
“What’s wrong?”
“Don’t you remember?”
“Not really.”
“...This is where the Time of Choice took place after Room 203 ended.”
“Really?”
It had been one of the most shocking experiences of my life, so I remembered it vividly. Ga-in had forgotten everything when getting off the train.
“This is where Kim Sang-hyeon made his wish.”
At that moment, Mook-seong spotted something and called out in amusement.
“Hey! There’s A-ri over there too! Ah, Ga-in’s there as well!”
Just as he said, there were visions of my past self and Ga-in. Kim Sang-hyeon sat across from my vision.
Then Kim Sang-hyeon’s voice reached us.
“I have a wish.”
“...”
“Since entering the Hotel, for the first time, I have something I want even more desperately than escape.”
Having said that much, Sang-hyeon rose from his seat and walked toward us with a bitter smile.
“Do you remember what I said after that?”
“Of course.”
The wish Kim Sang-hyeon had spoken of in front of me after escaping Room 203.
“You said you wished for the salvation of the people who had been with you in Room 203. It seems that was your First Wish.”
“My First Wish?”
Sang-hyeon tilted his head, and Ga-in explained the situation to him.
While speaking, Ga-in suddenly fell silent, as if something had struck Ga-in as strange.
“Ga-in?”
“Wait.”
Soon, Sang-hyeon also sensed something strange and frowned.
“Isn’t this odd?”
“What is?”
“Ga-in, Agent Mook-seong, Miss A-ri, Jin-cheol. You all made your wishes before entering the Hotel.”
“That’s only natural... Huh?”
“Why was my wish the only one made after entering the Hotel? Didn’t I wish for something before I entered it?”
Another strange point.
The others’ wishes could somehow be linked to their blessings, but no matter how I looked at it, Sang-hyeon’s wish had no connection to Diligence.
Saving the people was simply the natural virtue of a diligent king?
Honestly, that interpretation was too much of a stretch.
At that very moment!
--- Splash!
With the sound of clear water, the surrounding scene changed in an instant.
* * *
A completely different landscape appeared in the blink of an eye.
The sky was filled with pale blue light, while the ground looked as though ice and fog had hardened into stone.
And what in the world were those unidentified spire-like structures rising in every direction?
It looked like some alien planet. I was left speechless.
“Where is this...?”
“It doesn’t seem to be Earth, but it’s not like we can’t breathe.”
“Because it isn’t real, but an illusion?”
“...”
Without a word, Ga-in raised a hand and pointed ahead.
“It’s Sang-hyeon.”
Jin-cheol immediately tried to approach Sang-hyeon, but Ga-in stopped him at once.
“Let’s watch.”
“What?”
“Unlike before, it looks like he’s unconscious now. He seems deeply immersed in the dream.”
“Is that so? Wait, why is Sang-hyeon the only one with two completely different dreams?”
“...Because he experienced the Hotel twice.”
“What?”
“Pioneer wasn’t Sang-hyeon’s first Hotel.”
“...”
“I think this is what he experienced before going to the Deep Sea Hotel.”
The wish he made in front of me was his second wish, made after coming to Pioneer?
And that was the First Wish he made to the Deep Sea Hotel?
--- Whoooooom...!
An enormous, unknown sound came from the spires.
At the same time, we heard the plea of a man overcome by fear and despair.
“Please... Please... Father in Heaven! God, Allah, anyone at all is fine! Save me, save us...”
His next words were quite meaningful.
“Do not let humanity’s accumulated achievements become worthless...”
Footnotes:
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