WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 650: Meeting, Reconnaissance (1)
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「User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)
Date: Day 1
Current Location: Level 3, Lobby
Sage’s Advice: 0」
- Han Ga-in
Every companion's dream related to the First Wish had ended.
When I returned to the third-floor lobby, I found my companions scattered across the plush sofas.
Snacks and drinks were spread everywhere. The Hotel's usual generosity with food seemed unchanged.
Eun-sol must have placed an order through the HP Market while I was gone. There was even a whiteboard and some markers.
"Oppa, are you all done now?"
"Good work!"
A few companions gave me a casual wave, but quite a few were so lost in thought that they hadn't even noticed my return.
Rather than talking, they seemed preoccupied with their own memories and wishes.
I didn't want to interrupt, so I was just about to lean against a marble pillar.
--- Beep!
A Hotel notification window appeared before everyone.
The first line was a welcome message.
"Why's the welcome message so late?"
"At first, only Grandpa and I were awake."
"Oh, is that why it's appearing now? Because everyone's awake."
* * *
「Participant Han Ga-in, welcome back to Hotel Pioneer!
What kind of place is Hotel Pioneer?
Is it not the finest hotel in the universe, filled with kindness and consideration, love and happiness for our valued guests?
Of course, we are also aware of the malicious rumors about the Hotel.
Stories circulate of violent guests behaving roughly, dangerous events arranged for bored participants, and an unidentified watcher.
They are all nothing more than baseless rumors.
According to our internal investigation, not a single death has occurred in Pioneer's history.
Occasionally, participants lacking in skill have simply been trapped in refrigerators.
Because of these false rumors, quite a few participants do not return once they escape.
It is a truly disappointing state of affairs.
If they had truly attained enlightenment, they would know the answer lies not outside the Hotel, but within it.
In that sense, “you” are excellent!
On the third floor, you will gain new challenges, mysterious secrets, and rewards of unparalleled value.
Of course, that is only if you can overcome the trials.
We remember the moment you first arrived at Pioneer.
Who you were then was different from who you are now.
If you can reach the end of the Hotel...
Who you are at that moment will also be different from who you are now.
Finally, let us say it once more.
Participant Han Ga-in, welcome back to Hotel Pioneer.
# P.S. We will begin the schedule tomorrow.」
* * *
After the notification window disappeared, everyone was speechless for a moment.
As I read my notification, I discreetly checked the others as well. Only the names differed. The contents were identical.
That meant everyone had received a notification full of absurd nonsense.
Unable to hold it in, Eun-sol spoke up.
"The finest hotel in the universe nonsense aside... malicious rumors? They're all true!"
Mi-ro murmured, her voice trembling slightly.
"W-what does it mean that no one died according to its internal investigation? I died and came back to life."
A-ri gave a bitter smile.
"It says so right below. From the Hotel's point of view, you didn't die, Mi-ro. You just lacked the skill and got trapped in a ‘refrigerator’ for a while."
"Y-you mean Frozen Hell?"
"That's right."
"That's ridiculous! A resurrection Ticket was used to wake me up in the first place!"
"Well, it's probably the Hotel's usual joke."
I held back a hollow laugh and spoke.
"If we ignore the meaningless parts, the postscript seems more important than the main text."
Song-i nodded.
"‘We will begin the schedule tomorrow!’ That has to be the important part. What does it sound like to you?"
Grandpa answered with an indifferent look.
"It's telling us to enter a Curse Room starting tomorrow. Looks like it'll let us off until today."
Among the Hotel's many rules, this was the most important.
In principle, participants had to enter a Curse Room, Mission Room, Gate Room, or something similar every day.
The only days they could rest were Party Time or the occasional irregular day off.
"What time is it? The time... Ah, there's a clock on the wall. It's close to noon."
"Then we still have some time before tomorrow."
"What should we do with the rest of today?"
Eun-sol gave a simple answer to Grandpa's question.
"We should hold a meeting first. We each had dreams related to our First Wishes, right? The contents must be connected to the Curse Rooms somehow."
"That's true, but shouldn't we do some exploring too? There were several strange places."
"Grandpa, I think you've forgotten because it's been a while since we returned to the Hotel. We didn't normally explore when Ga-in had no Advice, did we?"
"Mm... That's true too."
Exploring the Hotel was more dangerous than anyone could imagine. If we were suddenly exposed, something irreversible could happen before we even had time to take a breath.
For example, once we tried to head underground before the event with the monster monkeys had ended, and a warning appeared.
The Mirror Room, which had opened when we reached the second floor, was also filled with danger.
After some thought, I spoke.
"A-ri, did you try using your blessing?"
A-ri's blessing, Secret, was useful for finding the Hotel's mysterious locations.
Without a word, A-ri scribbled on the whiteboard in the lobby.
1. Hidden NPCs on the third floor: ???, ???
2. Hidden rooms on the third floor: ???, ???
"It's the same as the lower floors. Two hidden rooms and two hidden NPCs."
"There really is a lot to find. As you know, our Advice uses recover every day at midnight. Let's check the basic layout once at midnight."
We could look for the hidden NPCs and rooms one by one, but we needed to learn the basic structure of the third floor quickly.
"At midnight? Yes, that would be better."
It wasn't a good idea to put off even minimal exploration until tomorrow morning.
Because of the Hotel's nature, it tended to trigger strange events if we spent the day we were supposed to enter a Curse Room exploring instead.
I wrote what we knew about the third floor's basic layout on the whiteboard.
"Those of you who just woke up in the lobby probably didn't see it, but there's a sign like this."
⇦ Observatory
⇧ Guest Rooms
⇨ ??? - Under Construction.
Sang-hyeon muttered with interest.
"An Observatory? I wonder what it's meant to observe. The question marks probably indicate an area we can't access yet."
"We'll have to find out step by step."
Once the discussion about exploring ended, we naturally moved on to the wishes.
"Let's talk about our wishes until this evening. From the circumstances, it seems the First Wish is connected to the third floor somehow."
Eun-sol chimed in.
"Right, let's start with the wishes. It's better to do it while our memories are fresh."
Everyone's eyes naturally turned to A-ri.
"Me first?"
"Wouldn't it be best to go in the order we checked the wishes?"
"That's true, but... I don't have much to say."
A-ri began explaining what she remembered.
"I'll start with the wish. While working as an agent, I encountered countless pieces of mysterious, unfathomable information. Naturally, I began to think about it. I wanted to solve every mystery in existence. Or I wanted to know all the secrets of the world."
A-ri's First Wish: I want to know all the secrets of the world.
"The memory connected to it took place on an ‘interstellar train running endlessly across the Milky Way.’ At the Management Bureau, we called it the ‘Milky Way Train’ for short."
Eun-sol wrote ‘A-ri: Milky Way Train’ on the whiteboard.
"The train periodically appears all over Earth, replacing real trains or subways. It kidnaps people who board it thinking it's an ordinary train, then vanishes without a trace."
Eun-sol asked a question.
"If it vanishes without a trace, how did you know it ran across the Milky Way? A tracking device?"
"Something like that. After related incidents kept happening, we narrowed down the places where the train was likely to appear and sent in several agents. I was one of them."
"And then?"
"After that, we used a special method... Fine, you know the person too, so I'll just say it. We found out with the help of Clairvoyance."
"Ah, so you tracked the agent with Clairvoyance and discovered the train was moving through space?"
"Yes."
Among Ryan's companions, there was a participant named Jin Yeo-hwa who possessed Clairvoyance.
It seemed the Management Bureau had been able to contact Jin Yeo-hwa when it received that help.
Then again, Jin Yeo-hwa had once married one of The Silent, so she was practically part of the Management Bureau at the time.
"Any other information? You boarded the train yourself."
"That's all. When I returned to reality, I had lost all my memories from inside the train."
"..."
"From what I vaguely remember... I think I fought someone."
The conversation came to a halt there.
A-ri couldn't recall anything else.
"Let's move on to the next person. Jin-cheol?"
"Uh, um... Sorry. I know even less than A-ri."
Just as he said, Jin-cheol really knew nothing.
After several losses piled up, all he remembered was wandering around near a gym in a depressed mood and having a drink of soju.
"Wasn't there something supernatural involved?"
"I know."
"..."
"Sorry."
"No, if anything, it feels like A-ri and I were the ones who made a mistake."
A-ri nodded too.
"Yeah. Jin-cheol's dream came right after mine, so Ga-in and I hadn't gotten the hang of it yet."
Compared to Elena's dream, the last one, we had both carefully observed our surroundings then. We put Elena in the room and discovered the TV's abnormality.
When it was Jin-cheol's turn, we hadn't gotten the hang of things yet, so we couldn't explore that actively.
Cha Jin-cheol: Gym. No additional information.
"Nothing we can do. Let's move to the next one."
The moment it was Sang-hyeon's turn, A-ri's eyes lit up.
"Everyone already knows about the Empty Wish at Pioneer, so let's skip that."
"Let's do that. I was also just sitting on the sofa, digging through memories about an alien planet..."
"The setting of Sang-hyeon's First Wish definitely wasn't Earth."
"I thought so too."
"It wasn't the Moon or Mars either."
"That's right. It was an unknown exoplanet. It probably wasn't even in the Solar System."
"Does that make sense? I mean, humanity's space exploration technology could never take us outside the Solar System."
"... That's true."
As Sang-hyeon and A-ri fell silent for a moment, I thought about it.
Actually, it was a little different based on what we'd learned in the Curse Rooms.
Not only had humanity left the Solar System, there had even been a human civilization that colonized distant exoplanets.
The humans of Room 203.
The problem was that no one knew when that Loop had taken place.
The Primeval Civilization that discovered the secret of Soul Convergence?
Or a Loop that existed before that?
Was it some forgotten point among the countless Loops that existed between the Primeval Civilization and the current Loop?
As I thought about it, a hollow laugh escaped me.
Given the Hotel's nature, transcending time and space, it even seemed possible that it was a future Loop.
At that point, there was no point in thinking further, so I stopped.
"Miss A-ri, let me ask this time. Could the Management Bureau colonize an exoplanet?"
"Not with science and technology."
"That makes it sound as though it would be possible through means other than science and technology."
"Think of the Milky Way Train from my wish. Quite a few anomalies drift through space beyond Earth."
"Huh..."
"If we used those phenomena, it wouldn't be completely impossible to send people to an exoplanet."
"I understand."
"The conclusion I've reached is this. As far as I know, humanity's science and technology couldn't send you to an exoplanet."
"I think so too."
"Of course, the Loop you came from, Sang-hyeon, could have been an interstellar civilization beyond anything we can imagine..."
Like Room 203.
"No. It wasn't very different from the twenty-first century you know."
"Then there's only one answer."
"..."
"The group that sent you to the exoplanet was the Management Bureau or an organization like it."
"Could I not have been swept up in an unidentified Chaos Disaster?"
"You were wearing a spacesuit in the memory, weren't you?"
"..."
"Does it make sense that you were randomly swept up in a Chaos Disaster while walking down the street and ‘happened’ to be wearing a spacesuit?"
"You're right."
At that point, everyone understood what A-ri meant.
The only organization that could put Kim Sang-hyeon in a spacesuit and send him to an exoplanet was the Management Bureau or something like it.
Eun-sol murmured cautiously.
"You really have no idea, A-ri? You were one of The Silent..."
"I have no idea at all. That's why it's strange. Well, information about past Loops is unreliable by nature at the Management Bureau."
Three questions.
1. Which exoplanet had Kim Sang-hyeon been on in the past?
2. What had he seen there that drove him into such despair?
3. What organization or group had sent Sang-hyeon to an exoplanet?
Footnotes:
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