WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 651: Meeting, Reconnaissance (2)
──────
「User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)
Date: Day 1
Current Location: Level 3, Lobby
Sage’s Advice: 0」
- Han Ga-in
After that, various theories about Sang-hyeon’s memories continued to come up.
They were mysterious memories, the kind that, in a movie, would feel like an even blend of science fiction and horror. That was why there were far too many possible explanations.
At one point, Sang-hyeon waved a hand with a weary expression.
“Let’s leave it at that. There are plenty of interesting theories, but there are too many of them. My head’s starting to spin.”
Eun-sol jotted down a brief summary of the information about Sang-hyeon.
Kim Sang-hyeon: The setting was an unidentified exoplanet. He encountered an incomprehensible being and was overcome by terror. The questions are the location, the entity, and why he went into space.
At that point, I hesitated too.
Should I focus on Sang-hyeon and use Insight?
“...”
No. Using Insight now would likely disrupt the meeting.
The right time was after it ended.
“Then let’s move on to the next person. The order is...”
A-ri, who had been about to continue with the order, suddenly flinched.
She had realized Mi-ro was next.
“L-let’s hear from Eun-sol first.”
Mi-ro herself looked completely unconcerned, but A-ri seemed embarrassed as she tried to skip her turn.
A few of the others tilted their heads at how unnatural it was, but Eun-sol began explaining without comment.
“Sure. Mine is short and simple.”
Just as she said, Eun-sol’s dream was simple.
It was a brief account of her time as an Executive Director at Daeyang Group, some stories about her siblings, and memories tinged with disappointment in her father.
“Father always had high expectations for us. Looking back, the biggest reason my siblings and I grew distant was that Father encouraged competition between us.”
Since it was a family matter, no one could easily chime in. Everyone listened in silence.
“That was all I felt back then. A father who was always strict. A father who was always disappointed in us. A father who was too great, too exceptional...”
Her voice was full of tangled love and resentment for her father, the chairman of Daeyang Group.
“But after going through the Hotel and learning how strange this world really is, I sometimes started wondering. Was Father really an ordinary human?”
Grandpa asked carefully.
“Is that why you mentioned a Regressor? You think he succeeded in founding the company because he was a Regressor?”
“I felt it sometimes while growing up. Father was like...”
“Like?”
“Like he knew the future. How could he make such incredible choices, one after another?”
“Hmm...”
“Of course, I’m not certain. You know what I mean, right? Anyone who founds a major corporation is bound to be extraordinary.”
“That’s true.”
I offered my own opinion.
“Say you gathered a hundred thousand people for a rock-paper-scissors tournament. One of them would eventually win, right? If you only looked at the winner, they’d seem like someone who knew the future. They would have picked the right answer every time through hundreds of rounds.”
Eun-sol nodded.
“I understand what you mean. Even now, countless aspiring CEOs are starting businesses on Earth. One of them will eventually build a massive conglomerate.”
“Right.”
“If you only look at that one final winner, they can’t help seeming like someone who knows the future. Whether through luck or skill, they kept winning at rock-paper-scissors. Yes, I understand what you mean. But...”
“But?”
“... Still, my father was difficult to understand even by that standard.”
“If we get the chance in a Curse Room, let’s look into it.”
“...”
“If the chairman really is a Regressor, I’m curious how that would tie into the room’s scenario.”
That was enough to wrap up Eun-sol’s story.
Lee Eun-sol: Is the chairman of Daeyang Group a Regressor? If he is, what connection does he have to the scenario?
“I’ve written mine too. Next is, uh...”
While Eun-sol hesitated, Mi-ro cut in.
“Wasn’t it my turn?”
“... It was.”
Eun-sol gave A-ri an awkward smile, but Mi-ro had already started chattering proudly.
The situation felt funny all over again.
A-ri, who knew the truth, was trying to skip Mi-ro’s turn. Eun-sol, who sensed the mood, had gone along with it. Yet Mi-ro herself knew nothing and eagerly stepped forward.
How did such a pure kid grow up to become Ghost Story Mi-ro?
“Mine’s simpler than Doctor Teacher’s!”
Doctor Teacher?
She’d only been going to school for a few months, but that sort of expression had already become natural to her.
“You remember the Santa I saw a loooong time ago, right? I think I made my wish after losing my friends to Santa. It was probably... the destruction of demons?”
Eun-sol, who had been writing on the whiteboard, checked again.
“The salvation of the innocent, the destruction of evil beings, and the realization of justice. Something like that?”
“Yep!”
“You have a second wish too, like Sang-hyeon, right? The Empty Wish at Pioneer.”
“Yeah.”
“What was it?”
“Um, a few days ago, when I was dreaming, I met my past self. Then...”
She told them how she met her past self in a dream and reaffirmed her goal of saving humanity.
The dream itself was probably true.
Ghost Story Mi-ro’s wish really was the realization of justice.
But in the Hotel’s view, Young Mi-ro’s actual wish was something else.
Earlier, because it was time to see the next person’s dream, Mi-ro had been sent away with a convenient lie...
Thinking about it again, though, did we really need to keep piling on lies?
Should companions really keep secrets from each other?
--- Tap!
“Hm? Ga-in?”
“Eun-sol, there’s something I need to say...”
Just as I was about to reveal the “cold, hard truth” in front of everyone.
“...”
“Ga-in?”
My legs suddenly started getting unbearably cold.
A-ri had used Old Blood to send a gust of freezing air at me.
Normally, she would have gotten Grandpa’s help to send me a “private message,” but she probably wanted to hide the conversation from him too. So my poor legs were the ones suffering.
In that instant, A-ri and I exchanged glances and spoke with our eyes.
‘Do you really have to say it in front of everyone?’
‘We can’t keep hiding it forever.’
‘Think about Mi-ro’s human rights!’
Meanwhile, Mi-ro had no idea what was happening and just stared at us with wide eyes.
“Ga-in? What’s wrong?”
“Ah, no. I think I was mistaken about something.”
“... Is that so?”
As always, quick-witted Eun-sol seemed to vaguely sense something between A-ri and me. But because she was quick-witted, she didn’t press further.
“Then, the next person!”
As everyone’s attention naturally turned to Seung-yeop, I thought to myself.
Did I really have to hide it just because A-ri asked me to?
If the problem was saying it in front of Mi-ro, I could tell everyone else later when Mi-ro wasn’t around!
“Uh, I...”
Just as Seung-yeop opened his mouth, Mi-ro suddenly burst into wild laughter.
“Kyahahahaha!”
“Huh?”
“I-I’ll tell you everything! I know everything!”
“W-what are you talking about? What I can say is...”
Seung-yeop’s face turned bright red as he desperately tried to salvage the situation, but it was no use.
Mi-ro giggled wildly and blurted out everything she had seen without filtering it.
“Did you know he was playing games all night from the very beginning? He’s seriously hopeless. I feel sorry for your parents!”
“Hey! Worry about your own parents! You used to play princess at school!”
“What? Play princess? Hey! Does it make sense to make a wish because you got bad teammates while playing games? Wow! The next scene is even more shocking!”
At that point, Mi-ro suddenly stopped talking.
“...”
As if even she couldn’t bring herself to say what came next.
Naturally, the other companions, who had no idea what was going on, became curious.
Song-i was one of them.
“What happened in the next scene?”
“...”
“What? You made such a big fuss about it being more shocking. Playing games all night can’t have been all there was.”
Seung-yeop trembled as he kept his gaze lowered, while A-ri stared at the ceiling as though she knew nothing.
Even Mi-ro, who had started the story, looked away with an expression of regret.
Right. There was no helping it.
The answer was me.
I would be the first to do what everyone feared.
“On his way home after class, he suddenly confessed to a girl named So-yeon.”
“What?! S-suddenly?”
“From what I saw, I don’t think he’d ever properly spoken to her even once before confessing.”
“...”
“What exactly did he say? ‘So-yeon! From the first time I saw you...’”
“Ga-in, please don’t!”
If I was going to back down here, I should never have started.
“‘From the first time I saw you, I was completely captivated by your shining eyes!’ That’s right, isn’t it?”
“Grrrk...!”
For some reason, Seung-yeop began groaning with a half-fainted expression, but I knew everything anyway. My memory was very good.
“Then the girl said, ‘Sorry, I have a boyfriend.’”
Song-i asked with an expression that said surely not.
“And then?”
“Seung-yeop said, ‘I-if you break up with him, then next time...’”
“Aah! T-that’s enough!”
--- Tap!
“Whew...”
Eun-sol sighed deeply and tapped the whiteboard.
“Okay, okay. I get the general idea. I’ll write down what happened in Seung-yeop’s dream.”
1. Plays games until dawn every day and blames bad teammates.
2. His school life is a complete mess. He barely has any friends.
3. Tried to confess to a girl he had never spoken to, only to get rejected immediately. Tried again after getting rejected and was turned down again.
The moment the summary was complete, silence settled over the room.
“Is that right?”
Not only Seung-yeop and A-ri, but even Mi-ro, who had initially wanted to tease him, were speechless.
It was a simple, pure summary without a single tease, joke, or exaggeration.
Which made it even harder to endure.
At that point, Seung-yeop collapsed onto the sofa, half out of it.
It was a strange moment where the Greatest Martial Artist Under Heaven, self-proclaimed, was defeated by just three sentences.
I thought an attack like that would be impossible to withstand even if Yi Ja-seong from Room 205 came back to life.
Seung-yeop finally answered with a vacant look in his eyes.
“... Yes.”
As if he couldn’t stand it any longer, Jin-cheol spoke carefully.
“H-hey. Even so, that can’t be all there is, right? Isn’t there anything else? Ah, maybe So-yeon turned out to be a demon or something?”
“...”
“Um, or maybe that game you like turned out to contain some cosmic entity’s evil secret art...”
“...”
“There’s really nothing? There’s no way there could be nothing!”
It was a little funny listening to him.
At this point, didn’t So-yeon really need to turn out to be an evil spirit?
Or maybe that game had some Management Bureau conspiracy behind it!
A-ri, who had only been sighing, carefully poked my shoulder.
“Didn’t you say something?”
“...”
“You said it felt convenient or something.”
“I did get that feeling.”
The others’ gazes naturally gathered on me.
Seung-yeop’s gaze looked especially desperate.
“For example, Seung-yeop’s parents might have been excessively neglectful of him...”
“That makes sense. I thought it was a little extreme too. What else?”
“When he wanted to confess, the person he wanted to confess to conveniently appeared?”
“What?”
“Looking at Seung-yeop’s attitude back then, it didn’t seem like a planned confession at all.”
“What do you mean?”
“I got that impression while watching. He was debating whether to confess, but then he decided, ‘I have to do it today!’ and...”
“You’ve analyzed Seung-yeop’s psychology in a lot of detail.”
For some reason, I felt like there was an unspoken sentence after A-ri’s words.
‘Like you’ve often had similar worries, Ga-in.’
I flinched for a moment, but tried to look as natural as possible as I continued.
“... He was still debating it, then the person he wanted to confess to suddenly appeared right in front of him. So he couldn’t hold it in, and what was in his heart just came out.”
Song-i, who had been listening, nodded.
“So what you mean is this. Looking at Seung-yeop’s attitude, it wasn’t a planned confession. It didn’t look like he deliberately tried to meet that girl. But in a school with hundreds of students, it’s strange that he happened to run into her at the exact moment he wanted to confess?”
“That’s roughly what I mean.”
This time, Song-i frowned, and strangely, I could sense what she was thinking.
‘Ga-in, have you ever failed to find Ga-young at school?’
What was going on?
Could it be that Insight had read A-ri and Song-i’s thoughts through their expressions and gestures?
Haha! Wasn’t that just my imagination?
They were both sitting quietly without thinking much of anything. I had to be the only one imagining things after seeing Seung-yeop in trouble.
Then A-ri spoke in a low voice.
“It could have been planned.”
“What? How could that have been planned? Even a kindergartener wouldn’t make such a ridiculous confession.”
Beside us, Seung-yeop muttered in a half-dead voice.
“... It wasn’t planned. Please spare me.”
Then...
A-ri answered indifferently.
“Well, there are people who thoroughly plan for a week before confessing over KakaoTalk. Compared to that, Seung-yeop’s confession could have been a month-long plan.”
Footnotes:
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