WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 670: Room 301, Curse Room - ‘The Origin of Species’ (14)
──────
- Yoo Song-i
Early in the morning, as I washed up and got ready to head out, Mom looked puzzled.
“You’re leaving this early? It isn’t even seven yet... Are you meeting a friend?”
I think I snapped at Mom a little in a situation like this during the first attempt.
I hadn’t thought much of it, but A-ri advised me not to create unnecessary conflict.
“Yes, we decided to meet somewhere a little far away. I think I’ll be home late today.”
“Are you taking Pero too?”
“We’re going to a parrot café!”
That was the rough excuse I came up with.
“...”
As I put on my shoes, I remembered what had happened last night.
The chilling sight of an unknown fog passing through the walls and sweeping through our home!
It was bizarre, but I still didn’t know exactly what that phenomenon was.
The same went for my suspicions about my parents.
A-ri said she would look into them, but she hadn’t found anything in particular last night.
* * *
A-ri appeared before I had even taken a few steps outside.
She had somehow gotten hold of a baseball cap and pulled it low, and she was even wearing a mask. She seemed to be trying to hide her striking looks.
“You’re late.”
“Hey, it’s only 6:40. I came out almost as soon as I finished washing up...”
“You washed up? Took a shower?”
“Yeah.”
“That was dangerous.”
“What do you mean...”
What A-ri said next was something I had never considered!
“Ga-in or Sang-hyeon are probably watching from outside.”
“W-what?”
“Song-i’s soft, pale body...”
“Ah! Don’t say weird things! I’m sure...”
“Sure what? You think they stopped observing just because you were showering? With Ga-in’s personality?”
“... Wh-what’s wrong with his personality?”
“The kind of personality that would watch you shower with his eyes wide open.”
The moment she said that, an embarrassing memory from Room 206 crossed my mind.
* * *
‘By the way, did you know Song-i has a heart-shaped mole on her right shoulder...’
...
‘How, how, how did you know I have a heart-shaped mole on my shoulder?!’
* * *
Just as my face was starting to heat up, A-ri smoothly changed the subject.
“This attempt, you and I need to make contact with the Management Bureau.”
“... I know.”
“Because of the failure during the first attempt, we learned that Corruption has spread among the Management Bureau’s lower ranks. The Yith Kin have probably taken over the bodies of quite a few employees.”
“Probably.”
“But they can’t have taken over everyone. If they had, the world would have already ended.”
A-ri believed the leadership, including those known as The Silent, was still intact. The others generally agreed.
In short, we had to avoid the corrupted lower ranks and make direct contact with high-ranking people who knew the truth.
“What about Grandpa and Jin-cheol?”
“They have something else to do.”
“To check on my parents?”
A-ri flinched slightly, then admitted it without protest.
“Grandpa and Jin-cheol will get hold of some dog and visit your dad’s hospital. Let’s focus on our own job.”
“... Okay.”
* * *
At 7 a.m., Gangnam Station was packed and chaotic with office workers heading to work.
At that hour, A-ri and I sat in a coffee shop, tapping away at our phones.
Our goal was to find a secret Management Bureau base in Seoul.
“Are you sure there’s one in Seoul?”
“There definitely is. Not just one, either. There are several.”
“Do we really have to search manually like this? The places Eun-sol told us about...”
“Places outsiders know about aren’t the real ones. They’re just fronts.”
Even the locations identified by Daeyang Group were not real.
It wouldn’t be strange for the Management Bureau to have secret bases civilians didn’t know about, but...
How were we supposed to find those secret bases just by staring at G Company’s map app?
“No matter how I look at it, this is a waste of time!”
“Just do it. What’s so hard about tapping away on your phone? I even told you a few conditions.”
“...”
“Secret bases are usually larger than they appear from the outside. Most have hidden underground spaces. So...”
“There aren’t any other buildings nearby.”
“And when selecting and operating the site...”
“Stop, stop. I get it. But let me ask you one thing.”
“Go ahead.”
“What are we going to do once we meet them?”
“...”
It was something that had come up during the actual meeting.
The plan to skip the lower ranks and meet with Management Bureau higher-ups sounded plausible, but what would we do once we met them?
“... Ga-in said we should openly ask for their cooperation.”
Ga-in’s opinions carried enormous weight with everyone at meetings.
To put it bluntly, if Ga-in said, “Let’s do A,” there was a ninety percent chance we would do A.
This time was the ten percent exception.
A-ri and Grandpa strongly opposed it, and even Jin-cheol did.
Ga-in had his reasons.
“The Management Bureau knows about the Hotel, even if only incompletely.”
“... Right.”
“Also, many people who escaped the Hotel are part of the Management Bureau’s leadership.”
“That’s true.”
“We tell them outright that we’re Participants who escaped the Hotel and that we came to resolve a problem in reality. Is that strange?”
“...”
After a moment of silence, A-ri spoke carefully.
“I understand why Ga-in said that. If openly revealing ourselves as Participants and asking for cooperation works, we can use the same method again and again, not just in Room 301 but in other rooms too.”
“Right! Ga-in said the same thing.”
If it worked, it would be an incredible method we could use in other Curse Rooms as well.
“It sounds plausible, but think about it. Did I ever do something like that while going through the first and second floors?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Now think about this from the Management Bureau’s perspective.”
Not our perspective, but the Management Bureau’s.
“Unlike ordinary people, the Management Bureau knows about the Hotel. In other words, the moment a Participant openly reveals their identity, they’ll be plagued by fears like these.”
“...”
“Is all of reality a lie? Is this nothing more than a false world created by the Hotel, one that could vanish like a bubble tomorrow?”
“... But that wasn’t what Ga-in meant.”
What A-ri said was a little different from Ga-in’s opinion.
Ga-in wanted us to reveal that we were Hotel escapees.
In other words, he meant that this place was reality too, not that we should reveal it was a Curse Room.
Besides, I secretly thought that from the third floor onward, the world didn’t seem fake.
Looking at it that way, it wasn’t a lie to begin with.
A-ri calmly countered.
“I know what you mean. I’m saying the Management Bureau won’t be able to easily tell the two apart.”
Whether this was reality where Hotel escapees had appeared, or whether the whole world was a false illusion.
The Management Bureau had no easy way to distinguish between them.
That was why the appearance of unknown Participants alone would frighten them.
“You shouldn’t think that having so many Participants in the Management Bureau’s leadership means they reached a peaceful agreement. In many cases, Participants survived conflicts and clashes intense enough to make several movies, then were eventually absorbed into it.”
“...”
“Also, this is something I thought about while going through the first and second floors...”
“What is it?”
“I don’t think there are any Participants in Curse Rooms other than us. Don’t you?”
“Because of our blessings?”
“Maybe. In that case, the moment the Management Bureau learns we exist, they might become certain this place is a Curse Room.”
To summarize everything so far, this was the issue.
How did the Management Bureau inside a Curse Room perceive reality?
I had never thought this deeply about it before.
Still, the more we talked, the more I began to understand A-ri’s opinion.
The moment we revealed that we were Participants, there was a chance the Management Bureau would realize this world was false.
If that happened, it was hard to guess what would occur.
“This is hard...”
“Talking during the meeting made me realize something. I think Ga-in assumed everyone thinks like him.”
“What?”
What A-ri said next was quite meaningful.
“What if the Management Bureau thought like Ga-in? Well, maybe it wouldn’t care whether the world was fake or not. Maybe it would say, ‘Real or fake, it matters not~’”
“...”
“But people can’t be like Ga-in.”
About fifty minutes later, A-ri and I had found around three possible locations.
Just as we were talking about going to check them in person, my phone buzzed with a secure message.
“Eun-sol?”
The long message Eun-sol sent was full of mysterious information she and Elena had learned from the chairman of Daeyang Group.
A-ri muttered regretfully.
“It looks like there was other important information.”
“What kind of information could there be that we didn’t see?”
“Something about what the Daeyang Group chairman did while serving the Yith race...”
I felt sorry for the dead, but I wasn’t surprised in the slightest by crimes such as mind-controlling and massacring ordinary people, or taking over agents’ bodies.
Even Ga-in could do that much with his eyes closed.
There was no way someone as grand as the King of Yith couldn’t do at least that much, right?
The next sentences, though, were truly astonishing.
“From one as small as you, someone shall be born who receives a great destiny.”
“...”
“One Who Cries Out for the Three Thousand Worlds has chosen one of your young children.”
“Hmm...”
“Could the King of Yith have known Eun-sol would become a Hotel Participant?”
How could that be possible? Because it was a Prisoner?
For divine beings, seeing the future wasn’t completely impossible.
There was the blessing Foresight even in the Hotel, and Insight was a similar ability.
Come to think of it, Eun-sol said the Sea God left her with meaningful words when Room 202 ended.
There was also the appearance of the Nebula Dragon, and the Lord’s seemingly endless design.
There had been quite a few arrangements that could only have been possible if someone could see the future or fate.
But!
“Something, something is strange. I mean...”
I knew it was strange even compared to those earlier cases, but I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what was strange.
A-ri clearly explained my confusion.
“It is strange. It feels as though the King of Yith read the course of Buddha’s actions.”
“... Right.”
“Predicting an ordinary human’s fate probably isn’t difficult for a Prisoner. Look at this.”
A-ri suddenly pointed at an ant crawling across the table.
“It’s obvious where that thing is going, right?”
“It’s moving in a straight line along the edge.”
“People can easily read an ant’s behavior to that extent. For a Prisoner, reading a person’s fate is like that. But it’s hard for people to read other people.”
“That’s true.”
“Then could a person read the course of a god’s actions?”
“That would be impossible.”
“That’s why it’s strange. The King of Yith didn’t just see the future. It knew that Buddha would choose Eun-sol.”
“...”
It wasn’t that Foresight itself was impossible.
It existed as a blessing, and it was the kind of ability a Prisoner could probably use without much difficulty.
But reading an ordinary person’s fate and reading Buddha’s choice were entirely different matters.
A-ri’s point was that the latter might be too much even for a Prisoner.
That was why A-ri brought up an interesting idea.
“I think the King of Yith cheated.”
“Cheated?”
“It’s much easier to manipulate the stock market using the power of major players than to predict stock prices.”
Predicting stock-market trends was difficult even for great scientists, but market manipulation by powerful actors occurred around the world every day.
“Prophecy is difficult, but self-fulfilling prophecy is relatively easy.”
“What do you...”
“The Management Bureau can’t read Buddha’s choice. But we have repeatedly succeeded in forcing those we wanted into the Hotel. Mi-ro and I are proof. Would that be impossible for a Prisoner?”
Footnotes:
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