WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 673: Room 301, Curse Room - ‘The Origin of Species’ (17)
──────
- Lee Eun-sol
It was day three of the second attempt.
What was my goal this time?
The ultimate goal was, of course, resolving Room 301.
But resolving it required a long, complicated process.
I wanted to learn the secrets related to the Yith race from Daeyang Group Chairman Lee Seok-hwan, my father.
How was that going?
Honestly, I had hit a wall.
“...”
If Father had gone missing, I could simply find him.
If he refused to speak, I could force him to. If an enemy interfered, I could fight them.
Unfortunately, the problem was nothing like that.
Father was sitting across the table from me, and he was fairly cooperative with all my questions.
Nothing absurd was happening, like Father’s bodyguard trying to assassinate me.
I simply could not access the most important information.
According to him, a retired Management Bureau agent he met twelve years ago had placed him under a security measure.
Because of that security measure, even he could not recall the “important information.”
“Eun-sol, you’ve been staring so hard you’ll wear my face away. Is there something you want to say?”
No matter how formidable a Management Bureau security measure was, its limits were obvious.
The Flute of Rest could easily break it, and perhaps Ga-in or A-ri could undo it as well.
The problem was the warning that something terrible would happen if I forcibly extracted the information from Father.
Absurdly, even Father himself did not know what that terrible thing was.
Elena had only confirmed that Father genuinely believed it.
Ga-in or Mr. Sang-hyeon, watching from outside, had even issued a warning through Poltergeist activity. There was nothing I could do.
Just as I fell into confusion over what to do, a day flew by, and the various procedures for me to inherit Daeyang Group began.
If this had happened before I came to the Hotel, I might have been happy. It was the very moment I had dreamed of.
Now, it just felt like a pointless waste of time.
“...”
Forget it!
No matter how I looked at it, this was just wasting my mental energy.
It was worse than taking a nap.
My precious brain needed to be used for something more important!
--- Clatter!
When I sprang forcefully to my feet, piles of documents on the table spilled across the floor.
Father looked at me in surprise, but he did not say anything.
“...”
I loosened the reins on my thoughts.
Fixating on the keyword “Room 301” seemed to be narrowing my thinking even further.
What if information I considered unrelated to Room 301 was actually connected to it?
Think.
Think.
Think.
All kinds of thoughts kept appearing and vanishing.
Some concerned Room 301, but far more were stray thoughts that had nothing to do with it, or only seemed to have nothing to do with it.
“You seem to have quite a lot on your mind.”
“I do.”
“Is it important?”
“Of course.”
“... More important than Daeyang Group?”
“Much more.”
Father thought for a moment, then suddenly walked to the bookshelf and brought back a small book.
“What’s this? Shakyamuni’s Teachings of Hope?”
“Your worries may be different from mine, but I’ve had many things to worry about in my life too. Whenever I did, things like this helped.”
“...”
It was a small collection of Buddhist sayings and lessons.
I had seen Father read it from time to time, and I had read it a few times myself long ago.
Seeing the title, 〚Shakyamuni’s Teachings of Hope〛, for the first time in a while made me laugh.
Shakyamuni was the founder of Buddhism, the name Buddha went by when he was human.
In the past, I would not have thought much of it, but the word Buddha meant something completely different to me now.
A distant being that truly existed somewhere in the universe!
Still, no matter how I looked at it, it was completely different from the being Buddhism spoke of...
“Ah.”
“What is it?”
For the first time, a truly strange thought occurred to me.
Our whole family believed in Buddhism.
“Father. Our family has believed in Buddhism since long ago, right?”
“We have.”
“Why did you start believing in Buddhism?”
“Didn’t I tell you before? In my twenties, I met Venerable Jiwoon, a high monk on Seoraksan...”
“Father, wasn’t that a story you made up for the press and the public?”
“...”
“Please tell me honestly. You don’t need to hide it from me.”
“...”
“Have you heard? Somewhere in the universe, godlike beings beyond human comprehension are teeming.”
“...”
“With a single gesture, they can turn an ocean into a desert. They are terrifying beings, so terrible that an ordinary human’s eyes and brain melt just from looking at them.”
“...”
“And yet, there is a being before whom even such godlike beings kneel and bow. That being is called Buddha...”
Silence fell over the office.
At some point, Father had stopped paying attention to the useless documents too.
Soon, Father began speaking about his faith in a way I had never heard before.
“... Personally, this is how I see Buddhism.”
“Tell me.”
“Shakyamuni, Gautama Siddhartha, was a person who truly existed in human history.”
“...”
“Perhaps through some mysterious process, he learned of the distant being called Buddha, received some kind of inspiration from it, and founded Buddhism.”
“...”
“I do not think the human Gautama Siddhartha was a god. But the Buddha that inspired him truly exists. That is why I chose to believe in Buddhism. Does that answer your question?”
Several thoughts passed through my mind as well.
I knew far more than Father did about the secrets of the world, the Hotel, and Buddha.
What if the founder of Buddhism in history was the first person to escape the Hotel?
If I thought of it that way, the many miraculous powers Shakyamuni was said to have displayed became easy to explain. They must have been abilities derived from an Inheritance or a blessing.
Of course, there was no way to know.
Since A-ri had never spoken of anything like this, even the Management Bureau probably did not know.
“I’ll ask one more thing.”
“Go ahead.”
“Who was it?”
“Hmm?”
“Who told Father about the existence of Buddha?”
“...”
It did not seem likely to be the Management Bureau.
Information about the Hotel and Buddha was highly classified even within the Management Bureau.
Father still did not know about Regressors or Loops.
That meant the Management Bureau had not told Father the truth about the world, so it seemed unlikely they would have told him about the greater secret of Buddha.
“It wasn’t the Management Bureau, was it?”
“No. No, it was not. They never properly told me anything.”
“Who was it?”
“I do not know either. Perhaps it is because of the security measure I received twelve years ago...”
“Even if you don’t remember all of it, you remember some things, don’t you? You just told me why you started believing in Buddhism.”
“...”
“Tell me anything you remember. Whatever it is.”
Father lowered his head and thought for a long time.
He seemed to be wandering through memories like mirages, memories that almost surfaced but never quite did.
Soon, he opened his mouth and told me something strange.
“Someone in my memories said this.”
“...”
“They said that you... that we had a truly pitiable fate.”
“Why?”
“They said we were born too early.”
We had been born too early.
“They said we had been born not in the heaven that would someday be completed, but in the hell that came before it. That was why they called us pitiable beings.”
“Is that all?”
“At the end, they added this. They wanted to send my children to heaven.”
* * *
- Yoo Song-i
After our first meeting with the Forerunner ended, she began taking us to the Gangwon Province ruins as promised.
“Miss Song-i.”
“Yes!”
“I looked into you on the way here. You are still in school, and you seem very close to your parents.”
“...”
“Was this your first regression? For now, your family and ordinary life must still feel precious. One day, you will miss this time.”
“... I hope you will not do anything to my family...”
“Do anything? Oh my, are you saying the Management Bureau is some kind of villain? An agent’s family is our highest-priority protection target. Please do not worry.”
Her strangely kind attitude only made me uncomfortable.
Compared to the Forerunner ahead of us, every member of The Silent I had met in reality seemed like a complete personality wreck.
We had met her only today, yet she freely told us secrets and guided us to a mysterious place.
Naturally, I was extremely suspicious, but refusing to follow her would have been strange too.
Suppose our objective was A, and the other side willingly gave us A.
Should we abandon A because their attitude was suspicious?
Then why make A our objective in the first place?
In the end, A-ri and I had no choice but to follow the Forerunner while staying on guard.
--- Tap!
Kim A-ri: Check! Check!
A-ri kept asking me to verify things like this.
She suspected that the Forerunner might have been possessed by one of the Yith.
It was a reasonable suspicion, and I had worried about the same thing many times.
No.
Yoo Song-i: No.
Something we had confirmed during the first attempt.
Whether it was a human soul inside an animal’s body or a member of the Yith race inside a human body, both were classified as Chaos Entities.
The blessing of Affinity worked on them, and Telepathy should work too.
Kim A-ri: Are you sure?
Yoo Song-i: I said no!
The Forerunner acted friendly toward me, but it had nothing to do with Affinity.
She was just as kind to A-ri.
Also, if Telepathy worked, I should have been able to vaguely sense the Forerunner’s emotions or simple thoughts. I could not sense anything at all.
Like the other Management Bureau agents, the Forerunner was simply a human with special powers.
More than my suspicions about the Forerunner, the underground ruins themselves confused me.
--- Creak!
“Ah!”
“Be careful.”
“Please watch your step. The excavation is still underway, so the ground is unstable. If possible, only step where Miss A-ri has stepped. Miss A-ri somehow only steps on safe ground.”
The air was thick with salty dampness, and the ground felt unpleasantly soft beneath my feet.
Add the bone fragments scattered carelessly everywhere and the smell of rotting meat, and it was a hell unto itself.
But it was not only unpleasant.
There were also many mysterious fragments and murals.
“... There are so many murals.”
“They are very old paintings. Most are from the Stone Age.”
There had been nothing like this in the chairman’s memories Eun-sol had told us about.
Considering the period, perhaps the research had only been in its early stages then?
Maybe they had not yet properly dug this far underground.
As I got lost in thought, the Forerunner suddenly began saying something strange.
“Have you thought about why the Project is called On the Origin of Species?”
“Can you tell us?”
“Of course. On the Origin of Species is the title of a very famous book. It was written by the great figure who first revealed the principles of evolution.”
On the Origin of Species, the theory of evolution.
“You both know about the theory of evolution, right?”
“...”
“I know the basics.”
Honestly, I didn’t know much!
At times like this, I felt a little embarrassed about how poorly I had paid attention in school.
Even if I didn’t know, A-ri probably did.
“Living things accumulate genetic variations over time. Sometimes those mutations benefit an individual or do no harm, but in many cases, they are harmful. Then...”
“You can skip the general explanation of the theory of evolution.”
I was a little disappointed by A-ri’s words.
I wanted to hear a little more about the theory of evolution too.
“I am glad you know the basics. Then, Miss A-ri, have you ever considered this?”
“...”
“Must the principle of evolution apply only to biological bodies?”
“...”
“Perhaps the principle of evolution applies to souls as well.”
“Please explain in more detail.”
“The core of the theory of evolution is natural selection. Mutations in the body or soul occur almost randomly, but...”
At some point, the Forerunner naturally began explaining souls as part of evolution.
“... Among them, only souls that acquire mutations suited to survival live on and continue to exist.”
“Mutations suited to survival?”
“That refers to us.”
“What does that...”
The Forerunner’s next words contained an idea I had never considered before.
“The beginning and end of the world, the Loop. This is a law of the cosmos. We, the Regressors, are beings capable of enduring the Loop. In other words, we are naturally selected souls.”
“Ah?”
“Miss A-ri, do you understand? A Regressor is the end result of a human soul’s evolution. That is what we are. We evolved a little faster than our fellow humans.”
Footnotes:
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