WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈

Episode 67: Room 101, Curse Room - ‘Common Sense-Altering Media’ (1)

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Third Attempt

* * *

[User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)

Date: Day 22

Current Location: Level 1, Room 101 (Curse Room - Common Sense-Altering Media)

Sage’s Advice: 3]

I should go underground. I had a feeling I might find more by searching the upper floors, but that was too risky.

The upper floors were packed with offices, which meant they were full of people.

The Management Bureau badge was practically an official pass, but it could only make people move aside. I couldn't exactly drive them out of the building, so heading somewhere crowded was too dangerous.

Since I was alone this time, it would be better to explore the basement, then figure out a plan with everyone on the next attempt and search the building as a group.

---Click. Click.

The sound of my shoes echoed through the corridor. There wasn't a single person around. It was fortunate that the curse-induced headache and ringing in my ears had disappeared, but this was strange.

Employees would have cars parked in the underground lot, so shouldn't there be people coming up from there? Could a place really be this empty?

Maybe it was proof that I was heading in the right direction.

---Click. Click.

Being alone was unsettling. I'd been through so much in the hotel that seeing human corpses no longer shook me, yet this kind of fear hadn't completely disappeared.

I was nearing the underground parking lot. There was a security office by the entrance. I could just let the badge work its magic again, right?

Gasp.

I instinctively covered my nose and stepped back.

A terrible stench. An unbearable foul odor wafted from the parking lot.

It smelled like the stench of excrement from some ancient pit toilet.

Like rotting food waste.

The smell was so bad that I couldn't bring myself to enter the lot.

Which meant I should probably go in.

It was clearly abnormal.

It was strange for a parking lot to smell like this, but it was even stranger that nobody was doing anything about it.

Only after enduring the urge to vomit and moving closer did I realize the stench was coming from the security office.

Could there possibly be someone in an office like that?

I went only as far as the area around the office. Ever since entering Room 101, I had gained the ability to detect people infected by the curse.

Just approaching an infected person gave me a headache and ringing in my ears, so I could tell whether someone was nearby.

Even when I approached right up to the door, nothing happened. It didn't seem like there was anyone infected by the curse inside.

Still, as I got closer, it became even clearer that the security office was the source of the smell.

At least I should find out what was in there. Whether it was human waste or rotting food, I wanted to see it and get it over with. I threw open the security office door.

... I saw hell.

...

What would happen if a person were trapped in a small space, unable to leave, doing nothing but eating and relieving themselves over and over?

The floor, walls, trash can, every surface was smeared with human waste and reeked of it. Traces of preserved food, like canned goods, were piled everywhere. Rotten food. Unidentifiable scribbles covered every wall.

Yet something was more horrifying than all that gruesome scenery.

A human being... was alive.

Something that had abandoned all hope and become an animal, existing in nothing but fear. The end of a person's despair, after being born human and giving up on living as one.

A skeletal figure saw me and staggered closer.

Perhaps they had gouged at their own eyes because they didn't want to see what frightened them. The area around their eyes was covered in wounds. Had they mutilated their ears because they didn't want to hear frightening sounds? More than half of each ear had been torn off. Their entire body was covered in what looked like self-inflicted wounds, and perhaps because they hadn't received proper treatment, their left arm and right leg could barely move.

"You... Management Bureau... Why did you come so late?"

"..."

"Eek! Hngh... Isn't it fragrant?"

"..."

"All the decent food is gone. It's been a month. What do you think I've been eating?"

"..."

The skeletal figure crawled across the floor, moved a bony finger, and pointed at a sheet of paper.

There was only one clean thing amid that hellish ruin. A laminated sheet of paper.

A spotless piece of paper that looked as though it belonged to another world.

When I picked it up, the man staggered, then collapsed into the hell of excrement and food scraps.

"... Would you like to come out with me?"

"Please... show mercy. That thing on your right."

...

---Bang!

I closed the security office door and came back out.

The horrific stench remained. But there was no headache or ringing in my ears.

Now that he had found peace, the man was someone who had not been infected by the curse.

Maybe avoiding infection in the beginning had simply been luck. Perhaps he felt something was wrong the instant he watched TV and immediately turned it off.

After that, had he been able to avoid contact with people because he worked in that secluded underground spot?

But he had only been left alone. While the man struggled to hold on to his sanity, the world had become consumed by madness.

Unable to take even a single step into the frightening world outside, he had rotted away inside that security office...

I took out the laminated paper I had brought with me. The paper itself was clean, but honestly, I didn't want to keep carrying something that had absorbed the security office's stench.

It contained three extremely simple precautions.

1. Do not look inside the cars in the parking lot.

2. Do not turn around on the underground stairs.

3. When looking for something in the underground storage room, do not turn on the lights. Use a flashlight.

Simple instructions. I read them several times until I had memorized them, then threw the paper away.

For now, I decided to explore the basement further according to the precautions.

After crossing the parking lot for a while without looking at the cars, I found stairs leading down to the second basement level. It said not to turn around, right?

I went down to the second basement level while looking straight ahead. As expected, nothing happened.

There was a supply room, restrooms, offices, and a room where strange machinery was operating.

There was no one anywhere.

I checked several rooms, but found nothing in particular.

Underground storage room.

The paper had listed a precaution for when looking for something in the underground storage room.

Was there something there?

I took the stairs down again, heading for the third basement level.

---Click... Screeeech.

The moment I took a few steps down the stairs leading to the third basement level, I began to hear something scraping the floor with metal behind me.

...

It had said not to turn around on the underground stairs.

I kept walking down without making a sound.

Little by little, I began to feel a headache.

Only after reaching the third basement corridor did I turn around.

There was nothing there.

It was getting harder and harder to understand what was going on. I had started exploring to learn something, yet it felt as though the number of things I didn't know was only increasing.

What was the point of the precautions in the first place?

There were no other rooms on the third basement level. At the end of the corridor, a flashlight hung on the wall in front of a huge door.

Was this the underground storage room? It had said not to turn on the lights in the storage room.

After opening the storage room door, I ignored the light switch as instructed, took the flashlight, and searched all around.

It was an ordinary storage room. Stacks of clean A4 paper, printer supplies, spare chairs and tables. The kind of place people would come when something in the office broke or they ran out of supplies.

I rummaged through all sorts of things for what felt like nearly twenty minutes, but there was nothing unusual. No people, nothing strange.

...

I had learned practically nothing. All I had discovered by coming underground was a security guard who had fled the curse and died in agony, along with a sheet listing precautions.

Was I thinking about this the wrong way?

Then I realized one thing.

Why had I come underground? To survive? No.

I hadn't come down here to survive. I had come to obtain information.

Reading the precautions on that paper and following them perfectly so I could proceed safely.

That was the sort of thing a horror movie protagonist would do to survive.

What I needed to do was the exact opposite.

I needed to break the precautions instead. My job was to find out what happened when I broke them, even if it meant getting beaten to death in the process. Seung-yeop would take care of escaping.

It was time for me to die for everyone.

* * *

1. Do not look inside the cars in the parking lot.

2. Do not turn around on the underground stairs.

3. When looking for something in the underground storage room, do not turn on the lights. Bring a flashlight.

I looked over the precautions again.

Now, I needed to look inside the cars in the parking lot, turn around on the underground stairs, and turn on the lights in the underground storage room.

I went back up to the parking lot and looked around. The stench that stabbed at my nose returned, along with easily dozens of parked cars.

It felt strange all over again. With this many cars, shouldn't the owners have come to the parking lot at least once? And no matter how distorted common sense had become because of the curse, could anyone really not notice this smell?

Thinking back, when I first entered Room 101, my fake family and I had torn apart raw duck meat and called it fresh as we ate it. With common sense altered to that extent, perhaps this stench smelled pleasant too.

First, I should look inside a car.

A car whose tinted windows made it almost impossible to see inside.

The moment I approached and pressed my face close to the window...

I was so startled that I fell backward.

There was someone inside. And I hadn't felt a headache even as I approached this closely.

There was someone who had not been infected by the curse.

I got back up, composed myself, and looked inside the car again.

It was an incomprehensible sight.

It wasn't the interior of a car. I was clearly looking through a car window, yet an unfamiliar space that had nothing to do with a car was visible inside. A sturdy bed that looked as though it had been made from a single block of iron. Handcuffs mounted to it.

An unknown person lay bound to the bed in handcuffs.

Drool trickled from their mouth, and the hospital bed was already covered in ugly stains. They had clearly been restrained for a long time without proper care.

I tapped on the window, but there was no response.

It felt like the outside and inside of the car were somehow different spaces.

---Bang!

I broke the window.

Only then did the emaciated person inside look at me with unfocused eyes.

"Are you all right? Where is this? Who are you-"

"Hngh... Hngh... Student..."

"... Yes?"

"Call the teacher. Call the teacher."

"Which teacher are you talking about?"

"Teacher teacher teacher teacher teacher teacher teacher teacher teacher teacher teacher teacher teacher teacher teacher teacher teacher teacher teacher teacher."

-Thud!

"Hey! I can't help you unless you explain what teacher you're talking about."

---Screeeech.

Something... the sound of metal scraping the floor.

The man's voice dropped to a near whisper.

"It's coming... It's coming... The nurse is coming. Mister. Student. Get me out. Get me out."

He begged me, yet couldn't even raise his voice.

As if something truly terrifying were approaching.

This man wasn't sane. Since I didn't have a headache, he hadn't been infected by the curse. He was simply insane for reasons unrelated to the curse.

Normal communication was impossible.

The moment I sighed and stepped away from the car, the window I had shattered with my gun repaired itself.

...

I was past the point of being surprised by something like that.

I broke the windows of two other cars and looked inside in the same way, but there was no real difference. Each held a mad person tied to a bed, and I couldn't understand a word they said.

Did he mean a doctor by ‘teacher’? A nurse? Was that place a hospital?

Next, I would go to the underground stairs.

I would turn around as I went down and find out what had been following me.

Before that, I filled the magazine with my blood.

Footnotes:

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