WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 683: Room 301, Curse Room - ‘The Origin of Species’ (27)
──────
- Kim A-ri
Around noon, the four of us gathered somewhere quiet: the house Mook-seong and I shared inside Room 301.
As soon as we met face-to-face, Jin-cheol cautiously spoke to Mook-seong.
“Um... Agent.”
“What is it?”
“The Chat Window is, um, a little...”
“Why? Is the lag that bad?”
“...It’s only a little distracting.”
The Chat Window was not currently bad enough to be unusable.
Just as Jin-cheol said, it was only slightly inconvenient.
What worried me was not the inconvenience itself. It was the very fact that something had gone wrong with a blessing.
That also meant that something might have happened to Mook-seong.
“Are you all right?”
“Of course. Do I look like there’s a problem?”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
What was the Price of Defying Heaven for One More Chance?
In the Gate Room, it had been roughly thirty years of aging.
In reality, it had meant losing one’s qualification as a Regressor.
In the Curse Room...
“Hey, hey! We’re all busy people, so let’s get down to business.”
Right. Mook-seong was right. Enough of this.
It was not a problem we could solve just by worrying among ourselves.
“Grandpa, isn’t the problem that we aren’t actually busy?”
“Ha ha! Elena’s right.”
Under the original plan, it would have been difficult for us to gather so leisurely in the middle of the day.
I was supposed to help Song-i, Elena was supposed to watch over Eun-sol, and Mook-seong and Jin-cheol were supposed to keep an eye on Song-i’s parents.
The plan had changed, making those arrangements meaningless.
Plan B was for Eun-sol and Song-i to retrace their past lives exactly and recognize their Original Wishes.
It sounded plausible, but one problem had come up.
“Don’t you think we’re all kind of in limbo?”
“Yeah.”
“Honestly, I do.”
“Hmm... I’m not sure what we should be doing.”
Approaching Eun-sol felt unsettling, while Song-i said she would handle things alone and told us not to help.
That left the roles of Elena, Mook-seong, Jin-cheol, and me in an awkward position.
Still, since we had gathered, we should share the information each of us had collected.
I told everyone what had happened with Song-i.
As I finished, Jin-cheol spoke with a worried expression.
“Did Song-i report it to the Management Bureau earlier?”
“Yeah.”
“What happens now? Won’t those alien bastards come and kill Song-i?”
“Probably...”
“Are we seriously going to sit back and watch?”
Mook-seong answered.
“We should leave her alone. Wasn’t this always a possible risk with the plan?”
“That’s...”
“The goal is for her to recognize her wish, even if we have to accept the risk. Even if Song-i dies at the aliens’ hands, we should leave her alone.”
“What if she asks us for help?”
“Then we help her. It’s only a five-minute walk away, right? If you run, or A-ri flies, it won’t even take a minute.”
Basically, we would not intervene whether Song-i lived or died, but if she asked for help, we would help.
That settled the conversation about Song-i.
Naturally, the subject shifted to Eun-sol.
“Executive Director Lee Eun-sol’s Shanghai Project at Daeyang Group failed. Because of that, she temporarily stepped away from the front lines to rest and reflect after severe stress.”
That was the public story.
“The excuse itself sounds plausible. It’s not unusual for someone to step away from the front lines and reflect after ruining a business deal.”
Elena took out her phone and showed us a message.
“You see this, right?”
Since Elena’s role had been to help Eun-sol, she had stayed in contact with her through messages until yesterday.
“She says the three of them, including Eun-sol, are about to take a trip to Seoraksan. They might already be hiking by now.”
Mook-seong asked as if he could not believe it.
“A trip? The three of them? With who?”
“She’s going with her mother and her second older brother.”
“I can understand her mother, but what’s with the second older brother?”
“She says she had a huge fight with him at work. Their mother suggested the three of them take a short trip within the country so the siblings could make up...”
After a moment of silence, Mook-seong muttered.
“...Something about this situation is strange.”
Elena answered at once.
“No matter what anyone says, this is a Curse Room. The End Times are approaching, yet they’re going on a trip. That alone is unusual, even if Eun-sol is deeply immersed in her role as Executive Director Lee Eun-sol...”
“Exactly! Aliens must be crawling all around them, but doesn’t Eun-sol’s behavior feel a little too carefree?”
Jin-cheol looked puzzled.
“Is that so strange? Um, what I mean is, considering the nature of Plan B, shouldn’t she be acting unlike a participant in the first place?”
“That’s...”
“If you see it as the actions of Lee Eun-sol, Executive Director of Daeyang Group and Chairman Lee Seok-hwan’s third daughter, rather than Participant Lee Eun-sol, it doesn’t seem strange.”
“Hmm, you’re not wrong, Jin-cheol. What do you think, A-ri?”
My thoughts were similar to Jin-cheol’s, but a little different.
“Basically, I agree with him. She’s proceeding after abandoning her identity as a participant, right? Having no sense of danger and not being aware of the Yith race is not absentminded behavior. It’s committed method acting. She’s doing well. But...”
I looked around at the others and asked.
“I’m asking because I don’t know much about this, but is it common for children over thirty who hold major positions in a huge conglomerate to go on a ‘make-up trip’ with their mother?”
The room fell quiet for a moment.
“Eun-sol and this brother of hers aren’t college students. Aren’t they both high-ranking executives at a major corporation? But a make-up trip? Arranged by their mother? What do you think?”
Soon, my companions made their sad confessions.
“I don’t know. The only memories I have of my family are running from a dictator.”
“I don’t have siblings, and I’ve never worked at a normal company...”
“Hey, hey, I’ve forgotten what my parents even looked like.”
Every one of them knew even less about normal society than I did, and I was born in the Hotel.
After letting out a deep sigh, I said what I really wanted to say.
“Phew... Anyway, this is what I mean. If you examine Eun-sol’s actions one by one, none of them are logically impossible. But when you put them together, there’s something strange about them.”
“Hmm... If that’s what you think, A-ri.”
“Is that why you told Song-i not to contact Eun-sol?”
“That’s right. Something is strange about Eun-sol right now. How should I put it? It feels like she’s being made to dance on a stage set by some huge unseen hand!”
Mook-seong looked worried.
“Originally, Eun-sol was supposed to protect us with the Flute of Rest. If she’s being manipulated by the Yith race herself, that’s a serious problem.”
“I’ve also had this thought. Maybe this was exactly what she was like before she came to the Hotel.”
“What do you mean?”
“If being toyed with by the Yith race was Eun-sol’s original state, then it means we still have to watch the current situation play out. That’s Plan B.”
Once the conversation reached that point, Mook-seong brought up something rather chilling.
“Wow! Come to think of it, isn’t Plan B only possible because we’re in the Hotel?”
“What?”
“Think about it! If this were reality and we belonged to the Management Bureau, Eun-sol would be subject to Disposal no matter how things turned out.”
“...”
It was the kind of thing that made you laugh, yet felt too chilling to treat as a joke.
The mood around us instantly turned cold.
Noticing it, Mook-seong added as if making an excuse.
“I-I mean, that’s how the Management Bureau handles things. If someone showed a weakness like Eun-sol’s against aliens that play with people’s minds? Even if we drove out the Yith race, Eun-sol would have to be disposed of afterward. Because...”
“Because she’s already Corrupted.”
“...That’s it. So a plan like Plan B, where we accept the risk of Corruption to gain information, would be difficult to make in reality. Success or failure aside, the agents or employees sent in would all become subject to Disposal.”
“It’s a plan that’s only possible in the Hotel.”
“It is.
This is Room 301, Curse Room - ‘On the Origin of Species.’
One of the rooms inside Hotel Pioneer.
Even if Eun-sol becomes ‘Corrupted’ by the Yith race, it’ll be fine.
As long as we somehow escape Room 301, every problem will be resolved.
No matter how much Eun-sol undergoes mutation, Corruption, distortion, or contamination...
The Hotel will return every negative change that occurred in Room 301 to nothing.
* * *
- Lee Eun-sol
Out of nowhere, we started hiking in the morning.
“Phew...”
While I kept sighing, a voice beside me complained without pause.
“This is because of you.”
“...”
“Ugh! Lee Eun-sol, this is because of you!”
My brother had been complaining for a while that he had been dragged all the way here because of me.
The situation itself was childish and absurd.
I found it ridiculous. My companions probably would too.
Let’s go through it one by one.
First, it was funny enough that two grown adults well past thirty had fought at work, but it was even funnier that they had come on a make-up trip because of it.
Second, since we arrived at Seoraksan, Jin-uk had been complaining to me for two hours. His childish attitude was ridiculous.
Third, I had guessed this childish turn of events, but there had been no way to stop it. Why? Because Mom said we were going on a trip.
“How did I end up hiking with an idiot like you?”
“...Because Mother said we were going on a trip.”
Right. Our family had always been like this.
From the outside, people might say, Wow! Chairman Lee Seok-hwan, one of South Korea’s foremost founders! What charisma!
But at home, Mother was the law.
A ridiculous plan for two Executive Directors of a major conglomerate to take forced leave and go on a trip?
If my brother and I had planned the itinerary and told Father, he would have asked if we had lost our minds.
Once Mother decided it, nobody, including Father, said a word.
“Hey, I said a few things, and you ran straight to Mom to tattle on me?”
“...I never told Mom about what happened between us.”
“Don’t lie. Then how did she know to talk about making up and all that?”
“Who knows.”
“Seriously! I said a few things. Did you have to get that upset?”
“...”
“Hey, why are you making me out to be the bad guy? When I messed up before, you also...”
“Can’t you just shut up for once?”
If you only heard the conversation, nobody would think it came from two Executive Directors of a major conglomerate.
They would think we were immature siblings who did not act their age.
The funny thing was that I was enjoying this situation in my own way.
It felt as though both my brother and I had returned to our teenage years.
“You have way more stamina than before.”
“...”
“Wouldn’t you normally be out of breath near the entrance? Or am I wrong?”
“I was never that bad.”
I was a Hotel participant, after all.
Wouldn’t it be humiliating if I collapsed from exhaustion after just a couple of hours of hiking?
By then, my brother seemed tired of complaining and began making small talk.
For example, he told me that his laptop had recently started malfunctioning.
“You know the laptop I use, right? Something has been wrong with it lately. Windows suddenly become garbled, or a black grid pattern pops up on the screen.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. A virus? Malicious code? There are too many possible causes.”
Like many men, my brother was interested in IT devices.
So he spoke with a hint of smugness.
“Eun-sol, do you know the most universal solution when a computer has a problem like this?”
“Call an assistant.”
“...Other than that.”
“Everything gets fixed if you call an assistant.”
“Seriously! Sometimes you’re impossible to talk to!”
“You’re being annoying. I’ll listen, so tell me.”
Jin-uk shook his head and continued.
“System restore.”
“System restore?”
“Let’s use the flu as an example. If you get a sore throat, it doesn’t mean there’s only a problem with your uvula. You know that much, right?”
“I suppose so. The pain might be in one small area, but the infection itself would be throughout the respiratory tract.”
“Computers are similar. The visible symptom might be only a few garbled windows, but the actual problem is often much more widespread. It’s the result of hundreds or thousands of lines of code becoming warped again and again.”
“Hmm...”
“Things like that don’t necessarily happen because of viruses or malware, either. Problems can pile up over time even through normal use.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“When a computer has a problem, it’s incredibly difficult to identify exactly where the problem is. Then you fix that part, and a problem comes up somewhere else. So in many cases, the convenient and universal solution is ‘system restore.’”
“...”
“You return the computer to a time when it was fine. Technology has improved recently. You can preserve data like photos, videos, and documents while restoring only the OS, various drivers, and programs.”
A problem in A did not mean that only A was the problem.
In many cases, large and small cracks had occurred across a much broader area, and A was only where the result appeared.
Therefore, the most universal solution was system restore.
Without asking questions or investigating, you simply returned the computer to when it had been fine.
Technology had advanced enough that you could preserve documents, photos, and videos while restoring only the programs.
“...People and computers are really similar in some ways.”
“But people don’t have a system restore function like computers do.”
“Do they really not?”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
I thought about the Hotel.
As we proceeded through Curse Rooms, countless problems arose in both our bodies and minds.
The Hotel’s response was similar to how someone managed a computer.
It preserved the ‘data’, meaning the memories formed in the Curse Room, while ‘restoring’ everything else to the point when we entered the Curse Room.
System restore was a universal and excellent solution for managing not just computers, but humans too.
I nodded with mild interest when my brother brought up something else.
“Still, system restore has a weakness.”
“A weakness?”
“There are plenty of viruses and malware that exploit it.”
There was a weakness in restoring time to when the computer had been fine?
“What is it?”
“You really don’t know much about computers. This is common sense.”
“...Quit showing off.”
Jin-uk shrugged and explained.
“Let’s say the restore point is December 1. Near the end of December, you use the computer, notice a problem, and restore it to December 1. Then every problem that happened during December disappears. You understand?”
“Yeah.”
“Then what about problems that happened before December?”
“...”
“Malware can be installed before the restore point. Not in December, but in October or September. No, it could have been installed as early as January.”
“...”
“Then system restore can’t easily solve the problem.”
If malware had already been installed before the restore point, restoring the system would not easily solve it.
From the perspective of the one restoring it, the system administrator, the ‘infected state’ was the original state to begin with.
“...That’s a little creepy. What do you do in that case?”
“Well, that would be...”
At that exact moment,
“Eun-sol, Jin-uk. Shall we take a short break around here?”
Mother’s smiling voice called out from ahead.
Footnotes:
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