WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈

Episode 71: Room 101, Curse Room - ‘Common Sense-Altering Media’ (5)

──────

* * *

Fourth Attempt

* * *

- Cha Jin-cheol

I turned around in shock. The broadcasting station had suddenly vanished.

Enormous cliffs. A single rope stretched between them. I was barely keeping my balance on it.

A schoolgirl stood on the other side.

... I think I get it. That girl. That monster was the cause of all these strange phenomena. I just had to kill her!

I kicked off the rope and sprang through the air. Five seconds, maybe? Before long, I reached the schoolgirl.

Up close, she looked rather cute. She was probably quite popular at school.

Her expression was unsettling, though. She stared at me without a trace of emotion, like a mannequin.

It didn't matter. She was still a monster. One hit would be enough!

I brought down my fist.

...

The world collapsed again.

A jungle suddenly appeared. Monkeys lunged at me from every direction.

I hurled the monkeys away with all my strength. I burst one's head with a single blow, grabbed another by the leg and slammed it into the ground. I grabbed two, one in each hand, and crushed them at the same time.

After killing around fifteen monkeys like that...

...

Everything collapsed again.

This time, the entire world was filled with rocky mountains. Rocks everywhere, front and back, left and right. I flailed my limbs wildly, smashing my surroundings as I thought.

I could never win like this. I had fallen into an endless hell I could never escape.

Was it that schoolgirl from before? How was she using such power?

Bang! Bang!

... I looked down.

A fierce pain shot through my chest.

...

My consciousness was growing hazy.

Within the nightmare, I vaguely felt the “me” waking up.

What the hell was this? So right now, I-

* * *

- Elena

I wiped away my tears and looked at the broadcasting station.

It looked like a battlefield.

More than ten broadcasting station employees had been crushed to death, while Grandfather Mook-seong could only groan with both legs shattered.

...

Bang!

...

Song-i was walking around with a gun, confirming the kills.

I thought back on what had happened.

Jin-cheol, who hadn't come to his senses until the end, had nearly killed Grandfather Mook-seong. I had tried to shoot “Mother” afterward, but failed.

I thought I was going to die too.

But Song-i arrived late and brought the situation under control.

She flicked her hand behind Jin-cheol, and he suddenly turned and ran in the wrong direction. He fell on his own, crashed into walls, and rampaged around.

Broadcast station employees and security guards rushed in to stop him, only to be beaten to death as a group.

At that moment, he didn't look human. He looked like a gorilla grabbing people and throwing them around.

Song-i watched from a distance as Jin-cheol caused chaos like King Kong tearing apart New York. Then she walked up with a gun and fired several shots at Jin-cheol. That ended it.

Jin-cheol's mother had died long before that amid the chaos, but once Jin-cheol began fighting the station employees, there was no sign that the curse would lift. There was probably no other choice.

Afterward, Song-i began shooting the remaining employees dead.

As I stood there, half out of my mind, a camera and microphone suddenly approached me.

“Hello! Miss Elena Ivanov? I'm Producer Cha. We received countless reports that an interesting event had taken place at the broadcasting station during the live broadcast.

Could you perhaps tell us what-”

Bang!

Bang!

“Huh? Huh? Huh?” Before I could react, Song-i had shot everyone from the producer to the cameraman.

In reality, it would have been difficult to kill everyone like this, even with a gun.

At the very least, they would have run.

But because of the curse, people saw death as an entertaining event or show.

They didn't run. Even as the person beside them died, they smiled as they died too.

...

Come to think of it, why had Jin-cheol, infected by the curse, gotten so angry?

What was the big deal about killing his mother in this strange world?

By this world's “common sense,” it should have been something to laugh off. He must have been an excessively devoted son.

“Elena. Be careful.”

“... Ah. Th-thanks.”

Song-i approached Grandfather Mook-seong.

He had managed some first aid in the meantime.

“Can you hold on?”

“I managed to patch up one leg, but the other is beyond me. I'll need someone to support me.”

“Get some rest. I'll clean things up.”

Song-i then continued confirming the kills while replenishing her blood from the nearby corpses.

Grandfather made a comment as he watched.

“We've got another first-rate junior agent here, don't we? Are young people these days normally this capable? Senior, you worry about the strangest things.”

...

Someone entered the broadcasting station.

* * *

- Han Ga-in

[User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)

Date: Day 23

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

Sage’s Advice: 3]

Come to think of it, I really was doing everything in this room!

I felt like I gathered all the information, and I did the most searching too, right?

Wasn't it about time I got an Inheritance?

When I went to the next Sanctuary of Blessings and met that damn Owl, I should slam down an Inheritance and shout, “Look at this, you bastard!”

I was already happy. Besides, hadn't I learned a lot during this fourth attempt too?

I didn't know what power the “villain” had, but I had a rough idea of who the “villain” was and what the general scenario was.

I spent so much time happily thinking that the painful time in the taxi passed quickly.

I had so much information to bring back to everyone.

Feeling like the head of a household bringing home pizza or chicken after payday, I arrived at the broadcasting station with a broad grin on my face.

?

??

???

What the hell? Why had the broadcasting station turned into a war zone?

I was so shocked that I completely lost it.

* * *

...

What the hell had happened?

After hearing the explanation from my companions at the broadcasting station, I was speechless.

So...

Jin-cheol's mother had followed him here. He probably planned to go to the broadcasting station alone when he was still in his right mind, but while he'd lost his reason, his mother must have insisted on coming with him.

A massive battle that nobody expected.

Because of it, Jin-cheol was dead, Grandfather's legs were shattered so badly that he could barely move, and only Elena, Song-i, and I remained.

The three of us gathered in the broadcasting station, which had practically become a battlefield.

“...”

“...”

“What do you think we should do?”

“Doesn't it look like we'll have to make another attempt? That boar bastard is dead, so there's a huge hole in our fighting strength.”

Elena voiced her concern.

“But Grandfather, this was already the fourth attempt. It seems the difficulty rises from the fifth attempt onward.”

“Well, what can we do? We have to try our best.”

“Elder, can you move?”

“...”

“I think you need to tell us honestly.”

“It'll be impossible unless someone keeps supporting me.”

Song-i finally said what everyone had been thinking.

“Then why don't you leave the broadcasting station and escape, Grandfather? The reason you haven't been judged to have escaped even though your family isn't nearby must be because you're still inside the station. I think if you leave the station and keep moving for around ten minutes, you'll be able to escape.”

“... I'll do that. It's better if I don't get in the way.”

“Go and rest first. We'll find out as much as we can, and if possible, we'll even obtain an Inheritance.”

“Do your best. Well, I'll hear about it once I leave anyway, but did you find anything through your searching?”

Had I been the only one who actually searched properly? Everyone looked at me.

“First, I don't know exactly how the curse began spreading. But I found out who caused this and why.

There was a student named Kim Sang-min at Shindong High School. Judging by the articles published afterward, he seemed to have suffered severe school bullying. There were eight students who mainly bullied him.

When he couldn't get help at school, he sought help outside, filed a lawsuit, and his parents fought hard too.

But he lost the case at the time. According to the articles, the conclusion was that he had fabricated violence that never happened due to delusions caused by mental illness. Other articles argued that the mental illness itself might have been caused by the extreme bullying.

In short, there was an argument over whether he developed a mental illness because he was bullied, or imagined being bullied because he had a mental illness. The court accepted the latter and ended up sending the victim to a hospital.”

“Why does the broadcasting station come into that story?”

“The biggest reason the victim lost the lawsuit was the news coverage. An ABS reporter investigated and published several articles saying that the victim had always been mentally ill and regularly caused disturbances at school, and that the other students were actually the victims. Those articles were used as evidence in court.”

“Listening to that, isn't it possible the trial was right? This Sang-min kid might have really been insane, caused disturbances at school, and imagined that the other students were bullying him.”

“Song-i's right. I don't know the real truth either. But since Kim Sang-min seems to be the villain in this scenario, I'm explaining things from his perspective for now. We need to understand where he's hiding and what he's doing.”

“Keep explaining. I understand the broadcasting station, but where did New World Hospital come from?”

“After Kim Sang-min lost the trial, he began receiving treatment at New World Hospital. Then reports from a different perspective began to emerge. You could say Kim Sang-min gained people on his side.

New World Hospital was a psychiatric hospital, and its director personally treated Kim Sang-min. The director heard about the patient's situation during treatment and seemed to be somewhat persuaded by what the patient said.

So the director began saying things from the patient's side, that the perpetrators had bullied the patient so severely that they caused his mental illness. Since the director of a famous hospital was saying the exact opposite, reporters poured out coverage supporting that side too.

Then the hospital suddenly disappeared, and exactly three days later, the world ended.”

“The hospital disappeared?”

“Yes. It was an incident that became a huge topic three days before the world ended. The hospital literally vanished. Building and all.”

“Could Kim Sang-min have gained some immense power at that point?”

“Probably?”

After I finished the rough explanation, everyone fell silent and began thinking.

“So you think the culprit behind all this is that little brat named Kim Sang-min?”

“Yes. It explains the other students being tortured underground, and why this started at the hospital before dragging in the broadcasting station.”

“Hmm. From that bastard's point of view, let's say the students underground, the broadcasting station, and even the entire world are all targets of revenge.

Then why was the hospital the first target? From Kim Sang-min's point of view, wasn't the hospital his benefactor? Why did he make the hospital strange too? From what you saw, it sounds like all the nurses and patients became monsters.”

“I'll have to look into that further. He might have simply gone insane.”

“The scenario is cliché. It doesn't seem too important who the culprit is. What's important is how a mere human high school student destroyed the world.”

“Do you think there's a separate culprit with supernatural powers?”

“Who knows? There might be another culprit, or that brat may have gotten hold of some treasure too powerful for him to handle.”

“Where do you think we should search now?”

“The upper floors of the broadcasting station, right?”

“What should we be looking for?”

“I'll tell you exactly. There's only one thing you need to search for now. That kid Kim Sang-min, who is presumed to have caused this disaster. You need to find him.

He'll be somewhere in this broadcasting station, or in the ‘vanished hospital’ that can be reached through the broadcasting station. Kill him if possible. If it's too difficult, we'll all come together next time and kill him. I think that will end it.”

After the conversation ended, Grandfather Mook-seong sighed and left the broadcasting station.

Three people remained.

We needed to search the upper floors of the broadcasting station and the “vanished hospital” accessible through it, then find the villain.

Footnotes:

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