Escaping the Mystery Hotel

[User: Han Kain (Wisdom)

Date: Day 18

Current Location: Floor 1, Room 104 (Cursed Room – Preparatory Selective, Hotel High School)

Sage’s Advice: 3]

Lee Eunsol (Teacher): Come out.

It began.

The hour hand of the clock in the dormitory room was pointing at 1. At 1 am, everyone should be asleep except for the few night-shift security guards and teachers. 

Tonight, we will be escaping this place.

*

After preparing a few textbooks and a lighter, I left the room.

Clomp. Clomp.

Footsteps. Even though I was treading as softly as possible, my footsteps were still echoing across the dark and silent dormitory corridor. After some thought, I decided to take my shoes off and walk on my socks. 

My room was located on the 3rd floor. There weren’t guards on every floor so it was a breeze until the 1st floor, but the problem was the main entrance of the dormitory on the 1st floor – there was a security guard and the doors were locked.

I could see a fire alarm on top of the stairs. My plan was to use this to alert and attract the person guarding the entrance but… would this work? 

For starters, I built up several books into a tower and lit them on fire. I had been desperately wanting to burn textbooks when I was going to high school and it seemed that this was where my dream came true.

—- Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!

The fire alarm went off right on time when I got to the 1st floor. Hiding behind the wall, I watched the guard room and saw the guard immediately dashing out.

While he was gone, I arrived in front of the main entrance.

Han Kain (Student): I’m here!

— BBIK!

An unlocking sound went off as Eunsol-noona opened the door with her teacher card from the outside. 

“Let’s go. The car’s right here.”

I left the building and immediately found a black SUV. Where were the girls?

After making my way to the car, I saw that Elena and Ahri were already in the back seats while Grandpa Mooksung was driving in the front.

We thus started our 5-man escape plan.

*

“How did you come out so fast?” I asked.

“I just followed Ahri. She walked to the main entrance and looked at the guard, and the guard just opened the door herself!”

It seemed that Ahri used the hypnosis which she had cast on me last time.

“Three of you, be quiet. Don’t you know you guys have to be silent? Go to the back, lie down and put this over you.”

Eunsol-noona said before throwing a black piece of cloth towards us. It was the same colour as the chair. Since it was also nighttime, it would be very difficult to see us if we hid ourselves using this blanket.

We headed to the trunk which was connected to the back seats and covered ourselves with the cloth.

“Ahht, sorry. I couldn’t see properly.”

“No, it’s okay.”

“I told you to be quiet!”

It was hard to hide as 3 people in such a tiny place. My hands and feet were constantly pushing into something soft. As for what that was, let’s try not to think about it…

*

— Knock knock!

“Hi. May I ask why you’re leaving this late at night?”

“Hello~. We have a business in the city.”

“Can I see your card?”

“Here.”

“Miss Lee Eunsol. Yep confirmed, thank you. But as you know, you have to apply for a late-night leave beforehand.”

“We have urgent business.”

“Whether it’s urgent or not, we cannot let you go. Sorry.”

“Haha, buddy,” Grandpa Mooksung chimed in. “We’re going to grab some teaching materials. Are you gonna be this strict about it?”

“Ahht, my apologies. But looking for teaching materials this late at night?”

“We’re not going there to buy, we’re going to receive it from someone. My old friend in the town has prepped it for us.”

“Umm…”

“Hey, listen. Are you really going to be this strict about it?! Did you not check our IDs already?”

“O, okay. But please apply beforehand next time.”

*

It looked like we should be able to leave soon.

Even in a place as strange as this Hotel High School, age seemed to be a very powerful tool. Well, that might be nothing strange though because pressuring with muscles also worked yesterday. This preparatory selective school had a similar culture to Korean schools in strange places.

After passing the main entrance, we started feeling less tense.

Did we escape already? We already left the school premises so there shouldn’t be any problems, right?

The others removed the blanket and got up as if under the same impression.

“It should be fine now, right?”

“Who knows. We did leave the school though. I guess we should be able to escape by going down this road?”

“Strictly speaking, we are still in the school premises. I was going through several documents at the office yesterday. It seems that this crazy school is the legal owner of a large piece of land outside the main gates,” replied Grandpa Mooksung.

“Does that mean we have to leave the legal premises completely?”

“Not sure about that. We would need to drive for another 20 minutes though.”

“20 minutes by car? How about you go a bit faster?”

“This is a trash car. Can’t even go 50 km an hour. Can’t believe the chief had something like this as his car.”

It was when we were chatting without feeling as nervous as before.

The chase began.

—– UIIIINGG! —— UIIIINGGGG!

???

“Huhh?! What’s that?”

“There’s a group chasing after us.”

“What? What kind of high school chases after their teachers!”

“A high school possessed by heretics that changes people could have pursuers.”

“Grandpa! Can you go a bit faster?”

“This stupid car doesn’t go any faster! Wait a second!”

——STOP THERE! ———STOP THERE!

I looked behind the car. Judging from the number of headlights, there appeared to be 4 or 5 cars and they were a lot faster than our own.

“Unni! What do we do? What should we do?”

“I don’t know! But it’s too late to go back now. Old man! Go as fast as you can. There’s no way they’ll do anything to a car that has teachers and students inside right? I think something should work out as long as we leave the school premises!”

—– Bang! —– Bang! —– Bang!

As soon as Eunsol-noona said they wouldn’t do anything to teachers and students, gunshots echoed from behind! What the heck was wrong with these guys?

Something was weird.

If they were going to be this aggressive, then shouldn’t they have threatened us with a gun as soon as we arrived at the school to bring us to the Old Main Building?

A good title as a preparatory selective school, and preparing ‘excuses’ like tests and the triathlon to bring students to the Old Main Building…

Until now, they had at least been ‘trying’ to conceal something, and yet now they were super aggressive as if none of that mattered. Ahri said as if she was thinking the same thing.

“We touched their reverse scale.”

“Did we irritate them or something?”

“Otherwise, it’s impossible to explain their course of action.”

“Is it because of our escape attempt? Because we’re trying to leave Room 104–“

“It is probably because of our escape, but don’t think like that,” added Ahri. “How about you think from the ‘perspective inside the stage’?”

Perspective inside the stage.

Right, the fact that this world was a ‘stage’ prepared by the Hotel were things that only transcendent beings like the ‘Devouring One’ knew about, and most of the ‘characters’ had no clue.

Perspective inside the stage: they were a strange religion of heretics that did things to people.

“Are they afraid of being exposed to the public?”

“In the end, their goal is to switch people. That’s why they built this preparatory school, bought a large piece of land and are teaching actual stuff for the college exams. They’re trying their best to ‘make sure they stay low’.”

These guys were extremely afraid of gathering the eyes of the public.

As long as we could make use of that—

That was when a car appeared from the front.

— Bang! — Bang! — Bang! Clink!

– Kiiiiiiiikk! Kung!

The car spinned. It danced like an unstoppable beast before going out of the road and heavily colliding against the hill next to us. 

My body ached all around from that short yet huge incident. When I blankly turned to the driver’s seat—

I discovered a hole on Grandpa Mooksung’s head.

…

I had seen countless brutal scenes ever since we entered the Hotel but things like this were very hard to get used to. I had to force myself back from throwing up.

Ahri silently approached him and closed his eyes. Eunsol-noona… also had a hole on her body. I shut her eyes that were still open despite her immediate death.

In an instant, the teachers were annihilated.

My breath was coming to a stop as an indescribable sense of despair enveloped me. Was this the end? Were we all going to be brought back to the school to be substituted?

That was when Elena, who had been silent for a while, suddenly had a change.

*

– Elena

My chest was feeling stuffy for a long time.

‘Why’

‘Why was there nothing I could do?’

Everyone else had blessings or leadership skills, strength and mysterious tools and each had their own roles and yet there was nothing I could do. Even when we had to escape, I was just following behind Ahri. Even though there was a group of pursuers that were even carrying a gun to shoot everyone to death, I—

Wait. Shoot everyone to death?

My head immediately turned clear as if a bucket of icy cold water had been poured over my head.

Pieces of knowledge that I never knew until now surged from deep down. 

Knowledge? Was this even supposed to be called knowledge? Rather than that, it felt almost like a sensation.

It was coming from the very depths of my own being.

Soul? Or was it the heart?

A balance appeared inside who knows where – a scale that assessed people’s sins.

What was Justice? Those who committed sins needed to have repercussions. 

Even the Ancient Greeks believed in justice. They believed in a god that could assess the sins of this world on a balance to enact a rightful order. They wished the goddess of justice and her scale to bring order to the world.

I knew what I had to do.

*

“We have stopped them! The two teachers have died! What should we do with the students at the back?”

“There has been an order to leave the kids alive. It’s already too late for the corrupt adults, but there is still the path of salvation for these children. Keep them alive.”

– Thud.

“Come out. Your sin is not small by any means, but the ‘Lord’ is greatly generous and you can still be forgi—“

– Slam!

It was as if a large hammer had struck down on the person from the sky as the heretic became like mashed potato in an instant. Rather than being horrified by the savage scene before my eyes, I was instead dumbstruck from the incomprehensible turn of events.

“What? What’s going on? 

– Bam!

Another head was crushed like mashed potato. I forced myself to turn inside the half-demolished car and looked at Elena. Something that was glistening in gold – a balance (?) – was rotating around her.

– Boom! – Boom!

As if a large hammer was striking down from the sky, everyone that was chasing after us started to explode.

– Bang! Bang! Bang!

They belatedly started shooting their guns but it was futile.

Elena didn’t even leave the car in the first place and the half-destroyed car acted as a remarkable shield. Like that, Elena blankly gazed at the sky inside the car while exploding more than 20 men that used to follow us from behind. 

As if it was nothing significant, Ahri asked with a curious voice.

“Is this the power of ‘Justice’?”

“Nn.”

“How does it work? I was expecting it to be strong because of all the conditions, but isn’t this too much?”

“Who knows… I am still in the middle of understanding how it works. I think we should save that for later.”

“That’s true too.”

I opened my mouth after Ahri. 

“Let’s stop the conversation here and start running away immediately. We did come a fair bit with the car so 1 more hour and we should be able to escape from this damn school.”

“No,” asserted Elena.

“Miss Elena? What do you–”

“Justice must be fair. Those receiving the punishment cannot be differentiated from those that do not. Now that the ‘enforcement’ has begun, I must carry it through.”

“Carry it through… Do you mean you have to return to the school?”

“Sounds like it,” Ahri replied. “Do you have to go back to the school and kill all the other heretics? Does that mean you can’t stop yourself either when your blessing gets activated?”

“I don’t know if I have to kill all of them, but I must go back.”

It was quite a tedious ability. Of course, it was ridiculous in the sense that it allowed her to reduce dozens of people to ashes without even touching them, and we had never seen any other blessings that were as impactful as this.

However, there were also an absurd number of conditions.

1. The target must be similar to humans.

2. The user must be aware of their evilness.

We knew up to those 2 conditions but there appeared to be another one.

3. The user cannot stop at will after starting the enforcement.

“What should we do? Looks like Elena has no choice but to stay. Should we run away together at least, Ahri?”

Someone else replied instead of Ahri.

Such concerns are needless.

For thou has no rights to choose.

An angel descended from the sky.