Escaping the Mystery Hotel - Chapter 142
Only Krnovel
Episode 142 – No. 107, The Gateway Room – ‘Perfect Life’ (33)
– Han Ga-in
class. Another class, another class.
No matter how many times something like this happens, I still can’t get out of school.
After sighing and skipping classes at the new school, we gathered in one of the empty classrooms.
“…”
“…”
“…”
In the end, Ari was the first to open his mouth.
“We’ve become pretty cute.”
“Don’t you look younger than me now?”
“You and me. “Anyway, how did we end up like this?”
“…”
“…”
As expected, Ari opened his mouth again.
“We didn’t realize one thing. “Elena is deeper into her dreams than we thought.”
“Why is it that Elena is the only one who has fallen so hard? “The three of us woke up sooner than expected, right?”
“Well, it’s the last trial, but it’s actually been very easy so far.”
There was something that came to mind.
“Elena seems to have a much stronger desire for something that has not been achieved compared to me or Songi. Isn’t that why the psychological mechanism to achieve that wish appears much stronger? Compared to Ari… .”
“You have less training than me. “I come from a management department, so I have a strong mentality in these areas.”
In summary, it seemed like the reason was that Elena’s mentality was weaker than Ari’s and she had more regrets in life than Songi and I.
After Songi sighed, she started talking to Ari.
“What on earth should I do? If you think about it, the method we used was to stimulate a strong sense of discomfort and induce people to recall forgotten memories of the hotel, right? Even after Elena remembers the hotel, it feels like she has returned to a dream.”
“It’s a cliché situation. Could it be said that he chose to be buried in a happy dream rather than an unhappy reality? “Our first plan was not to wake Elena up, but to make her have a new dream.”
“At this rate, I don’t think it would be any use to remind Elena of the past. “No matter what I say, I think it will just change the content of the dream rather than wake me up.”
“If we keep stimulating them, they might find us ‘uncomfortable’ and end up locking us up somewhere.”
While the two were talking, my memory moved towards the past.
The process by which people who have already awakened come to their senses, the method we applied to Elena.
The method we chose was missing one important element.
*
At least in the second dream, it was easy to understand what Elena’s wish was.
Creating a happy childhood, as revealed in the previous conversation.
Elena was attending a peaceful school, and her surroundings were full of friends.
Songi, I, and Ari were also close friends of Elena in this place.
As the first dream came to an end, the memories that Elena had seemed to have clumsily regained seemed to have disappeared again.
Perhaps even erasing that memory was part of the wish.
…
“Eight!”
— Tung!
While I was quietly thinking, a tennis ball flew like a beam of light due to an intense smash and hit my head.
“Ugh!”
“uh? Ugh! Cain! are you okay?”
During gym class, Elena, who hit me with a tennis ball, came up to me in a panic and helped me up.
After bursting into laughter, I stood up and Elena immediately burst into laughter.
We had a fun time passing tennis balls back and forth.
…not bad.
Honestly, Elena looked so incredibly cute and happy right now.
*
It was lunch time.
“Elena.”
“huh?”
“Are you happy now?”
“Yes? What are you talking about all of a sudden? Of course it’s fun! Oh, by the way, do you know that there is a performance at the Vakhtangov Theater in the evening?”
“First time hearing this.”
Elena handed me the ticket with a somewhat shy expression.
“Dad told me to bring my friends! “Let’s go see it together.”
After receiving the ticket, I asked a question.
“Are you just giving it to me?”
“W-what do you mean! I’ve given it to other friends before too! “Don’t think strange things.”
My seat was next to Elena.
*
As evening approached, I don’t know what time it was, but I also had time to take a walk with animals.
As expected, the children around me started taking out animals such as white Samoyeds and Norwegian Forest animals that I couldn’t tell where they came from and taking them for a walk.
Fortunately, unlike the music class, we also had Perot during this session, so we were able to roughly participate.
Faro’s splendor was no less than that of other animals.
Of course, Pero’s ferocity surpassed that of all the animals in this place combined.
“Ugh! Peroyaaa! “You can’t pull out a Samoyed’s hair!”
“Just leave it alone. “Pero should also have time to gather nesting materials.”
“Ari! “The Samoyed owner is crying!”
“What do you think? The animal world is essentially a diet of flesh and blood. “It’s wrong that the Samoyed is weaker than the Faroe.”
I laughed because I was dumbfounded by everything I heard.
In the end, I had to step in and pull Pero out as he tried to swim through the Samoyed’s fur.
*
Elena was a really happy child at school.
During every class, she was always the first to raise her hand to answer a question the teacher asked and was praised, and all the children liked Elena.
I had wealthy and warm parents at home, and my life was full of fun performances, happy travels, and kind people.
Truly a ‘perfect life’.
The idea of life that everyone has longed for at least once.
Now, Elena doesn’t feel a single bit of the darkness she felt when she woke up half-awake in the coffee shop.
I felt like the ‘genre’ of the world was subtly changing.
Beautiful girl, shining world. Always lively and enjoyable daily life.
.
.
.
no.
It’s just a meaningless illusion.
The first night we left the hotel, the genre of the world we were in was decided.
Elena, I’m sorry, but Hotel’s genre is not a romantic comedy no matter how you look at it.
*
“Hey, Han Ga-in! What was it earlier? “I thought this was your dream, not Elena’s.”
“what?”
“You look like you’re playing tennis with Elena with the happiest expression in the world, right?”
“Then you ignored me and Songi and played the violin alone. “I thought we were from another world.”
“How old are you and you still don’t know how to play a single instrument?”
“I know how to play the recorder too.”
“Perot can also play the recorder, right?”
“…”
“Ah, let’s stop joking. What should I really do? I don’t know how to wake Elena up. I am confident that even if I kill Elena, it will be of no use. Even if I just kill it, I think I’ll move on to the next dream.”
“I think I know now. And what mistakes we made.”
Songi and Ari looked at me at the same time.
“I’m sorry, but we catered too much to Elena. Look back at the process we went through. Ari was confused and only woke up after attempting suicide by jumping off the building, right? Song-i almost got into a fight with Ari? “I woke up almost being fried in boiling oil, even though I had summoned it.”
“so?”
“Everyone didn’t wake up in a particularly peaceful way. The point is that just ‘stimulating a sense of discomfort’ is not enough. It feels strange in a state that only stimulated a sense of discomfort in the first place, but it’s just a happy dream, right? “I don’t feel like I’m going to wake up.”
Songi looked somewhat anxious.
“brother? That means… .”
“You have to make yourself feel that you are not happy with this dream. “Then you will wake up on your own.”
Ari, who was wondering what I was talking about, listened to me and nodded, his expression becoming stern.
“You’re right. Because that’s how we woke up in the first place. It should go beyond just being strange and make you feel like you need to wake up from this dream. Now I know what was missing from our plan. “The ‘spicy taste’ is missing.”
‘Spicy taste’.
Songi, who read the ominous tone emanating from these words, responded with a slightly gloomy expression.
“I understand the intention, but how about making it a little more tailored? Elena seems to be able to ease her sister’s feelings a little… .”
“The more we do that, the more Elena will delve deeper into this dream.”
“all right. But if you bully us too clumsily, we might be blown away somewhere.”
“What are you worried about? You’ve already tried it against me, right? We have to proceed without being caught. I followed Song-i’s ‘peaceful’ plan, but it didn’t work out, right? “Let’s do it my way this time.”
The plan we initially chose was missing one important element.
‘Spicy taste’
It was time to set the alarm clock for Elena’s sweet dreams.
*
– Elena
Calming my pounding heart, I waited under the clock tower at Cohort Square.
When will it come? When will it come?
Has about 20 minutes passed? The person who had been waiting from afar appeared.
As soon as Ga-in came, he looked at me and shouted as if he was surprised.
“Elena! “It feels like it came down from heaven!”
“Ugh~! Don’t say that. “Did you bring theater tickets?”
“huh. “But your parents aren’t there?”
“We’re not kids, what kind of parents do we need to watch a play?”
I turned around with a happy heart.
From behind, Ga-in said with an ambiguous expression, ‘He’s a kid now, isn’t he?’ I muttered the same thing.
I’ve always felt that Ga-in is both cool and weird, smart and sloppy, kind and harsh.
?
Did I ever have such complicated thoughts about Ga-in?
After tilting my head for a moment, I entered the theater.
The performance was very enjoyable.
As I listened to the songs of people dressed up as cats, I found myself singing along several times without realizing it, and a happy time passed.
Ga-in sitting next to me was quiet. As the performance was ending, Ga-in spoke up.
“Elena.”
“huh?”
“Are you happy?”
“huh! “It’s so much fun.”
“okay… . “I’m happy that Elena is happy.”
There’s something about his tone that’s unusually sarcastic. For something like that, his expression was cold.
Strangely enough, Ga-in was different from usual.
oh! no way… . Did Ga-in feel strange when the two of them came to the theater together?
When I thought about that, my heart started pounding without me knowing.
— Boom! thud!
Why are you like this! It’s not a big deal, I just saw a performance –
— Boom! thud!
…
— Boom! thud!
what? My heart isn’t racing, but the floor is actually vibrating?
When I slightly raised my head in confusion, people began to murmur.
Suddenly, Ga-in grabbed my hand and dragged me.
“Go, Gain?”
“Let’s go out. “It smells strange.”
“Strange smell? I can’t feel it… .”
Ga-in didn’t even pretend to listen to me and dragged me to my feet.
In less than 10 seconds, a loud sound filled the theater.
“Fire!!! “It’s fire!!!”
In an instant, the theater was filled with chaos!
The entrance was narrow, and when everyone in the theater stood up at the same time and tried to leave, we were stuck between them and couldn’t move a single step.
what? What on earth? Why did this happen today?
— Boom! thud… ! bang!
Suddenly the floor of the theater exploded!
“Aaaah!”
“Ugh! “It’s a monster!”
In the middle of the theater, which suddenly became chaotic, a dinosaur-like bird wearing a black cloth appeared.
I watched in fascination as the monster bird was destroying everything.
What should I do? Why did such a monster appear in the theater in the first place?
Why today!
A strong resentment fills my heart. Something, something will punish that bird –
“oh!”
“Elena, what are you just standing there looking at? “Let’s get out quickly.”
I thought something was going to happen! Before that, Gain immediately grabbed my hand.
I had no choice but to follow Ga-in and start running out of the theater.
Slowly, I could see the acrid smoke that filled the theater, and I could feel the smoke stinging my nose.
Strangely enough, it seemed like today would be a long night.
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