Escaping the Mystery Hotel - Chapter 679
Only Krnovel
EP.679 Episode 679 – Room 301, The Cursed Room – ‘The Origin of Species’ (23)
Episode 679 – Room 301, The Cursed Room – ‘The Origin of the Species’ (23)
– Yoo Song-i
It’s been three days since I started living as high school student Yoo Song-i.
I realized that I was a pretty dishonest person in the past.
—Whew!
“Yoo Song-i! Who sleeps with their head down during class – huh?”
“ah.”
I didn’t even look at the flying chalk properly and swatted it away with one hand.
The kids around him giggled as if it was funny, and the teacher looked dumbfounded.
You all probably think it’s just a coincidence?
I just felt a little proud, honestly!
Now I can knock away flying chalk with my eyes closed!
“sorry.”
It’s a really useless ability.
What’s the point of just shooting down something as slow as chalk, let alone shooting down a flying bullet?
Anyway, after wasting so much meaningless time, class ended.
As soon as I came out of the classroom blankly, Ari appeared.
“Do you feel anything? Are you recalling a mysterious memory?”
“at all.”
“… Don’t say it so easily. I thought you would realize something by now.”
“What can I do if I don’t know?”
Ari made a dumbfounded expression, and I just shrugged.
“The more you ask, the more I don’t know.”
“… I felt this way while watching your behavior these past few days.”
“What is it?”
“I feel like I’m living a very purposeless life.”
“…”
“I don’t study hard, I don’t exercise hard… .”
Most high school students are similar to me!
“A life where you just waste time? A life where you just take naps like a lazy cat -”
“Are you trying to fight me right now?”
“Do you understand now?”
Ari giggled and dragged me by the arm into the empty classroom.
“Okay, okay. When you and I talk, it will stand out, so let’s be mindful of eye contact.”
“…”
“Seriously, I felt like I didn’t really go home after class. It didn’t seem like I was doing anything in particular.”
“I was originally like this.”
“Yeah. That’s what it was like before, so it’s probably repeating that behavior. What I’m saying is, why don’t you go home?”
“… I don’t want to see my parents. These days, my mom is at home a lot.”
“Ah, I understand.”
Ari tilted her head for a moment, then said.
“Then, did you experience something by wandering around without going home until night in the past?”
“… That might be the case.”
“If we keep wasting time, there will be no end to it. Let’s do this.”
*
– Lee Eun-sol
A fact that everyone realized thanks to Grandpa Museong who turned back time!
Plan A, set outside, leads straight to the bad ending.
So the plan B that my colleagues came up with spontaneously in the room was simple.
Living as Daeyang Group Managing Director Lee Eun-sol, not Hotel Contestant Lee Eun-sol, and finding out what her ‘first wish’ is.
Now, three days later, one thing is clear to me.
My brothers and sisters were a bit unlucky people.
“Haha! Eunsol, I heard the news.”
“…”
“The Shanghai project has gone bust? Wow… This is a big deal. Wasn’t this something that everyone in the group had high hopes for?”
“…”
“Hey, hey! What are you doing? You’ve been trying to collaborate with Shanghai Teijin Group for over a year now.”
The name of this man who is openly mocking the day when business went wrong is Lee Jin-wook.
He is the proud second son of the Chairman of the Ocean Group and my older brother.
“What should I do? Our Managing Director Eunsol must be under a lot of stress! So, can you help me out?”
My brother is openly scratching me.
At this moment, what I felt was more awkwardness than annoyance.
To begin with, I don’t know what the ‘Shanghai Project’ is.
My brother says that I’ve been working on this project for over a year, but it looks like I completely forgot about it while I was rolling around in the hotel.
Also, I didn’t feel like fighting with someone over such a trivial thing.
Was that why? I muttered without realizing it.
“Why did we end up like this?”
Then Jinwook oppa looked slightly embarrassed.
Or maybe he felt a little embarrassed by what I just said.
“What is this… Ahem! Eunsol, it seems like your father is disappointed. Prepare your answer.”
Although my brother was always teasing and sarcastic, I could feel a gram of genuine concern when he said, “It seems like your father is disappointed, so prepare an answer.”
This is the basic feeling that the four of us siblings share.
Their rivalry with each other and their fear and resentment towards their father.
“…”
Father, Lee Seok-hwan, Chairman of Daeyang Group.
A troublemaker who always provoked sibling rivalry.
According to Grandfather Mukseong, he is also an imperfect regressor who mistakes the memories of the previous loop for precognitive dreams.
“A precognitive dream… .”
“what?”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m busy now -”
“Precognitive dreams? That’s something my father used to say sometimes.”
I was momentarily taken aback.
“What? Your father told you about a precognitive dream?”
This time, my brother looked at me as if he was wondering.
“You’ve heard it many times, right?”
“…”
“Isn’t that what your father often said when he was drunk? When he had to make important decisions, he would rely on his dreams.”
“This can’t be happening.”
“What’s wrong? Did you drink alcohol for lunch today?”
When I heard it, it was true.
As my brother said, my father used to say that he often had dreams when he was drunk.
However, in the past, such words were just passed over.
I thought things like regression and loops were only something that happened in movies, and that chaos disasters were something only the Management Agency should worry about.
I let it slide, but is this the only memory that contains a big secret?
“Brother, do you remember anything else?”
“what?”
“Strange memories, absurd things that happened in life, strange phenomena that often made you question things. Don’t you have anything like that?”
My brother muttered, looking momentarily embarrassed.
“No, why is the topic of conversation suddenly like this?”
When I heard that, I came to my senses belatedly.
Oops! Plan B wasn’t to live as a hotel participant, but as an executive director of the Ocean Group.
Your actions earlier were too participant-like.
“…Okay. Just get out.”
When I told him to leave while waving his hands, my brother also seemed dumbfounded and was about to leave.
My brother suddenly stopped in front of the door and muttered.
“Now that I think about it, listening to you reminds me of something.”
“What comes to mind?”
“We traveled a lot when we were young, didn’t we?”
“Was it so?”
“You and Hee-yoon were so young that you might have forgotten. Your mother really likes to travel.”
“I think so too.”
“It seems like you’ve had a lot of unique trips.”
“…”
“Was it my mother’s taste? I don’t know.”
“What was unusual?”
“I can’t quite remember what I’m talking about. Ask me when you get home.”
*
Left alone in the office, I thought of several keywords.
Eunsol Lee, executive director of Ocean Group, who is not a participant.
The first wish I made at the hotel.
Everyone, let me tell you about my memories before coming to the hotel.
This is a story that applies to many of my colleagues as well, but my memories before arriving at the hotel have become very blurry.
Because the experience at the hotel was a shocking experience that no ordinary person could ever imagine.
In the end, most of the memories of the ordinary person named ‘Daeyang Group Managing Director Lee Eun-sol’ have long since been swept away by the waves of oblivion.
Thanks to that, I didn’t anticipate what would happen next.
“Oh my, oh my! I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”
“…”
At this moment, I didn’t understand why the secretary was apologizing.
Fortunately, the secretary, whose name was also confusing, soon made clear the reason for her apology.
“I should have made the coffee earlier…! I, uh, I was busy organizing Mr. Manager’s schedule for tomorrow, so I had to-”
Only then did my past self vaguely come to mind.
Are you one of those people who always needs to have warm coffee on the table while you’re working?
What does this mean?
The story goes that the secretary has to keep replacing the coffee cups with warm coffee before they get empty or cold.
Also, the coffee beans should always be Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, and the proper temperature should be maintained between 70 and 80 degrees.
After thinking about this, I blankly looked at my right hand.
It’s not even coffee beans, it’s Maxim Mocha Gold coffee mix, it got cold a long time ago.
That’s why the secretary acts like that because he’s afraid of being scolded.
“Sir, I am the one who-”
“Okay, okay.”
“yes?”
“It’s nothing, don’t worry about it.”
I couldn’t help but laugh out loud when I saw my secretary’s expression, which clearly showed that she was glad she wasn’t getting scolded by me.
What on earth are Ethiopian Yirgacheffe beans?
Just drink some random mixed coffee!
What is the right temperature?
Will I freeze to death if my coffee gets cold?
The Eunsol of the past was such a boring person.
“…”
No, no! Isn’t it right to be annoyed right now?
If I continue to live the way I always did, I feel like the past will just happen again… .
“hey!”
“Eek!”
“What kind of job do you get paid to do? You can’t even make coffee properly, so what kind of secretary are you?”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”
I’m sorry, anonymous secretary.
It can’t be helped that I was like this in the past.
I was glad that I had never shown this side of myself to my colleagues.
Well, if you’re bullying people around you in a place like Hotel Pioneer, that’s not a character issue, it’s an intelligence issue.
*
‘… I didn’t know Eunsol had this side to her.’
‘It’s not like I don’t have any memories.’
‘Have you ever had something similar happen?’
‘When I looked at the memories related to the first wish, I saw him naturally ordering his staff around.’
‘this!’
*
I came home late at night from work earlier than usual.
I guess it’s because there were quite a few awkward moments while working at the company.
For a moment, I wondered if this was okay… .
Looking back, I remember in the past, when I was feeling irritated, I would just skip the meeting and leave work.
Is it okay for a manager to be like this?
The chairman’s daughter can be like this.
I sat in my office, roughly working through the documents I had brought, and thought.
My past self – What kind of person was Eunsol Lee, executive director of Daeyang Group?
Looking at my hazy memories and the attitudes of the people around me, I felt a few things.
I fear my father and at the same time resent him.
There is considerable competition between siblings.
While not hiding his greed for the Ocean Group, he also wants to start his own business.
How do these things connect to the first wish?
If you live as a business owner like you do now, will you come to know it naturally?
“…”
Isn’t this analytical approach itself acting like a hotel attendee?
If it was really me in the past, I wouldn’t have known these words since it was my first wish!
This situation feels exactly like ‘don’t think of an elephant’.
The more I try not to think about A, the more obsessed I become with A.
“Whew… .”
At that moment, I was sighing and trying to find something to eat in the refrigerator in my room.
A welcoming voice was heard.
“Eunsol, you got off work early today?”
“Yes. I have some concerns.”
— Bam!
“uh?”
The room seemed to shake slightly.
For a moment, I thought my colleagues outside were warning me about a poltergeist… .
It was too short to be seen like that.
At the point where I was confused and wondering what this was, I heard my mother’s warm or – amused voice.
“I was a little surprised this time.”
“yes?”
“Things don’t seem to be going well… right?”
I see Jinwook oppa has been doing something or other with the Shanghai project.
It’s a problem that doesn’t concern me at the moment.
“It’s nothing, so don’t worry about it.”
“I’m glad you say that. You know I’m always rooting for you, right?”
“sure.”
“… It wouldn’t hurt to try again. I’ll help you.”