Chapter 250: Room 202, Cursed Room - 'The Little Mermaid' (28) |
- Han Kain
As soon as I regained consciousness, I surveyed my surroundings.
The mysterious location beyond the door—what was this place?
The body I possessed appeared to belong to a boy in his mid-teens.
He was gaunt, likely malnourished, but his clothes seemed to be made of luxurious silk.
The blurred wooden structure turned out to be a small house.
Up to this point, everything seemed relatively normal.
However, everything else was bizarre.
The surroundings were entirely gray, as though I had stepped into a black-and-white film.
It wasn’t night, but it didn’t feel like day either.
I began walking toward the door, following Ahri’s instructions.
One step, two steps.
“…Of course, it’s never simple.”
If this had been during my early days in the Hotel, I might have been fooled.
Moments ago, for reasons I couldn’t fathom, my body moved not toward the door but in the opposite direction.
It was drawn toward the passage behind the house, the one Ahri had warned me never to approach.
A strange light glimmered at the end of that tunnel.
After much deliberation, I took another step, only for my body to move toward the tunnel again.
What kind of trickery is this?
Why am I being drawn to the tunnel despite intending to head for the door?
Is it a distortion of my senses?
A warping of space itself?
There were too many possibilities to arrive at a definitive conclusion.
What should I do?
If this was an issue of sensory distortion or a problem with how my body was being controlled, I figured I could resolve it by invoking the Power of Incarnation.
My consciousness surged again, reaching a state beyond the limits of the physical—a “higher realm” where I floated freely.
Black threads extended outward, connecting to the boy’s body.
The boy, who had been aimlessly wandering, now moved steadily toward the door.
Finally, the door that separated the two spaces began to open.
- Ssshhh!
“Hmm?”
A strange sound reached my ears.
The sound of something flowing.
The faint drip of an unknown liquid.
The gentle patter of droplets on a stone floor.
It was impossible to discern what it was—
“Well done. You can return to your body now.”
As an overwhelming sense of unease washed over me, Ahri, oddly enough, remained remarkably composed.
***
User: Han Kain (Wisdom)
Date: Day 107
Current Location: Floor 2, Room 202, Cursed Room - ‘The Little Mermaid’
Sage’s Advice: 3
- Han Kain
“I’m back.”
At the same time, the boy’s body I had just inhabited collapsed into the grass.
As the boy twitched slightly, Ahri approached silently, observing him.
The boy, with a confused expression, mumbled, “Where… is this? Right now—“
“Thank you for your hard work.”
“Huh?”
“You’ve been through a lot. I doubt you even understood what you’ve been enduring all this time. My name is Kim Ahri. Thank you again.”
“What are you—“
It took less than a second for the boy’s neck to snap.
In an instant, the pain in his eyes faded into a serene stillness.
“…Who was he?”
Ahri didn’t answer.
Instead, she closed the boy’s eyes.
The playful mischief that usually lingered in her gaze was gone, replaced by a seriousness I hadn’t seen before.
She was almost reverent in her treatment of the boy’s lifeless body.
“Kain.”
“Yeah?”
“You must have a lot of questions.”
“Of course—“
“Ask them now. I’ll answer one or two until the moment we die.”
The bluntness of her words left me speechless.
Until we die?
It was then that I noticed the world was starting to change.
The sky turned an ashen gray.
The grass withered beneath our feet, and the air began to smell acrid.
“Looks like survival isn’t an option here, huh?”
“If you and I could move faster than sound, maybe. But as it stands… no.”
In other words, we were doomed.
Even the usual Life Warning that warned of danger was eerily silent.
At that moment, the ground began to shift beneath us.
Time was running out.
“If you’d told me earlier, I could have at least prepared myself.”
“I didn’t know what was inside until I opened it either. There were several possibilities. If it had been any of the others, we might have had a chance to escape. But this one… well, sorry.”
“What is that door, anyway? A prison for some kind of monster?”
“Something like that.”
- Shhhhhh!
A sound like fabric being torn apart echoed through the air.
“Something like that? Can you be a little more specific? I’ve been thinking, once we get out of here, I might work for the Administration. Consider this a prep session for your junior.”
Ahri’s gaze shifted to the sky.
Following her line of sight, I noticed a black crack forming in the sky.
Slowly, agonizingly, it widened, revealing something indescribable within.
“We…”
“…”
“We’ve always rewritten endings we didn’t like.”
“What does that mean—“
“Sometimes, we observed the starting point of despair and prevented the event. Other times, we eliminated the people who would accelerate ruin. When neither of those worked, we forcibly altered the direction right before the end.”
“…”
“But there are ‘unavoidable endings’ in this world. No matter how much money, time, or manpower you throw at them, they won’t change. That door contains those endings. It’s a trash bin for bad endings.”
I didn’t fully understand.
And yet, somehow, it felt familiar.
Ahri’s explanation carried a strange sense of déjà vu.
“Don’t worry too much. There are plenty of these trash bins, and we’ve only opened one. The Korean branch can handle it. But… they’ll have to invest a lot of resources to do so. In the meantime, Eunsol and Jinchul will accomplish their goals. It’ll all work out. So let’s just… rest now.”
Ahri approached me slowly.
A faint silver gleam flashed at her fingertips.
This was my final memory.
***
- Lee Eunsol
The man knelt on the cold asphalt, praying.
Cars that should have been blaring their horns at such behavior in the middle of the road were nowhere to be seen.
That was because we were traveling in a convoy of dozens of military vehicles, carrying hundreds of armed soldiers.
As Jinchul began to kneel and pray, the soldiers halted, joining him in uttering their own blasphemous prayers.
Watching this surreal scene unfold, it felt like reality itself was slipping away.
“Unni, should I use the bracelet again?”
Songee, who had been periodically applying the bracelet’s protection to Jinchul, now hesitated, wondering if it still had any meaning.
“It doesn’t seem to matter much anymore.”
“…But he was still responsive until just a moment ago.”
“He’d probably still answer if you talked to him.”
Thinking back to Lee Suho, who had completely crossed the line, the answer seemed clear.
Even after being consumed by Rudah for much longer, Lee Suho retained some lingering feelings for Elena, his former lover, up until his death.
It wasn’t that the human ego was entirely erased, just that their values shifted over time.
Who could Jinchul be praying to now?
And for what?
“Unni, do you see the people around us?”
Following Songee’s words, I looked around.
In the bustling streets between Gangnam Station and Seocho Station, the torrential rain didn’t stop the massive crowds.
It was impossible to count how many people were there.
Some collapsed on the ground, wailing.
Others clung desperately to crosses or rosaries, praying fervently.
Still others screamed madly, proclaiming that judgment day had arrived.
Little by little, something approached us.
It was as if someone had spilled murky paint across the canvas of the world, slowly dyeing the skies and ground in shades of gray.
The blue light in the sky faded.
A profane aurora shimmered unsettling everyone’s hearts.
Strange stones began to emerge from the ground, pushing through the hard asphalt.
Inside these stones were unfamiliar red flesh.
- Boom!
Salvation came with the thunder that those who prayed had longed for.
From the western sky, opposite the gray abyss, an overwhelming force of “civilization’s might” surged forward.
- Screeeeech!
A piercing, grating sound resounded throughout the world.
It felt like the very vibrations would shake my skin and insides apart.
Stumbling from the intense waves, I was caught by Songee, who steadied me.
My head throbbed painfully.
Was it because I’d been “watching” the bizarre phenomena occurring in the distant sky?
It felt as though needles were burrowing into my brain.
This was such a strange battle.
There were no missiles flying, no bullets being fired.
To begin with, the “enemy” that Kain and Ahri had supposedly unleashed—what even was it?
But the Administration was clearly fighting something.
They destroyed what could be destroyed and met the incomprehensible with equally incomprehensible measures.
Little by little, the world seemed to return to a proper light.
It was only at this moment that I began to understand what it meant to fight against the Administration.
At the same time, I realized why Ahri had struggled to accept my arguments about the Administration’s culpability for the situation in Room 202.
These people truly have been protecting the world.
And yet, I had punched a hole in the massive wall they had built to shield it.
I felt like I was suffocating.
My heart pounded furiously.
I—
“Unni.”
“Huh? What?”
“Focus on the situation at hand. Jinchul-oppa just screamed and charged forward. His role will end soon, won’t it?”
“…”
“We need to do our part too. And—”
Songee hesitated, seeming to debate whether to say more, before finally adding, “Don’t get too emotionally involved in what happens inside this room. And remember, even though those people have been protecting the world, it’s also true that they’ve made repeated mistakes when it comes to matters involving the Sea God.”
She was right.
Songee’s words cooled my mind.
The heroic image they displayed now and the narrative of Room 202 were entirely separate matters.
It was time to stay calm.
Songee and I still had tasks to complete—just as the others, moving in the limousine, had their own roles left to play.
***
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