### Chapter 250 – Room 202, Cursed Room – ‘Mermaid Princess’ (28)
—
– Han Kain
As soon as I regained my senses, I took a look around. An unfamiliar place on the other side of the door. What on earth was this place?
First off, the body I was now inhabiting seemed to belong to a boy in his mid-teens. He looked a bit underfed, but his clothes appeared to be made of rather fancy silk. The vague wooden structure I had spotted earlier turned out to be a tiny house.
So far, so normal. But everything else was weird. It was as if I had stepped into a black-and-white movie; the surroundings were shrouded in a gray haze. Even though it was clearly daytime, this place was oddly dim—definitely not night, but close enough!
Following Ahri’s instructions, I started walking toward the door. One step, two steps.
“… I guess nothing comes easy, huh?”
If it were the old me from when I first entered the hotel, I probably would’ve just fallen for it. Just a moment ago, for reasons I couldn’t fathom, my body began to move not towards the door but towards the opposite direction.
I was drawn toward the back of the house, where I spotted an unknown flickering light in a tunnel. After some serious deliberation, I took a step, only for my body to again veer towards that bizarre tunnel.
What kind of trickery was this?
I was definitely moving toward the door, but why was I shifting toward the tunnel? Was it a distortion of the senses? Was the very space itself warped? Too many possibilities raced through my mind, making it hard to come to any conclusion. What should I do?
If the issues stemmed from sensory distortion or a problem with controlling my body, I figured I could resolve it using the power of possession. My consciousness started to rise again, pushing past the limits of the body, reaching a ‘higher realm.’ A black thread extended towards me.
The slow-moving body of the boy stopped wandering and moved resolutely in the right direction—toward the door. And, slowly, the door that separated the two spaces began to open.
— Swoosh!
“Hmm?”
I heard a strange sound.
Something flowing. The sound of some unknown liquid dripping. The soft splatter of droplets soaking into the stone floor.
What a completely mysterious situation—
“Good job. You can return to your body now.”
In the midst of this overwhelming anxiety, Ahri remained remarkably unbothered.
*
[User: Han Kain (Wisdom)
Date: Day 107
Current Location: Layer 2, Room 202 – Cursed Room ‘Mermaid Princess’
Sage’s Advice: 3]
—
“… I’m back.”
At that moment, the boy’s body I had previously possessed collapsed onto the grass. While I watched the boy slowly writhing on the ground, Ahri approached silently.
The boy, looking dazed, muttered, “Where… am I? What time is it—”
“Good job.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’ve really been through a lot. You probably have no idea what you’ve experienced. I’m Kim Ahri. Thank you, again.”
“What in the—”
Before the boy could finish his sentence, his neck snapped in an instant. In that fleeting moment, the eyes filled with pain gently closed.
“… Who are you?”
Ahri didn’t answer but instead closed the boy’s eyes. Usually, carrying a playful demeanor, she looked unusually serious at this moment, treating the dead boy with an unexpected respect.
“Kain.”
“Yeah?”
“Aren’t you curious?”
“Of course—”
“Go ahead and ask now. From now until the moment we perish, I’ll entertain one or two of your questions.”
I was momentarily at a loss for words. Until we die?
…
Only then did I start feeling that the world was changing in a strange way. The sky had turned a grayish color. The grass was all dried up, and a fetid odor began to fill the air.
“So, it looks like we’re the ones who will survive, huh?”
“If you and I move faster than sound, we might just make it.”
This was the tale of death. Was it truly impossible to survive? There seemed to be no alerts signaling danger. Just then, the ground started to wriggle. Time was running short.
“If you’d given me a heads-up, I could’ve prepared myself mentally.”
“I didn’t know what was inside there until we opened it. There are quite a few candidates. With our current strength, many of them could have escaped. But, unfortunately, one of them was not meant to survive. Sorry about that.”
“What’s with that door? Is it a prison for monsters?”
“Something like that.”
— Shhhhhh!
A sound like tearing fabric echoed through the air.
“Something like that? Can you give me a bit more detail? Lately, I’m getting the feeling that I might end up working for the Bureau when I get outside. It would be nice if I could get some pointers.”
Ahri’s gaze shifted skyward. Following her line of sight, I realized there was an unknown black crack in the sky. Slowly, this rift began to widen, revealing something I couldn’t quite make out.
“We…”
“…”
“We’ve always rewound endings we didn’t like.”
“What do you mean by that—”
“Sometimes we’ve observed the starting points of despair to prevent tragedies, and other times we’ve removed individuals who would speed up destruction. If neither of those worked, we’d forcefully change the course right before the end.”
“…”
“But this world also holds ‘inescapable endings.’ No amount of money or resources can alter such outcomes. That door is where those endings are trapped. In a way, it’s a trash can filled with nothing but bad endings.”
I didn’t get it. At the same time, it felt strangely familiar. Oddly enough, Ahri’s words struck a chord somewhere deep within me.
“Don’t worry too much. There are many such trash cans, and we’ve only opened one. This one can likely be contained within the boundaries of the Korean branch. Although…. it’ll probably require a significant allocation of resources. In the meantime, Eunsol and Jinchul will probably reach their objectives. Everything will turn out fine, so let’s just rest for now.”
Ahri gradually approached me, her fingertips gleaming with a silver light.
This marked my last memory.
*
– Lee Eunsol
A man knelt on the cold asphalt, praying. Naturally, one would have expected the cars honking at him for kneeling in the middle of the road, but not a single one was in sight. That’s because we were moving in a convoy filled with armored soldiers on dozens of military vehicles.
As I watched Cha Jinchul kneeling and praying, along with the soldiers who were spouting blasphemous prayers in solidarity, it really felt like reality was slipping away.
“Hey sis, should we cast the bracelet again?”
Songee, who periodically placed protective charms on Jinchul, began to ponder whether there was any real point in that anymore.
“Honestly, it doesn’t seem to matter much now.”
“… But it did work just a moment ago.”
“If you talk to him now, I’m sure he’ll respond.”
Thinking back to Lee Sooho, who had completely crossed the line, I found the answer to that question. Lee Sooho had been eroded by Ruda for far longer than anyone else, and even up to the moment of his death, he was still harboring strange feelings for his former lover, Elena. Being eroded doesn’t mean that a person’s identity disappears completely. Rather, it’s just that their values shift gradually.
What on earth was Jinchul praying for right now?
“Hey sis, do you see those people around us?”
Following Songee’s words, I looked around.
In the busy street leading from Gangnam Station to Seocho Station, countless people were packed in despite the downpour.
Some sat on the ground, howling in despair.
Some desperately clutched crosses or rosaries, praying earnestly.
Some shouted crazily that Judgment Day was approaching.
Little by little, something was crawling toward us.
As if someone had spilled muddy paint on the canvas of the world, a gray hue began to creep from the sky down to the earth.
The blue glow in the sky began to fade. An unholy aurora flickered, shaking everyone’s hearts. Strange stones began popping up from the ground, pushing through the hard asphalt, and inside these stones lay unknown red flesh.
— Boom!
The salvation those praying longed for arrived with a thunderous sound. From the western sky, from the opposite of the gray light, a countless force of ‘civilization’ flew toward us.
— Screeeech!
An ear-piercing, rough sound pierced the air. As I felt an intense wave that seemed to jolt my insides, Songee grabbed onto me for support.
My head ached. Had I been staring at the bizarre phenomenon unfolding in the distant sky for too long? It felt like needles were tearing through my skull.
This was a bizarre fight.
Missiles weren’t flying, nor were bullets firing. I couldn’t even grasp what kind of ‘enemy’ that Kain and Ahri had released outside was.
But the Bureau was certainly fighting against ‘that thing.’
Destroying enemies they could destroy, they confronted incomprehensible foes with incomprehensible methods.
Little by little, the world returned to the right sort of light.
At that moment, I finally grasped the meaning of fighting against the Bureau. I also understood why Ahri had difficulty accepting my earlier statements regarding the Bureau’s responsibility in the situation of Room 202.
They truly were the guardians of this world. And I had just put a hole in that massive wall they’d built.
I felt like I couldn’t breathe. My heart raced. I—
“Hey sis.”
“Y-yeah?”
“Focus on the current situation. A second ago, Jinchul oppa shouted and ran off. His role is probably coming to an end.”
“…”
“We need to do what we have to do. And—”
Songee hesitated, as if contemplating whether to say something.
“Don’t get too emotionally invested in what’s happening inside the room. Also, while those people have been protecting the world, it’s a fact that they’ve made some wrong judgments regarding Sea God issues.”
That’s true. Songee’s words sent a chill through my heart.
The heroic persona they were portraying now had nothing to do with the scenario of Room 202. It was time to be cold and logical. Songee and I still had work to do, just as those moving by limousine had their own roles to play.
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