Chapter 11: Rest, Basement of the Hotel
—
[User: Han Kain (Wisdom)
Date: Day 2
Current Location: Floor 1, Corridor
Sage’s Advice: 0]
Everyone, except for one person, was completely zoned out.
Jinchul-hyung was sprawled on the floor, letting out huhu, huhu sounds like a malfunctioning robot, while Eunsol-noona was sitting on the coffee table, chugging down what must have been her tenth cup of coffee.
Songee was crouched next to the bonsai like yesterday, sniffling and muttering eerie words like “Happy… Sombae…” while Elena huddled on the other side of Eunsol-noona, looking like she was trying to become one with the sofa.
And as for me…
I just wandered back and forth, my mind utterly blank. What on earth was that horror we just experienced?
I tried to recall the events clearly.
My family, who had lost their minds — no, I shouldn’t even call them family. Those monsters mimicked their appearances and desecrated my sanity.
I accepted the bizarre thoughts as normal, and ultimately ended up rolling around naked in the dead of winter, freezing to death.
Others must have endured something similar. Not once did the thought of asking what transpired cross my mind. I wasn’t even the slightest bit curious, nor did I plan to share my own experiences.
And then—
The only sane person among us managed to snap back.
“Hey, in about 30 minutes, it’ll be lunchtime, shouldn’t we head back to Room 105?”
Silence enveloped the five of us.
I had to force my mouth open.
“Right… we should eat. And Seungyub, really, thank you. So much.”
As I initiated my words of gratitude, the previously dazed individuals started speaking up too.
“Aigo… it’s embarrassing how I strutted in like I could protect everyone. Who would’ve thought such weird things would happen? Seungyub, or rather, Hero Seungyub, thank you. If it weren’t for you, we’d be in real trouble.”
“Exactly. If it weren’t for Seungyub-gun, we all would have met a tragic end. Truly, thank you!”
Once people began to share their thanks, Seungyub waved his hands around in flustered embarrassment.
“No, seriously! I didn’t really understand what was going on either… Honestly, I have no clue why I escaped successfully. I was just going ‘uh? what?’ and then suddenly I got pulled out! Ahahaha! You really don’t have to do this.”
Was it his first time receiving praise from multiple people at once? It seemed like the shy middle school boy couldn’t handle the happiness and had a nearly tooth-splitting smile.
Thank goodness for that.
Seeing at least one lively middle schooler smiling like that lightened the oppressive mood hanging over us.
We all started gathering our things and stood up.
“Alright! Let’s all cheer for Seungyub three times and then go eat! What’s life if not about food? Let’s shove something in our mouths! Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!”
“Hooray!!! Hooray!!! Hooray!!!”
Half of our cheers were out of gratitude towards Seungyub, and half to shake off the traumatic memories. We all cheered for the boy whose face was now as red as a strawberry before returning to Room 105.
—
[User: Han Kain (Wisdom)
Date: Day 2
Current Location: Floor 1, Room 105 (Room of Rest)
Sage’s Advice: 0]
Ten minutes before meal time, I washed my face in the bathroom to calm my mind, changed my clothes, and kept an eye on the status screen.
The date and Sage’s Advice hadn’t changed.
Didn’t I just spend a hellish day in that nightmare?
I went to the botanical garden in the morning, stopped by the duck restaurant, went to a resort, spent a night, skied, and ended up dead.
I slept for a night, so shouldn’t it be Day 3?
That’s when it hit me.
When I thought about it, the events in that nightmare felt anything but normal.
Not only were people out of their minds, but there was also no delay in moving from place to place, and it felt like morning the moment I closed my eyes and opened them again.
At the time, I thought it was normal since I was losing my mind too, but looking back now, it screamed ‘anomaly’ at me.
Maybe, real time didn’t actually pass that much.
I hadn’t tracked time precisely, but we headed straight into Room 101 after breakfast, so it had to be before 9 am at the latest.
The time we all exited together was likely around 11:20 am.
Initially, I mistook it for 11:20 the following day…
But now that I think about it, we simply entered in the morning, then came out just before noon.
To think there would be a nightmare so horrible that it left not just me but even a strong man like Jinchul-hyung incapacitated for just two hours…
What other terrifying things were waiting in this hotel?
Rest was essential.
Two hours of suffering shouldn’t weigh so heavily on my heart.
“We need to take a break.”
As soon as I entered the dining room, Jinchul-hyung blurted it out.
“Yeah… let’s take today off, or maybe even tomorrow. First, let’s enjoy a good lunch. At least they consistently serve delicious food here, which I’m thankful for. But if they could just let us go, that’d be 100 times better.”
“This is too… ah, urgh… too much.”
“Enough! Yu Songee, stop! Today, we all make a promise! We’ll forget what happened in that room. No one says a word about it. We just had a few terrible nightmares! Everyone, lower your heads and check yourself. Is there anything different? No, right? We’re all healthy, right? It was just a nightmare. Forget it, it’s over!”
The mood began to lighten gradually.
“You’re much better than me, noona… Let’s do that. It wouldn’t be right to talk about something bad in front of food,” Jinchul-hyung added.
“Yes. Everyone, let’s relax and eat. And just in case, it might be that we only spent about 2 hours instead of days,” I added.
“Huh? I spent days with my little brother, well, not really relevant, but we definitely spent days, right?”
“No, I think Kain is actually right in this case. I… recalled some things, but the flow was weird. Noona, when you think about it—no, don’t actually think about it—the progress must’ve felt off as well. That’s based on what I saw on the status screen, right?”
“Yeah. The date hasn’t passed; it’s still Day 2, and the advice hasn’t reset.”
“Ugh, so we went through all that in just 2 hours? Alright, let’s wrap this topic up.”
After hastily piecing things together, we quietly took to our meals.
In the chaos, the food was incredibly tasty. A scoop of white rice topped with pork bulgogi, drizzled with a little sesame oil, and accompanied by a fried egg.
That one bite dulled the nightmare of today by about a third.
Indeed, people live to eat.
“Dude, you’re demolishing that food. Ah~ I was thinking of grabbing some bulgogi too.”
“Oops! I grabbed it before I even knew it, there was just so much food around.”
“No, no, don’t worry about it. I’m just saying, even the galbi here is super tasty.”
As we indulged in the delicious food, the tension started to ease a bit. Just when everyone was slowly getting back to their senses, Elena chimed in.
“We are planning to take at least today and tomorrow off, right? I saw a bunch of interesting amenities in the basement yesterday. How about we take a break today and explore?”
“Well, that sounds great, but isn’t it a bit strange to have monsters roaming about these hotel facilities? Like I said on our first day, it feels too risky wandering around when Kain’s ‘warning’ is showing 0.”
“Hyung, you have no advice left?” Seungyub asked.
“Yeah. It’s still Day 2 and the count is 0. I think I used up all three back in that room…”
“Jinchul’s right. It’s too insecure to wander around without Kain’s abilities. Let’s just finish lunch today and chill at Room 105,” Eunsol-noona suggested.
With no Sage’s Advice at hand, we decided to stick to light meals and rest comfortably rather than navigating this perilous hotel. We could check out the amenities down in the basement tomorrow instead.
“By the way, a swimming pool and gym seem reasonable, but a ‘Zoo’? ‘Botanical Garden’? Do hotels usually have these? A campsite? An amusement park? Eunsol-noona, you seem like you’ve been to such places often. Is there a hotel like that?”
“Well… I think a zoo and botanical garden are absurd. Campsites and amusement parks? Instead of absurdity, I wonder if it’s theoretically silly for a basement to even have those. But hey, it’s not impossible in a hotel where opening a room door leads to another world. Imagine a normal-looking room that opens to a theme park inside!”
A voice tinged with a hint of excitement rang out.
“A swimming pool! Most hotel facilities look incredibly fancy and stylish, so the pool must be spectacular, right? But I have no swimsuits—what do we do?”
“Haha, well, we’ll find out when we get there, right? I assume you swim well, Miss Elena?”
“I’ve been swimming since I was little. You seem like you’d excel at physical activities too, Jinchul-ssi,” Elena replied.
“Me? Well, I can manage the basics,” he shrugged.
“I really want to check out the zoo! I have a feeling there are going to be some fascinating animals,” Songee said excitedly.
Despite the chaos of the hotel, the atmosphere was surprisingly lively. It seemed I wasn’t the only one entertained by this shift in mood, as a voice of caution emerged among us.
“Yeah, yeah, it’s delightful to see everyone so eager to have fun! I just hope this hotel doesn’t keep hiding monsters from us everywhere.”
Before long—
I felt the remnants of the horrific trauma slowly washing away from everyone’s faces. Perhaps we all walked the fine line of forcing ourselves to engage in cheerful chatter just to dispel the shadows of our traumatic experiences.
I, too, sensed those terrible memories fading gently into the background.
Nothing much happened after that. I lounged around, resting, followed by dinner mixed with cheerful banter, and then I rolled around some more before drifting off to sleep.
If only this continuous, pleasant time could last, maybe this hotel wouldn’t be such a bad place to live in.
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