Chapter 756 – Room 302, The Curse Room – ‘Brave New World’ (26)
—
– Observatory, Elena
Observing the world through the telescope, specifically looking at Room 302, the Curse Room.
It was an intriguing yet crucial task, but lately, it had been somewhat frustrating.
The only subject of observation was the doctor.
I couldn’t get a peek at Seungyub’s side, so I had no idea what was happening over there.
What if they suddenly wrap it up and end it?
While the doctor was diligently doing something, if a big failure popped up on Seungyub’s side, it would be over in a flash!
— Thud!
I felt a gentle nudge on my shoulder and pulled away from the telescope.
As I stepped back, the pain of observation crashed over me, rattling my body, mind, and soul.
“Ugh…!”
“Great job! Now it’s your turn to switch. Next up is Jinchul hyung.”
“Hmm, did you see the notes I wrote?”
“I read all of it. The Feather of Twilight, huh… That’s something to keep an eye on. What’s next?”
“Seunghyun, Mooksung, and Eunsol are moving toward the outskirts of Texas together.”
“…”
“By the way, the Administration Bureau has started chasing them about two hours ago. Grandpa is still evading them skillfully, but it looks like they’ll have a showdown soon—”
While I was talking, I noticed Kain wasn’t focusing on what I was saying.
His response stopped, and his gaze was fixed on the empty air.
Since we’ve been together for a day or two, I knew exactly what that behavior meant.
He was staring at his Status Window.
But can information come out of the Status Window right now?
We’re in the Curse Room, not the Observatory!
Did he use advice? No way.
He clearly said he used it all in the early morning.
“…”
Now, he seemed totally oblivious to my presence.
Seeing him lost in thought, I couldn’t help but want to play a little prank.
Since we were in an Observatory, it wasn’t a crisis situation anyway, right?
Heh! Although I couldn’t see the Status Window, I already knew my position.
— Swipe!
“Zap! Status Window hide!”
“Whaaat!”
As I reached out to block where the Status Window likely was, Kain jumped back in surprise.
“Come on… Elena, you startled me.”
His unexpectedly cute reaction caught me off guard too.
I never anticipated he’d get this startled over such a minor thing.
I expected him to either dodge casually or laugh it off.
So, Kain, what was making you so focused there?
“Oops! Sorry about that. What had you so engrossed? Advice? Still 0, right?”
“… The summoned creature that Miro called is leaving notes in the Status Window.”
The summoned creature Kain was apparently seeing in the Observatory wrote notes in the Status Window.
This had happened during the latter parts of the first attempt, and it was happening again.
It’s a bizarre method, but it seems pretty useful—information transfer via Status Window notes.
That’s basically the only way we’ve found for exchanging information between the Curse Room and Observatory.
Kain looked at me with a face that said, ‘What the heck does that mean?’
Strange and terrifying events unfold in the hotel like they’re part of everyday life.
The guy in front of me had an impressive knack for coming up with plausible answers in most situations.
Yet, even he seemed baffled by the questions thrown at him by a version of himself from a different time period.
“What does it say?”
“… Have you ever thought about what true love is?”
“Uh?”
“That’s a question that was written earlier, but I still haven’t got an answer.”
“Oh, really?”
“Another question just showed up a moment ago. Miro seems to have summoned me again. I guess the other version of me wrote something else.”
“What’s it this time?”
The next line was equally shocking.
“A wise person creates a board where everyone can win.”
“Ah, I remember this one. A supporter of Kain said something like that before—”
“… A foolish person creates a board where everyone seated loses.”
*
– Kim Ahri
About 20 minutes had passed since Seungyub left the classroom with Songyi.
In that time, Seungyub was treading the same path he had mentioned before.
“Why don’t we just run away?”
“What, what did you say?”
“Let’s ditch the rest of class. I want to talk.”
Suddenly throwing out a proposal to ditch school, the girl caught the boy slightly off guard, but not for long.
“Okay, okay!”
This felt so natural.
Watching Seungyub for half a day made me realize that the original Seungyub wouldn’t be the type to study hard in class.
If a pretty girl suggested ditching, he should be quick to say ‘sure!’
The next development was almost identical to what Seungyub had mentioned.
“I’ll show you something fun.”
“Eh?”
“Usually, the PE teacher patrols at the back door, right?”
A story being repeated like an ongoing movie.
“The PE teacher isn’t around?”
“He’s in the teacher’s office right now. He probably went to apply for equipment since something broke yesterday.”
“… How do you know that?”
“Just wait a bit. If we wait 26 more seconds…”
Having realized this fact made it easy for Sonyeon to slip out of school, just like in a movie.
Of course, both Songyi and I were able to follow without much trouble.
We might not be intimately familiar with the movie plot like that girl, but we were former agents and participants, after all.
The rest of the developments were similar.
Sonyeon told Seungyub about the “truth of the world,” and he started to recover fragments of his past with a stunned expression.
“If you remembered your past, you’d know.”
“What do you mean? Ah, get everyone else to wake up?”
“I think if you create a powerful emotion, you wake up.”
Observing from a distance, it felt like some bittersweet romance or an escape act.
Suddenly, an angry voice broke through.
“Hey, hey! What’s going on? What was that?!”
“…”
“Did you see that? That girl, Sonyeon, every time she spoke, her face turned bright red!”
“Keep it down! We’ll get caught.”
“Seungyub, he already likes her! He likes her already!”
“It’s not like the real Seungyub, anyway.”
“What in the world was Yumi waiting for with a girl like that?”
Even though Songyi wasn’t particularly close to Yumi, she was fuming.
It felt like she had discovered an affair or something!
“That girl is just that—Yumi will return in her own way.”
“Ugh! How can you say that so casually?”
Songyi, who was in disbelief, soon shifted back to serious talk.
“So far, everything has matched the development I heard from Seungyub precisely.”
“True.”
“If it keeps up like this, it’ll just fail again, right? There needs to be a shift in the progression for the original human to matter—”
At that moment.
“Hold on.”
The plot started to shift!
“So, I’m pondering. What should we do? Actually, I do have a plan.”
“Uh, what’s the plan?”
“Come here.”
What kind of dialogue had happened during the first attempt?
Seungyub wasn’t sharp enough to pass along Sonyeon’s words verbatim.
But abstractly, he remembered the general flow of what happened.
At this point, Sonyeon should be asking Seungyub for his opinion.
How to wake others up, what does he think—
This round was different.
“Something’s changed.”
“What changed?”
“The girl isn’t asking for Seungyub’s opinion. She’s just going to follow her plan.”
“… This must be based on something that genuinely happened.”
“…”
“Originally, Seungyub wouldn’t have been the kind of person someone would trust. I bet the real Sonyeon didn’t trust Seungyub, and rather than asking for his opinion, she probably acted on her own.”
“…”
“But during the first attempt, Seungyub appeared too smart and remarkable. So Sonyeon hid her thoughts and followed his lead.”
“Guess we need to see what the girl’s plan is.”
As time passed, Seungyub and Sonyeon sat in a coffee shop, starting an intimate chat.
I tried to hold back, but there were one or two absurdly funny elements that made me chuckle.
“Guys, seriously. What kind of secret meeting is going on in a coffee shop?”
They hadn’t even chased everyone else away!
There are people sitting at the table right next to them.
Do they not see that Songyi and I are sitting at the back table too?
… Let’s just roll with it.
Seungyub and Sonyeon aren’t seasoned agents; they are just middle schoolers.
“Are you saying you can wake them up by stirring intense emotions?”
“Right. So, um, are you planning to hit someone?”
“That’s not good. You’ll get arrested.”
“… Have you ever been arrested?”
“Uh, well! Anyway, we need to do something big without getting caught.”
What’s a way to make a large group of people extremely angry without a risk of getting arrested?
While various ideas popped into my head, I suddenly chuckled at one of Seungyub’s methods.
Maybe Songyi thought similarly, as a blurry illusion appeared on the table.
“Isn’t Seungyub amazing? To think he thought of breaking people’s minds with toxic chats and trolling!
It sounds like a plan straight out of a game obsessed Seungyub would come up with.
In other words, Sonyeon wouldn’t have considered that option.
“Initially, I thought about dropping stones from the overpass or dropping water balloons from the apartment rooftop.”
What?
Wow, the girl has quite an imagination too.
“If you do that, people might die.”
“… So, I scrapped that idea.”
“Wait, you actually tried that? Did people die—”
“Shush! Others will hear!”
If you’re scared of someone listening, why even hold a meeting in a coffee shop?
No one will take anything seriously since you’re talking about such absurd ideas anyway.
“The conclusion is simple. We have to strike when there are no people around.”
“When there’s no one around?”
“We’re sneaking into the school at night. We’ll go in, trash everything, and set it on fire. The next day, the teachers and kids will be shocked and faint, right? How’s that sound? Doesn’t it seem good?”
“Sounds… okay!”
Okay? Is that really okay?
I was momentarily speechless, but Songyi cautiously whispered in my ear.
“Ahri, doesn’t that plan seem weird?”
“… It’s not just weird. You’re planning to set a fire in a school where there are people even at night.”
These absurd ideas stem from one simple reason.
“They don’t realize there are people in the school at night. They think it’s empty, with only the guard outside.”
“Thinking back, I think when I went to high school, I had no idea teachers or the guards stayed overnight.”
“Phew… I can see why.”
“So what do we do?”
“What do you mean? Let it be.”
*
Late at night.
Two creatively thinking little ‘terrorists’ came forth with small cans of oil, lighters, hammers, and other stuff ready.
‘Logically speaking,’ having such a childish and full-of-holes plan succeeding doesn’t make sense.
Of course, considering common sense in this splendid new world is utterly useless.
The girl knows the route to sneak into the school, as well as the patrol schedule of the guards.
For a typical middle school student, that might be impossible, but for a middle schooler who’s been through dozens of loops, it was a piece of cake.
At that moment, Songyi murmured, lost in thought.
“Here’s a thought I’ve been having.”
“What is it?”
“This world feels like a movie now, right? Those two might be the protagonists.”
“That’s a possibility.”
“Isn’t it a romance school drama? You know how time slows down when they fall in love.”
“At least that’s what Seungyub said.”
“It’s so weird…”
“What’s weird?”
“I’ve read a lot of romances, webtoons, and novels. I love romance school dramas.”
“So?”
“I’ve never come across a romance school drama where the heroine sets the school on fire…”
“…”
“This is my first time seeing such a ridiculous plot.”
Songyi’s point is straightforward.
When has the heroine ever set the school on fire in romance?
This is a world that exists only in a movie, and it’s an absurd turn of events where NPCs recognize that the world is a movie.
What does that even mean?
While I pondered this, random bickering erupted from a corner of the playground.
“What are you saying? Suddenly suggesting we go home?”
“Sonyeon… Ah, no matter how I think, this doesn’t feel right.”
“Why? Are you scared all of a sudden?”
“Isn’t it ridiculous to set the school on fire?!”
“What’s wrong? No one’s here anyway. The guard is far away, so it’s fine.”
“C-couldn’t we think about this more? We have time, right? How about tomorrow or the day after…?”
“Eh! I’m just a fool for counting on you! Here! I can do it on my own!”
At first, the girl had the boy following her lead, but when the moment came to light the school on fire, he started to change his mind.
He tried to persuade her to think about it for a few more days, but it didn’t work.
With a pout as if she didn’t expect him to back her, Sonyeon started heading towards the school.
“Such an innocent look. What a cute pair.”
“… Do they know they’re heading to set the school on fire?”
“Setting a fire isn’t a big deal, you know. What’s the big deal?”
“What insane stuff are you saying—the 104th Room didn’t get you to burn the school down?”
“Everyone thinks about burning their school at least once when they’re little. Now, let’s see how the girl proceeds.”
Just as we were about to follow Sonyeon into the school.
— Thud!
Suddenly, Songyi nudged my shoulder.
“Why?”
“…”
She wore a look that suggested she was hesitating to speak.
She must’ve thought of something that seemed off even to her.
“Just say it.”
I’ve been trusting Songyi’s instincts so far.
As Seungyub’s mentality appears to be sturdier than I thought, I felt my direction shift with his game commentary.
In this realm of middle schoolers and high schoolers, she seemed to outshine me.
Though I’d never admit that aloud.
“… Ahri, why were you trying to follow Sonyeon just now?”
“Why? Because she’s trying to set the school on fire—”
“Seungyub is behind us.”
“Huh?”
“Now that Seungyub and Sonyeon are separated, you naturally want to follow Sonyeon.”
“…”
I realized it after being pointed out.
As Songyi said, once Seungyub and Sonyeon were split, I instinctively tried to follow Sonyeon.
“So, you see Sonyeon as the protagonist.”
“…”
“I feel the same way. Sonyeon’s the protagonist, while Seungyub seems just like a clueless boy with a crush.”
“… But the chosen participant is Seungyub, not Sonyeon.”
For the first time, I felt Songyi was incredibly insightful.
A romance school drama based in middle school.
Perhaps she’s the expert in this genre?
Wow, that’s quite a pathetic expertise, isn’t it?
Wouldn’t she get mad if I said that to her face?
“Do you know which part is the most important in a creation?”
“…”
“The beginning and the end. The impact in the introduction is crucial for attracting the audience, and the ending comprises half of the evaluation of the work.”
Just then, the girl dashes off as if she’s about to set the school on fire.
A boy making a sad puppy face is left behind on the playground.
His attitude showed how he was merely dragged by the situation, completely weak-willed.
Throughout this all, I felt no hint of protagonist qualities from him so far.
But I knew how this movie ends.
I also know who was chosen by the hotel.
So starting now…
Shall we explain it using baseball as an example?
Even if you flop until the 8th inning of the final game, that’s fine.
In the last game, with two outs in the ninth inning, a tie, if you hit just one home run, you become the MVP.
“… The hotel seems to be watching for that one critical moment after all.”
“Is it strange? The one sitting above all has that tendency!”
No matter how many times you may fail, as long as you have one success at the very end, that’s all it takes.
Reflecting on this, it’s the very nature of the hotel.
For someone, life is like a single big shot.
For another individual, even the destiny of the universe came down to a single strike.
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