Our Hotel Is Open for Business as Usual Chapter 50

Honestly, I didn’t think much of it.

 

“….”

 

I was in a situation where simply looking after myself was overwhelming enough.

 

Besides, this was a game. For twenty-six years, Hotel One had been nothing more than an object of play for Lee Yeonwoo. Even if someone appealed to me now that the tragedies here were real history, how visceral could that truly feel?

 

Even if I felt something, I had to ignore it.

 

“….”

 

What else could I do?

 

Lee Yeonwoo was no god; he was currently in a position where he struggled even to take care of his own business. So, let’s not act stupidly by getting swept up in sentiment. I had to make a rational, wise decision.

 

I didn’t want to regret it later, thinking I should have been more careful after everything was already over.

 

“….”

 

However, right before the second pursuit broke out.

 

Lee Yeonwoo finally unfolded the materials he had brought along and read them.

 

Yes, it was no big deal. I could spare that much time. To reiterate, he loathed his own ignorance and hated regretting things that had already passed too late.

 

So, before the situation became uncontrollably urgent, Lee Yeonwoo intended to ask himself in advance.

 

Can I leave like this, as if nothing happened, even while knowing all of this?

 

“….”

 

…He also recalled memories that weren’t his own.

 

The first thing that approached was a vivid pain. Or perhaps it was a record left by someone.

 

The deep resignation of one who realized they could no longer return home, to the embrace of their family, or to their ordinary daily life. I heard a scream silently sinking into the abyss of despair.

 

Deprived of human rights, treated as something less than a living creature, they were being crushed by the pressure of a narrow crevice. Even a single shard of exhaled breath was nothing but suffocating.

 

No, it would be suffocating.

 

“….”

 

Someone thought that it would be suffocating.

 

“Truly….”

 

That, in truth.

 

“Regrettable.” 

 

Made Lee Yeonwoo feel upset.

 

* * *

 

Banging their head. Scratching with their hands.

 

“….”

 

Ah, finally.

 

“….”

 

The door opens.

 

* * *

 

“….” 

 

“….” 

 

“….”

 

Rumble—!!!

 

“…Coco.”

 

He called out, but no response was heard. 

 

“Coco.”

 

It was the same this time as well. It was clearly hanging from his neck, but as if his ears had gone deaf, no sound reached him. 

 

“….”

 

The answer came immediately as he looked around.

 

Room 14 was collapsing and distorting. Dark red blood was flowing backward through the gaps between the holes where countless eyeballs had been embedded. Deformed fingers sprouted, squeezing through the cracks in the tough, rough concrete walls.

 

Lee Yeonwoo let out a short breath that sounded like a hollow laugh.

 

‘And yet you can’t even come outside.’

 

As if pleading to be saved, or as if they had to kill.

 

Even though they had long since been cracked and torn. With those fingers, as if eating away at the wall, they went scratch-scratch-scratch-scratch-scratch-scratch-scratch-scratch-scratch-scratch-scratch-scratch-scratch-scratch-scratch—

 

Scratch.

 

“…Ha….”

 

His ears throbbed with pain. 

 

“Coco?” 

 

“Yes!”

 

Now he could hear it. 

 

‘Let’s stay calm.’

 

He forcibly erased the lingering images of experiments and rituals clinging to his mind. He barely shook off the unpleasant sensation of his brain feeling contaminated. This was not the time to be soaked in such contamination or sentimentality. 

 

Lee Yeonwoo calmly asked his partner.

  

“Are you confident you won’t fall off?” 

 

“Yes!” 

 

“Excellent.”

 

Hideous sounds poured into his ears. 

 

The laughter of a madman, the thudding sound of a head being smashed against a wall. He wanted to cover his ears right away, but he couldn’t do that.

 

Because right now, listening was the phase that determined survival.

 

Thump—!! Rumble!!!

 

“As you know, we’re being chased right now.” 

 

“Yes!” 

 

“The speed….”

 

He wanted to pick up the speed more, but. 

 

“…Hmm.”

 

It was impossible. This was the maximum speed Lee Yeonwoo could produce currently.

 

He had been running. Ever since he stepped out of the ‘last room.’ This was because the second pursuit had been forcibly activated the moment he secured the elevator button.

 

‘I know the situation is urgent enough that I should run faster, but if I exceed the character speed defined by the system, it puts an overload on the body. My condition is already a mess, so I have to be even more careful.’

 

If he raised his speed recklessly, his body itself could scatter into bloody water. 

 

“Anyway, it would be best to hang onto my shoulder tightly.” 

 

“Yes!”

 

Coco dangled behind his shoulder. She looked like a necklace or a scarf worn backward. It was a relief, if anything, that her weight wasn’t felt at all, so she wasn’t a hindrance.

 

Lee Yeonwoo focused his nerves on the sounds he heard.

 

“….”

 

Boom—!!

 

‘The sound is getting closer and closer.’ 

 

Reflecting on the specs in the game, the monster’s speed was minutely faster than the character’s maximum speed. To survive this second chase, he had to pick only the correct route without a single delay. 

 

‘Right, so….’

 

The correct path.

 

“I have everything memorized, but.” 

 

“Yes.” 

 

“Now that this has become reality, it is indeed confusing.” 

 

“Ing?” 

 

“Was this section… pattern 21? No, 94?” 

 

“Ing?” 

 

“Ah, not this one either.”

 

Lee Yeonwoo quickly swerved his body into the right alleyway.

 

‘I was almost caught for a good while.’

 

The interface map was displaying an escape route, but it was a trap. Certain alleyways were collapsed or monsters were hidden like ambushes, so he had to judge for himself which path was the correct one.

 

‘Right here, then left, then the next is… Ah, is it not this pattern? Then right… then the stairs….’

 

First, the red lighting. The lights on the correct path are steady, but the lights on the fake path flicker. However, there are also alleyways with no red lighting at all.

 

In that case, listening is required. The correct path is relatively quiet or only old mechanical sounds can be heard. In traps, screams or whispers can be heard distorted.

 

“Is this place not it either?”

 

“Yes!” 

 

“This is driving me crazy.”

 

Even if both are judged to be correct, if a vibration is felt in the air, it is a trap. Part of the monster is there. Going there means instant death, so he had to be truly careful.

 

“Just which pattern is this? Number 55? Number 32?” 

 

“No!” 

 

“Now I’m certain. 73.” 

 

“Yes!” “

 

“Of all things, the longest pattern had to be the one.”

 

It wasn’t pleasant news.

 

‘It’s incredibly distracting.’

 

The ceiling, which had been nothing but darkness, was now filled with monitors stuck together like insect egg sacs. On every flickering screen, the videos seen in the ‘Temporary Manager Exam’ were playing repeatedly.

 

The walls where fingers scratched, The floor thumping and shaking from behind, The monitors making screeching sounds.

 

“Hello?” 

 

“No….”

 

Bang!! Bang bang bang—!!

 

“I am not doing well at all….”

 

Reddish gazes as if pleading, and the desperate noise of pounding on iron doors. Through every narrow crevice, mutated or crushed body parts were being shoved into the alleyways.

 

Solely to catch the one man, Lee Yeonwoo.

 

“This is highly unpleasant.”

 

Who designed this kind of hell? He desperately hoped that all of this was a sophisticatedly produced play. That it was merely a gesture to startle the user, and not the actual embalming of someone’s grudge or pain.

 

Please, let it not be!

 

“Haha…!”

 

A hollow laugh escaped him. This damn world. It was sickening. He couldn’t help but ask himself.

 

‘If this is truly a real situation, is it right for me to run away like this?’

 

And reason for that being, 

 

‘Whatever the reason, I am the manager of this hotel now, and the only person who knows the situation here?’

 

The question that had tormented him all the way here now stood before the final opportunity.

 

The Room 14 event happens only once. He might be able to find new variables in the actualized system, but basically, once Lee Yeonwoo left this place, Room 14 would be permanently sealed.

 

‘Then will every existence here die? Will they sleep forever?’

 

Or would they be imprisoned once again?

 

Lee Yeonwoo felt like he was going mad thinking about the settings of the hotel in the game.

 

They had been trapped for far too long. An eon, practically. They would likely be craving the solace of death instead.

 

“I really… don’t know why you’re doing this to me.” 

 

“No?” 

 

“No, I don’t know. I still don’t know anything.”

 

A clear answer did not emerge. Thinking coldly, feeling an unnecessary sense of responsibility in this situation was no different from volunteering to be a fool.

 

Nevertheless, he continued to weigh the future and the possibilities. It was because Lee Yeonwoo ultimately failed to discard his humanity. And he had to bear the price himself.

 

The responsibility for deciding to live as himself.

 

“As I recall, the monster that is the subject of this event was not classified as a staff member.” 

 

“Yes.” 

 

“That is a pity.”

 

This event belongs to the ‘horror elements.’ If the hotel system deleted the data upon the conclusion of the event, Yeonwoo would have no way to touch it again.

 

“To make a person this distracted when I’m already busy enough just looking after myself.”

 

…It wasn’t that there was no conclusion reached this way.

 

“….”

 

He also thought, is this right?

 

“I really need to get some proper rest after this is over….”

 

A groan escaped him involuntarily.

 

He couldn’t judge whether the alternative that came to mind was a way to protect his humanity or a way to abandon it completely. Ultimately, it was a matter of which value Lee Yeonwoo himself placed more weight on.

 

“Let’s go over this for a moment.” 

 

“Yes.” 

 

“The original strategy is to throw blood packs onto the path. Like Hansel and Gretel. The key is to buy time while the pursuing monster absorbs that blood.” 

 

“Yes!” 

 

“Of course, it shouldn’t be overused.”

 

The more blood it absorbs, the stronger and faster the monster becomes. It’s a last resort used when lost. If one has perfectly memorized the path like now, the right answer is not to use it.

 

‘Above all, these fresh blood packs are resources I’ll definitely need later.’

 

Lee Yeonwoo narrowed his eyes as he looked at the blood packs filling his inventory.

 

‘Should I just run away?’

 

Or.

 

‘Should I try taking a gamble?’ 

 

…A hollow laugh escaped him.

 

“I’m debating it, what do you think?” 

 

“….” 

 

“You’re unusually silent, Coco. Do you have nothing to say?” 

 

“Ing….” 

 

“That must mean it’s hard to clearly decide between pros and cons. I understand. It’s an alternative with risks and returns that are just as clear.”

 

As confirmed in the first pursuit, the monster of Room 14 is weak to contaminated blood and blindly drawn to fresh blood. And Lee Yeonwoo, to summarize extremely, was himself a living mass of blood.

 

“If I am eaten, return to blood, and conversely absorb that monster into my body… I can take that friend out with me even after leaving this event area.”

 

As long as it doesn’t go through the conversion process, it does not become ‘me.’ It’s just being kept in the container called a body. After securing it like that for now, he could slowly find a way to handle it in the lab later.

 

That was the ‘alternative’ Lee Yeonwoo had come up with.

 

“….”

 

“….” 

 

“…I feel quite ashamed to claim I’m a sane person….”

 

He couldn’t even count how many times he had volunteered to do something crazy.

 

But an intuition that he must not turn away pulled at the back of his neck. While the gazes and fingers beyond the walls were a ‘phenomenon,’ that entity chasing him was different. It was similar to what he had felt from the monster guests.

 

Perhaps, a living creature.

 

“….”

 

…Or people.

 

“Ha….”

 

I’m tired.

 

He took out a blood pack with the feeling of hurriedly stuffing a roll of kimbap into his mouth on the way to work. It was a great relief that he had swept them all up along with the blood collection tools.

 

Lee Yeonwoo put the pack to his mouth. From now on, it was an all-out offensive. To have a head-on confrontation without the system’s calibration, he first needed to have a full stomach.

 

‘Better to act than to live with a lingering sense of discomfort for the rest of my life.’ 

 

“No?” 

 

‘This wicked cat.’

 

Lee Yeonwoo ignored it and drank the blood. Doing such a reckless thing. Even when he drank alcohol to liven up the atmosphere at a company dinner, he wouldn’t have poured it down his throat to this extent. 

 

* * *

 

Please.

 

I want to get out.