Escaping the Mystery Hotel-Chapter 259: Party Time - The Mirror Rooms Secret (5)

- Yu Songee

Would you like to make a wish? If you press ‘Yes’, your wish will come true.

A whirlwind of desire bubbled up inside me.

The glowing words in front of me promised to fulfill everything I could ever want.

Mesmerized, my hand instinctively reached forward to press “Yes”.

[Break free from the limits of perception.]

I felt as though someone had doused me with ice-cold water.

[Embrace absolute reason.]

A sharp bolt of lightning struck through me from head to toe.

[That is why I bestowed upon you the bracelet.]

The Diverse Perspectives bracelet—my Inheritance that had never left my wrist since Room 103—flashed with a white light.

My vision went dark, and the endless reflections of myself that had been lingering in my mind faded into obscurity.

I saw nothing.

I heard nothing.

The cold glass beneath my feet vanished, along with the subtle breeze that had been caressing my skin.

The bracelet had severed every sensory input to my brain, leaving only the consciousness of Yu Songee floating in an abyss.

And in that moment, for the first time, my absolute reason awakened.

It warned me...

This place is dangerous.

Even Miro, a highly skilled agent, couldn’t withstand this place.

A deep sense of unease settled in my gut.

Since arriving at the Mirror Room, something had felt wrong—an inexplicable absence of something that should have been there.

The room had never once asked me, “What is your wish?”

It reflected my countless desires, showing me every craving of my soul, yet it never actually asked which one I wanted to be fulfilled.

It finally hit me.

Why didn’t it ask me to specify my wish?

Because it didn’t need to.

The Mirror Room wasn’t granting a single wish—it was granting all of them.

Even if they contradicted each other.

Even if they led to darkness.

I needed to confirm it.

Is my reasoning correct?

Is the Mirror Room truly hiding something sinister?

Slowly, I released the sensory suppression from my bracelet.

The first thing I felt was the cold, solid glass beneath my feet.

Then, the flow of air moved in and out of my lungs.

Finally, my sight returned, and the glowing mirrors came into view once more.

But the reflections had changed.

One mirror showed me lying in bed, doing nothing but sleeping to escape my exhaustion.

Another showed me completely alone, having abandoned all human relationships for solitude.

Some reflections were shameful, revealing my most basic, hidden desires in unsettling, perverse detail.

I passed them all by, pushing through the myriad of reflections exposing the deepest recesses of my mind.

And then, I finally found it.

A mirror that showed me a normal human life.

As a child, I went to school like everyone else.

In my early twenties, I attended university and prepared for a job.

After that, I got employed and entered society.

If I met someone I loved along the way, happiness would follow.

Maybe I would marry that person, have children, and raise a family.

Perhaps my child wouldn’t always listen to me, but raising them with the person I love would bring joy.

Eventually, that child would become independent, and I would enter the later years of my life.

This was a normal human life.

The version of me in the mirror aged peacefully, content with her life’s journey.

Then I looked at the mirror beside it.

It showed another me—one that scoffed at all of it, calling it insignificant.

That me had no interest in escaping the hotel.

Why leave when the Hotel offers transcendence, after all?

Why settle for a job, a family, and a mundane life when immortality and power beyond human limits lay before me?

A version of me existed in that mirror, who climbed past the second floor, reached the third, and ascended to the apex.

She obtained supernatural relics beyond value, powers that defied imagination, and ultimately, she sought divinity.

And after that...?

Even I couldn’t comprehend what awaited her beyond ascension.

Humans were contradictory beings.

We longed for success, yet we also craved a lazy, carefree life.

We wished to be loved, yet sometimes we yearned to disappear and be forgotten.

We wanted a simple, happy life with a loved one, yet we couldn’t abandon our fascination with the extraordinary.

So then, which of these reflections was the real me?

It didn’t matter.

All of them were fragments that made up who I was.

Then it dawned on me.

The Mirror Room granted all desires—not just one.

Of course, there must be limits to its power.

But the true problem wasn’t how much power it had.

The real question was...

How does it fulfill contradictory wishes?

How can someone be both a beloved social butterfly and a lonely recluse?

How can someone both return to a peaceful human life and remain in the Hotel to become a god?

...I understood now.

Behind the countless mirrors, possibilities flickered into existence, slowly taking shape.

“...That’s enough. I don’t need this kind of wish.”

My voice, surprisingly cold, echoed through the chamber.

The mirrors dimmed, and the forming figures dissolved back into darkness.

Now that I had made up my mind to leave, I instinctively knew how.

- CRASH!

I wrapped a towel around my hand and shattered one of the mirrors.

Glass shards scattered in all directions, and my hand was soon stained red with blood.

At that moment, an alert appeared.

Would you like to leave?

“Yeah. But what happens to my wish?”

Unfortunately, if you give up your wish, the free wish opportunity will be passed on to the next person who enters the Mirror Room. So please don’t be too hasty in your decision—

Tempting.

Hearing that my opportunity would be lost made something inside me stir with greed.

But... I knew the truth now.

I knew how the Mirror Room granted wishes.

And I knew why Miro was doomed to destruction.

“It’s fine. Really, it’s fine. This place... isn’t somewhere I should be. For those who aren’t suited for it, it only leads to an unspeakable end.”

Even as I reassured myself, stepping away from this place was harder than I expected.

***

User: Han Kain (Wisdom)

Date: Day 110

Current location: Floor 1, Corridor

Sage’s Advice: 2

- Han Kain

In the early morning, Songee suddenly appeared—her hands covered in blood and completely naked.

It was enough to throw everyone into a panic.

But the strangest part was that she didn’t offer any explanation.

She simply sat blankly on a chair in the lobby, murmuring the same thing over and over, “If I go back in now... Then I’ll still be the ‘first’ again.”

A flustered Eunsol-noona quickly fetched something for her to wear, and the others shook her by the shoulders, trying to snap her out of it.

But Songee’s vacant, soulless gaze remained unchanged.

She insisted, in a voice that was anything but reassuring, “I’m fine. Go get some rest.”

It didn’t feel right just leaving her like that, but when I used Sage’s Advice, I got an unusual response:

This is something she must overcome on her own. Just leave her be.

So, I simply went back to sleep.

The next morning, once Ahri and Seungyub woke up, things finally started to shift.

Unlike us, who had no idea how to handle the situation, Ahri—whose own mother’s fate was tied to all this—clung to Songee with desperate intensity.

After listening intently to Songee’s explanation, Ahri asked, “So, the Mirror Room is a place that indiscriminately fulfills all of a person’s desires?”

“Something like that.”

“But since those desires often contradict each other, it ends up realizing them in a twisted way. Like... if a person had wishes that couldn’t possibly coexist, it would literally split them apart?”

“That’s how I felt.”

“So that means the real problem isn’t just conflicting desires, huh?”

“There’s more.”

Songee hesitated before speaking again, “There are also... shameful wishes. Dark ones. And the room tries to grant those, too.”

“Tries to grant them how?”

“The Mirror Room’s power isn’t limitless. It can’t perfectly grant every wish a person has. So instead, it grants them... in a vague, distorted way.”

Nothing in this Hotel was ever straightforward, but this place—this Mirror Room—was particularly unsettling.

I voiced my thoughts aloud, “So, the dangers boil down to two things. First, it doesn’t care what the wish is. Even if it’s something that shouldn’t be granted. Second, it tries to fulfill contradictory wishes, even if that means splitting a person in two.”

“Yeah... that about sums it up.”

It was a terrifying thought.

How could a human being not have conflicting thoughts?

People contained multitudes.

They held thousands upon thousands of desires—some rational, some irrational.

Among them, there would be things that should never come true, and there would be contradictions.

Songee mentioned wanting to leave the hotel as soon as possible, but also wanting to stay and collect supernatural artifacts and power.

That contradiction existed inside me, too.

Miro must have been the same.

And the result of that... was Miro losing her mind, and Ahri being born.

Who knew what she had wished for that led to such a fate?

Ahri, looking hollow, murmured, “You did better than Miro. She couldn’t overcome her desires... but you made it out.”

“Eh? No, that’s not it. If anything, because I already knew what happened to Miro, I had a reason to stay alert. I knew the Mirror Room had to be dangerous. That’s why I could snap out of it in time.”

“Thanks for saying that.”

At the very least, it was a relief that Songee had made it out unscathed.

While the others expressed their relief, I suddenly had the urge to mess with her a little.

“So, Songee...”

“Huh?”

“What exactly were those shameful, dark wishes? What was so embarrassing that you couldn’t even look at the mirrors? Don’t tell me... it had something to do with why you showed up completely naked—”

“I-I was wearing a towel! I took it off to break the mirror, that’s all!”

Before I could even finish speaking, she bolted from the room.

Ahri, exasperated, groaned, “Ugh! Idiot! There were still so many things I needed to ask her!”

“You can just chase her down and ask. What else do you need to know?”

“The Mirror Room. No matter how dangerous it is, it’s clearly not just a trap. It offers a free wish and even lets you use a Ticket to make additional wishes. That has to mean it’s possible to use it properly.”

“Yeah, that makes sense.”

“There has to be a way to make a wish without triggering its dangers. Songee must have figured out something about that. We need to find out what.”

With that, she kicked me in the shin and ran after Songee.

I lay on the floor, staring at the ceiling.

The two fundamental problems of the Mirror Room.

Firstly, it granted wishes that should never be granted.

Secondly, it forced contradictory wishes to coexist, breaking the person in the process.

How do we get around that?

Is it even possible for someone to be completely free of such contradictions?