12. Hotel Top Floor (1)
Guns were overpowered. That wasn't even up for debate.
Twitch a finger and a life disappears.
Sure, it has the drawback of needing bullets, but weighed against that convenience, a drawback like that is more than worth putting up with.
For one thing, I liked that there was no lingering sensation in my hand. Bashing someone with a rock or stabbing them with a knife had felt disgusting.
Like that pain was being transmitted to me too.
But a gun was different. The distance between me and the corpse also separated me from any guilt.
Now I could fire a gun without feeling a thing. Not that I'd felt much from the start.
The blond guy from a little while ago.
Was he a fucking idiot? That was all I could think. How could he do that? Why act so irrationally?
What was he so confident about? The skill effect I heard about wasn't even that good.
I don't get it. Then again, there's no way I could understand every person in the world.
The world is crawling with fucking idiots.
If everyone were rational and intelligent, this world probably wouldn't run properly.
Anyway, I kept walking, thinking about what I should do next.
First, I want to wash up a bit. My body feels gross. Too much blood on me. I wish I at least had some wet wipes.
Walking down the main road like that, once I reached the intersection I started feeling a bit at a loss. But my eyes went to the building right in front of me.
A five-star hotel in the middle of Gangnam. A place I'd never even dreamed of visiting under normal circumstances.
No, well, I probably could have gone. The problem was that I had no money and no woman to go with.
So I headed there.
And I figured that there would be people there who couldn't go anywhere even if they wanted to.
Tourists who came to a foreign country for fun and ended up trapped, unable to move.
They have nowhere to run. So they'd be in there.
What was it again. A hat with a strap you can tie around your neck. Should I at least get something like that?
A baseball cap makes me a little uneasy. If it accidentally gets knocked off, a lot of things would get complicated. I don't want to see that happen.
For now, I'll just have to be careful. Well, I'll worry about that later.
The hotel entrance. Standing in front of it, I had no choice but to stop walking.
Damn it. Being an invisible man is great, but this is the problem. I can't do anything about this door.
It's just one glass door. But this one glass door is enough to make someone suspect my existence.
If a door opens and closes with no one there? If someone sees that?
They'll think, what the hell? If they've got a vivid imagination, they might even connect it to the existence of an invisible man.
Of course, if someone thought that under normal circumstances, they'd belong in a mental hospital.
But the situation is different now. If you know skills exist, reaching the idea of an invisible man isn't that hard.
Should I wait for someone to come out? Or someone going in?
It's annoying in every way. I'm having the same dilemma I had in front of the police substation.
The problem is that doing that here is difficult. With the way I look right now, going in here would be unnatural.
So after thinking for a bit, I came up with a decent method.
Bang!
The hotel's rather nice-looking glass door shattered like that.
Right. This works.
No one can hear the gunshot anyway. So if anyone was watching, they'd just feel like the glass door suddenly broke on its own.
I wait for a moment like that. In case anyone comes out.
And just as I expected, people who looked like hotel staff came out.
But rather than ordinary staff, they looked like people with some seniority.
So not regular employees, but manager-level or so?
Three people approaching cautiously. They make troubled faces at the broken glass door.
Not that they can do anything about it. They can't fix it, and they can't cover it up or block it off either.
Anyway, so there are people here. Meaning not everyone ran off.
Interesting. Why are they still here? A sense of responsibility? Or because they had nowhere to go?
Of course, they might have stayed because they hoped everything would blow over as a passing scare.
But from where I stand, they're just foolish people. They look like idiots who can't properly grasp the situation.
Well, maybe they're carrying different burdens than I am. Not that I need to care about that.
I step through the broken door and go inside.
I heard glass crunch underfoot, but I didn't care. The others wouldn't hear it anyway.
Still, I moved my feet carefully. Even if there's no sound, the glass shards moving could be visible.
Not that those three seemed composed enough to notice something like that.
Anyway, I got inside safely like that.
Once I'm in, there's nothing to worry about. I can go anywhere and won't be caught by anyone.
So I took my time looking around the hotel.
It really is luxurious. It's not a five-star hotel for nothing.
Given the current situation, it looks a little less glamorous, but it must have been even nicer normally.
Well, not that it has anything to do with me.
I cross the first-floor lobby like that and head to the desk.
There was no one on the first floor. Everyone seemed too worried to come downstairs.
Same at the desk. The staff member who was here probably went over to the broken glass door.
So I was able to leisurely look over the empty desk.
Including the monitor that was on.
It's probably the hotel room management program. I can tell just by glancing at it. Occupied rooms and empty rooms are all displayed.
Hm. Weird. The rooms are this full even on a weekday? Why are there so many?
Anyway, I wasn't interested in ordinary rooms. I checked the most expensive ones.
Since I'm at a hotel anyway, I might as well check out the best room.
I roughly confirmed the information. But to get in, I'd need a card key.
Rummaging around carelessly is a bit much. There's a CCTV above the desk.
If someone reviews the CCTV and sees objects moving around on their own, that would also be strange.
But of course, I wouldn't show up on CCTV, right? If I did, that wouldn't make sense either. It would be absurd.
Anyway, I search under the desk only to the extent that it wouldn't seem strange.
But there was no way a master key would just be sitting out in a place like this. Even if there was one, someone probably carries it.
So I gave up on searching and thought for a moment. Should I put a bullet into that CCTV too?
But that's a bit much. For the hotel's glass door, people could think something flew in from outside, but not in here.
I didn't want to give the impression that someone was doing something inside. So I drop it.
I'm an invisible man, after all. I should exist as if I don't exist, as much as possible.
While I was thinking that, the desk phone rang.
The phone kept ringing. With no one there to answer, it rang a few more times before stopping.
A few seconds later, it rang again, then fell silent once more.
Right after the ringing stopped like that, the staff member who had gone to the glass door comes back.
Bad timing. Whoever it was, they had bad luck.
Anyway, two people came to the desk and talked to each other with worried expressions.
Grumbling about what the hell is going on. And lamenting the current situation. Things like that.
So I listened quietly, hoping to pick up some useful information.
After listening for a while, I could understand why they were here doing this.
Earlier in the morning, after that message window appeared, the hotel's owner apparently gave direct instructions.
Everyone with family nearby was told to bring their families to the hotel.
I was inwardly impressed. Wow. He could give an order like that. Pretty smart, huh?
In my opinion, it seems like the best possible order.
Since no one knows what will happen, he can't just empty the hotel and tell everyone to leave. There are guests too, and that would be irresponsible.
But he also can't force people to stay. If he did, it's questionable how many would remain.
So instead, if they bring their families, the hotel naturally gets protected, and the staff and their families get protected too.
Even if something happens, they can all band together and respond as one.
However, that's the best option among purely "rational" choices.
Getting a skill has the basic condition that you have to kill people.
And an order like that fundamentally denies that condition. In other words, the people remaining here are good people.
To someone with a skill, they just become a neatly gathered box of coins. Like right now.
Anyway, I liked this place. For one thing, the fact that it's a hotel.
At least it's better than my 8-pyeong studio apartment.
Anyway, the rooms were that full because the staff's families were in the hotel rooms.
No wonder there seemed to be a lot of people for a weekday. Well, whatever.
First, I want to get something like a master key.
That staff member looks fairly high-ranking. So would he have something like a master key?
Usually places like this run on a computer system, so if you have a certain level of authority, you can probably get into anywhere.
If he goes to the bathroom or something, should I quietly follow him, kill him, and then search him?
Well, that doesn't seem like a bad idea. But disposing of a dead body is hard.
If it gets discovered, things would get noisy.
Then the phone rings again. And the staff member answers it right away.
The staff member spoke politely—and then switched straight into English.
I definitely studied English hard back in school.
I don't know why I can't understand a single word now. Is that staff member's pronunciation bad?
The staff member puts down the phone. Then he says to the staff member next to him.
"I'll go up for a bit. They keep asking me to check on something."
"Should I go instead?"
"You want to? It's the PSL room."
"Uh, you don't mean those three foreign women?"
"Right."
"No. You go. I'll watch the desk."
The staff member who answered the phone smirked, then came out from behind the desk and headed toward the elevator.
So I followed that staff member.
I'd already worked out what PSL meant from the desk earlier. It stood for Premium Special Luxury.
In other words, a fucking amazing room. But there are three women in a room like that?
There's no way that doesn't pique my interest. Of course I have to go.