085. Escape from Hell Hotel
085. Escape from Hell Hotel
Silence flowed through the empty classroom.
Beyond the window, a red sunset was melting downward.
‘...Looks like dismissal time.’
Why was I in a school right now?
I shelved that question for the moment.
Something else mattered more right now.
‘More importantly, my body felt a bit strange...’
I decided to check my physical condition first.
Not only had my limbs shortened, but a hideous potbelly—something I'd never had before—bulged out in a grotesque state.
I moved to the back of the classroom.
Then I looked into the rectangular full-length mirror placed beside the trash can.
‘What the hell was this fucker?’
The person reflected in the mirror wasn't me.
A build like E.T. the alien.
A head bigger than my shoulders.
A shorty with stubby, thin arms and legs.
An ugly man with purulent acne evenly distributed all over his face.
And on his school uniform name tag, the name 'Park Jin-ha' was written.
‘Now who the hell was Park Jin-ha?’
I didn't know who this Park Jin-ha bastard was.
But the uniform I was wearing right now—I remembered it.
It was the high school uniform the me of this world had attended.
***
At some point, a bastard called Park Jin-ha seized control of my body.
I was only sharing senses and vision.
There was nothing I could do.
‘Looks like they took measures to stop me from acting on my own.’
At present, Park Jin-ha was on the move.
After receiving a text from a friend, he was hurrying somewhere.
The place he arrived after running like that for a long while was an empty lot, packed with a sea of delinquents puffing thickly on cigarettes.
‘Fucking tons of people.’
Five men wearing the same uniform as Park Jin-ha.
About twenty women wearing uniforms from other schools.
And if you added the women in plain clothes, the number approached almost fifty people.
‘But why did he come here?’
Just as I was harboring that question,
Park Jin-ha, who had been catching his breath, wore an awkward smile and addressed a male student.
"Sorry! A little late?"
"A little late, my ass, you crazy fuck. I told you to come running within five minutes, didn't I?"
"Sorry hehe..."
The man Park Jin-ha was acting servile toward.
That bastard seemed to be the ringleader of the male delinquents.
‘It looked like a gorilla. I felt as though I might remember that bastard too...’
Without any time to recall who that bastard was, Park Jin-ha moved his feet toward where the delinquents had gathered.
The delinquents were standing in a circle.
Surrounding one man.
That man also entered Park Jin-ha's view.
A man standing with his head deeply bowed, thick and bushy black hair covering half his face.
And I knew that man.
Because he was none other than 'me'.
You could say it was precisely the past form of me who had lived in this world.
‘Now I got what was going on.’
Apparently.
This illusion I was currently experiencing seemed to be reenacting a past event exactly as it happened.
Not from my point of view.
But from the point of view of the person I had assaulted.
‘...But did something like this even happen in the past?’
My memory was a little fuzzy.
Because I didn't keep all the memories of this world completely intact.
Unless it was a memory sharply lodged in my mind.
Most cases required applying pressure to my head and wringing it out like squeezing something to recall it.
‘Well, I'd remember it as I watched.’
I decided to eavesdrop on the sounds of the delinquents murmuring through Park Jin-ha's ears.
"Told him to follow and he actually follows."
"Got no sense of fear? Crazy bastard."
"Is that guy Gye Se-hun?"
"Yeah. Heard my boyfriend's friends all got beaten up by him."
"He's strong for a guy, I hear? Good at fighting too."
"Still just a guy in the end."
"Hey, hey. Doesn't he look like he'd be fucking handsome if you pushed his hair back?"
"Yeah. He's handsome even though his hair is covering his eyes."
"His proportions are model-level, though?"
"I don't like tall guys."
"No one asked your taste, you crazy bitch."
"But he's not saying a single word."
"I heard he doesn't talk much normally. Said he's a bastard who lives a life cut off from people."
"Is he retarded?"
While eavesdropping on this talk,
I finally managed to recall the current situation after wringing my brain.
‘Ah. I remembered now.’
First off, the reason the delinquents were gathered like this was no big deal.
This empty lot was simply their hangout.
And as it happened,
while I was walking through this area,
one of the delinquents had recognized me and brought me here.
The reason, well...
It was because I had assaulted their boyfriends and their boyfriends' friends.
‘They got hit because they deserved it.’
Those bastards were trash who deserved to be beaten.
Because they were the types who viciously bullied male students weaker than them.
Extorting money and valuables was the default.
They were bastards who forced people to run all kinds of errands or beat them up on a whim whenever their behavior displeased them.
Of course, I had no personal connection to the students being bullied.
I only helped because I couldn't stop thinking about them.
After finishing my recollection,
I looked at my past self again through Park Jin-ha's eyes.
"..."
Still with his head deeply bowed.
Lips pressed shut, ignoring everything the delinquents were saying.
It was a presence that went beyond reticence, a gloomy atmosphere overflowing from him.
‘Seeing it from a third-person perspective, it felt a little scary.’
Anyway.
Soon enough, the delinquents would resort to violence first.
And the delinquents would get beaten up in return.
I didn't know how they managed to create this illusion, but in any case, if I could simply endure the violence my past self inflicted, the trial would be passed.
Nothing particularly hard.
Just as I was accustomed to hitting, I was accustomed to getting hit.
*
*
*
The situation proceeded exactly like the past in my memories.
Around the time about ten female delinquents had been taken down,
the other delinquents all started fleeing in fear.
Park Jin-ha, with whom I was sharing senses, was also currently trying to escape the scene.
But getting caught was only a matter of time.
Because my past self didn't chase the female delinquents, but only pursued the male delinquents from the same school.
"Se, Se-hun, wait! I have nothing to do with this..."
A heavy fist slammed into Park Jin-ha's stomach.
"Keuhuk...!"
That pain was transmitted to me exactly as it was,
because my senses were shared,
even though I had no control over the body.
‘He deserves it.’
It wasn't unbearable.
Because my past self was pulling his punches.
Moderately, just enough not to kill.
However, only my mind was fine.
"Heueo, eoeok... I won't ever bully the kids again, so forgive..."
Park Jin-ha was writhing in pain.
Dripping tears, snot, and piss.
Couldn't even endure something like this; what a truly pathetic bastard.
"Sorry, I'm sorry... I won't force the kids into compensated dating by threatening them anymore... Please..."
My past self didn't even pretend to hear Park Jin-ha's words. He just grabbed his arm and snapped it without mercy.
"Ggyaaak! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'll apologize for secretly putting thumbtacks on your chair, too!"
Next, he broke his leg.
The sound of bone breaking rang out crisply.
"Aaaack! Sto-, stop...!"
Finally, he got slapped across the face several times and passed out with his eyes open.
Ah. Of course, only Park Jin-ha passed out.
My mind was still perfectly fine.
‘Was the trial passed with this? Easy.’
Making such a thought moot,
this time my consciousness was transferred not to Park Jin-ha's body, but to that gorilla-like bastard from before.
And he started getting beaten by my past self again.
‘Hmm. This one was more bearable because his body was sturdy, even if he was just a normal man from that world with water-balloon muscles.’
After that,
my consciousness kept transferring to people who had been beaten by me.
Naturally, all of them were bearable.
‘Role-reversal trial my ass... Just because I was put in the shoes of these cocksuckers, did that make me regret using violence and repent my sins...’
Honestly, I dislike pain, too.
But right now, I could enjoy getting beaten.
Because the bastards I was sharing senses with were all human trash.
Just as I was repeating this with a joyful heart, taking the hits,
suddenly a memory of being subjected to domestic violence because of this incident came to mind.
‘...No, I had not even tried to recall this, so why was I suddenly remembering it all?’
Parents who acted like they hit people outside.
Parents who would yell, "Go on, try hitting us sometime too," while committing violence.
And my past self, silently taking that beating as usual.
My parents, for whom domestic violence was a daily occurrence, always hit me without justification, but once they had a justification, they beat me even more viciously.
As if they had been waiting.
‘The more I thought about it, the more frustrating that bastard became. Parents or not, he should have fought back and become an unfilial son...’
I quickly erased this memory from my head.
Because it was a memory utterly useless to recall.
I decided to forget all those exhausting memories and focus on getting pummeled.
***
How much time passed?
Subjectively, it felt like nearly a day had passed.
I was gradually getting used to the pain.
And just about when I was getting bored,
<...Trial passed.>
I came to my senses upon hearing the voice from the speaker.
I had finally awakened from the illusion.
【Reformed Guburi】─?? What did he do to pass?
【Hottie Licker】─Passed in 1 second without doing anything. Lick.
【Qkrnfl892】─Did some kind of error occur?
After briefly looking around,
I checked the chat window on my phone.
It seemed the viewers hadn't seen the illusion I experienced.
Furthermore,
it seemed only a few seconds had passed in time.
It was an uncanny thing.
【Plum Tree】─Wasn't there something about an illusion or a role-reversal trial?
【Dick Lover】─Yeah, but nothing happened.
【Drift AI】─I will speak. I state that I saw it.
【Reformed Guburi】─Saw my ass, you cunt.
【Reverse-Rape Maniac】─Maybe the 2nd floor wasn't ready yet so they just let you pass?
【Yoho】─That seems likely.
【Hottie Licker】─You're really phoning it in. Lick.
I considered explaining but decided against it.
They wouldn't believe me even if I told them anyway.
<Customer No. 20, please move to the final trial location.>
Afterward,
listening to the voice from the speaker,
I came down to the 1st floor to proceed with the final trial.
"Welcome."
On the 1st floor, a staff member wearing a clown mask was waiting for me.
***
The site where the Escape from Hell Hotel had stood.
It was now an empty lot, and two groups were searching it.
"Director. Is this really the right place?"
"...It should have been around here."
"There's no hotel, let alone a motel."
"Strange."
"But... why the hell are those bitches here?"
"I don't know either. They must have some business here."
The Daehan Seoul Group.
BigGirl, Seong So-ri, and Team Leader Park.
And the organization members of their line.
"I don't think this is the place?"
"I just spoke to the young lady again, and she's certain it's around here."
"What are those thugs doing here?"
"Don't know. Maybe they came to bury a body or something."
"It's annoying how they're openly staring..."
"Ignore it. We'll lose if we fight BigGirl."
Ranked 1st among global corporations.
The Oseong Group's special security team members.
It was just as these two groups were roaming the empty lot, engaged in an invisible war of nerves.
"Huh? What are those colorful things now?"
One woman among the security team spoke loudly.
At her words, the people in the empty lot shifted their gazes to follow her line of sight one by one.
"Their hair really is colorful."
"What kind of bitches are those?"
"Huh? Those people, I feel like I've seen them a lot somewhere..."
"Hey, aren't they that circus troupe that's super famous around the world these days?"
Women walking toward the empty lot in a single horizontal line.
They were, precisely, the members of the circus troupe to which the Se-hun Defense Force belonged.
"Director. Aren't those clown bitches coming here right now?"
"Seems so."
"Why is a circus troupe coming here?"
"Probably to put on a show or something."
"Do you think that makes any sense right now?"
The circus troupe arrived at the empty lot.
A red-haired woman stepped out from among its members.
Next, she looked around.
After surveying the women already searching the area, she spoke.
“Ladies. We have business in this empty lot, so if you do not mind, could you fuck off?”
It was the Se-hun Defense Force, Han Yu-i.