CHAPTER 316: MIRO (1)

0% – Kim Ahri

My vision blurred. Tears I hadn’t shed in a very long time flowed down my cheeks.

I knew. I had guessed.

The irrational obsession I had with Miro might not be a natural emotion. I had this thought countless times.

I was an Administration agent. After encountering countless incomprehensible beings and powers that touched human emotions, it would be stranger not to think of such a possibility, right?

But... “It might be so” and “It is so” were quite different.

– Woong!

With a strange tone, the mirrors all around started showing different images again. It was probably because my heart wavered after seeing Miro’s wish just now.

Wiping away the flowing tears, I recalled the conversation I had with Kain earlier.

What is the beginning of love? It’s genes.

Actions of helping and cherishing among family members, or sociocultural pressures emphasizing affection between parents and children, are all just forces that maintain already created love.

That’s right. The beginning of love is originally a program. Therefore, love created by a wish and love created by genes are not very different.

That was what I believed—no, it was what I decided to believe.

The fortunate thing was that my memories of Miro weren’t that bad. She wasn’t a good person, and honestly, she wasn’t a good mother either.

However, she was clearly a being who loved me.

Even at the last moment, Miro gave me the means of escape and made me escape instead.

Once again, as the wavering images in the mirrors subsided and began to reflect only one image, a notification popped up as if it had been waiting.

[Do you want to make a wish? If you press ‘Yes’, your wish will be fulfilled.

My hand touched the alert in the air.

***

User: Han Kain (Wisdom)

Date: Day 137

Current Location: Floor 1, Corridor

Sage’s Advice: 3

– Han Kain

“To put it simply—“

“Yawn!”

“Don’t yawn!”

“Hey, it’s 4 AM now...”

Grandpa kept sending “personal notifications” until I couldn’t bear it and got up. When I came out, Grandpa was yawning and going back in, and Ahri was there.

“So you succeeded in making a wish to restore Miro’s mind?”

“That’s right.”

“That’s good. But why did you wake only me up?”

I understand waking me up because issues related to Miro were important. The puzzling part was that she “only” called me out.

“Well... It proceeded a bit differently from what I initially thought.”

“I’ll listen carefully this time, so tell me again.”

“Alright. The problem starts with the ‘second wish’ Miro made.”

“Second wish? You said the first wish was the one that created you, right?”

“That’s right. The problem is that the wish Miro made in the Mirror Room on the day I was born wasn’t one, but two.”

“Hmm... Did she make the free wish for the first discoverer and then use a ticket to make another wish in succession? More importantly, how did you know that? Did the Mirror Room tell you?”

“It told me. But you’re also right about making Miro making the wishes in succession.”

“What about the ticket? Ah, wait, since she passed the first floor, she would have had a ticket. Did Miro obtain it?”

“...She might have obtained it, or she might have taken it by force.”

After a moment of silence passed, I opened my mouth again, “It seems they didn’t know that fact outside. Well, you had just been born so you wouldn’t have known anything, and the person who made the wish had regressed to infancy, so there was no way to know. Okay, why is that second wish a problem?”

“Miro lost her intelligence because of that wish.”

This was an extension of what Songee had said before. The Hotel didn’t take human intelligence as payment, so the loss of intelligence itself might be the result of the wish, as mentioned prior.

There was a part that was difficult to understand.

“It’s strange though? We met adult Miro when we ended Miro’s nightmare in the Frozen Hell, right?”

“We did.”

“At that time, while explaining about the Mirror Room, Miro said, ‘I tried to achieve many goals there, but in return, I lost everything.’”

Instead of answering, Ahri half-opened her mouth for a moment.

“What’s wrong?”

“No, how do you even remember the sentence from that time?”

“...It was an impactful memory to say the least. Anyway, chew on those words. No matter how you look at it, it doesn’t sound like she’s saying the loss of intelligence was her intention, right?”

“You’re right. It wasn’t Miro’s intention. This is a matter of perspective.”

“A matter of perspective?”

“From Miro’s perspective, a major accident occurred, and from the Mirror Room’s perspective, it fulfilled a wish. The second wish was...”

Ahri, who had been speaking up to this point, seemed to be choosing her expression for a moment.

“To solve her weakness?”

“Miro’s weakness?”

“Maybe it was to gain stronger power?”

“Hey! What on earth was the wish?”

“I want to express it in just one sentence too, but it’s difficult. As you know, the Mirror Room isn’t a place that listens to words spoken out loud. Miro herself said, ‘Solve my own weakness’.”

“But what she actually wished for was different?”

“Rather than different, it would be more accurate to say she wished for various things simultaneously. Look at the situation again. The party’s relationship was broken when Miro entered the Mirror Room, right?”

“It was.”

“Miro thought her own issues were partly responsible for that relationship breakdown.”

“...’Partly’?”

“It seems Miro thought it would be difficult to proceed further at that point, so she thought about somehow securing a means of escape for a single-person, leaving the Hotel, and then entering again.”

“Entering again even after escaping... She’s an amazing person in many ways.”

“The problem is if Miro’s own issues were part of the cause for breaking up the party, even if she enters again, the party could break up again due to her issues.”

“So she tried to fix her own issues? I understand why she made the wish, but I don’t see how that connects to the loss of intelligence.”

Suddenly, Ahri let out a hollow laugh.

“Kain, why do you think the party of the Deep Sea Hotel was shattered?”

“The doctor said it, didn’t he? Your mother’s... autocratic side played a big role. Other rebelled when she tried to control people by brainwashing them.”

“How should it be solved?”

“Communicate through rational dialogue and improve relationships between each other? This would be the standard approach, right? It’s embarrassing to say it myself, but it would be similar to how we function now.”

“There’s another way too.”

“What?”

“If you could subdue all other companions with just a flick of a finger, how many people would risk their lives to rebel against Miro in that situation?”

“...”

“Miro thought her biggest problem was ‘a Blessing she couldn’t use freely’.”

I think I understand what she means.

Leadership wasn’t always created through communication.

Rather, the method preferred by famous monarchs throughout human history or modern dictators was control through overwhelming power.

I slowly started to vaguely understand the full picture of what happened that day.

The Mirror Room was a place that simultaneously recognized the numerous impulses dwelling in the participant’s heart. Looking back at her party that had broken down in the Deep Sea Hotel, Miro must have thought.

It is meaningless to return after escaping if the cause also lies with me. What is my problem?

My Blessing, “Justice”, is truly powerful, but it has many conditions and is tricky to use. A Blessing with many weaknesses inevitably shows many gaps in power no matter how many Inheritances I might obtain.

But what if I could use my Blessing as I please? If I could wield a power beyond the limitations of Justice, ignoring its conditions according to my will?

No one could stand against me.

“Was this the flow?”

“...Probably.”

“In the end, we had it backwards about your mother, Ahri. It wasn’t that she wielded Justice as she pleased because she lost her intelligence. She lost her intelligence because she wanted to wield Justice as she pleased.”

“She probably didn’t know she would lose her intelligence as a result. She vaguely thought it would be good if she could wield the Blessing as she pleased, but it turned out that infantile regression was necessary for that.”

We got the answer to the biggest question about Miro—why she lost her intelligence. Miro wished for her weakness to disappear, and she thought that weakness laid in the Blessing she couldn’t use freely.

The Mirror Room made Miro into a state where she could use the Blessing as she pleased.

“Now you know why Miro’s loss of intelligence was the result of the wish she made herself. This is where the problem arose. I didn’t know before making the wish either, but there was one restriction in the Mirror Room.”

“Restriction?”

“You can’t change someone else’s wish with a wish.”

“Ah!”

“So it was impossible to restore Miro’s mind to an ‘adult state’.”

“T-then what should we do? Surely you’re not thinking of reviving her in a child state? Of course, the current Miro couldn’t wield justice even if revived, but—“

“Listen a bit. I said it’s impossible to restore her to an ‘adult state’. The Hotel knows three forms of Miro, right?”

One was the infantile regressed Miro, who was no different from a disaster. Another was the adult Miro, who was dangerously formidable in a different way.

The last one was...

“No way? The middle school Miro who was in the Frozen Hell?”

“That’s it. There was no problem reviving that self. Maybe the Mirror Room recognizes individual selves as separate beings... It might judge it as making a separate being from the Miro who made the wish dwell in Miro’s body.”

As my mouth half-opened, Ahri lightly bowed her head.

“When Miro wakes up, besides me she’ll also recognize you. Help her adapt.”

The dawn conversation ended like this.

***The next morning, Ahri gathered everyone and briefly explained the situation.

The reason Miro’s mind collapsed, the limitation of the Mirror Room that couldn’t nullify the wish of another with a wish, and the circumstances that necessitated awakening middle school Miro’s mind instead.

At first, the companions were bewildered, asking Ahri questions in succession, wondering what this was all about. When everyone understood the situation, some people showed unexpected reactions.

“That’s fortunate,” Eunsol-noona said.

Wondering what she meant, I turned my head, and surprisingly, the doctor was nodding along.

Jinchul-hyung asked in bewilderment, “Fortunate? Isn’t this a very confusing situation?”

“It’s confusing, but isn’t it very fortunate? Look at the situation.”

With those words, Noona wrote three words on the whiteboard as she always did.

Mentally Regressed Miro

Adult Miro

Middle School Miro

“Now~ choose one of these three. Which one is the scariest?”

“...”

“...”

“Mentally regressed Miro isn’t even worth mentioning since even Ahri said, ‘This is a bit...’ How about adult Miro? Isn’t that person scary in a different sense?”

Several people nodded their heads in succession at the same time.

“That’s right.”

“I was honestly terrified? It was just because she’s Ahri’s mother that we couldn’t help it. You never know what crazy tricks she might pull! It’s obvious she’s a person with many schemes.”

“Cough!”

“Sorry, Ahri! But, you’ve already restored the third Miro anyway, right?”

“Yeah...”

“Middle school Miro is the best. Didn’t Kain say she was quite cute and had a nice personality?”

“Well... Except for the fact that she uses superpowers as easily as breathing. She wasn’t evil or anything.”

“That won’t be a big threat to us now.”

A flute appeared in Noona’s hand. Seeing her confident expression, I felt relieved too.

“Alright! Then let’s go right now!”

A shining paper flew across the table into Ahri’s hand.

While Ahri flinched, Noona spoke firmly, “What’s the point of delaying this further? You were planning to wake her up eventually anyway, right? Now that her intelligence has been restored, there’s no need to postpone it.”

Ahri, holding the ticket, stood up with an uncharacteristically awkward attitude and slowly bowed her head to everyone. Only when she was about to leave the table did everyone finally realize.

Now the 10th companion, probably the last companion we’d welcome in the Hotel, was finally awakening.

***– Miro

I had a strange dream.

It was a long, very long dream. I went to school and played happily with friends every day.

At the end of it...

There was always Santa. A being wrapped in blood-red clothes, piling up mountains of corpses.

That being was my end, the beginning of an eternal nightmare.

Every day I played happily with friends and died together, forgetting everything. Only in the fleeting moment between death and life did I vaguely come to my senses. Each time I thought.

This was my fate. How did I fall into such an incomprehensible hell?

Then one day, for the first time, the content of the dream changed.

A friend who looked strangely like me, lovable just to look at, and a boy hiding mysterious secrets appeared. And... and...

Now, I woke up in a hazy fog.

“...What is this?”

“Choose your second fate.”

In front of me was a table with various pieces placed on it.