Escaping the Mystery Hotel-Chapter 279: Room 204, Mission Room - 'Hotel Cinema' (3)
- Elena
- Splash!
A cold bucket of water shocked my senses back to clarity.
I tried to sit up, only to realize that my arms and legs were tightly bound by cold metal shackles.
“…Waking up like this doesn’t exactly give me a good feeling.”
“Ha! Did you really think you’d get away with what you did?”
An enraged, yet familiar, voice echoed through my ears.
That was when I finally recognized my kidnapper’s identity.
Honestly… I was a little bewildered.
Why the hell are you here?
“Your Highness, the Crown Prince.”
“Oh? So you do think of me as the Crown Prince? You bitch!”
“…”
“Did you enjoy it? Huh?! Was it fun? Making me the laughingstock of the entire empire… was that so entertaining for you?!”
…I started feeling a little bad.
Not for the idiot in front of me, but for Seungyub, whom I had compared to this.
For a long time after, I was subjected to a torrent of insults, the likes of which I had never heard before in my life.
Honestly, it didn’t faze me.
Ranting about how he’d do this and that to my parents—whom I had never even met—meant nothing to me.
Instead, I focused on why this situation had turned out like this.
And slowly, I started to piece it together.
“Who put you up to this?! Was it Pendleton? That motherfucker—did he tell you how to make a fool of me? Or was it in bed—“
“Enough.”
“The hell do you mean, enough?!”
“Let’s stop here. If your mouth keeps running like that, this movie’s gonna get an R-rating. And I don’t think that’s what we’re aiming for.”
“…You’re still—still looking down on me?! You think just because you’re pretty, you can do whatever you want?!”
“Oh! That’s actually a decent line. ‘Just because you’re pretty’ So, you do think I’m pretty?”
“Even now, you’re playing games?! Fine, then. Today, I’ll make sure that smug face of yours twists in agony!”
His body trembled with rage as he gestured.
From the corner of the room, a servant approached, carrying a pair of tongs—heated to a burning red.
“Pluck them out!”
“…Your Highness, please reconsider. At this point, the situation can still be salvaged—“
“I said pluck her eyes out!”
“If you do this, His Majesty will—“
Suddenly, I couldn’t help but laugh.
“Pfft!”
“You…!”
“Hey, are you really the protagonist of this story? Your own servant is giving you a moral lecture—“
- Thrust! Clang!
“Gaaahhh!”
“Now… now there’s no one left to look down on me, huh?!”
I stared at the convulsing Crown Prince.
The sword he had drawn from his waist was now buried in the servant’s chest.
Coughing up blood, the old man writhed on the ground.
His suffering must have been unbearable because, without hesitation, one of the nearby knights stepped forward and finished him off with a single stroke.
“Your Highness.”
“What now?! Are you trying to lecture me, too?!”
His eyes gleamed with murderous fury.
It seemed the sheer humiliation—of having his first love turn him into a joke—had burned away all remnants of his reason.
“…Of course not. But whatever you do, you don’t have much time left. If you have any final wishes, you should act quickly.”
“Hmph! Then I’ll personally pluck out this woman’s eyes.”
He picked up the iron tongs that had fallen to the floor.
That was when I finally accepted it.
The game was over.
“Ahh… it’s a failure. Where did I go wrong? Was it during the fox hunt? I wonder what scene I wasn’t shown.”
“What the hell are you—“
“You’re dead.”
- Laaaah!
A divine melody echoed through the room.
The air warped as a massive scale materialized, shattering the shackles that had bound me in an instant.
My body floated weightlessly into the air.
“W-what?! What is this?!”
Unlike the dumbfounded Crown Prince, the knights standing behind him reacted swiftly.
Some drew their guns, others unsheathed their swords, immediately forming a protective line in front of their prince.
But, of course, it was pointless.
Abducting me.
Attempting torture and murder.
Slaying a servant in cold blood before my very eyes.
And now, defending a criminal about to commit even more atrocities?
Only death awaits them.
- Crunch!
A knight’s torso exploded under the force of my fist.
“Get His Highness out of here! I’ll—“
You’ll what?
It didn’t matter.
Before he could even finish his sentence, his body split in half.
Ah… how satisfying.
The frustration I’d been feeling this whole time vanished in an instant, replaced by an overwhelming sense of clarity.
Was this what people meant when they talked about “catharsis”?
The panicked knights.
The Crown Prince, sobbing and wetting himself.
They no longer mattered.
…
…
Now, only one remained.
“H-hrk! W-what are you?! H-how can a human—“
Before, when I used Justice, I couldn’t even control myself.
I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak.
But recently, I’ve started to understand.
Mental discipline. Self-control.
Maybe it’s because I’ve grown.
Because I’ve learned how to interpret the constraints that Justice places on me.
“For example… let’s talk about this.”
“W-what?”
“Once I activate my power, I have to kill everyone here. That’s a fixed rule. I can’t go against it. I can’t stop the execution. Every second, every moment—I have to move forward and carry it out.”
“W-what are you talking about—what are you saying—please! I-I’m the Crown Prince of Atlant! If you kill me—“
“But aside from that rule, everything else is pretty vague. The order I kill in, the method—that’s entirely up to me.”
I took a step closer.
“For example, the reason I’m walking toward you right now is because I decided to start by plucking your eyes out.”
I picked up the iron tongs.
The prince’s screams filled the room.
“This isn’t easy. Were you really planning to use this to gouge out someone’s eyes? A guy who couldn’t even hunt a fox… pathetic.”
“Let’s just end this. I’m getting tired.”
In the end, all it took was one blinding flash.
And then—
The ending credits rolled.
***
“…”
“…”
The theater was filled with silence.
Everyone was speechless, staring at the ending credits filling the screen.
Eventually, a deep voice broke the silence.
“Guys. This is… completely fucked, isn’t it?”
“…Mooksung, Seungyub is here. Watch your language. Use nice words.”
“How the hell am I supposed to use nice words in this situation?”
Elena, sensing disaster, leaned against the wall with a hollow expression, staring at the ceiling.
After about three minutes of stunned silence, Taming the Crown Prince - Elena’s Route, finally ended, and the lights in the theater came back on.
No one had the energy to say anything, so they just sat there in a daze—until something utterly ridiculous happened.
“Dun-dun-da-da! Da-da-da-da-da-dun!”
“…Why are you making your own sound effects?”
“Because the Hotel spent too much of its budget on the film.”
The guide had appeared out of nowhere, spouting nonsense.
“Now then! Participants, it’s time to evaluate the movie, isn’t it? Of course, with such a unique scenario, it’s hard to imagine it receiving a high score, but procedures are procedures! Hotel’s prestigious judges, please come in!”
There are judges, too?
“Dun-dun-da-da—“
“Shut up already!”
The doors of the theater opened, and three people entered.
They took seats in front of the screen—chairs that hadn’t been there a moment ago.
All three were familiar faces.
“Merchant, you do this kind of work too?”
“Haha! Eunsol, are you still making good use of that eye you bought?”
“Yeah, I’m using it just fine. You really do everything, huh? Do they even pay you properly?”
“Haa… I’m just glad someone appreciates me. Playing multiple roles is one thing, but now I’m stuck reviewing movies? This is why the Hotel is a mess.”
“Come work for me when you get out. I’ll pay you properly and won’t overwork you.”
“Thank you very much.”
The Merchant seemed to have gotten quite friendly with Eunsol.
The next person was also someone familiar.
“It’s been a while.”
“Hey, Kain!”
It was the souvenir shop NPC from our mountain expedition in the basement.
This time, she had styled her hair into twin buns.
“Merchant, buns girl, and—“
“Just call me Souvenir Girl.”
“Fine, Souvenir Girl… But what is that? Can it even talk?”
The third judge was the mysterious Lego from the second floor.
He didn’t say anything, remaining silent.
The guide, unfazed, laughed heartily.
“Haha! Even if it can’t speak, it can judge! Now, let’s begin! I trust our esteemed judges will evaluate this thoroughly, despite all the chit-chat!”
The first to go was the Merchant.
He made no effort to hide his inhuman nature anymore, stretching his mouth vertically as his tentacles whipped out an O panel from his waist.
“PASS!”
“…What?”
“Huh?”
We were the ones most shocked.
“PASS! My score is a pass! In my 100 years of working here, I have never seen such an original scenario! Do you know what era we live in? Women’s empowerment! Girl Crush! What better girl crush is there than utterly crushing the male lead?”
Even the guide fell silent for a moment.
“A new era! The 21st century! It’s time for romance movies where the female lead rips the male lead apart! This is peak FPT! This is peak multiverse!’”
“For the love of—just shut up!”
The Souvenir Girl, visibly irritated, held up an X panel.
“Ignore this idiot. Do you even know what FPT and multiverse mean?”
“Of course. FPT stands for Failed Plot Twist.”
“Ah… How much longer do I have to be stuck in this damn hotel working with this idiot…? Anyway, that was the dumbest ending I’ve ever seen. FAIL! No question about it. Also, what the hell was up with the narration? The female lead was mocking the male lead from the start!”
I felt like I had to say something in Elena’s defense, so I cautiously raised my hand.
“Uh… Can I say something?”
“Of course, Kain! If you have a disagreement, speak up! Convincing the judges is part of the evaluation.”
“I mean, can we at least not count the narration against us? No movie just throws a character’s thoughts out there unfiltered. Imagine if every masterpiece film did that—it’d be a disaster.”
Eunsol immediately backed me up, “Exactly! Take Titanic, for example. That famous scene where Leonardo DiCaprio says his goodbyes in the freezing water—imagine if the movie actually included his real thoughts. It’d be something like, ‘Holy shit, it’s freezing! Can we wrap this up already? Who messed up the last take?!’ See what I mean?”
Souvenir Girl thought for a moment, then sighed.
“Fine! I won’t count the narration. But even without it, the ending was a disaster. Elena literally crushed the Crown Prince with her scale! Can anyone argue against that?”
Silence.
No one spoke up.
With that, the second judgment was an X.
The final judge, the Lego, didn’t even speak. He simply held up an X, confirming Elena’s failure.
***
For a moment, everyone—except for Elena—left the theater.
The doctor finally broke the silence, “We need to rescue Elena, which means we have to go back in. Let’s analyze what went wrong.”
“The fox hunt.”
“The fox hunt.”
In an instant, everyone said the same thing.
Elena’s failure.
The Crown Prince’s breakdown.
…We had seen the answer.
While Elena had been inside, she hadn’t realized it—but we had.
Eunsol sighed heavily.
“The fox hunt completely ruined everything. Think about it from the Crown Prince’s perspective. Maybe he was happy on that day. But eventually… he learned the truth.”
Between the fox hunt and the New Year’s festival, there had been a scene where a few mischievous nobles had revealed the truth to the Crown Prince.
It seemed Elena had not seen that scene.
Jinchul shook his head.
“Honestly, I kind of understand his reaction. Every year, the hunt was an embarrassment. He couldn’t shoot well, so he was always humiliated. But this time—for the first time—every shot he fired took down a fox. He must’ve been thrilled. And then… he learned the truth. It was all fake.”
Songee added, “But the real problem wasn’t that it was rigged. The bigger issue was that every noble around him knew. What do you think went through his mind when he realized that? He must’ve felt like everyone had been mocking him. His pride was shattered, and then, to make it worse, he realized the mastermind behind it all was his ‘first love’—Elena.”
I spoke next, “He completely lost it. His ego was already fragile, but after that, he just snapped.”
Ahri groaned, rubbing her forehead, “Alright, alright. Let’s make sure the next person doesn’t repeat the same mistake. Who’s going in next? Kain?”
“What?! Hey, I’m a guy!”
“So? There was that Evelyn girl at the party, right? She was pretty. You could just possess her. Just don’t grope anything while you’re in there.”
I was so flustered I couldn’t even breathe.
No one even tried to help me—they were all too busy laughing.
“AHAHAHA! Ahri, you’re killing him!”
“Then how about you, Songee?”
“Cough! U-uh… What about Eunsol-unni—“
“Oh my, Songee. Think about our age gap. I’m fifteen years older than the Crown Prince. You think that’d work?”
“Then you go in, Ahri!”
“Did you not see the last movie? There’s a horror film at the end. I belong there. Have you seen more monsters than me?”
Slowly, everyone turned toward Songee.
She looked like she was about to cry.
“…Fine. Just… nobody takes off their earplugs, okay?”
No one answered her plea.
***
https://ko-fi.com/genesisforsaken
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Chapter 279: Room 204, Mission Room - 'Hotel Cinema' (3)
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