Our Hotel Is Open for Business as Usual

And so Lee Yeon-woo, with the 'Drenched One,' the 'Lover of Dawn,' and the 'Guest Without Taste' before him, took out a notebook and pen. Setting the monster of Room 14 down on his desk, he calmly settled into his seat and nodded.

"Let's begin the lecture."

The old vampire quietly raised a hand and asked,

"May I speak?"

"Permission granted."

"Didn't I ask to be excluded?"

"A pity—it's been rejected."

"Since it's come to this I won't resist, but I'd like to hear a reason at least."

"The student says he'll study, and the teacher runs away?"

Later, the 'Guest Without Taste' would describe the Lee Yeon-woo of that time as wearing 'the face of a man who, had he still been in the General Manager state, would have swallowed me whole and stripped away all my knowledge without hesitation.'

***

"Director."

"Let me get some sleep, you rascals~"

"How unfortunate."

"What's so unfortunate about it."

Gangwon Director Dan-cheong lifted her back from the chair with a grunt.

"What now—I already heard all about Mr. Lu-whatsit throwing a bash in Korea. What's got you so put out that you'd come bothering this Director, who just got roasted to the marrow, nice and thorough, back at Head Office."

"It's nothing much—do you know something called STEEM?"

"Steam?"

"You don't, I take it."

"Aw now, that's a hurtful way to put it."

She rolled her eyes round and round before opening her mouth.

"A game?"

"Oh, correct."

"Some internet shop that sells online games, isn't it."

"Yes—more precisely, the world's largest digital distribution platform for PC games."

"Well I'll be, has our Sensitivity Bureau finally gone and expanded online?"

"I just thought you ought to take a look at this, for a start."

The secretary quietly slid a tablet PC in front of her.

"If you'd have a look, please."

"Let's see now, this is…."

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《Our Hotel Is Open for Business as Usual》

A roguelike survival game set in 'Hotel One,' where monster guests lodge! You become a guest of this hotel, and must survive a bizarre hotel that changes every day, every hour.

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"……."

"……."

Covering her eyes hard with a hand, Dan-cheong asked in a low voice.

"…That Tarot fellow still in Gapyeong?"

"I believe he's paid a visit to Head Office."

"You not craving some gukbap?"

"Not especially, no."

"Damn bastard, dodges every troublesome spot like a ghost, he does."

Dan-cheong let out a sigh with a thoroughly exhausted face.

"Your Director's going to have to head down to Seoul just one more time."

"I'm rooting for you."

***

"I don't quite understand it."

At the man's words, Baek Mu-jin raised his head.

"Understand what."

"Are we all right leaving it like this?"

"I didn't expect someone shunted off to a subsidiary to care so much about company affairs."

"You call even using a shell company Baeksan's business, then."

"So long as its master is me, yes."

Clink.

Baek Mu-jin set down his glass.

"You mean turning that Labyrinth into a game."

"It looks dangerous."

To the name 'Our Hotel' that the Sensitivity Bureau had bestowed, someone had even attached the meme 'is open for business as usual,' caricaturing the Labyrinth and exposing it to the outer society. And to ordinary people, no less.

"I'm sure the Chairman looked into it thoroughly before deciding, but as a matter of human decency, I must say my piece."

"But not the decency owed a son."

"Convince me."

He held out the tablet screen he'd been gripping. On the blue-glowing liquid-crystal display floated a provisional store-registration file for the global game-distribution platform 'STEEM.'

Adorning the main banner was a jet-black cat with uncannily round eyes, a crescent-shaped mouth curved up as if the corners might tear, and a rounded body.

"This is…."

"Speak."

"This is a game far too blatantly."

It was near absurd.

"If information on real Labyrinths—their structure, scale, magic, and so on—is exposed indiscriminately to ordinary people through a STEEM release, there's a high chance of conflict and confusion arising in our society."

And this much alone was already a serious problem, but it didn't end there.

"Dokkaebi and Labyrinths often grow by feeding on the beliefs tangled up in human gazes and relationships. The more people who encounter this 'game,' the more the fixation concentrated on it could send a Labyrinth into a frenzy."

"And?"

"The Sensitivity Bureau—especially the hardliners and vigilantes at Head Office—won't sit idle. It could provoke their security alarms and bring on the crisis of an all-out clash and subjugation. You said it was a Labyrinth to be preserved, and yet isn't this too harsh a measure?"

"He wished for it."

Baek Mu-jin cut his words short.

"I merely gave a fitting repayment for the one who saved my niece."

"Even if it harms more people, and the very Labyrinth you regard so kindly?"

"Then it's my turn to speak."

He continued in his particular low voice.

"First, the wall of the Golden Grotto stands sound."

In this world there exists a thing called the 'Golden Grotto.' The floor and pillar of Gaps society, and the source that supplies its oxygen. Ordinary people lack the very capacity to perceive the world that belongs to the 'Golden Grotto' in the first place.

Talents like Baek Mu-jin's youngest son, who can be told of the Gaps in full, were exceedingly rare.

"But in cases like Seon-hae or Writer Hong Gyeong-yeon…."

"Those are times they're forcibly made to encounter it. How could there never have been residents of the Gaps trying to sink roots into the outer society? Artists, mages, Labyrinths, and Dokkaebi have all eyed it, each in turn."

"You aren't about to make the argument that 'without witnesses, it won't get out,' are you."

"That, too, occupies a very large share, but it isn't the whole of it."

The reason information from the Gaps had never spread outside until now was clear.

"First, there exists a being that censors all of that 'memory,' 'information,' and 'substance.'"

It was a being famous as the 'Fallen Angel,' but Baek Mu-jin didn't bother to speak that name aloud. Himself aside, the kid before him would have no means of enduring that gaze.

"Second, as I said earlier, the providence of the world blocks that contagion."

"When you say contagion…."

"The moment a human undergoes an experience a human cannot, and must not, have, that human becomes a source of contamination. Put another way, the Gaps are a world teeming with pathogens a human cannot withstand. What happens if you have an accident and contract a rare disease most people in the world don't even know of?"

"You either die, or, with luck, receive treatment, or self-recover, no?"

"It's the same thing."

Baek Mu-jin sipped the tea in a glass afloat with bobbing ice.

"Dying goes without saying, and if self-recovery occurs, that's how one becomes an Artist or a mage. In the Gaps this is given the name 'Disaster,' though…."

A disaster-class Artist, or a disaster-class mage.

"If you ask why it splits into Artist and mage, I'd have to get into heredity, so I'll skip it."

"I didn't much want to hear it either."

"Insolent thing."

Baek Mu-jin continued his explanation.

"Even setting those two cases aside, in most cases, even if a human is lucky enough to receive 'treatment,' in the process they erase the event in question from memory."

"Because it isn't an experience a human can withstand?"

"Whether they erase the memory themselves, or the one who treated them erases it. And if not that, there are quite frequent cases where the Golden Grotto makes the whole thing as though it never happened."

Baek Mu-jin set down his glass.

"If you've heard this far, you should be able to understand the case of Seon-hae and that bastard writer, too."

"Seon-hae was, from the start, the type able to withstand it, while Writer Hong Gyeong-yeon can't, so the 'hotel' erased his memory for him. Otherwise he'd have caught the disease and died."

But,

"How do you explain this latest case?"

Those two had visited the 'hotel' a second time and come back alive, and moreover with their memories fully intact.

"Seon-hae became an Artist, so she became a type able to accept it, but Writer Hong Gyeong-yeon shouldn't be. Did that fellow, by any chance, become the disaster-class Artist or mage you just mentioned?"

"There are two reasons."

Baek Mu-jin glanced at the clock.

"First, the 'hotel's' master, out of consideration, adjusted the difficulty to a level even an ordinary person could withstand."

"I gathered he came out quite kindly. Even gave them talismans for their mental and physical safety, I hear."

"Above all, he's gone mad."

That voice was calm to the point of feeling almost tedious.

"He's fallen ill."

It was no different in Lee Seon-hae's case either. She'd gone mad.

"Why that face?"

"……."

"Don't take 'mad' amiss. When those able to withstand it find a way to withstand what should not be withstood, and adapt—don't people commonly call that madness?"

That was the ecosystem of the Gaps.

"However kind and endearing the other may be, does trying to gather a Dokkaebi of that caliber into your arms as if it were a five-year-old child look sane to you?"

***

"Director, what's this?"

"Hm?"

"This here."

A crew member on the shoot came over and pointed at a picture on the screen of Lee Seon-hae's laptop.

"It's really scary-looking."

"Why? I thought it was really striking."

"For me, the horror-thriller film we're shooting right now is my absolute limit."

"Hmm, how do I put it…."

Lee Seon-hae shut the laptop with a snap and said,

"These days I find myself drawn to this kind of thing."

"This kind? The slightly grotesque kind?"

"There's that to it, but you know the kind with a lot to interpret. The kind packed with story."

Gustave Doré, <Cocytus (the Frozen Lake)>, from 《The Divine Comedy》 (1861 edition).

"No matter how long I look, there's no end to it…."

Saying so, Director Lee Seon-hae smiled sheepishly.

"Ah, and if anyone comes near the shoot, let me know."

"You said that yesterday too, though."

"Did I? Sorry, I've been scattered lately."

"Is there someone you're waiting for?"

"Well now~"

Lee Seon-hae shrugged.

"I got to thinking someone I know might just show up."

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