Don't Feed the Professor! - Chapter 58

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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The Broker read my expression and spoke.
“The hotel doesn’t directly involve itself in the casino’s operations. But it’s true that the casino operates under the hotel’s authority.”
“I see. So the rules are set by the hotel too?”
“Exactly. You saw those guests being dragged out by security a moment ago, didn’t you?”
I recalled the woman chewing chips and the gaunt man at the blackjack table.
The Broker continued.
“Only humans are permitted entry to the casino. If someone is judged to be non-human, they’re immediately forced to leave. The problem is that the rules keep getting stricter, but there’s no proper standard for what makes someone human.”
“The hotel doesn’t even know what ‘human’ means.”
At Bibi’s words, the Broker nodded.
“My income’s been cut in half because of it. That blackjack gentleman from a moment ago was a VIP customer last month. But this damn hotel’s interference keeps crossing the line.”
The language was crude, but I got the gist.
Guests who didn’t fit the hotel’s arbitrary standard of ‘normal’ couldn’t access the casino.
But how many of the Black Market clientele were genuinely well-adjusted citizens?
“What’s any of this got to do with me, though?”
Bibi asked. I nodded along. The situation was unfortunate, but what was it to me?
But the Broker remained unruffled.
“It has everything to do with you. Because the hotel manager has the Transaction Ledger.”
What?
“I’m not making excuses. You’re suggesting I’m lying because I don’t want to cooperate with The Agency.”
“Listen. Nobody in this area has been in business as long as I have. If I’d cared about principles and rules, I wouldn’t have lasted this long.”
‘That’s just boasting.’
I asked him.
“Say you manage to meet the manager and get the Transaction Ledger directly. What do you get out of it?”
“The manager behaves so unreasonably precisely because they don’t understand what a true human really is. You’ll need to meet them personally and serve as examples.”
“That phrasing bothers me.”
Bibi muttered, and the Broker let out a soft laugh.
“Don’t worry. I’ll try to keep you intact as much as possible. Besides, you saw the Guidance Document earlier.”
“What do you…?”
The Broker spoke with a peculiar smile on his face.
“Automatic participation the moment you see it?”
Bibi muttered some curse or other and wiped his face with his palm.
“I’m sorry it’s come to this. But we all have our own circumstances, don’t we?”
“If that’s your argument…!”
I held back Bibi, who looked ready to throw himself at the Broker. If beating someone senseless would solve this, we’d have done it already.
‘Besides, if his explanation from before was accurate…’
I picked up the crumpled Guidance Document from where the Broker had tossed it and unfolded it. I already had the contents memorized, but I wanted to carefully review the rules.
In essence, this was a game of Hide and Seek played inside a hotel.
We didn’t know how many floors the hotel had, how many rooms existed. They wouldn’t even tell us how many times we could use the elevator.
We couldn’t go opening every single room one by one. We didn’t have the stamina or time for that, and there was no telling what might jump out at us along the way.
Even if we were lucky enough to find the Monitoring Room, there was no way to tell from the screens alone which room held the seeker.
Hotel rooms all tend to look the same anyway.
But.
“Let’s try it.”
At my words, Bibi’s eyes went wide.
“What? Are you insane? When we don’t even know what could happen…?”
“Loose rules mean plenty of gaps to slip through. There’s no other option anyway, and it seems like there’s no time limit either.”
“Even if there’s no limit on paper, in practice there is. The elevator—”
“Usage restrictions? Doesn’t matter. I’m only taking it once.”
“…?”
I spoke to the Broker.
“So, shall we begin now?”
The Broker, who had been silent for a moment, smiled mysteriously.
“…Follow me.”
* * *
Creak—the emergency stairwell door opened. Climbing the stairs to the 4th Floor wasn’t difficult.
“It’s this way.”
I walked down the red-carpeted corridor without hesitation.
“Hey, what are you doing? Going in blind like this…?”
Bibi followed close behind, speaking as we went.
I understood his worry. Until a moment ago, I’d thought the game was impossible.
But when I read the Guidance Document a second time, I was certain. A strange sense of déjà vu I’d felt in the Lobby, and a familiar name.
“Bibi, do you know the Fine Creek Hotel at Samseong Station?”
At my question, he flinched for some reason and asked back.
“…Why are you asking?”
“I worked there as a room maid two years ago.”
It wasn’t a bad job. I just couldn’t stay long because of the loan sharks.
I continued.
“There’s one local legend that circulates among the staff there. When the Fine Creek Hotel was first built, an identical twin hotel was supposedly built together on some remote island.”
“…”
“If I recall correctly, it was supposedly built to ward off some kind of Disaster, but the building vanished entirely the moment it was completed.”
The vanished hotel’s name was the Sarin Hotel.
According to the rumor, they didn’t simply build two similar hotels—the Sarin was an exact duplicate of the Fine Creek Hotel.
Of course, the real Fine Creek Hotel in our world had no underground casino like this, and the interior was decorated in a modern style, but the structure was identical.
“The layout is exactly the same.”
I opened the door to the room at the far end of the 4th Floor.
Sure enough, it was the Monitoring Room.
The narrow space had one wall covered entirely with monitors. The screens displayed the interiors of various rooms in random rotation.
Bibi spoke with tension in his voice.
“Even if what you’re saying is true, how do we find the hidden seeker among all these identical-looking rooms? And even if we do find them, we can’t figure out which floor or room number in under a minute just from—”
Click. I turned the Dial and surveyed the screens.
At the same time, the Timer in the corner of the screen began to activate.
“…50 seconds.”
All the rooms look identical, just as Bibi said. But they’re not.
“When you clean rooms day after day, your eye gets trained. Not just the room layouts, but the lighting, the angle of shadows, and…”
Found it.
I pointed to one of the monitors. I’d caught a glimpse of a black sleeve flickering at the far right edge of the frame.
So which floor and which room was this?
“30 seconds.”
I climbed up onto the table and stared intently at the screen.
One bed, one wardrobe, a coffee table and sofa.
Everything is the same. But there—that subtle crack beneath the baseboard molding.
“The 19th Floor had serious floor-leveling problems. The cart wheels would often slip.”
Everyone kept quiet about it, but it was a construction defect unbecoming of a luxury hotel.
“And that silk wallpaper. See how the pattern symmetry is slightly off? I remember seeing that misalignment every time I changed the sheets.”
“…20 seconds left.”
Bibi whispered in a suppressed voice.
I didn’t take my eyes off the monitor.
And finally—it’s high noon right now, when the pale sun is at its peak. The angle of the shadows cast by the window frame at this hour, combined with all these clues, points to only one answer…
“Room 1905.”
Pop—all the monitors went dark at once.
In the black screen, my reflection was smiling.
* * *
Outside Room 1905, Bibi stopped me.
“Wait, Amelie.”
He hesitated for a long moment before finally opening his mouth.
“You said you worked at the Fine Creek Hotel, right? Then… that thing you mentioned before, about the loan shark debt…”
“Huh?”
“That debt—you didn’t take it from the Songwon Group, did you?”
The Songwon Group was one of the handful of massive conglomerates in Korea, and besides the Fine Creek Hotel & Resort, they controlled many subsidiaries.
They had the image of a traditional conglomerate, but rumors circulated that they were entangled in illegal loan-sharking.
I quickly shook my head.
“No way. Why would I borrow money from a place like that?”
Of course, there might be larger forces backing the loan sharks who’d pushed me into this.
Bibi seemed reassured.
“Well, then maybe…?”
“What?”
“…Never mind. Let’s go in.”
And I opened the room door.
—Creak.
There was a hanging corpse inside.
“…”
Black clothes.
Pale face.
“The Broker…?”
Bibi stood in shock, muttering.
—Creak.
The rope was attached to the ceiling’s light fixture. I entered the room.
“Amelie!”
Looking up at the body swaying slowly side to side, I spoke.
“When someone dies by hanging, their face doesn’t stay that clean.”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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