Episode 9 - Room 101, The Room of Curses - 'A Strange Family' (4)
Episode 9
Hah, heok, heoeok...
Eun-sol breathed roughly. What on earth was happening? Her older brother was doing this?
It was never easy for siblings to always get along, and their father in particular had always encouraged competition among his children, so her relationship with her second older brother had grown increasingly distant as they grew older.
Even so... she thought they had built some trust recently, having 'dealt with' their father together.
Wasn't the next step simply to deal with the eldest brother, who was ahead among the siblings, and their younger sibling Hee-yun, who had started getting on everyone's nerves?
However, it seemed the order I had in mind differed from the order my second older brother had in mind. My second older brother chose to 'deal with' me first.
Ah... I made a mistake. I should have dealt with my second older brother first.
Rather than suddenly resenting her brother, she lamented her failure to act first, and lost consciousness.
/You have failed!
The endless wealth of a conglomerate family inevitably becomes the seed of tragedy. Therefore, shouldn't you have maintained your tension even more? From the moment you participated in a makjang drama by executing your father alongside your brother, you should have always watched your own back.
You neither escaped the curse nor resolved its source. How regrettable.
However, there is still a chance! Wait for your comrades...
...
...
...
...
A successful escapee has emerged among your comrades! Congratulations! With the emergence of a successful escapee, all members return safely./
Lee Eun-sol felt her sunken consciousness slowly floating......
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Her entire body trembled amidst unimaginable extreme pain. Ah, what on earth had happened. Her right arm was being torn apart by Som-i. Her left arm had been almost entirely devoured by Happy, leaving nothing but bone visible. While the two tore at her arms, three cats and a parrot waited for their turn. Already, a beak was beginning to pierce into her left eye.
Scared hurt scared hurt scared hurt scared hurt scared hurt scared hurt scared hurt scared hurt scared hurt scared hurt scared hurt scared hurt scared hurt scared hurt scared hurt scared hurt scared hurt scared hurt
Please, someone, end this nightmare.
/You have failed!
How adorable animals can be, wouldn't you agree? Once you fall for the peaceful eyes of a Golden Retriever, the elegant grace of a Norwegian Forest cat, and the majestic crest of a sulfur-crested cockatoo, all your tension melts away. However, have you perhaps forgotten? That beasts always retain the breath of the wild within them... Oblivion sometimes exacts a tremendous price of suffering.
You neither escaped the curse nor resolved its source. How regrettable.
However, there is still a chance! Wait for your comrades...
...
...
...
...
A successful escapee has emerged among your comrades! Congratulations! With the emergence of a successful escapee, all members return safely./
Yoo Song-i felt her sunken consciousness slowly floating......
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Blood flowed from her mouth. Ah... this day had finally come. The radioactive black tea always mentioned as a joke on Korean internet. Had any Korean ever genuinely worried about it? It was never a light issue to be consumed as a joke... She wasn't trying to blame Koreans. She too had once mocked things Koreans took seriously as mere jokes.
But... ah, through what route had this tea ended up on the family's table? She felt her father and mother both rolling on the ground, clutching their stomachs. Who was it?
Since childhood, when a Tsar effectively ascended to power in their homeland, the entire family had embarked on a path of exile, and their happy days had ended... but even so, hadn't they loved each other more than anything as a family?
Turning her gaze, she discovered her older sister. Joy, pleasure, a sense of liberation... Ah... her sister must have wanted to be liberated even if it meant killing them all. Fool. Now, having killed her father, her mother, and me, would that exalted Tsar spare her older sister?
It was meaningless. After the long overseas flight following their exile, and settling in the first-world country of South Korea, she had thought everyone's lives were finally stabilizing, only to meet this kind of ending...
/You have failed!
Once a Tsar rises to power in the homeland, the opposition has no choice but to flee into exile. However, the greatest difficulty of the arduous path of exile is not solely physical. The fact that someone in the family could grow exhausted from exile! Did you never consider that this exhausted person might sell out the rest of the family? Did you not notice your older sister acting strangely for days? Letting your guard down is strictly forbidden.
You neither escaped the curse nor resolved its source. How regrettable.
However, there is still a chance! Wait for your comrades...
...
...
...
...
A successful escapee has emerged among your comrades! Congratulations! With the emergence of a successful escapee, all members return safely./
Elena Ivanova felt her sunken consciousness slowly floating......
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Knock knock knock!
A knocking sound could be heard. Ugh, so annoying. He was already struggling, playing Yasuo and looking for a solo kill opportunity! His concentration had been shaken by the knocking, and now he'd given up a reverse solo kill! Though he'd already given up about two solo kills before that, it wasn't a big deal. Yasuo was meant to scale by dying anyway. If it weren't for that knocking sound, this would have been the game where he got a solo kill and carried... Truly, his mom was never helpful.
"Ah Mom! I told you not to knock when I'm gaming!!!!"
"Seung-yeop... Mom's sorry. I didn't know you were concentrating this hard. Still... shouldn't you eat? You skipped breakfast, and at this rate you'll miss lunch too..."
"Mom. If you hadn't interrupted just now, I would've finished this game and come out, okay? Please stop interrupting. I'm about to hit Diamond, why do you always interrupt?"
"Mom put the food on a plate. I'll leave it in front of your door. Make sure you at least eat lunch."
Seriously, with that damn food, food, food. It's not like you die from skipping one meal, so why she acts like this was beyond him.
As his irritation surged, he suddenly heard a strange voice.
[777! Today, your luck is unprecedented.]
Did he hear that wrong? He turned down the League volume a bit.
After a 3-game losing streak, he finally managed to win one. He always felt this way, but he truly had perseverance. If only he could get decent teammates, though he couldn't understand how there could be insect-like players every single game.
Stepping outside his room, he saw the plate his mom had left about two hours ago.
What was that? That thing on the plate... food? A dead mouse?
Bah! He shook his head and forgot about it. It couldn't be a mouse, must be some weird food, but what did it matter since he wasn't going to eat it anyway. Rather than such trivial problems, hitting Diamond as soon as possible was what mattered!
Walking around the living room, he replayed the previous game in his head. His Yone timing was definitely on point. If only his teammates had followed up, it was a perfect angle to sweep them, yet strangely all 4 of them failed to respond. Absolute idiots. This was exactly why those bastards couldn't climb out of Platinum. Someone like me who's destined to climb sees angles at a completely different level from the start, so it couldn't be helped.
While he was brooding, his dad came home. Ah, another annoying person.
"Seung-yeop. I heard from your mom earlier that you skipped lunch... How about eating out with Dad today? Over there, next to Fresh Mart, a really good meat restaurant opened. They serve live pig, super fresh, and it's delicious."
Live pig? What did that mean? Who eats a pig alive? Well, whatever. He always said weird things anyway. Must have heard some strange joke somewhere.
"Dad, I'm going to make ramen later, and that's enough for me. I keep telling you this period is crucial, right? Why would I go out to eat meat... I don't have time for that. I need to queue up for at least one more game."
"No... you're going to eat anyway, right? You can't play games while eating, so let's eat deliciously outside. I happen to have something to talk to you about too."
"Ha! What do you mean I can't play games while eating? There's a cat champion in League, and it can totally play while eating ramen. Anyway, I'm eating alone, so do whatever you want!"
Bang!
Slamming the door loudly, Seung-yeop went back into his room, and the parents watching simultaneously sighed. Life was difficult as it was, but why were children this impossible to manage? Even so, he was their son. The couple resolved to somehow drag him out of the house tomorrow.
And that day too, Seung-yeop ate ramen and succeeded in changing the first digit of his cat's win rate to 2, and by the time he finished his ramen, his account had been banned again.
Truly, it was hard to understand. He was just trying to maintain his game sense even during meals, so how was this grounds for a ban? It wasn't like he wasn't playing. He clearly bought and sold items from time to time. The people who reported him were strange too.
Of course, it was no big deal. He had 17 accounts prepared anyway. Once his talent exploded, he'd hit Diamond in 3 days, so there was no need to worry about one or two accounts getting banned.
And so, another fulfilling day came to an end.