Volume 5 - CH 89.4

Afterwards, the trio ask the ‘Mushroom’ for details on what he saw on the floors below; outside of how there’s one elevator there, and the ground being littered with glass, though, the man seems to know nothing.

Besides that, this person only knew that his friends were murdered downstairs and had their corpses thrown out. He knows nothing about who those perpetrators were.

Suits then asks, “what kind of office was it downstairs?”

The Mushroom is staring blankly into the void for a while, before shaking his head, “I… I don’t know. This, building. It was rented out, out to different, companies.

There is a, con-struc-tion company above, and food, and real estate… I think. And a waste, waste manag-, management company; they had, they gave, gave us brochures… Yes. For meth-ane, when we, my, place, just moved in.

But, I don’t exactly… no, not exactly know, what they do. When… before, this, we would… would not, hang out.”

Suits asks him, “what was your job?”

“Me?” The curled-up man thinks for a while before replying, “it, was… plants?”

Suits stares at the man for a bit while thinking inside, and then nods to mutter, “it seems these people’s madness have to do with their original companies.”

Jiang Shuangmei also can’t help but nod, but then asks, “so what kind of company could it be below the 9th floor? They’re murdering…”

“Who knows?” Suits then guesses, since they’re inside of a game right now, “maybe it’s a game developer.”

Jiang Shuangmei also smiles at the joke.

None of them notice that, when Suits said the phrase ‘game developer,’ the Mushroom on the ground showed a somewhat shocked expression.

Suits decides not to dwell on the topic, as there must be some survivors in the building who knows about the 9th floor and below in detail, or this Instance would have been unwinnable.

That said… Teen and the others are exploring elevator Three, aren’t they? They probably wouldn’t be so unlucky that they’ve ended up in those floors right? From the Mushroom’s description, the situation seems quite dire once you go past the 9th floor.

Suits shakes his head to move on to other thoughts.

Meanwhile, Jiang Shuangmei asks, “should we try this cargo elevator then?”

Suits looks hesitant as his gaze shifts towards the control panel of the cargo elevator.

There are still only eight numbers that are lit up on the panel; few, but it’s double the passenger elevators, at least. Suits takes a deep breath and says, “let’s do it.”

Yet, the moment he extends his hand towards the buttons, the ‘Mushroom’ who was all curled up into a ball on the ground suddenly yells out and grabs for Suit’s hand while chomping his mouth repeatedly.

Suits retracts his hand by reflex, then the man calms down.

It seems his sudden madness was only to stop Suits from pushing the elevator buttons.

Though, furrowing his brows, Suits was going to say something when suddenly, his eyes widen when he can see the ‘man’s form clearly, and he asks, “you’re a woman?”

The extremely hoarse and almost burnt voice of the curled-up, horribly messy woman had them assuming. It is only when she stood up that the Missiontakers could discern her gender.

While Suits wouldn’t be so surprised whether she turned out to be a man or a woman in the first place, it is notable that, during the second run, Mystic took the little girl here… into the cargo elevator, where the woman is, during some kind of trance.

Jiang Shuangmei can’t help but ask, “you couldn’t be that little girl’s mother, could you?”

The woman looked at the Missiontakers with eyes out of focus, but then seems to ‘snap awake’ all of a sudden to ask, “you… you’re, talking about my daughter?”

Jiang Shuangmei nods, “the little girl on the 31st floor. Is she your daughter?”

The woman nods immediately, saying, “yes! Yes! My poor girl! How is she? I didn’t dare going up to look for her. There are dangers… I didn’t want the dangers getting to her… the 31st floor is safe…

How is she? Was she afraid? Did you see her? Did she run out of food? … Oh, my girl. She must be so scared to be there alone…

And I, I couldn’t even go look for her. It’s too dangerous… too dangerous down here…”

Her hoarse voice now has the hint of sobbing. It’s increasingly saddening.

At least, Jiang Shuangmei is furrowing her brows at this scene of a family tragedy.

Suits is much more detached to the whole thing, and asks, “what kind of danger do you think you could bring to her? Why did you curl up here and not go up to look for her after climbing back up?

Also… The little girl was here, the cargo elevator of the 9th floor, earlier. She came here with one of our companions. She didn’t recognise you.”

The woman just asks, though, shocked, “my girl… she was here? When?”

Suits then knows the woman doesn’t have her memories of the second run yet, and feels his head throbbing.

The woman said the little girl is her daughter, but her attitude is suspicious to Suits. Especially when it is true that the little girl couldn’t even recognise her mother during the last run, even when she was brought here.

Besides, if she really is so genuinely worried for her daughter…

Then why didn’t she leave the 9th floor and go up to reunite with her daughter? Dangers? Really?  And she didn’t so much as ask about her daughter until they mentioned her in passing?

Suits is doubtful whether she really is her mother.

Read only at Travis Translations

boilpoil's notes:

Surprise! It’s kind of hard to do this twist of the gender because it’s fine to actually say ‘human’ to reference some person when you don’t want to specify a gender, but in English, trying to call someone a ‘person’ instead of ‘man’ or ‘woman’ or ‘guy’ or ‘lady’ once would be fine, but more than that would be suspicious already. So I decided to run with it instead. Anyway, otherwise, this part of the chapter showed the Mushroom would stop anyone from moving this elevator from where it is parked