The Crying on the Sofa Won't Stop

Elisha jolted up in alarm.

"You, you! How could you crumple that up!"

"You won't even look at it, so what's the point of me looking?"

When Sohee raised the paper as if she might tear it to shreds right then and there, Elisha scrambled to her feet and snatched it away. Though nothing written on it could be seen, Elisha smoothed out the crumpled sheet with both hands, over and over.

"But why would you… why would you crumple it?"

Tears came pouring from Elisha's eyes again. It was as if the crumpled paper were her own ruined life, and she could not stop trying to flatten it back out. But a paper once creased was never going to return to what it had been.

Sohee closed her eyes tightly, then opened them. The sight struck her heart as so pitiful that she paused for a moment to steady her breathing. Then she spoke again, her tone turned cold.

"That's right. I don't know your life. How could I, from a few lines of text?"

Elisha, who had been fussing over the paper, lifted her head and looked at Sohee. That face, still frozen and hard, showed no sign of softening.

"I could die and come back to life a hundred times over and still never fully understand how you feel."

Only the sound of Elisha sniffling back tears and Sohee's low voice filled the room. Sohee swallowed a sigh and continued.

"It's just a piece of paper, you say? The single most important thing to the Hoe-Bing-Hwan is what's written on these few sheets of the Life Record. I have a responsibility to judge it properly and point each guest in the right direction."

And the conclusion Sohee had drawn objectively was regression or reincarnation.

The justification for possession was lacking, and the odds of failing if she forced it were extremely high.

Would failure be the end of it? She wouldn't simply dissolve—no, everything she had built up through all that endurance would be reduced to zero as well. She had come all this way seeking the Hoe-Bing-Hwan under these abysmal conditions. Was she really planning to do it this way?

The Hoe-Bing-Hwan could only happen when the guest and Sohee were in perfect accord. Which meant, for now, there were only two options: making Elisha give up her longing for possession, or giving it up herself.

Sohee rose from her seat and opened the door of the consultation room.

"It seems our views aren't going to meet. Take care on your way out."

Kuku, the RPR Motel's head cook, was a young man with a lovable, adorable face. His curly hair was a vivid vermilion, and his sun-kissed nose was dotted with a scattering of freckles.

It was a face that drew quite a bit of attention even among the Hamlet Residents—thanks, naturally, to that striking hair.

He was heading for the lobby carrying a cold drink filled to the brim with ice. In Kuku's estimation, something very annoying was happening in there right now.

"Worse than I expected."

The scene that greeted him when he stepped into the lobby was quite something.

A woman, soaked in tears and refusing to leave, sat planted on the lobby sofa as if nailed there. Every time Sohee tried to leave, she burst into loud, deliberate sobs, leaving Sohee no choice but to sit across from her, at a loss.

Just drag her out, wouldn't that work?

Thinking this, Kuku advanced one measured step at a time toward Sohee, equipped with his ever-useful, charming smile.

As he drew near, Sohee looked up from her troubled staring at the floor.

"A sweet, refreshing drink. I thought it would suit you right about now."

"Thanks."

The moment Sohee reached for the glass—

"……!"

In the blink of an eye, Sohee's hand snapped out and caught the hand that had shot toward Elisha.

"…Kuku."

"Yes?"

His wrist seized in her grip, Kuku tilted his head with wide, innocent eyes, as if to ask what the problem was.

"No."

Kuku lifted his shoulders in a shrug and let them fall.

"I was only going to put her to sleep for a little while."

At the tip of Kuku's fingers was a single, needle-thin blade. Once Sohee had confirmed it, she turned her head toward the front desk, and a voice rang out as if it had been waiting.

"A cloth coated in sleeping agen.t."

Relieved that it was not poison, Sohee let out a breath and looked at him.

Kuku, the Hamlet Resident blessed with an adorable face and outstanding culinary skill. A calm, rational young man with a somewhat binary way of thinking.

And on top of that—

A former mercenary, skilled with drugs and blades.

Sohee recalled the trait she had briefly forgotten. If Kuku had ever appeared in an actual novel, more than a few characters must have lost their heads for letting their guards down before that harmless-looking face.

Kuku tucked his weapon back into his sleeve with a resigned air.

"Are you perhaps practicing building up your patience?"

"…What?"

"Because if not, I can't think of any reason to sit through two hours of whimpering."

Hic.

Startled by the hiccup that escaped her before she could stop it, Elisha clapped a hand over her mouth.

"Kuku, staff members aren't supposed to do that to guests."

"That's exactly why I wasn't going to kill her."

Just put her to sleep like the dead, that's all.

Kuku gazed down at Elisha slowly. From the moment he had produced that dreadful needle, her tears had stopped cold.

"Fine. Fine, I'll… I'll talk it through with her myself."

"Understood."

Kuku answered simply, turned, and headed for the kitchen. Elisha, watching his retreating back, sat frozen with her hands clenched tight.

"E-excuse me, Ms. Sohee?"

Swish. Kuku looked back over his shoulder.

"If it's not a staff-and-guest relationship, I don't have to hold back, right?"

Smile. He beamed at Elisha.

Go on. Whine one more time. See what happens.

Reading the look in his eyes, Elisha's face went white as a sheet—the very soul knocked clean out of her.

"Kuku."

"Ah, right, never mind. I'm aiming for long-term employment, after all."

At Sohee's admonition, Kuku turned and walked away. Elisha froze with her mouth clamped shut as if she'd forgotten how to breathe, and the lobby fell silent in an instant, as though it had emptied of everyone entirely.

"Ugh."

Sohee flopped onto the bed in her own room. As predicted, the day had been endlessly long. In the end, Elisha Brown had not left the motel—but she hadn't given a firm answer either.

Sohee had walked Elisha through the reasoning behind the 'regression' route once more. No matter how she tried to persuade her, the moment 'possession' was all that filled Elisha's head, nothing Sohee said would have registered at all.

Only after holding that trench line all day did the day finally come to an end. Elisha had resolved to sleep on it and decide whether to prepare for regression, or to abandon the whole idea and leave the motel for good.

Just because the option I laid out was reasonable doesn't mean it's the right answer for her.

For all Sohee knew, if Elisha could never truly claim the saint's seat, she might decide she didn't even need regression. No matter how adamantly Sohee insisted she was right, if the guest herself wasn't willing, there was nothing to be done.

That said, she had no intention of blaming her. All Sohee could do was hold to her own standards and point each guest toward the best available path.

Now only Elisha's conclusion remained.

"Ms. Sohee!"

"…Mm."

"Did you not sleep well? You look absolutely exhausted."

Seeing her dozing off at the front desk, Riri, who had just arrived for her shift, wore a worried expression.

"…I did sleep."

"Your dark circles say otherwise."

Kuku, who had just come out of the kitchen, chimed in. Sohee fiddled self-consciously with her face.

"Is it that bad?"

"Yes."

His tone was flat, but in his hands he carried a tea said to relieve fatigue. He set the teacup down in front of Sohee with a soft tap.

"Drink."

Sohee pouted slightly, but lifted the cup.

"Thanks, anyway."

As she sipped the hot tea, she felt her heart warm along with her body. Just as she was relaxing her guard, a chilling sensation crawled up the back of her neck.

"So. So. Hee."

"……"

"Why were you not sleeping?"

At those words, Sohee flinched and looked down at the notebook lying beside her, for no good reason.

"I, um… I got deep into thinking about how to make this motel prosper even more, so…"

"That is not why you stayed up all nigh.t."

Caught dead to rights, she finally set her pen down.

"…How do you even know these things."

It would have been stranger, really, to keep a secret from Moon Jar—the old-timer who had lived here from the very beginning. Sohee heaved a deep sigh and propped her chin on her arms atop the front desk.

The problem was that, on the verge of sleep, she had taken one last look at Elisha's Life Record—just in case—and read it in more detail.

The trouble was that a fragment of Elisha's life had overlapped, of all things, with painful memories of Sohee's own. She had forced herself to try to sleep, only to have nightmares about them, and after that she hadn't dared close her eyes again.

Moon Jar quietly studied her expression.

Does it show that much? she thought, turning to a mirror to check her reflection. It was true that the skin under her eyes was dark and rough—her complexion really was terrible. Her brow furrowed deeply, thoroughly displeased.

Moon Jar knew perfectly well that her displeasure had nothing to do with her appearance.

Cold as ice about everything else, and yet this is where you falter.

She disapproved of how her own heart wavered whenever she brushed up against a situation that mirrored her past. She had thought she'd forgotten the contempt and betrayal of her relatives long ago—but it seemed a true wound simply took longer to heal.

Moon Jar spoke as though he could see straight through her.

"You are the head manager of this motel. You must not let yourself be swept up in the stories of those who come seeking. this place."

"…Yes."

If she let emotion take priority in the Hoe-Bing-Hwan plans, she risked misjudging the situation entirely and ruining everything. She finished her thoughts and looked straight ahead.

"I'll work on it."

She shut the mirror she'd been looking into with a firm snap.

And just then. A presence stirred at the motel entrance, and the door burst open.

"Tch. Not a single soul to show a guest in."

Tap, tap. A middle-aged man, limping on one leg and leaning on a cane. Judging by his attire, he looked every inch a nobleman out of a romance fantasy, and he swept the motel's interior with a discontented eye.

In that instant, a fresh Life Record materialized above the front desk.

"……!"

Dylan Brown. Elisha's adoptive father.