I needed answers, and I needed them quick. After asking both Earnest and Carol to handle the breakfast so that I didn’t look too suspicious, I quickly made my way to Room 001.

There was irony in that the only person I could trust to give me correct information right now was the one whose face I had never even seen. But mad scientist, schizophrenic psychopath, introvert or not, the man had gotten me Magic. Not just last loop, but this one as well.

Before I could get to the room, a quick stop in the Pantry had helped me figure out that my Magic was indeed working. Even though my physical conditions had been reset, my powers had not vanished. It begged me to question what kind of loop this even was, but I knew better than to try to answer questions beyond my pay grade.

Knocking on the door, I spoke in as calm a voice as possible.

“Sir? Are you there? I need some help from you.”

No response. I could barely hear some footsteps inside, but he did not answer. That was to be expected. He knew us in the last loop, but even then, he had taken time to get around to it. The man hadn’t even answered for a whole day before actually deciding to entertain our poor souls.

Thankfully for me, I knew precisely how to get his attention.

“I am the Innkeeper of the Northflame Inn. That’s what everyone says, at least. But I know that I am not actually the innkeeper, and you happen to know who the real one is. Can you please help me out?”

And that, as I had hoped, got his attention. The footsteps got louder as he came closer, and the entire paper ritual repeated itself.

 

Who are you, then?

 

“I…I woke up in that room wearing this blue dress, and now I really, really do not know why everyone calls me the innkeeper. That’s all I can tell you, because that’s all I know. And, uh, my name is Laura Mason. I am not from this world, either.”

A small pause, and then came the reply.

 

I might know what is happening, but I cannot be sure.
You will have to give me some time, Laura Mason.

 

The last sentence made me chuckle. I had finally gotten a fairly long sentence out of him, but the thing that he had asked for was precisely what I didn’t have. Once more, the apathy of this unnatural flow of things mocked me in my face.

“That I can’t give you, sir.” I decided to go through the effort and explain. If there was one person whom I could tell all of this to, every single loop, and not regret it? That was this man. Because he had the answers.

Starting with the very first time I had awoken, I went through all of the events in short. The mold, the light, the Ghost, the Magic. All of it. As I told the story, I heard the man inside inching closer and closer to the door. The wood creaked and squeaked under his shoes, and his breath grew heavier as the truth of the situation set in for the man.

After I was finished, I waited. For almost a minute, I waited to get a response via the paper method, but never got anything. The recluse did not tell me what I needed to know. At least not how I expected.

His voice, though low, made its way through the wooden door: “You can use Unravelling Magic, Laura Mason?”

“Y-yes. I can.”

“And you’re stuck living the same three days over and over again, Laura Mason?”

“Yes, I am.”

“And you are…not the innkeeper of the Northflame Inn.”

I did not answer because it was not a question. He ended that line on an authoritative note, almost declaring that I was merely faking this job. This man knew who I truly was, but more than that, he knew who I could never be. It was as if his thoughts stretched deep into my own mind and perceived the truth of the woman Laura Mason was.

The truth of why, no matter how many cosmic accidents, I could never fit into a role like this. The fact that I was not meant to be here. Not because I was a human from another world. But because I was me. A chill ran down my spine, causing me to shake in my sandals as I waited for him to speak again.

“The Innkeeper of the Northflame Inn is one person, and one person only. Do you understand that, Laura Mason? Do you know the woman who runs the Northflame?”

“Yes, sir.” My voice turned into a defeated whisper at his insistence. I accepted the fact that he was correct and did not try to fight what was right. “And no, sir. I do not know who runs this place.”

“Andrea Donatella.”

The name carried weight. It almost pushed me down and forced me to back up. A simple whisper of this woman’s identity, and the entire seemed to howl with recognition around me, growing warmer by the second.

“Yes, sir. I am sorry.”

“Do not be sorry. It is not your fault that you are here. Just a mere chance. Yes, yes, that’s all it is. Just some anomaly that should not have happened. Yes, what else could it be? What else could it be, Laura Mason? Do you know what else?”

“N-no?”

“Hmm. You don’t. Of course, you don’t. Go, now. Leave and go practice your Magic. Protect the inn from that rot you talk about with your powers. Can you do that, Laura Mason?”

“I can try my best, sir.”

The man wildly cackled and banged on the door, making me jump. “You will either do it, or you won’t. Do you understand that, Laura Mason? I will do, as well. I will see what I can find out about this predicament we find ourselves in, but that’s that. Get better until then. That is all the advice I can offer a woman like you.”

“Yes.” I nodded, even though he could not see me. “But, sir! Can I ask a question, if you’ll allow me? This woman you speak of. Andrea Donatella. Where is she? What happened to the original innkeeper?”

No reply came this time around. From the other side, there came only a whimper. An almost scared, sad sound that I hadn’t expected from the man. An unknown inflection of a voice that had been so demanding and all-knowing just a few seconds ago. And with that, the mask of the man on the other side fell.

With that, a single question brought my heart rate back under control. It reminded me that no matter how old or wise, the man on the other side was still just a man.

“I will take my leave now, then.” I hesitantly whispered, slowly moving backwards. “It was n-nice talking to you. See you later. I’ll, uh, be back maybe by night?”

Nothing, once more. The man really had been permanently muted by whatever memory my words had conjured up.

Hoping that I had not messed him up too badly, then, I took my leave.

_____________

 

After everyone finished breakfast and took their leave, I finally found some room to breathe. Especially now that Carol and Earnest were busy cleaning up.

Resting in the Lobby, I finally had time to ponder the deeper questions of life. The questions that had been passed on to me without any guidance twice now. I was still clueless about how to even go about it, after all.

The man had told me to get better, but how was I even supposed to go about that? It wasn’t like I had a teacher to tell me how to do things, or a training dummy to release my Magic on. Everything that surrounded me, as I might have explained to you multiple times now, was made out of wood. A single blast only shattered it into splinters without much positive impact.

I could try to practice on those ugly black slabs covering the windows, but then what? I would just blast them over and over again, and then maybe break the damn things. None of that contained the part where I got better at actually using Magic. There was no blueprint for how to ‘refine’ it, as Bella had told me last time.

The normal thing to do would be to ask her, but she had completely vanished after having breakfast with the…

“Hello, innkeeper. What’s going on? Everything alright?”

I, who had been quite literally sleeping on the couch in the Lobby, quickly sat up with a jolt at the voice. In front of me, sitting on the couch opposite, were the twins. Trev and Tray…something. I had never caught their last names, had I? Let’s find out with some immediacy, then.

“Oh, hey! Trev and Tray…uh, what was it?”

“Zarken.” The one sitting on the left replied.

“Zarken, right.” I nodded as if I had heard that name before. The more I could keep them under the illusion that I was the innkeeper, the less friction I would have to face while collecting intel. “How do you even tell each other apart? I mean, sorry. Of course, you can tell each other apart. How do others do it?”

“It’s easy. Really!” The one sitting on the right said. “I’m Trev, and I’ve got these pitch-black abyssal eyes. Kinda cool, aren’t they? People always tell me that I might be the hidden bad guy or something like that.”

“Yeah, right. Anyway, I’m Tray. I’ve got simple brown eyes, and there’s nothing quite special about any of it.” The one on the left, Tray Zarken, took over. “That’s basically the only way to tell us apart.”

They weren’t wrong about that. I hadn’t paid attention to their eyes before, given that I was not quite interested in people’s eyes anyway, but the brown and black difference was striking. Even more so when you took into account their sandy hair, square facial features, and similarly hooked noses. Even their weight seemed to be the same, somehow.

In fact, if you took Trev’s black eyes and replaced them with Tray’s brown eyes, they were virtually indistinguishable.

“I mean, not really.” Trev got comfortable on the couch, resting one leg on the other. “We’ve got other differentiating markers, but those are in areas…inaccessible to the public.”

For a second, my face went flush red at the remark. In the next second, my brain caught up and realized the redness was due to pure anger. I wasn’t sure who this guy thought he was, but I wasn’t exactly going to accept such brutal, one-note flirting. That right was only reserved for other girls and guys who deserved it…

“Do you want a punch on your face, Trev Zarken?”

“Hey, I don’t mind at all. You wanna give it a g-”

Tray brought a hand up and pinched his brother’s neck from the back. The resulting yelp gave me a wave of satisfaction that I did not know I needed. With a slight smile across my face, I looked at the hurting twin with some authority.

“Sorry about that, he’s a bit much.” The smarter twin cleared his throat. “Also, he means to say that we do have some other marks on our ankles, but that’s a bit difficult to check every time you see us. That’s why we stick to the eyes.”

“Ah, yeah. That…makes a whole lot more sense, doesn’t it?”

“Well, that’s what I meant in the first place.” Trev whistled. “What did you think I was talk-…owckhie!”

That word, reader, is an approximate transcription of the very inhuman voice that escaped that boy with the second pinch on his neck. But I assure you, at the detriment of calling my own skills in question, that I have not done the pathetic nature of it justice. It was so, so much more satisfying to actually hear it.

To continue with the conversation, however, I tried to change the subject of the conversation.

“So, how has your stay been until now? How long have you been here again?”

“Wow, you really have some bad memory, don-…kavowckschie!”

“Sorry about that again. We only came here two nights ago. I think you were asleep or unavailable at that time. It was Miss Carol who checked us in.”

“Ah…Carol.” I nodded back, keeping my internal joy at seeing Trev punished to myself. “She’s a…good employee. The very best we’ve got, actually.”

The moment I said that, the twins’ faces got a massive smile for some reason. Before I could ask why, I was jumped by a sound behind my back.

“What was that, innkeeper!?”

I let out a short yelp before turning to see both Carol and Earnest standing behind the couch with their hands behind their back.

“What was that, innkeeper?” she repeated.

“Oh, uh, I was just talking about how…nice you are. Yeah, that’s it.”

Carol nodded with a smirk. “Yes, innkeeper. Thank you so much for the praise. I will definitely not let it go to my head.”

Earnest cleared his throat and landed a hit on her lower back, sending her spiraling out of my view while squealing about how much it hurt. The twins laughed at the scene, as if they had not put on a similar demonstration just a few minutes ago.

“We’re here for some work, innkeeper.”

“Sure. What is it?” I stood up, hoping that doing whatever chore would let me focus my mind a little.

“There’s something weird going on with the Luxury Suite, actually,” Earnest mentioned. “The door has this weird sort of material growing on it, and we wanted you to check it out.”

Oh, yeah. It had almost escaped my mind after seeing peg-leg Poltrick and talking to the recluse Magician, but I still needed to check the newly opened Third Floor. If what I knew was correct, the mold hadn’t taken over it just yet. That would make it so much easier to check out and investigate.

I nodded and immediately ran out of the hearth and towards the staff members.

“Yeah, yeah. That sounds very concerning. Let’s go!”