After getting back from the Third Floor, I spent some more of my time reading in the Secret Room. As I went through the books related to Magic one by one, trying to piece together the rules of the system with context clues, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was forgetting something important. But all I did with that feeling was absolutely nothing.

By all means, it probably would have been beneficial if I had remembered the light from the last loop. I’m sure I had all the time in the world to walk to the edge of the two shelves and actually check the source of that time-looping illumination.

Unfortunately, my brain had been left so frustrated by the Resplendent Roundabout that it refused to work at peak capacity. All I could do was try to decipher the meanings of the foreign words mixed in with English in those books, and get frustrated further. A difficult experience, to say the least.

And thus, you who have made it this far, let me narrate the many things Laura Mason did that night. Let me run you down the conversations she had before remembering that she had one last location to check and get information from.

I will, however, beg you to understand this. Even if these conversations were a detour from the truth, I would rather have them a million times over rather than find out what I did. So, do enjoy the foolishness of Laura Mason, but also appreciate the calm amidst the storm.

_____________

 

“Fresh stir-fried vegetables with seasoned bread sauce!” Earnest explained as he put the plates on our table. Then, with the same smile as ever on his face, the man retired to the Kitchen.

Bread sauce was apparently a staple in this world. You first made bread, and then soaked it in a liquid of your choice. This time, it had been a spicy soup that Earnest had made beforehand. Once the bread had completely rested and absorbed the liquid, it was ground into as fine a paste as possible. This paste was then mixed with a thicker sauce base made out of the same liquid.

The result was…questionable. To my palate, at least, it was heavily questionable. But the people around me seemed to enjoy it better than most of the food I had made for them, which slightly ticked me off. At the end of the day, it was nothing more than a slightly granulated version of the sauce base, and did not seem to serve much of a purpose.

“Do you not like break sauce, innkeeper?” Bella asked once she noticed my slightly sour face.

“Ha! Of course she does not. Big woman like her is probably too rich to enjoy food like this, isn’t she?” Poltrick grumbled.

Now, I had no idea why these two had decided to sit down together, but I had been foolish enough to sit with them as well. As such, I could not really complain about the company. Because, to a certain extent, even the dwarf’s snarks had become an understated comfort by now.

“I am not!” I snapped back at Gregson anyway. “Also, my issue is with the texture itself. It’s complicated without having a reason behind it. There’s no cohesion with the vegetables. In fact, there’s no cohesion anywhere.”

“Well, it’s not meant to be fine cuisine. Sorry about that, innkeeper!”

“My name’s Laura. Can you stop calling me innkeeper already, Gregson?”

“Ah, Laura…” Bella leaned in, whispering in my ear. “The bread sauce is a dwarven specialty. That’s probably why he is a bit protective of it. To be honest, I don’t like it much either.”

“I heard that, Bella!” The dwarf raised his voice. Enough to gather the attention of every other person in the room – Tray, Trev, Nathan, Fera.

I looked down in shame, eating another green bean dipped in the sauce. It wasn’t perfect, by all means, but I had never said that it was bad. It wasn’t bad. My only issue was that it did not seem to have a unique purpose to exist.

Also, what was it with me disrespecting the dwarven race without ever intending to!?

“How about you explain it to us then, Mr. Gregson?” Bella smiled, keeping her calm in the face of the dwarf’s offense. “I’m sure even Laura would love to find out more about bread sauce and its creation.”

“Hmm,” I mumbled, picking one of the purple potatoes this time. “Sure, Gregson. I wouldn’t mind finding out more about my guests.”

He grumbled something under his breath before looking up and beginning to explain with a gruff voice.

“The dwarves’ve always been miners. We mine, and then we use our Conjoining Magic to make tools and other materials. Do you know what happens when you do all of that work by hand?”

“Uh…you get tired?”

“Precisely, Trev!” He looked back at the twin, who had answered despite not being part of the conversation. “But not quite there yet. We could have had sandwiches if the only issue was being tired. No. The issue was having so much toxic dust on our hands that eating bread with our hands would cause us to eat that as well. That was when a smart dwarf came up with the idea of bread sauce. You get the same nutrition without needing to touch your food!”

“Or…” I raised my eyebrow and debated if I really needed to say it, but then ended up blurting it out anyway. “Or you could have just used toothpicks or something to pick up smaller sandwiches.”

“Huh?” Poltrick’s voice was one of genuine bewilderment. “What is a toothpick? A small pickaxe? What is that?”

“Nothing. Never mind, Gregson. This is very good, now that I think about it. I love bread sauce so much.” I quickly turned to the girl sitting beside me. “What about you, Bella? Do the elves have any interesting food items like maybe…uh, rice sauce?”

“Oh!” She looked back with intense excitement and brightened eyes. “Elves have the best food in the whole world! And I know that I might be a little biased, but I think I am being completely objective here. Like, for example, my mother used to make this…this…my mother…she-”

Her sudden outburst of emotions deflated at once, without warning. Her smile dropped, and she quietly ate the last of her vegetables. It was then that I noticed how fast an eater Bella was. She put her fork down and then looked around the room at everyone staring back. Her eyes, though they tried to stay calm, betrayed her true emotions. Then again, her own words had betrayed her just moments ago.

Bella pushed her chair back and stood up.

“I am…sorry for interrupting everyone.”

With that, she rushed out of the Bar and Restaurant, nowhere to be seen. The piece of carrot in my mouth was swallowed at once, without being chewed, and got stuck in my throat. Earnest walked in with some kind of dessert cake, only to be surprised by her exit. In that one moment, even if she wanted to be left alone, the elf had attracted everyone’s attention.

“Not very good at being subtle with her emotions, is she?” Poltrick clicked his tongue and shook his head.

“That’s just all elves, I am afraid,” Fera added from the other side of the room. She and Nathan had been so non-existent over these loops that I had almost forgotten they even existed. But here she was with a convenient bit of information. “They’re not known to be great at holding themselves back. Their lifespan does not allow them to.”

“They experience everything in extremes because they experience so much of it?” I asked her back, wondering what she meant.

But the wood-skinned woman turned me down instantly.“Not at all! Elves have the shortest lifespans in the world. Only forty years. They experience things in extremes because they cannot experience them over and over, innkeeper. You really do need some lectures on the various species, don’t you?”

“That’s alright!” Poltrick supported me for some reason. “At least she’s trying, even if her rich childhood did not let her learn all that.”

I gave the dwarf a little nod to thank him, and then looked up at the ceiling. Above us somewhere was Bella’s room. She had probably retired there and was probably busy crying. All because I had asked her something I should not have. All because I kept doing this over and over, and letting my own world’s knowledge define me.

Forty years? That was all? Weren’t all the stories the exact opposite? Weren’t elves supposed to live forever? If Bella was only going to live for forty years, and she was the same age as me…it meant she had already lived half of her life. She was already more than fifty percent of the way through everything she would ever experience.

My brain told me that it would be wise to go up and apologize. I could go and talk to her about it, and maybe even explain myself. But that was my brain. Right now, I did not need to listen to it. My heart had already told me not to bother her any more than I already had.

This loop had gotten off to a pathetic start.

_____________

 

Lying in my room later in the night, completely destroyed by my own actions, I had no wish to do any reading. I just lay down on the floor, not even on the bed, and looked at the chandelier. Tracing the symmetrical patterns in that wondrous work of art, I spent my time wondering how I could be more accommodating.

I could read, of course. I could find out more about these people by putting in the effort and learning their cultures. But how? I could not even understand a single book because of the hundreds of loan words it contained. You could not possibly expect me to read entire books about different species and retain all the information. And the Secret Room would not contain all of that information anyway.

Someone knocked on the door, and I ignored it. I decided that if I kept ignoring it, they might go away. But that was, obviously, foolish of me. If there was one thread that connected every single person living in this building, it was their relentless pursuit of whatever they wanted. That is my way of saying that the knocks did not stop.

Giving in, I finally asked them to enter without actually moving an inch myself.

“Thank you, innkeeper.” Earnest Blest spoke as he opened the door, got in, and closed it behind him. “I just wa…what happened to you?”

The man with the oiled, slicked-back hair and beautifully defined moustaches adorning his rectangular face had real concern and fear on his face.

I looked at him with a sour expression and then gave him a thumbs-up. “Nothing. Go on, Earnest.”

“Oh, uh, very well.” He nodded and then started walking around my body like a detective checking a crime scene. “So, innkeeper, I had something really important to ask you. Really, really quite important. It is of the highest priority that I get an answer regarding this ques-”

“Just get to it, Earnest.”

“Right! Sorry, ma’am. What I wanted to say is that I love Carol Dalesia. I love her romantically.”

I looked at him, smiled, and then gave the man another thumbs-up. “Well, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but she clearly loves you as well. Go for it, my friend. Good luck!”

He stopped in his tracks and then got closer. Standing right between me and the mini golf courses on the right, he crouched down with a hand on his chin. “Of course, innkeeper. I mean, it would be a conundrum if she did not love me back. We’ve been in a relationship for the last month.”

There was no reply to that. All I could do was keep staring at him with the abandoned expression I had adopted since dinner. The absolute exhaustion of having to face such a nothing-burger of a problem was starting to set in. Because if there was an actual question to be asked, then he was clearly taking too long to get there.

“I’m happy for you, then, my dear chef. Keep it up. Goodbye…”

“Non, non!” He shook his head, shaking his royal moustache with it. “That is not the issue, obviously. My issue, innkeeper, is that I love her too much. It prevents me from saying anything bad to her, or purposefully hurting her when I do not need to!”

“Oh. What a new, unique problem to have. What do you need help with, Earnest?”

“I…I have no heart to tell her that…that her cooking is horrible!”

That made me sit up. Almost hitting him on the way there, my only regret was that I wasn’t actually able to do it. If there was one thing Earnie deserved in that moment, after all, it was a whack on the head.

“You are the chef in the relationship! Why do you need her to cook?!”

“That’s not it. I cook for her all the time.” He moaned and then sat down on the bed with a dejected face. “The issue is that I cannot cook for everyone at all times, since I have a condition that prevents me from doing so. I have a very weak constitution, innkeeper. As such, it is Carol who takes over for me every other meal and cooks for the guests.”

“I see…”

I saw. I saw not just what he was trying to say, but I also saw precisely where he was trying to go with this. All of it was suddenly so transparent, and I somehow did not hate the question that he was going to pose.

“That’s why I really wanted to know something, innkeeper. I needed your help if it would be feasible for you. If you could possibly fit it in your busy schedule, it would be a blessing, really!”

Here it came…

“I wanted to know if you could alternate cooking the meals with me, innkeeper. I really do not want to give the guests meals made by Carol, even though I love her with all my heart. You are the only person who can ask her to stop, and if I d-”

“I’ll do it.”

“I know! I know, innkeeper. I know that you are busy and do not…wait, what?” He shot up straight and got on his feet. “You will do it?”

“I’ll do it, Earnest. You can go and catch some sleep.”

“Oh, I am blessed.”

“No, you are Blest.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” I rolled my eyes at even trying and then pushed the man out towards the door. Even as he continued to thank me for helping him out, I could not be bothered to keep listening to it all. I had said I would do it, and that was that.

Once he was taken out of the room and the door closed behind him, I could finally breathe. My very stupid brain had just spent a stupid amount of time trying to get this man out, so that I did not have to bother with cooking. And now, that very stupid brain had so very easily accepted his offer to still make me cook anyway.

The only difference was that things were slightly different now. Because that’s who I was. If I could not find the answers to these people in books, I would have to find them in food. Because that was what Laura Mason did. It was the only way I knew how to speak, so it was the way I would need to adopt.

Maybe this morning it would have taken forever to convince me of the same thing, but not right now. Not this version of me. Poltrick’s anger was still fresh in my mind, and so was Bella’s little breakdown. I couldn’t fix those. I was bad at fixing those. So, I would have to do what I could.

With a slightly shaky newfound determination, I stepped into the Secret Room to do some light reading before I went to sleep. It was a hasty decision, but I had made it. I needed to do my part, and this was what it was.

And so it was that when everyone else went to sleep, I came back into that room. I looked at the painting, remembered the yellow light that had guarded it, and was thus reminded of the corner of those shelves. I was reminded of the white light which caused the loops, and where it originated from.

“Huh…”

I approached them, not knowing what awaited me.