After getting done cleaning the Lobby with Earnest and Carol, I decided to head back to my room. I was getting tired of this routine. I was done with doing things to try and get results, only to have it backfire so badly. This time, it hadn’t been just her, either. Everyone had found out. All of them had seen her lose herself and would have a negative opinion of her.

Lying on my bed, I counted down the ways this could go from here on out. I wondered what it would take for me to be able to help this girl, hopefully, without making her feel worse. Part of me even questioned if it was necessary to do all of that in the first place. But the other part erased it immediately.

Not doing this was not an option. Nothing would change if I did not take insane steps like this one, and we would be stuck looping forever. Something needed to happen, and I would do whatever was necessary to lead us there.

“Another loop wasted, huh?” I whispered, putting my arm over my eyes to block out the light.

Knock, knock.

It took a minute for my brain to be able to process that sound. It was close to midnight, and everyone had gone off to sleep. I had asked them not to come down, just in case some splinters were still on the floor. We had to clean them thoroughly. Still, I sat up.

Knock, knock.

A soft voice called out to me. “Innkeeper. Are you awake?”

Hopping off the bed, I immediately opened the door. Bella Garlove stood right there, with her head drooping down in shame.

“I…I’m sorry about that.” She whispered, refusing to look me in the eye. “I couldn’t control myself, and that ended up happening. You can let me know the amount required to cover it, and I’ll try my best to pay it back. It’s my fault, so I’ll deal with it.”

“N-no.” I shook my head. “I wanted to apologize to you, too. My story was a bit too insensitive for you, and I could have worded the last part a bit better. It is completely my fault for putting you in that spot.”

“Eh?” She looked up, clearly heartbroken, but also unsure now. “What do you mean? Your story? No, not at all! I did it because I was angry at Poltrick, and I lost control of my powers, even though I should not be using them at all. And the-”

“Yeah, but I brought up parents, and tried to indirectly call you out for not talking to them. That was on me, and I should not have done th-”

“How?” Bella mumbled, now just plain scared. “How did you know that, innkeeper? About my family?”

“Ah, shit.” I groaned and rolled my eyes. “Actually, I…no. Never mind. Are you hungry, Bella?”

“Huh? No, not really.”

“I am hungry. Really hungry. Come with me?”

“S-sure? Ok, yes.”

_____________

 

Putting the seasoned duck-like bird in the pan, I let it start searing. There was no telling how long it would take, since this was the first time I would be working with whatever meat this was. Nothing that couldn’t be handled with regular checks, though.

“So, you’re telling me that you have been living the same three days over and over again? Then all of us die and are sent back in this dream of yours?”

“No.” I clarified for what felt like the millionth time. “All of us are dying. We reach the verge of death, but then a certain Magic Conduit of sorts puts us back three days. It’s just that I remember it all happening, but all of you don’t. So, even though all of us have been through the same things, you all do not realize it.”

“That sounds a bit difficult for me to believe.” Bella now sat on the counter as she made me make a rudimentary, simple sandwich. “But you do somehow know about my family, so you must be telling the truth. How much do you…know? Did I tell you a lot before?”

“Nah, I usually messed it up like tonight.”

“Well, I’m sorry.” She looked at the meat sear, almost drooling at the smell. I had already put enough for both of us on, since I knew there was a chance this might happen. If it didn’t happen, then, well, double meat for me. But it did. Thankfully. She continued. “I don’t like sharing it with people. I…appreciate you trying. I am happy that you thought of it. But…I don’t like telling people.”

I flipped the meat and checked it once. Somehow, it had already cooked to perfection on this side. Whatever this was didn’t take very long to cook. Once that was done, I finally turned to her and spoke up.

“I know. That’s why I did this whole stupid thing. I wanted you to be comfortable enough, and then it all blew up in my face. And on the Receptionist’s Desk, I guess. Also blew up that.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“Don’t worry. As I said, it will all reset in a few days. Nothing you do can truly hurt this place, unless it’s the black mold swallowing it up. And that can also, hopefully, be stopped one day.”

“If I help you?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, but I am fine with you taking your time. I don’t want to force it out of you.”

“It’s not like I don’t want to.” She mumbled. “It’s just…I can’t. Every time I try, I can’t. Every time I even think of using my Magic, I feel like I can’t move. Tonight was a mistake. That’s all it was.”

Had the first time been a mistake, too? The very first day I had come here, she had used her Magic after Poltrick persuaded her a little. But then again, that had been the third day. The dwarf had also seemed like he knew she had magical capabilities, and acted as if he were a good friend of hers.

Did something happen between them, usually, that I had caused a rift by existing? Had my presence caused the loops to change so much that they no longer got that close? If so, then I had to be the one to do something about it. I was the one who had needlessly, unwittingly caused this to get so complicated.

But how?

I flipped the meat once more and then took it off the flame. Keeping it aside, I got to cutting the bread as I started again.

“As you might have guessed, I’m not the best at talking to people. I kinda especially suck at it, actually. But a teacher of mine. A person who taught me how to cook…told me this before.”

I cut off a little bit of the bird meat and tasted it. Sure enough, it fulfilled the requirements. So, I handed it to her and had her taste it.

“How is it?”

“Uh, really juicy? I like it.”

There it was. Almost exactly what I had said when one of my teachers back in school did it to me. Had I been able to follow his advice until the end? Functionally, sure. Emotionally, nope. Either way, I could always bring it up now.

“So, you can have it.” I shrugged. “You could eat it right now, but that’s not what you want to do, right? Or at least, that’s not what I want to do. I want to make a sandwich out of it, and when you do that…”

I took more of the meat, put it between two small chunks of bread, and handed it to her. This time, the moment she ate it, Bella had to also grab a glass of water to chug it all down.

“The bread by itself is not bad. And the meat by itself is also not bad. But when you put them together, it’s kind of a mess.” I hoped I was getting the words right. The speech had been stuck in my head forever, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t mess up. “That doesn’t make it the fault of the bread or the meat. It makes it a fault of…me.”

“Why? Did you need to bake the bread a particular way for a sandwich, or something?”

“No!” I almost snapped, and then controlled myself. “It’s not actually about cooking, Bella. Anyway. I put two things together, and they don’t go well. So, I am the one who needs to put extra ingredients on it to fulfill the same flavor profile. Get me? I need to add vegetables, and sauces, and other toppings to make it taste good again. Even though the meat and the bread by themselves were fine.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Y-yeah. Sometimes when people come together, and do things, and interact, things tend to get messed up. But that does not mean the individual people are to blame. It just means that…”

“The cook is to blame?”

“Well, in this case,” I tried to think of a good enough substitute. “I think my teacher meant something more along the lines of, uh, Don. As you might call him. Don’s not to blame, no. They just made us all different ways, and that clashes. And to deal with that, things need to be complicated sometimes. You need to add things to yourself that you didn’t need before.”

“Oh…” She looked like she had finally understood. Actually understood. She nodded. “I see. Yeah, I understand what you mean.”

“I didn’t talk to my family either, Bella.” I started assembling the sandwich. “I…I still don’t. I haven’t actually talked to them in years. But I don’t think that makes me a bad person. It just makes me slightly different, and that’s fine. I don’t think they hate me for it, because they’re not allowed to hate me for it.”

“I-” She started, then trailed off, and then started again. “I am-” and then trailed off once more.

Giving her as honest and as warm a look as I could, I nodded. I allowed her to keep going. If she could tell me this, it might get off her chest. It’s not like I was good at working in a team. Hell, the example hadn’t actually worked on me. My head chef was forced to put me in a more isolated position to ensure I didn’t mess up workflows with my terrible communication.

But I still had a place in the kitchen. I still had a job to do, and I needed to do it well. Even if I regretted not being able to talk to everyone else and being with all of them, I was a small part of it.

Bella, though, was different. Even now, she was putting in more effort than I ever did. She was trying to surpass her limits and be better.

“Elves have…a natural affinity for Magic. All types of it.” She finally explained. “But my family does not like Magic, so I…ran away. I enrolled in the Federation’s School without telling them, and joined. I shouldn’t have, but I still did, and then I was punished for it.”

“Punished?”

“I was g-good at Magic. Really good. But people didn’t like that. The people in my class didn’t like that. They thought I was showing off, an-and they didn’t talk to me because of it. They messed with my books, my equipment, and everything else. I wanted to go home. I didn’t want to stay there anymore. B-but if I go home, then my parents will be angry at me.”

“And so, you just stopped using Magic?”

“I-it would have been better if I never had it. Being Rejected is better, because…because you cannot disappoint anybody.”

“Re-jected?”

“When you can’t use Magic in our world, you’re Rejected. Most of the world is Rejected.” She explained. “You really are from another world, aren’t you?”

“Mhmm.”

Bella smiled. She had accepted it quite easily. But that was probably because I wasn’t the first. I kept forgetting that they had made contact with other species before, in whatever form it was.

“I’m sorry, Laura,” She still apologized. “The food metaphor was great. It worked, really. But I can’t use Magic. I can’t use it because it’s a curse.”

A curse. There was that word again. Did everything in the True World that did not fit in the status quo get called a curse? How ridiculous was it? This girl had gotten isolated and bullied for being…too strong. That was it. She was just too strong.

Too strong? Food metaphors that worked? Wait a minute.

“Do you want this sandwich?” I handed it to her and took a step back. “I’ll be right back.”

“Where are you going? Making something else?”

“Yeah. Something to wash it down with.”

“What?”

I swore I had seen them before, so I quickly made my way to the Pantry. Going through the shelves one by one, it took about two minutes until I finally found what I was looking for. Bringing the little wooden container back with me, I found that Bella had already made her way through half of the sandwich.

Must have been hungry, after all.

Emptying the contents of the container on the platform, I put them in an empty pan and started roasting them a little. Once that was done, they were put on the platform, and my hand stretched out. I would not be able to crush the coffee beans as much as I wanted, so I decided to use Unraveling Magic to do that.

As Bella watched, I demonstrated what I had learned from her. Letting a sliver of blue light make it into the beans, I watched as they were crushed into small pieces and turned to dust right there. That got a chuckle out of me. Magic was fucking awesome.

Some water in a pot, and we were basically done. So was Bella with the sandwich at the same time.

“What is that?” She asked.

“Just a drink that we have a lot. There’s kind of a species-wide crush on this damn thing. But at the same time…”

Once it was done boiling, I poured it out into a cup and handed the drink to her. Bella hesitated a little, but the species-wide crush thing seemed to have helped her out. She drank it, only to immediately cough and put the cup down. I couldn’t help but laugh. It is a rite of passage to make someone drink only coffee, isn’t it?

“You all drink that?”

“Well, no. Not all of us, at least. That’s what I meant.” Fishing some sugar cubes and a little bit of premade cream from the morning, I added both of them to the cup. “That was coffee. This is coffee, too. But it’s not quite as strong. Here.”

Bella took this new cup with some hesitation, but immediately drowned in the pleasure of it once she had her sip. I knew the face of a newly made coffee addict when I saw it.

“That is…good!”

“I know, but that sweetness needs the bitterness of the coffee. If it wasn’t as strong in the first place, it would not be that good in this form. What I’m trying to say i-”

“Oh, is this still part of your speech?” She finished the cup and kept it down. “Sorry, I didn’t expect that. I think what you’re going so is that sometimes some things are strong, and some people like them that way. Right?”

“Y-yeah.”

It made my face go red. I had done all of that to make another point, and she didn’t even seem fazed or affected by it.

“Thank you, Laura. It’s just that I was thinking a bit, too, and I realized the same thing. When you said that your parents probably don’t hate you, I was thinking about that, and realized that mine probably hate me all that much either. It doesn’t make it easier for me to go back, but I got what you meant.”

“Oh, yeah, right. That makes sense.”

This had happened last time, too, so why was I surprised? Bella was a smart girl. She wasn’t just going to sit there and wait for me to save her. In the time I had taken to get the beans, she had probably already reached her conclusion. She had worked to get her own answers.

“So…”

“I’ll help.” She whispered back with a smile. “If you make me that coffee thing every day, at least.”

“Oh, we’re negotiating now? Alright. Then I’ll need Magic lessons from tomorrow morning.”

“Sure. But it might take some time.” She warned. “I don’t think I can do it instantly, but I can do it. I can try my best, that’s for sure.”

“You will try your best.”

She was taken by surprise. “Ah, yes. Sorry. I will try my best, for sure.”

“No, do-”

I decided not to finish it. I was about to tell her that that was another line I had gotten from someone else, just like the sandwich metaphor before. But I was going to keep the credit for that one. Out of embarrassment, yes. But also, because I wanted to look a little cool.

So, in the end, I settled on a simple – “It’s a deal, then.”

And she nodded back.

I hadn’t expected it to go this well, but it had. Thankfully, it had. And on top of that, it didn’t look like I was rushing things this time. She was going to take her time, and so was I. We would only attack when we were prepared.

“I think you should go to sl-”

Then something stopped me and stole our attention. Something I had never heard before.

A blood-curdling shriek from the First Floor.