Coco had a point.
"After going through all that, it might be better to rest."
He acknowledged it.
"Adequate rest is necessary for any task. You rember what I said on the 14th Floor very well. As I always think, Coco, your learning ability deserves praise."
"Mm."
"No, I'm not changing the subject... hmm."
But.
"...Haven't I rested quite a lot?"
He'd just spent days acquiring control of the Central Control Room.
"Yes?"
"I understand the spirit of what you're saying, but please calm down and hear
out first."
"Yes."
"Unfortunately, the tasks of this world don't consult individual circumstances before descending upon you."
"Yes?"
"And I have an obligation to be responsible for this hotel."
Honestly, he still didn't understand why it had to be him, when this treacherous hotel had—
'Shut up.'
He needed to shut up.
"Right, I can't start off by killing my own morale like this."
"No?"
Coco seed to want Yeon-woo to rest longer. Partly out of concern for his well-being, but not only that. It appeared to fear the side effects of their lost bond.
"......"
Discomfort and unease ca to him easily.
'The cold treatnt right after The Guest Without Taste's invitation must still be a shock.'
In truth, even now, the close feelings from before were absent. He didn't find Coco particularly cute, either.
'Originally, Coco was a case where playing the ga long enough made even its appearance seem endearing.'
All that remained was a sense of indebtedness for the help received on the 14th Floor.
So Coco itself was anxious. It was fine for Yeon-woo to drift from humanity and beco an excellent manager, but being treated coldly like before was another matter.
'So it's being careful not to let my condition worsen. If I get consud by even more negative emotions, the odds of mistreating Coco only increase.'
"Yes...."
"How forthright."
A cat that knew nothing of modesty.
"......"
Yeon-woo lifted Coco and held it.
"...There's no need to worry so much."
"Mm."
"Listen."
"Yes."
"The Guest Without Taste only consus emotions that already exist—he can't devour the cognitive system that generates those emotions. Probably."
In truth, the distinction was thin. A human stripped of all positive emotions—Yeon-woo had experienced it himself—found that the circuitry for creating and storing emotions broke down as a matter of course.
In simple terms, you lost your mind.
"But I'm not that far gone."
Largely thanks to gripping his reason so tightly.
"Now that the urgent work is finished, so peace of mind has returned."
Ordinary emotions could simply be built up again.
"So it's ultimately sothing ti will resolve. Personally, I feel a sense of unfamiliarity similar to when I first saw you inside Hoone, and in its own way... I don't think that's bad."
"Yes?"
"I an it feels like when I first played the ga."
If he thought of it as gaining new things to enjoy, it wasn't so unpleasant.
"......"
No, it was unpleasant.
'I told you to shut up.'
Fair enough.
"Mm."
"But I also know what you're worried about."
Yeon-woo straightened his disheveled appearance. It was different from usual.
No suit jacket, no vest, no tie—just a shirt. He still wasn't wearing his glasses, and his hands were bare, without gloves. In his unadorned state, he still looked deceptively young.
'How did it co to this?'
Feeling uncomfortable, he swept his hair back. That helped a little. He continued.
"At this rate, the negative emotions will grow larger than the positive."
"Yes!"
"At the very least, you wouldn't want that. And neither do I. Being at the rcy of emotions turned out to be far more uncomfortable than I'd imagined."
"Yes...."
"In that sense, I trust you won't stand in my way."
"Yes?"
Yeon-woo offered a smile.
"Let's go sort things out."
Selection and focus were important, always and everywhere.
***
When the door opened, only a single door was visible at the end of a narrow corridor.
The corridor was quietly empty, and a subtle aroma reminiscent of roses hung in the air. The floor was covered in ebony, and footsteps dissolved into a hushed resonance.
And when the next door opened, a small salon-like dining room was revealed.
"...Aha."
Yeon-woo saw the person seated there.
"So this is where you've been."
"Oh."
"Is the al to your liking?"
"An unfamiliar look."
"I didn't co today as the General Manager."
"I see."
Lightly, tapping the table, he asked.
"Would you invite ?"
"......"
"I'm curious... about your na."
The Guest Without Taste, who had been silent for a long while,
"......"
"......"
asked only after another long pause.
"...May I eat?"
Yeon-woo sat across from him.
***
The man recalled what had happened in the blood-stained control room, not long ago.
"......"
He was The Guest Without Taste. Wherever blood flowed, he could go. And so he'd been able to see Yeon-woo entangled in all manner of tal and dical equipnt, like a living sacrifice.
"Ugh...."
"......"
"Nngh, hh...."
"......"
"AAAGH...!"
Red blood soaked the floor.
The stench of rusted iron pierced his nose.
"AAGH!! AAAGH!!!"
The sound of bones shattering.
The heart being crushed, the whole body being ground apart.
But strange as it was. He did not crumble. As ti passed, the original form beca harder to discern, yet his posture remained undisturbed. Even the hands trembling from agony seed to reveal an iron will.
A desperate struggle, clinging to whatever possibility of survival remained.
"......"
...He knew that now was the perfect opportunity.
Hunger shook every cell in his body. Blood, despair, the sll of death—the sweetest temptation. One more step, reach out and seize that heart, and he could swallow that perfect being whole....
'Now is the ti.'
'Look—he's that weakened.'
'Just once....'
His inner voices, the hungry ghosts, whispered.
'Just once, give up being ■■.'
Like that.
'Abandon honor, seize him without cause.'
Then.
'Then we win.'
His jaw ached as though saliva were pooling at his lips. Blood and flesh leaked from the monstrous apparatus as the man thrashed. His fingertips trembled, but—
'Ah, this sweet sll of blood....''My throat burns with thirst.''Throat? Such a thing doesn't exist. How filthy.''It doesn't matter—to stop this pain, I need to drink that blood right now.''It feels as though my entire body is lting....''There is no flesh. There is only blood.''It burns, it burns, it burns.''There—see? He's perfect.'
And yet.
"......"
His feet would not move.
Why?
"Hk, nngh...!"
"......"
"...Phew...."
On the verge of drowning in blood. Being shattered and torn, yet never losing himself.
"......"
"......"
He had simply been watching that sight, as though gazing upon the sea.
'Eat.'
'Seize him.'
His inner self goaded.
'You can win!'
But there was a voice that resonated louder still.
"...You're not different...."
"......"
"Not differ... ent...."
...Whose 'voice' had that been?
"Ah."
It was mine.
When the blood pooled on the floor touched his foot, he startled as though he'd touched a ball of fire and stumbled back a step. Retreating, instinctively covering his mouth, his eyes t the devil's.
"......"
Black eyes—'Coco,' was it called? That thing, a part of this castle, simply watched him.
'...Does it not think I'll attack?'
No, more than that.
'Why?'
Why doesn't this man crumble?
'He said we're not different.'
If we're the sa, then why can he go that far? That question inflicted a pain deeper than hunger.
"......"
He realized, in that mont.
"......"
If he killed him now, swallowed him, stubbornly made him his own—he would never, for all eternity, obtain that answer.
What he truly craved was not prey, but the answer to what fundantal difference separated their existences. He thirsted for that above all.
You knew that. That's why you exposed yourself like this, so vulnerable.
"...Aha...."
In the end, he turned away.
"...For soone who fancies himself a god, you fight dirty."
Carrying his hunger, having found no answer, he vanished as quietly as he'd appeared. And told himself that 'the hunt had not failed.'
It was rely that there existed sothing in this world more valuable than death.
"......"
"......"
"......"
***
The man, lost in a strange sense of futility, abruptly noticed.
"Ah...."
From sunset to moonrise and back to dawn, he'd been standing in this empty banquet hall like a specter. He had remained alone, thinking.
"......"
What arrived was humiliation and defeat.
At his most vulnerable mont, with prey right before him, he'd failed to take a single step. Having justified the hunt as his arrogance and reason for being, he'd whittled away his own instincts.
'...I was falling, while you held onto yourself even through that agony.'
He'd wanted to break Yeon-woo and prove they were the sa, yet Yeon-woo had proven, in the end, that he was no beast. His overwhelming restraint and nobility beca a brutal mirror reflecting the man's failure.
Only now could he confess: he'd been lonely. Having wandered alone without kin who shared his sins, he may have secretly hoped for a kind of kinship and salvation in Yeon-woo. But in the end, the man was different from him.
'Where did it go wrong?'
He already knew the answer. From the mont he first tasted Yeon-woo's 'positive emotions.'
To one who had lost his sense of taste, they'd returned the sensation of a forgotten era. He'd clung to them even knowing that the more he consud, the more human—not divine—he beca. The als Yeon-woo offered were, ultimately, a virulent poison that stripped away even purpose.
Then his inner self whispered.
'No—stop being stubborn. You're just shifting bla.'
'You should have beco a god.'
'You didn't even try to devour his ego.'
The blood-borne instincts sneered. Claiming he couldn't guarantee control, calling it an uncertain gamble—too afraid to even attempt, and making calculated excuses.
"I know."
The man admitted it readily.
He'd been afraid that the mont he devoured Yeon-woo, he'd lose even this flimsy relationship forever. Perhaps what the man had wanted from the start was not a transcendent god, but an eternal, stable 'human' who never lost his nobility.
And yet Yeon-woo had not changed. He'd maintained his dignity.
"How noble is that? And how tragic."
The distant humanity the man had truly desired was right there. The battlefield he'd charged into bore the na not of power or ego, but of humanity—so it had been a losing fight from the start.
"Then it's right not to eat."
The man murmured into the empty air, as though entranced.
"If I eat and it's replaced, I lose myself. But if I don't eat and maintain the relationship... I can learn at his side. I can beco more refined. Predation can co after that. Isn't that so?"
Tell
it wasn't only my sin.
"......"
"......"
"......"
As all of you have done.
***
"You always conduct such peculiar research."
"Oh, what a hurtful thing to say."
A voice quite high-pitched for a man's.
"Is it that today? That kind of voice with that kind of personality?"
"A lively day is always important."
"Male, shorter than average, exaggerated...."
"Please don't insult my height?"
"Hard to understand."
"I'm empty from the start!"
"Empty?"
"There's nothing for you to read."
"For soone who claims that...."
He looked at the scattered files and the data on the screen.
"You're always diligent."
The unidentifiable chanical puppet mimicked a laugh.
"That's the beauty of being a machine!"
"Indeed, quite witty."
"Always grateful for the good marks."
"It's a fair assessnt."
Being in that presence had been peaceful. In hindsight, it was probably because, among all those who had suffered the sa failure, this was the only one who'd managed to exist like a human.
No need to ask 'May I eat?' No need for masks of monsters or human skin. No need to play at being a nobleman. Because they stood on the sa boundary.
"Because he's worth it."
He'd regarded him not as an objective, but as a backdrop.
"Easy to understand, clear in thought, and human...."
"Playing favorites?"
"I don't play favorites with anything."
"Perhaps you can't?"
"How unpleasant."
"Shall I apologize?"
"You said you're empty—I won't bother accepting."
That was how comfortable it had been.
Because the being before him was a backdrop—a blank space, a nothing. Simply a machine, a puppet, and therefore 'a being that required no explanation.'
And such a being always changed faces.
Voice, too.
Body, too.
Behavior, too.
"If you were to disappear."
That was why, on a whim, he'd been curious.
"Where would I find you?"
"Oh, good sir."
Whether it had been a joke,
or spoken in earnest.
"'The General Manager' is always at the hotel!"
He always called himself 'the General Manager.'
"—Now then."
"......"
"Thank you for visiting, Guest."
"......"
"How may I assist you?"
...
...
Five years ago, having vanished just after the war.
Still called 'The Devil' by the world.
It was... a hotel ghost story.
***
[mory of Bonds: A Feast of Sumr Flowers]
***
Courteous footsteps approached the one seated at the empty table.
"...So this is where you've been."
"Oh."
"Is the al to your liking?"
The man looked at Yeon-woo.
"An unfamiliar look."
A few strands of hair swaying near his eyes, as though brushed aside casually. A pure white shirt without even a vest, leaving his broad shoulders exposed, the fabric loose around his waist.
An expression hardened like dead wood from exhaustion, making his age impossible to guess....
'He's not even wearing his glasses.'
Today, a face without a trace of laughter answered nonetheless in a still-composed voice.
"I didn't co today as the General Manager."
"The General Manager."
"Yes, just an ordinary citizen."
"I see."
"Would you invite ?"
Slowly, tapping the table, he asked.
"Or shall I invite you?"
"......"
"Guest Without Taste."
"......"
"I'm curious... about your na."
The Guest Without Taste, who had been silent for a long while,
"......"
"......"
asked only after another long pause.
"...May I eat?"
"Nothing to be embarrassed about and slink away from, then."
"Cheeky."
"Shouldn't one try to live pleasantly?"
Yeon-woo sat across from him.
That, too, was a choice The Guest Without Taste would not have made.
Reviews
All reviews (0)