The Inn Where People Vanish
“It doesn’t happen often, but I’ve seen it twice. I heard travelers were staying at Somnus’s Dream, and the next day, while I was out shopping, I ran into them as they were leaving. Their group was one person smaller. So, I asked, ‘What do you mean? There were three of you.’ It was so strange. I clearly saw four of them laughing and chatting when they first arrived. I thought maybe one of them wasn’t part of the original party—just a temporary companion they’d met on the road. At the time, I just assumed I’d seen it wrong, or that the person wasn’t a companion at all, just a stranger whose path had crossed theirs. It wasn’t a big deal, so I let it go.”
“A few months passed, and just as I’d forgotten about it, another group of guests arrived. Two outsiders—a couple, clearly smitten with each other. They bought some potions and asked me to look at a scarred wound on one of them that had healed recently. They were talking about how they didn’t want that ugly scar showing at their upcoming wedding. Up until then, everything was normal. The problem was what happened next. They mentioned they’d heard Somnus’s Dream was a decent inn. I thought about warning them, remembering what happened before, but I stopped myself. After all, every other time I’d seen guests go there, they came out just fine—except for that one time. I figured I’d just been overthinking it.”
“I tried to forget it, to ignore it, but it kept bothering me, you know? So, just in case, I watched for them the next day. A man walked by alone. I ran up to him in a panic and asked, and he said the same thing. He looked at me like I was crazy, asking if I’d mistaken someone else for his companion since he’d come alone. When I asked about his girlfriend, he just scowled. ‘What are you talking about? I came alone and bought these things yesterday. Is that why you run a pharmacy by yourself? Because you’re the biggest mental patient in town? If you’re tired and stressed, take some of your own medicine and get some sleep.’ He snapped at me with angry eyes, but his voice softened when he saw how terrified I was. He just said he’d make good use of the potions and ointments and went on his way.”
“I know what I saw. I remember them clearly—two adventurers talking about their wedding, about the dowry. But now, one of them is just... gone. There’s more, too... but yes, you’re right. Maybe I’m just sensitive. Maybe I touched some hallucinogenic mushrooms or poisonous herbs and was so high on the fumes that I hallucinated a third or second person who didn’t exist. You ask about the villagers? I don’t think anyone from the village has disappeared like that. But who knows? Maybe a few have already vanished. Or maybe no one has disappeared at all, and I’m just completely losing my mind.”
“But I remember. Look at these patient records. Aside from those with rotting skin or blackened teeth, there are no external injuries. Respiratory failure. Lower body paralysis. Left-side paralysis. Facial muscle paralysis preventing proper emotional expression. Suddenly laughing or crying in the middle of a sentence... oh, wait, that’s not it. That’s the record of the last patients my father saw. It’s this one here. I’ve been recording the people who vanished without a trace, just like my father did. Names, symptoms, gender, age—everything. Look at this. If I were just hallucinating, I wouldn’t be able to write these things down so clearly and specifically.”
“Anyway, even if that inn doesn’t seem to be harming the village directly, it’s strange! An inn where people vanish into thin air and their companions don’t even remember them? Does that sound like a normal inn to you? There must be more cases like this—people just being erased. I thought about telling the villagers, but I realized it was useless. No one remembers the missing person. Even their own companions don’t. What’s the point of telling the villagers that the inn is a devil’s den? Besides, that inn used to be a small restaurant, and the owner is a man I’ve known since I was a child. To be precise, after a wealthy man with prosthetic limbs visited, there was talk of an ‘investment,’ and the small place that served food and lodging suddenly became quite grand. This isn’t a big city; it’s a small village. It makes no sense for such a large inn to be here with so few guests, and I have no idea why that rich man would renovate a village inn like that. I’m suspicious of him. He must have done something to that man to turn him into a servant of the devil.”
“You ask if I have the courage to uncover the truth myself? No, I don’t. I can only give medicine and treat the patients who come to me. I can’t go to a place where devilish schemes and magic lurk and fight bravely to find the truth. My father, who left without hesitation to help patients who came from far away, would call me a cowardly daughter if he saw me. But what if I tried to do something and something happened to me? What if my father came back after curing all those poor, suffering patients, only to find our clinic and pharmacy destroyed? I can’t fight. I just tell people to go somewhere else if they mention going there. I don’t want to experience something that makes my skin crawl three times in front of my own eyes. So, just sleep here for the night.”
Sophia poured out her heart, pleading with them not to go to that inn, sharing the chilling experiences that haunted her. Was it madness born of hallucinations from the scent of herbs and toxins, or a deduction based on repeated, reasonable suspicion? It was impossible to tell yet, but Sophia’s plea to avoid the inn was sincere. Hansel’s response to Sophia, who desperately wanted to hear that they wouldn’t go, was neither dismissal, rejection, nor agreement—it was comfort.
“For what it’s worth, that father of yours, Billock, wouldn’t be ashamed of you.”
At the unexpected words, the fear in Sophia’s eyes faded, and her expression brightened slightly. “I wish that were true, but...”
“Anyway, it’s a suspicious inn, is that it?” Hansel glanced at Gretel beside him.
“You want to check it out, don’t you? Let’s go, then. Hansel is too kind for his own good.” She shook her head, adding, “Though that’s part of his charm,” before kissing Hansel’s cheek with a loud ‘pop’ to tease Sophia.
“Wait, didn’t you hear a word I said? I told you not to go!”
“After hearing all that, how could we not go?”
“No, I mean... whether you do or don’t, what am I supposed to say now?”
In truth, it was possible that everything was just a delusion, the result of Sophia being lightheaded from the fumes of her own concoctions. Sophia herself couldn’t entirely discard that doubt. But anyone who had witnessed such horror would have no choice but to believe it. Especially in a world where forces beyond magical reality existed. It would be easy to dismiss it as the ramblings of a poor woman who accidentally drugged herself while making medicine, but Hansel intended to dig into the unknown evil that might be lurking in that inn.
‘In this strange world where people turn evil so easily and might stab you in the back at any moment, it warms my heart to see someone who is truly kind. I’m a hero, after all—I should do some good deeds.’
His father had abandoned his stepdaughter to leave, but he had gone for the noble purpose of saving people, so it was somewhat understandable. Compared to the leeches in his past life who would suck the blood of their own children or siblings, he was a much more decent man. Of course, Gretel was Hansel’s absolute priority, but he had the capacity to spare some grace for truly good people in this miserable world filled with human trash and cowards.
“We’ll be fine. Don’t worry. We’ve fought people much scarier than some guy hiding in a small village doing petty things.”
“You have herbs and powdered beast bones here, right? If you leave it to us, we can bring back enough to make more than everything in this shop combined.”
Seeing Hansel and Gretel ignore her warnings, Sophia finally gave up. “...Ugh, I shouldn’t have said anything. If I hadn’t, you would’ve just been guests passing through, but now... now I’ll have to watch people disappear even though I know.” Sophia shuddered, the chilling memory of people vanishing while their companions forgot them flooding back.
“Hmm, so it’s an inn where a person completely disappears from the memories of their companions.” Pinochia, who had stepped out for a moment, had returned and joined the conversation.
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“If you are going, I must accompany you. Magic does not work on me. If it is a form of magic that erases human memory, it will not affect me.”
It was true. Magic did not work on Pinochia. To be precise, it didn’t work on magic that didn’t involve the physical manifestation of fire, stones, or ice. Things like mental interference that caused disorientation, making allies appear as horrific monsters, shrouding vision in endless black mist, or turning people into pigs—none of that worked. To take Pinochia’s sight, one would be better off throwing a few bottles of black ink than casting a curse that shared the state of a prepared sacrifice’s body to gouge out its eyes. Even the corruption of the heart by the power of the seven devils contracted with the Snow Queen had no effect.
“A constitution that magic doesn’t work on? Does such a thing exist? Your skin is pale, but are you sure you aren’t just mistaking being dull to pain because your blood doesn’t flow well for immunity to magic? Would you mind if I checked your pulse? If it’s not too much trouble, maybe a little blood or a patch of skin...” Sophia’s eyes sparkled, clearly intrigued by the idea of a magic-immune constitution.
“No. And I dislike all of that.” Pinochia was tired of being treated as an interesting or fearful research subject.
“What were you doing?”
“I stopped by the blacksmith to borrow tools and make some bullets. I had several people try to replicate them with magic, but they couldn’t do it correctly. So, I have to go through the trouble of using the tools myself to craft the bullets and magazines.” At Gretel’s question, Pinochia pulled out her pistol, spun it around her finger through the trigger guard, and holstered it with a flourish. It was an inefficient act she had never performed before, but if she had gained a heart, she was supposed to find joy in such things. Pinochia was trying to perform a real imitation, not a clumsy one. The siblings, who had awakened a heart in a machine in such a strange way, felt no contempt or mockery, only acceptance.
“I just hope you sleep soundly there without anything happening. I’ll treat you to dinner.” Sophia looked slightly disappointed that she couldn’t examine the magic-immune constitution, but she couldn’t force it. She decided to treat her guests to dinner and wish them luck.
***
Somnus’s Dream. Without Sophia’s experience, it was just an ordinary inn. A man with a warm, friendly face greeted the travelers who came to the village. The overall level of the inn’s interior and the size of the village it operated in didn’t match at all. No matter how you looked at it, it was clearly running a massive deficit every month. Yet, they didn’t charge exorbitant prices under the guise of guaranteeing a clean and comfortable rest, and even to an outsider who didn’t know business, it seemed impossible to earn more than the maintenance costs. That was all that people ignorant of business saw.
While there were no means or methods to dig into the inn’s profitability, future, or mysterious source of income, several other strange things were visible.
“I snuck a peek at the guest register. It tracks which rooms are occupied, but it doesn’t record how many people are staying in them at all. Even at a restaurant, unless it’s a reservation, you just need to record the order and the bill, but isn’t this strange? Lodging businesses usually have occupancy limits based on room size, so it’s bizarre that they don’t pay attention to that.” This was the strange detail Gretel had discovered.
“It seems more like a restaurant for the villagers than a lodging business, but that’s beside the point. A wealthy old man who dreams of creating a shelter where travelers can rest comfortably sponsored it? He goes around to rural areas and small villages, repairing run-down inns and bringing in furniture? Nonsense. Where would you find a romantic, gullible old man like that in this day and age?” This was the strange detail Hansel had discovered.
In truth, these were just forced observations. The siblings, lying on the bed in comfortable attire with only their undergarments on, were listing suspicious points, but to anyone else, it was nothing more than nitpicking. The final blow came from Pinochia, who was sitting on the edge of the bed.
“There was a portrait of the wealthy man who repaired the inn hanging on the wall. I recognize that face. He is one of the Queen’s subordinates.”
There was no answer. When Pinochia turned around at the silence from behind her, the siblings who had been lying on the bed were fast asleep, oblivious to the world. Clearly, they were just talking a moment ago. How could they fall asleep so quickly? Something is wrong.