Chapter 8 - If There's No Money for a Room
I tightened my grip on the door handle. I didn't have the tale of the Hasshaku-sama memorized from start to finish — only that she was an extraordinarily tall woman, that she made a strange sound, and that she was not a thing you wanted to cross paths with. The last part hadn't been much help.
Considering I'd already run into her.
The woman was bent forward, peering down at me. Her long white hair spilled in past the doorway, though she hadn't pushed a hand or a foot through after it. The crimson eyes surveying me through the gap in the door shifted slowly.
I spoke first.
"What business brings you here?"
Her eyes settled on my lips. Then they swept over the rest of my face. I was weighing whether to repeat the question, since no answer seemed forthcoming, when a low voice sounded.
"A room."
I waited a moment, but nothing followed.
"You're looking for a room to stay in?"
The woman nodded. The motion brushed her white hair against the door handle, and my hand clenched reflexively around it.
At least she could talk. And she'd asked for a room before doing anything to hurt me or forcing her way inside — I couldn't ignore that and shut the door on her first. After checking that no one else was outside, I opened the door a little wider.
"Please come inside and we'll talk. Mind your head coming in."
The woman looked up at the top of the door. She bent a little further, her face sank below the doorframe, and only then was there room for her head and shoulders to pass.
But part of the hair spilling forward had snagged on the hinge.
"One moment. Your hair's caught."
The woman looked where I pointed and gathered her long hair to one side. I steadied the door so it wouldn't swing. Only after the caught strands came free did she step over the threshold.
Once the door closed behind her, the woman slowly straightened her back.
I tilted my head back again. Outside, the doorframe had made her true size hard to judge, but standing beside the table and chairs, the difference was unmistakable — as if the furniture had abruptly shrunk.
That wasn't to say she was broad or heavyset. The limbs beneath her white clothing were long, and there was nothing awkward in the way she stood. Her pale face and that long hair suited one another, drawing the eye in a curiously striking way.
I pulled my gaze away and gestured toward the counter.
"I'm Grain, the caretaker of this inn. May I have your name?"
"Don't have one."
My hand paused midway through opening the ledger.
"You don't have a name?"
The woman nodded. She didn't seem to mean she'd forgotten it, nor that she simply didn't care to say.
I left the name field blank for the time being. There was no call to make someone who'd come looking for a room explain the circumstances of having no name.
"Then, will you be staying alone?"
"Yes."
Short as her answers were, she'd grasped each question exactly. I was about to ask the next one when I realized my neck had been craned upward this whole time, and the back of it ached.
If I went on explaining the terms of her stay like this, my neck was going to be the first thing to give out.
"Won't you sit down first?"
I pulled out the nearest chair, and the woman looked down at it. She sat a moment later, but with nowhere fitting for those long legs, her knees pressed up against the underside of the table.
I drew the chair back a little and offered her the end of the table instead. Only once she'd turned herself sideways did her legs finally have room to rest.
"If you're uncomfortable, please say so."
The woman looked at me. Crimson eyes traveled once between the chair and my face.
"Here is fine."
I nodded and took the seat across from her. I still had to angle my gaze upward, but it was far better than standing.
A small noise came from the direction of the kitchen.
Ara emerged — no doubt come to see who had entered, the front door having closed. She was almost to the table when she caught sight of the white-haired woman and slowed her steps.
The woman turned her head as well.
The two of them studied each other without a word. Ara's tails drew in tight against her body; the woman looked them over, then lifted her gaze back up to Ara's face.
I stood by, waiting to see who would offer the first greeting. Neither of them opened her mouth.
"This is Miss Ara. She's staying here at the inn as well."
Ara looked at me.
"A new guest?"
"She's looking for a room, so we're discussing it."
Ara turned her attention back across the table. The woman was watching her too, but made no move to rise or come any closer.
It was Ara who moved first. She fetched a chair from the next table over, set it down a little nearer my side, and sat.
"I'm Ara."
"I heard."
A brief silence settled.
It wasn't a wrong answer — I had introduced her just now, after all. Still, a "nice to meet you" tacked on the end would have made it easier for Ara to choose her next words.
Ara pressed her lips together for a moment, then leaned back against her chair.
"Right. Fine, then."
Thankfully, that was the end of it. I brought over some water and set a glass before the new guest. She didn't lift it; she simply watched my hand until it left the table.
"Drink, if you're thirsty."
Only then did long fingers close around the glass.
I checked the lodging rates in the ledger and named the price, adding that meals were charged separately. The woman took a sip of water and set the glass back down.
"I don't have money."
I looked down at the ledger spread open before me. Beside the blank name field were the columns for nights stayed and the amount due. Those, it seemed, would be no easier to fill in at the moment.
"Do you mean you have no money on you right now?"
"Yes."
"Would you be able to bring it later?"
The woman shook her head.
I set down my pen. I'd assumed that speaking with a person of few words left less room for misunderstanding; instead, I was the one who had to dredge up every question worth asking.
"Then paying for the room will be difficult."
She didn't answer. One of the fingers curled around her glass moved, slowly. She didn't seem to have failed to understand me.
Before settling on any conclusion, I asked about something else.
"Have you been to this inn before, by any chance?"
"I have."
"And you were looking for a room then as well?"
The woman nodded.
The woman from the market came to mind — the one who said she'd seen someone bent low, slipping inside. So it hadn't been a lie.
"Did you stay here that time?"
"No."
"There were no rooms?"
The woman looked as if she was thinking it over. Her eyes went to the open staircase, then dropped to the ledger in front of me.
"The people disappeared."
My hand stopped just short of picking up the pen again. Beside me, Ara leaned forward a little too.
"What do you mean, 'disappeared'?"
The woman pointed at the entrance door.
"They left. After they saw me."
"So they ran away."
She nodded.
I exhaled shortly. It would be nice if, just once, someone explained that sort of thing at proper length from the start. For every two or three words she saved, I had to imagine far too much on my own.
The woman studied my expression, then nudged her glass forward a little.
"I waited, but they didn't come back. So I went out too."
Whether every word of that was true, I couldn't yet say. Still, the accounts fit together: a tall woman had come in during the night, and someone had left in fright.
In the time it took me to ask her name and hand her water, the woman had sat where I asked and answered every question. Nothing she'd done could be called an attempt to harm anyone.
I thought back to what Ara had said yesterday — that normally, people drove her off or went and called for others. There'd be nothing strange about the woman before me having met the same treatment. But neither could I simply decide on my own that she and Ara stood in the same situation.
"Have you been staying somewhere else, then?"
"Outside."
"All this time?"
She nodded. What she added after a moment was just as brief.
"When it rains, it's uncomfortable."
My eyes traced her hair down to its ends. Very long, very white strands lay pooled on the floor beside her chair. If all of that got soaked through, I thought, drying it alone would be a chore.
Even a woman who had to fold herself nearly in half to pass through a doorway needed somewhere to get out of the rain.
Seen that way, the figure I'd faced outside the door a moment ago and the one sitting at my table now began to feel like two different things. Of course, that hardly meant I could conclude the ghost story I remembered was wrong.
The only thing I could say for certain was that right now, this person was looking for a room because she didn't care to be rained on.
Ara glanced my way.
"There's a room free, isn't there?"
"There is."
"Then..."
Ara, mid-sentence, stopped. One look at the ledger in front of me, and she said nothing more.
Truthfully, I didn't think putting one more person into a vacant room was such a formidable task in itself. But this was not an inn I owned. The key I'd received yesterday had not come bundled with the deed to the building.
The owner had fixed the lodging fee, and I was merely the one who took the money and wrote it in the book. I couldn't conjure up a price that had never existed just because a guest was down on her luck.
And yet it was every bit as hard to look at the woman and tell her to leave on the spot.
While I hesitated over it, the woman lowered her hands to her knees. She gathered up her long, trailing hair and leaned forward — the beginning of someone about to stand.
I lifted a hand and asked her to give me a moment.
"If I were the owner of this place, I could give you an answer right now — but I'm an employee here myself, you see. Whether you may stay without paying for the room is a question for the owner."
The woman stopped mid-motion.
"What I mean is, I can't give you an answer at this moment. Please, go ahead and finish your water."
She held my gaze for a moment, then settled back into her seat. She didn't lean against the chair's back — she simply cradled the glass in both hands.
I called the owner's address to mind. There were rumors about the inn I needed to ask about as well, so a visit was due sooner or later either way. That was no reason, though, to leave the two of them here right this minute and head back out.
The plan was to finish getting lunch ready first, and then ask the woman how long she would be able to wait.
Just then, a small sound slipped out between the woman's lips.
"Po, popo..."
I looked up. The woman was gazing toward the entrance.
"The paper posted outside."
"I'm sorry?"
"It said you were looking for someone to work."
So she'd read it before coming in. The help-wanted notice I'd checked yesterday came back to me.
It had never occurred to me that the thing ought to come down once I'd gotten the job. Only now realizing it, I moved to explain.
"I've taken over as the caretaker. I just haven't taken the notice down yet, so..."
"You work here and sleep here too?"
I broke off and nodded.
"Yes. I clean, receive guests, and prepare the meals. In exchange, I'm given a room and food, and a wage besides."
The woman's gaze dropped to my hands. A fleck of onion peel still clung to my fingertips from the prep work. She looked at that, then let her eyes travel in turn over the rag and the empty water glass sitting beside it.
Ara came away from the back of her chair.
I thought I could guess what the woman was getting at, and opened my mouth to get ahead of it. She was a beat faster.
"I can clean."
The woman tipped a fingertip toward the empty glass on the table.
"I can wash dishes, too."
The crimson eyes came back to me. Unlike when the price of the room had come up, this time the gaze waiting on my answer was direct, and it did not waver.
"If I work in place of the money, can I sleep here too?"