The Girl Who Saw the Blue Light
While the echoes of the vengeful spirit still haunted the lobby, the heavy front doors groaned open once more. This time, there was no mist, no dramatic entrance. Only a young woman, perhaps no older than twenty-four, stumbling inside. She was dressed in a modern, vibrant yellow raincoat that stood out like a bruise against the hotel's gothic aesthetic.
Her name was Min-ah. Unlike the previous guests, she didn't look terrified or angry. She looked... curious.
"Excuse me?" she called out, her voice echoing. "Is this a themed hotel? My GPS went haywire, and I saw the blue sign..."
Manager Choi and the Proprietor exchanged a sharp, wary glance. Min-ah was breathing. Her cheeks were flushed with the chill of the Seoul rain. Her heart was beating—a steady, rhythmic thump-thump that felt like a drum in a room full of silence.
"A living human," Manager Choi whispered, his eyes widening. "Master, the barrier... the key must have weakened the hotel's concealment."
The Proprietor tucked the blackened iron key into his vest pocket and adjusted his silver-threaded cuffs. He stepped out from the shadows, his face returning to its mask of cold elegance. "The hotel is not open to the public, Miss. You've taken a very wrong turn."
Min-ah froze, her eyes landing on the Proprietor. For a moment, she didn't speak. She didn't look at his expensive suit or his handsome face. She looked directly at his eyes—the eyes that had seen centuries.
"I know you," she whispered, her voice barely audible.
The Proprietor stiffened. "I assure you, we have never met. I do not frequent the world of the living."
"Not now," Min-ah said, taking a step forward, ignoring Manager Choi's warning gesture. "In the dream. The one with the burning palace and the silver crane. You were standing by the gate, holding a blue stone, waiting for someone who never came."
The silence that followed was heavy enough to crush. The Proprietor's grip on his cane tightened so hard his knuckles turned white. The Moonstone at the top of his cane hummed—not with the crimson of anger, but with a soft, melancholic gold. It was reacting to her.
"Manager Choi," the Proprietor said, his voice dangerously low. "Take her to the 'Infirmary of the Living.' Ensure she drinks the tea of forgetfulness and send her back to the city."
"Wait!" Min-ah reached into her raincoat pocket and pulled out an object. It was a small, ancient-looking compass, its casing made of the same silver as the Proprietor's cane. The needle wasn't pointing North; it was spinning wildly, finally snapping toward the Proprietor's heart. "My grandmother gave me this before she died. She said if I ever saw a blue moon, I had to find the man with the silver shadow. She said I owed him a debt."
The Proprietor felt a jolt of recognition so sharp it felt like a physical blade. The compass was a twin to his pocket watch.
"What was your grandmother's name?" he asked, his voice shaking.
"Seol-hwa," Min-ah replied.
The Proprietor closed his eyes. Seol-hwa. The name was a ghost of a memory, a woman who had lived and died eighty years ago, a woman he had once guided to the afterlife when he was still new to this curse. If she had left a debt behind, it meant the cycle he thought he had broken was just beginning to spin again.
"It seems," the Proprietor murmured, looking at the iron key in his pocket and then at the living girl in the yellow raincoat, "that the 'Void' is not the only thing being unlocked tonight."