Chapter 4

“Let’s go, Alice.”

By contrast, the scenery of Bukata was quite different from the house in Sainsbury.

Everywhere the lamplighters had begun their work passed, lights bloomed like starlight. Multicolored neon signs, shining with their own light regardless of the lamplighters, announced the beginning of the night.

Hazel took in the scenery happily. She had no intention of denying Bukata’s charms. It was just that for someone like her to belong here, it was excessively glittering, dazzling, and luxurious enough to feel burdensome.

Even here in this main square, said to be the busiest place in Bukata, the most splendid building of all caught Hazel’s eye.

Alice, noticing that Hazel had stopped walking, found the place her gaze had landed on.

“That’s the famous ‘Strauss’ Hotel.”

“……”

It stood right behind the square where the fountain had been erected. Among the many hotels Peter Strauss had built, it was said to be his finest masterpiece.

Small towers stood at both ends of the seven-story hotel. The main roof was made in the shape of a dome, and the tower roofs were made in rounded conical shapes, so that it looked exactly like a castle. Compared to the high-rise buildings built in recent years, it was on the lower side, but because it stretched wide horizontally, it gave off an old-fashioned feeling. That grandeur seemed to play a part in why it brought a castle to mind.

As if she had noticed Hazel’s thoughts, Alice whispered,

“When it was first built, the royal family hated it. Just look at it, it looks exactly like a palace. People who come to Bukata for the first time even ask if that hotel is the royal palace. Meanwhile, the actual royal palace is hidden from view.”

“I am curious whether they really had to build it in that shape, even at the cost of making the royal family their enemy.”

“The more the royal family hated it, the more the bourgeoisie loved it.”

Peter Strauss was the spiritual pillar of the bourgeoisie. As a joke, people even said that after Peter Strauss divorced because of an affair, the rate of affairs and divorces among the bourgeoisie went up.

That was how much the man was someone people wanted to resemble and imitate.

But probably not for his own son. Hazel turned away from the hotel.

* * *

Clink, a coin dropped into the bowl. The beggar, lying prostrate in rags, lifted his filthy face and tried to show the prettiest smile he could. But all it achieved was displaying a face streaked with grime.

Kyle withdrew his gaze as though disgusted. This was Bukata’s main square, after all. Before long, the hotel guards, having received a complaint that a beggar had appeared, would come running and drag the beggar away.

An ordinary person would have shouted at the top of his lungs that no one but the police had the right to punish him, but the other party was a drunken beggar. He probably did not even have the presence of mind to distinguish whether the one dragging him away was a police officer or a private security guard.

Forcing his eyes away from something filthy, he looked at something splendid.

“……”

This hotel had been completed when he was five. It was in the days when he had thought his mother and father had a good relationship. During the period when Eliya Strauss had been active as a dancer named Eliya Zetov, his family had ridden by automobile to attend the completion ceremony of the Strauss Hotel.

Even at an age when he knew little about hotels or architecture, he had recognized this hotel alone. Looking up at the hotel, which could not be fully contained by any words including splendor, intricacy, grandeur, elegance, and enormity, his mother had offered the impression, ‘Overwhelming.’

The reason he had not readily answered yes when his father, wearing a gloomy face, asked him at age seven whether he would give up the Strauss name had also been because of this hotel.

And the reason that, in the letter from his father that arrived again in the year he turned fifteen, he had replied that once he came of age he would go to Bukata and inherit the business, had also been because of this hotel.

Up until then, if he wanted something, he could have anything. The money his father sent his mother every month was enough to support her extravagant spending habits. If only to reassure his mother, who behaved as though a catastrophe would occur if her son did not wear clothing from the finest designers, he freely wrote out checks without restraint.

Only in the winter when he was seventeen did Kyle first understand the sense of loss that came from not being able to have something he wanted.

“I regret to inform you, Young Master Strauss, but your father did not leave any property or ownership rights to either you or your mother.”

“Lawyer, what do you mean? There must be some mistake.”

“In life as well, he never expressed any particular position regarding the distribution of his estate. There is nothing I can do for you. Please speak directly with ‘Mrs. Strauss’ in Bukata.”

Having lost far too many things all at once, he now felt he could do anything if only he could destroy that hotel.

* * *

After that, Kyle stood there for a long while.

As the sun set further, the hotel grew brighter. Just as he was about to turn to leave among the passersby who deliberately came out for evening walks to see its dazzling splendor, a familiar figure appeared from behind the fountain. It was Hazel, from whom he had parted earlier in the day.

Hazel did not seem to know that he had spotted her. Like the other passersby who had come out for a stroll, she stood in the middle of the square looking at the hotel.

‘Does she like it because it’s so splendid.’

To someone who had just come up from the countryside, everything in Bukata must have felt new. Besides, she had always been someone who said she wanted to become rich; perhaps while looking at a beautiful and splendid hotel, she was dreaming of the day she might one day stay inside it.

Hazel did not stay long. After standing there for about five minutes, she turned around at once.

Kyle, who had also been about to leave around the same time, furrowed his brow. A man was approaching Hazel.

As much as tourists crowded the square, there were also many pickpockets and harassers. A young woman alone made a fine target. Blaming Hazel’s carelessness for having come out alone without Alice, Kyle narrowed the distance, when Criscent words reached his ears.

[Is that building perhaps the Strauss Hotel?]

[Yes, that’s right.]

[It’s incredibly extravagant. Are you staying there?]

For him to be the sort of guy trying to lure in an innocent woman, the size of the luggage bag he was carrying was unusual. He really did seem to be a traveler.

Since young people tended to speak foreign languages better than older people, it was easy enough to think he had asked someone who, without carrying luggage, gave off the air of ‘I’m from here.’

Hazel answered in fluent Criscent.

[I’m not a guest there. I don’t particularly want to stay there either.]

[I see, my apologies.]

Dragging his heavy luggage bag, the young man moved away. Kyle turned Hazel’s reply over in his mind. If she was not a guest, then saying she was not would have been enough, so he wondered what she had meant by adding that she did not want to stay there.

But if he asked her directly, it would only reveal that he had overheard the conversation. As he gave up and turned to leave, he heard the rattling sound of wheels. The young man who had been heading toward the hotel was coming back, dragging his bag and panting.

That sound made Hazel stop as well. In front of the woman standing there with a puzzled look, the foreign man poured out fluent Criscent to the young lady who could understand his words.

[I’m sorry. I’m planning to stay here for a while. Before I check in, may I ask why you dislike this hotel?]

A sly fellow. It was obvious he was hoping that if there was some fatal flaw, he could cancel the reservation and look for another place to stay. From the standpoint of someone running the hotel, he was exactly the sort of customer one hated to see, and also exactly why one had to put effort into reputation.

At this point, Kyle became curious what sort of answer this young lady, who was interfering with someone else’s business, would give. Hazel replied with an ambiguous expression.

[Because I think my friend would dislike this hotel.]

“……”

Perhaps because she did not notice the gaze boring into her, Hazel’s expression remained calm. At her face, which seemed to ask what the problem was, the foreigner opened his eyes wide and asked back,

[‘Think would’ ?]

[Yes. Probably. That is why I dislike this hotel.]

To think someone could dislike something for such a reason alone, for the first time in a long while he found himself envying her.

Hazel seemed ready to go back after finishing the conversation. Kyle also had no more time to delay. He needed to return and verify that there were no issues with the contract for the thirty-thousand-pyeong hotel site he was to be transferred from Earl Nett, so that he could stamp it by tomorrow.

So he could say with certainty that if only Hazel had not chosen to go that particular way, he would have simply hailed either a taxi or a carriage.