To start with the conclusion, I decided to accept the little one’s request for now.
It was only one day.
One day was, well, fine.
“Dad! Look at that! It’s the sun, the sun!”
“W-wow...... Right. The sun rose today.”
The child crouched in front of the crumbling wall and simply stared blankly at the sun.
Were her eyes not even dazzled?
“If you look at it too much, your eyes will go bad.”
I approached and lightly covered the child’s eyes with my hand.
“But it’s amazing. How does something so bright float in the sky? It’s amazing.”
She found so many things amazing.
I let out a small sigh and ruffled her hair.
But then,
“The oil......”
“Hm?”
I was not a germaphobe, but this was not acceptable.
“Shall we wash up first?”
“There’s water?”
“Of course there is.”
“Waa!”
I remodeled part of the room into a bathroom on the spot.
As for the bathroom itself, I shaped it after the bathrooms that had left a strong impression in the child’s memories, so it would not feel too out of place with the room as a whole.
Dribble.
When water came out of the half-broken faucet, the child’s face flushed red.
“It’s warm. Amazing.”
“The warm water is?”
“Yeah!”
“......All right. Come here. Let’s wash up.”
Someone might raise an ethical issue with washing a little girl, but to me, who had lived for thousands of years, this guest was practically a newborn.
However, when I quickly took off her worn-out clothes,‘......Hah.’
There was not a sound place on her body.
There were many places that had scarred over, and quite a few places were bruised black and blue.
When I discreetly scanned her entire body, there were no small number of cracks in her bones, either.
‘It’s impressive she didn’t show she was in pain.’
An ordinary child would have long since cried and screamed that she felt like she was dying.
The fact that she had endured this meant she knew nothing would change even if she cried.
And it also meant the situation beyond her dimension was that harsh, and that this little one was precocious.
“Dad?”
“Ah, wait a moment. There was some ointment here. Let’s treat this first.”
I summoned a jar of ointment, applied it to the child’s wounds, and at the same time bestowed a blessing of recovery upon her.
It was a blessing that could even regenerate a severed arm.
“How do you feel now?”
“Wow! It doesn’t hurt at all!”
“You’ll be fine while you’re here.”
“While I’m here?”
Once she left the hotel, everything she had been granted by the hotel would disappear.
That was the hotel’s rule.
If she paid the price, she could take what she gained here with her as it was...... but I did not particularly want to recommend that to a young guest unless it was absolutely necessary.
“That’s right. Now hurry and wash. Come here.”
“Dad, it tickles!”
I poured water over the child’s hair, squeezed out disposable shampoo, and thoroughly washed even her scalp.
“Remember this. You have to wash your hair on time. Scrub all the way to the scalp with your fingertips.”
“Hehe, you can wash it for me, Dad!”
“I can’t do it for you forever.”
“......Hehe, I guess not.”
At the child’s sorrowful smile, I quietly moved only my hands.
After thoroughly washing her hair clean, I filled the broken bathtub with water.
I had to scrub off the old grime too.
“Now, get in and count to one hundred.”
“You’re not coming in, Dad?”
“I’m fine.”
“Hmph.”
When I showed that I did not want to, she pouted but did not complain.
Looking at her, she was rather perceptive.
Had she learned that to survive?
Splash.
The child, who had immersed her whole body in the water, gazed at the sky beyond the broken ceiling and opened her mouth.
“Dad.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry.”
I could naturally tell.
That was not something she was saying to me, but to the past.
To her real dad.
“If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t have...... suffered either, Dad.”
But those words also felt as if she were saying them to me.
“......Did Dad look like he was suffering?”
“But Dad also had a burden like me......”
“I never thought of you as a burden.”
Ah, damn.
Had I immersed myself too much?
As silence fell, the guest’s memories flowed into my fingertips.
‘It doesn’t seem to have been that long ago.’
One or two years ago?
While they were fleeing from something that could only be called a monster, the little one’s father had volunteered to become bait himself.
That must have been the only way to save his daughter.
“It’s so lonely without Dad.”
“Even so, you have to live. You are Dad’s pride.”
“......My friends all went first too. They left only me behind......”
Her father was merely the representative figure; everyone who had been by the child’s side had walked the same path.
All of them had willingly thrown themselves away to protect this life.
They were somewhat cruel experiences for a child who was not even ten years old.
“Now, come out. One hundred seconds have passed.”
The more one dwelled on sad thoughts, the worse they became.
I deliberately took the child out of the bathtub and scrubbed her skin hard with a washcloth.
“It hurts! It hurts!”
“Look how yellow the grime is. This is what happens when you don’t wash properly.”
“Ugh, even finding water to drink is hard.”
“Then you should at least scrub with soap. If you don’t, you’ll get even sicker. Even if it isn’t a monster, you’ll die. Dad told you that, didn’t he?”
“......Yeah. Right.”
After that, the little one stayed quiet the whole time I washed her.
Thanks to that, washing her was easy.
“Come here. Let’s put you in new clothes too.”
I put the dirty clothes she had been wearing into the laundry and changed her into new ones.
Perhaps because the original material was good, once she was dressed, she looked like a children’s model.
Paradoxically, that was probably why she had lived an even harsher life.
“Now you look a bit like a person.”
“Yeah, I like it.”
“What do you want to do now? There’s an amusement park on another floor.”
There was a floor where I had made all kinds of rides, including roller coasters.
I had designed it so that even a full day would not be enough to make one lap around it.
“Or perhaps a zoo......”
Squeeze.
“Hm?”
“Let’s just stay here.”
The child did not wish for anything else.
She only wanted to be here with me, wearing the form of her father.
If one called it modest, it was truly a modest wish.
Though it was a wish that could no longer be fulfilled.
“All right.”
That wish, at least here, was something I could grant.
Even if it was nothing more than an illusion.
***
“The sky is orange.”
“That is the sunset. It is also called the evening glow.”
“It’s pretty.”
After that, the child and I simply continued staring at the sky beyond the broken wall.
“The sky is sparkling. Like shards of glass.”
“There are stars beyond space. That is the light those stars send.”
“Is that a star too?”
“That is the moon. It is the satellite closest to Earth.”
“It’s pretty.”
She kept staring at such an ordinary sky as if it were fascinating, as if it made her happy.
Without even eating, she kept staring.
The little one, who had been looking at the sky until the sun rose, held my hand tightly.
“When the sun rises, a day begins, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Then...... it’s over.”
The first-stay event applied only for one day.
After that, she had to pay the lodging fee.
“Do you want to stay longer before you go? If you bring an object from your original world, you can stay here longer.”
In a dimension of a destroyed world, there would be many objects heavy with stories.
In other words, it meant there would also be plenty of payments she could make.
“You could go out for a moment and then......”
“Mm-mm. No, I don’t want to stay here anymore.”
......Wait.
“Uh, why?”
“I’ve seen everything I wanted to see.”
This was a rather unexpected scenario.
“I think I can go now.”
“Where are you going?”
“......Home.”
“That’s not it.”
Reading other people’s thoughts and hearts was not difficult for me.
However, right now, I knew without using such an ability.
“Are you planning to die?”
It was the attitude of one detached from life, something I had seen more than a hundred times.
The attitude of someone who had given up on living.
Perhaps because I had struck the heart of the matter,the guest turned her head sorrowfully.
“Dad is gone, and my little sibling and friends are all gone too.”
I knew.
“Everyone beside me dies.”
Everyone close to the child in her memories had left first.
“But being alone is so lonely, and it’s hard.”
Now, only this child remained.
“I want to stop hurting.”
So it was not strange for her to think that way.
But I still had to say this.
“Living is hard by nature. Don’t whine over something like that.”
“......Dad?”
“I am not your dad. But even your dad would have said something like this. If you die here, do you think your dad would be happy? That he would say you did well?”
“......”
“Absolutely not. No parent wants their child to end their life that way.”
I drew out fragments of the child’s past memories in the form of images and projected them onto the wall.
An unforgettable moment from an intense memory.
That was why the child recognized it with only a brief glance.
What situation the scene shown there depicted.
What moment it was.
The child sharply turned her head away from the moment she had wanted to avoid.
“No! I don’t want to see it!”
“You should still watch.”
“I said I don’t want to!”
-Hye-rin.
At the voice that flowed from the image, the child’s body lurched to a stop.
No matter how much she pretended to be mature, a child was still a child.
“If you don’t see it, you’ll regret it. Forever.”
“Hic, h-heuk.”
“This may be the last chance you have to see the face of the dad you love. And yet, are you going to keep turning your eyes away?”
It was somewhat forceful, but the persuasion worked.
The child, who had been shaking her head while pouring out her cries, slowly looked up at the wall.
-You can live well even without Dad, right?
“Dad, Dad......”
-Hye-rin has to live. You have to. Live a long life, see many things, and feel many things.
The child’s father in the image was smiling at the child.
Even though it was the moment right before he threw himself into death, what filled his eyes was nothing but love for his child.
Not the slightest trace of fear could be seen.
Before the child’s father’s face grew distant, I stopped the image and looked at the child.
“Look closely. Look at the expression your dad showed you until his final moment.”
“Ah......”
“Does that person look like he wants you to die in such a vain way?”
Regrettably, I could not understand that person’s feelings in full.
Magic and divine authority allowed me to do many things, but they were not omnipotent.
Even so, it was not difficult to guess how he felt.
Because she, too,had bid me farewell with such a face.
“He wanted you to live better, to live more happily. To survive with strength.”
The guest, that tiny young life, could not take her eyes off the scene projected on the wall even as tears flowed endlessly down her face.
“The same goes for the others who left your side first. Even while fearing death, what they wished for until the end was your survival.”
None of them had refused to choose death in exchange for keeping this child alive.
Rather, they had willingly accepted that fate.
I returned my face to my original appearance.
Now, it was truly time to check out.
“Ah......”
“I cannot deny that it is sad. However, if you wish to honor their will, please do not make such a choice.”
She did not have to leave the hotel and return again.
However, if only to honor those who had left first,I hoped she would not make such a sorrowful choice.
“Time is up. I will now guide you to the lobby for checkout.”
The after-service for guest retention ended here.
I took the guest with me and headed toward the lobby.
“Huh? Huh! Master made a guest cry?”
“But they’re holding hands? Huh?”
“What is this? What is this?”
In the process, several guests we encountered whispered among themselves.
‘......I’ll have to hold interviews with the guests later.’
The hotel’s discipline had definitely slackened.
Once I finished checking this guest out, I would have to call an assembly.