Chapter Text
By eight o’clock the lobby lights felt spiteful, too white, too clean, showing every scuff in the tile like a judgment. Rina stood behind the marble front desk and watched the second hand claw its way around the cheap plastic clock. The clock said 19:57. Her body said tomorrow.
The hotel smelled like lemon cleaner and a perfume sample someone had drowned in hours ago. A low instrumental playlist filtered in from the lounge, the same four piano tracks looped until they knit themselves into the headache at the base of her skull. She’d been on her feet since 8 a.m. Twelve hours, fourth day running. People said you got used to it. People lied.
A man in a windbreaker leaned across the counter, sweaty with indignation. “It’s ridiculous,” he said, for the third time. “We were promised a view.”
Rina folded her hands on the blotter pad, nails bitten down to polite half-moons. “I understand your frustration, sir.” Her throat was dry. She smiled anyway. “I can move you to a king with a city view tomorrow. Tonight we’re fully occupied.”
“Tomorrow,” he repeated, tasting the word like it offended him. “We’re here now.”
“I know.” She kept her voice even. “I can note your reservation and-”
He threw up his hands. “Every time with you people, it’s ‘I can note your reservation.’ What good is a note? I could write a note.”
She wished he would. She’d staple it to his file and feel like something had been achieved.
“I can offer two complimentary drink vouchers,” she said. Her manager had left hours ago, sick child, or sick of this place; either way, Rina had the vouchers locked in the drawer for nights like this. She opened it, slid the little cards onto the counter. “And a late checkout.”
He glared. “Fine,” he said, after a beat that felt like a held breath. He snatched the vouchers and stalked off, dragging his suitcase like a dog that knew better.
Rina exhaled. The habit took over: her fingers drifted to the inside of her left wrist, where the skin was a scuffed constellation of healed crescent marks. She scratched once, twice. Enough to bite through the buzz of adrenaline without breaking the surface. Her right hand hovered, hovering meant control, control meant she was fine. Fine enough.
The phone rang. She flinched anyway, then picked up. “Front desk, this is Rina speaking, how may I-”
“Housekeeping,” a voice said, tense. “Do you have a note about 101’s pillow preference? They’re saying hypoallergenic. We have synthetic.”
Rina blinked. “Synthetic is hypoallergenic.”
“That’s what I said. They’re saying feathers are natural and thus… hypoallergenic.”
“Right.” Rina glanced at the computer screen, lines of reservations scrolling up, down, never ending. “Go with synthetic. Tell them management policy.”
“You are management tonight.”
“Exactly,” Rina said, and hung up before she could hear the muttered response. The phone rang again immediately; while it did, a couple drifted in from the rain, umbrellas dripping, one of them already mid-complaint about parking. Her shift would end at eight-thirty if the world had mercy. The world had never met her halfway.
Wake up at six. Bus at 6:35 if she wanted to sit, 6:50 if she wanted to sleep seven more minutes and stand all the way. Check in with the day manager, smile, nod, “Yes, I can cover Thursday too.” Check out all the complaints of the world at this desk and hand them apologies like tissues. Bus home. The smell of other people clinging to her hoodie. The key that stuck, always. The door that squeaked, always. Laundry thrones. Empty honey jar. Crumbs that bred like rumors. Clean up after Oberon, again.
“Hi, welcome to the-” she began, and swallowed the rest when she saw the new arrivals: a family of five, two kids already melting down into tears like soft serve, a father with the hollow-eyed look of someone holding frayed rope, a mother with the iron calm that had been forged in a thousand public crises. Behind them, two business travelers argued at a volume set for conference rooms. Behind them, a delivery man wheeled in a cart stacked with bottled water and a box labeled ASSORTED PILLOWS in black marker like a threat.
Rina split into pieces: one hand slid registration forms across the counter, the other typed, nodded, apologized, produced keycards, replaced them when the machine thought about jamming and then committed to the bit. She printed folios, took a phone booking from a man who insisted on spelling his surname three different ways, directed a guest to the elevators that had been in the same place since the hotel existed. She fielded a complaint about the ice machine’s existential failure from a woman who had, in her opinion, never met a problem she didn’t domesticate and name.
Her wrists itched. She rubbed them against the hem of her sleeve, then pressed her nails into the soft skin of her forearm, counting in her head the way they’d taught her in one of those campus workshops she’d gone to for the free pizza before she dropped out. Five things you can see. (Smudge on the brass bell. The wilted monstera in the corner. The scuff on her shoe. The blinking “paper low” warning on the receipt printer. The lemon wedge floating in the complimentary water like a dead sun.) Four things you can feel. (The smooth of the pen. The sticky plastic of her name tag. The itch. The ache.) Three things you can hear. (Phone. Lobby music. Someone laughing too loud at nothing.) The counting didn’t make her better. It made her precise.
At 20:09 the business travelers reached the front of the line and informed her, with rehearsed outrage, that the hotel had failed to honor their “informal arrangement” for upgraded rooms. Rina composed a regret in Corporate Standard English, layered it with what she had left of professional warmth, and extracted them from the conversation with two drink vouchers and a promise to personally escort them to rooms they would hate less.
By 20:23 the lobby thinned to a shape she recognized as survivable. Housekeeping had found the sacred “hypoallergenic” pillows. The children had turned their meltdown into sleep, limp in their parents’ arms like dropped jackets. The man who wanted a view had posted two one-star reviews and then, exhausted by his own victory, gone quiet. Rina printed the nightly audit sheet and wrote the notes Manager would pretend to read in the morning. Her handwriting grew worse as it approached her signature.
Rina clocked out with the relief of someone prying a door shut on a fire that would still be burning tomorrow. She tugged her blazer tighter, shouldered her bag, and slipped out through the revolving door into the night.
The air outside was wet and heavy, the kind that stuck to her skin instead of cooling it. She trudged across slick pavement toward the bus stop, heels clicking in a rhythm that didn’t match her heartbeat. The streetlamps hummed overhead, moths smearing themselves against the light.
The bench was already damp, so she stood. Her phone told her the bus was six minutes away. Six minutes stretched. She thought about her apartment, her shoebox kingdom.
There would be crumbs on the counter. Maybe new ones. The kettle might still work, if Oberon hadn’t decided to dismantle it for “inspection.” The laundry she’d left in a neat pile this morning would now be arranged into his latest throne or battlefield, because he had a talent for turning necessity into theater. He would be waiting for her, honey-sweet demands and deliberate misnamings ready to wear her down further, or distract her from everything else.
Her nails worried at the cuff of her sleeve. The itch in her wrists pulsed again, a reminder of the way today had stacked itself on top of yesterday, on top of all the yesterdays she couldn’t put down.
The bus rounded the corner, headlights harsh in the wet street. Rina straightened. She was too tired to stand, too restless to sit. Tomorrow would be six a.m. again. Tomorrow would be the desk, the piano, the notes, the lemon water.
But tonight? Tonight she’d go home to a fae king who had mistaken her cramped apartment for a stage. She didn’t know if that made her cursed or, against every logical thought, lucky.
The doors hissed open. She stepped on, dropped her coins into the slot, and sank into a seat by the window. City lights blurred in the glass as the bus pulled away.
She let her head rest against the cold pane and thought, not for the first time, that maybe the Grail War had already reached her, quietly, invisibly, and she’d been drafted into a battle that began not with swords, but with twelve-hour shifts and someone else’s mess waiting at home.