Hardboiled & Hard Luck by Banana Yoshimoto Read Free Book Online

strange things have been happening.
    My heart ached when I thought about what had happened at the udon shop, but I decided that since this hotel had been around for ages and was still doing fine, it was probably best to leave things as they were.
    True, it might not be appropriate to say the hotel was doing fine, when couples came here to commit suicide and it was haunted and so on. But the fact that no one died at the udon shop suggested that the shrine’s powers were limited.
    I climbed gingerly out of the bath, taking care not to step on the black stone, and then, figuring I might as well, I went back by the front desk.
    “Good night!” I called to the woman.
    “Why don’t you come in and have some tea before you go to sleep?” she said, emerging from the back room. “You don’t want to return to your room, do you?”
    I was dying to get back to sleep, but I was thirsty too. I decided to join her.
    Going through a door next to the front desk, I entered the back room.
    It was a neatly organized, rather small room, with six tatami mats covering the floor. The curtains, which had a floral pattern, were tightly drawn.
    The woman stood in the kitchenette waiting for the water to boil.
    A vase of brilliantly white chrysanthemums, so huge that they seemed terribly out of place, stood on the table. I wasn’t very happy to see them there, considering their funeral associations, but I kept my thoughts to myself, thinking it might be better not to say anything.
    The woman must have noticed that I was looking at them, though, because she raised the subject herself when she brought the tea over.
    “You want to know about the flowers, right?”
    The tea was very hot, and it tasted good.
    “It’s great. The tea, I mean.”
    “I’ve got relatives in Shizuoka, near where they grow it,” said the woman. “I was telling you about the flowers, though. Actually, the man who was involved in the attempted double suicide we talked about earlier—he sends them. Every year.”
    “The one who was going out with the ghost?” I said.
    “That’s right. They come every year, with a note asking me to put them out as an offering. I can’t very well leave them on the front desk, though, can I? Talk about bringing bad luck! That would be about as bad as it gets. On the other hand, I don’t like to put them in the room. That’s why they’re here. I burn a stick of incense in front of them every day.”
    I remembered the aura of loneliness that had clung to the woman.
    “People are always going on about how scared they are of ghosts, but the way I see it, people are much more frightening,” said the woman. “You know, I was at the front desk when the two of them came here to die. That sure was scary, let me tell you. It was a night just like tonight, the same strange mood in the air. The man was deathly pale and covered with mud; the woman was barefoot, her hair a huge mess, and she was covered with mud, too. They said they had come over the mountain. They were falling apart, and you could see they were in a very dangerous mood—you know what I mean?—something awful hung in the air around them... normally, I would have turned them away then and there, but the woman kept pleading with me, she kept saying, I have to rest... I have to rest... And her eyes were all red and puffy from crying. It was terrifying... So I ended up giving them a room, and then—what a commotion! I just thank my lucky stars I wasn’t fired. But you know, she planned it so that only she would die. The pills she took were stronger than the ones she gave him. The man almost went crazy when he heard that. That was when I realized that they had really been in love, it wasn’t just a game.”
    “I knew it...”
    “But for her to come back as a ghost... I guess that’s what people mean when they say no good deed goes unpunished, huh?” said the woman. “Not that it really matters. The hotel will be closing next year.”
    “Really? This hotel won’t be