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You return to Hotel Krat on a rainy Tuesday.
“It’s always rain,” you mutter to no one in particular, shaking the water from your umbrella in the foyer and placing it in the stand.
Despite the rain, Hotel Krat is a very different place to how you first stumbled across it. There are people in the lobby, guests from across the city and even out of town, talking and laughing. The rooms are never full, Hotel Krat has too many for that at the moment, but the amount of life this place has now astounds you. You approach the front desk, overseen by a young man in a crisp black uniform.
“Hello Andrei,” you greet, removing your coat and folding it over your arm. “How’s business been?”
Andrei flushes and stands at attention, not that he couldn’t stand any taller. He’s always been nervous around you for a reason you don’t quite understand.
“Sir, um, you’re back early,” he stutters. “Business has been, um, good, I suppose?”
You hum. You’ll get a better idea from your bookkeeper.
“Is Sophia in today?”
“Oh.” Andrei flushes again. “She’s in her room I think? I haven’t seen her in a while.”
You nod and leave Andrei, who visibly deflates the moment you turn to leave. You take the stairs two at a time and make your way to the back of the Hotel, where you keep the private rooms. Your room, when you bother to use it, is back here, but so are the ones designated for people you consider friends. Once everything had settled down, Sophia had never made any plans to leave so you’d just told her to pick any room she wanted, and she’d been using it since. She came and went as she pleased, just as much as you did, but this seemed to be her home just as much as it was yours.
It’s quiet in the hall of the private wing, with most of the rooms in this section unused. You go first to your room and unload your luggage, dropping your suitcase on the bed and swapping the damp coat for a soft sweater that Antonia gave you before she died. You run a hand through rain damp hair and scruff it around with a sigh. You’re due for a haircut again.
Feeling more at home, you return to the hall and walk the short distance to Sophia’s room, knocking gently on the door.
“Sophia?” You call.
You listen carefully. You think you hear a running tap, so you try again, louder.
“Sophia?”
There’s a sudden crash of glass and a loud thump.
“ Sophia!”
Your mind immediately jumps to several worst case scenarios and you immediately slam the door open, barely registering the fact that the handle has turned with such ease. You scan the room, find it empty, and dash for the ensuite, slamming that door open with a bang. You expect to see Sophia’s twisted body and pooling blood but instead you see…
A running sink.
Shattered glass on the floor, blue liquid oozing into the cracks of the tiles.
And Sophia, standing barefoot in a blue stained chemise with her hair long and lank over her face.
You immediately turn around, face burning red.
“I heard-” you start to say.
“Oh, P,” Sophia says, interrupting you. “You startled me.”
You hear her shuffle a bit behind you.
“Can you grab that towel over there? I need to do something about this mess.”l
Thankful to have something to do, you reach over and grab the towel on the rail before you realise.
You’ll have to turn around to give it to her.
She’s in her underwear.
“P?” She asks. “You can turn around, it's ok.”
“I shouldn’t,” you say, wringing the towel in your hands.
“It’s ok,” Sophia says gently. “I’m sure you’ve seen worse.”
You have but that’s not the point.
“I can’t get dressed because my clothes are out there,” she says matter of factly as you continue to hesitate. “And there’s glass in the way. So if you give me that towel I can do something about the glass.”
You chew your lower lip but nod, turning around. The moment you see her bare arm you shut your eyes and with your face continuing to burn, hold the towel out in front of you like a shield. She takes it and you hear more shuffling and a soft thwump .
“Open your eyes P.”
You open your eyes. She’s still in her underwear.
You close them again.
You hear a soft, yet emphatic, “ men ”.
“Open your eyes.”
“You’re in your underwear,” you say, starting to back out of the room, eyes still shut.
“I need you to help me over this,” she says, exasperated.
You let out a wordless “ oh”, and open your eyes. Sophia stands more or less in the same position with her lank hair now out of her face. You can see the blue streaks and stains across her skin now, much like her chemise.
“If you could just-“ she holds out a hand and you take it, supporting her weight as she awkwardly steps over the towel she’s thrown on top of the glass and liquid on the floor. Once over, she eyes the mess distastefully and brushes past you out of the room, muttering to herself under her breath. You stand in the doorway a bit at a loss as you watch her rifle through a cupboard and pull out a small dustpan and brush, pushing past you again to get back into the bathroom. She lifts the corner of the towel, but the liquid still hasn’t soaked in enough, so she lets it drop and flops on the floor next to it, looking up at you as she does.
“You’re back early.”
“Um, yeah.” You’re not really sure if you should be looking at her.
You dither a moment and decide to sit down too, tucking your knees under your chin and leaning back against the wall opposite her.
“Was it good?”
“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to talking to people,” you tell her with a shrug. “But Antonia had said I should be meeting with investors personally until I get more acquainted with them.”
When Antonia had left Hotel Krat to you as part of her will, it had been a long slog of trying to figure out how to run one of Krat’s most prestigious landmarks. She’d given you a lot of advice before she died, but actually putting that into practice was harder than she had made it seem, even in her final days. You’re still trying to win the loyalty of suspicious old men who think Antonia has left the Hotel in the hands of some unexperienced upstart.
They’re not entirely wrong, but having spoken with them recently, you’re inclined to make sure that they’re completely wrong.
“I’m sorry,” she says, fiddling with a strand of hair. “That must be hard.”
You shrug again. Talking to people is a lot easier now than it used to be.
Her fingers are stained blue.
“Can I ask-” you begin with a tilt of your head. “What were you doing?”
Sophia looks at her stained fingers and back at you.
“I was dying my hair and I dropped the bottle,” she says with a frown.
“You were…” you trail off, confused.
“Dying my hair,” she repeats.
She scrutinises your face as you go through the complex mental math of trying to figure out what the heck she’s talking about.
“My hair isn’t naturally blue P.”
“So you’re killing it?”
She laughs, rocking back with the force of it.
“ No,” she choked out, wiping blue stains on her cheeks and around her eyes as she rubbed at her tears. “It’s hair dye. It changes the colour of your hair.”
You think about it for a moment.
“Like fabric dye?”
“Yes, P. A bit like fabric dye.”
You scrunch your face up as you mull it over for a second.
“Did you really think my hair was naturally blue?” Sophia asked.
“No. I don’t think so,” you tell her. “I just thought it turned blue for another reason.”
She giggles a little.
“I thought it might have been the Ergo,” you tell her, shifting so your legs were criss-crossed in front of you.
The laughter stops.
“I’m sorry,” you mutter, as Sophia’s face drops.
It lights up like the sun when she laughs.
You want to see the sun in her face.
“It’s fine,” she says just as quietly.
She fidgets with the corner of the towel for a moment before lifting it to see the extent of the mess. Most of the dye has soaked in and you can now see glittering shards of glass sticking to the once white fabric. She starts to remove the towel but you wave her away, moving forward to start cleaning the mess.
Sophia watches as you pick the larger chunks up with your fingers, carefully putting them into the dustpan before moving on to sweeping up the smaller shards, the dye residue clinging to the bristles of the brush you’re using and streaking patterns onto the tiles. The bathroom is cold and silent as you work.
“Do you hate me?”
Her question is asked so quietly that you almost don’t hear her at first, and you almost want to pretend that you hadn’t. But it’s clearly a problem for her, her eyes rimmed red and watery when you look up at her.
“I don’t hate you.”
The ticking of your heart doesn’t change anymore, but in some ways you still know you’re not being entirely honest.
“I would hate me,” Sophia says quietly.
“Do you want to know why I don’t talk to Geppetto?” You ask, sitting back on your knees and setting the dustpan to the side.
She looks at you a little confused but you continue anyway.
“My father,” you start. “Made me to be someone I wasn’t. And I couldn’t be that, and he knew that, but he still wanted that from me anyway.
“Geppetto wanted me to be the perfect lost son and perfect little puppet that he could take and use as he needed. And that hurt me.”
“He was-“ Sophia starts, but you cut her off.
“He was grieving I know. Sophia, that’s not why I’m hurt by him.”
You take a deep breath and steady yourself.
“He used me in a way that I wasn’t comfortable with, and didn’t seem to understand why .”
Sophia hunches in on herself and you hear her trying to contain sobs. You reach over and take her hand and pull it forward a little, just enough that she’ll look up at you with bright, teary eyes.
“Do you want to know why I don’t hate you Sophia?”
She nods.
“You understand . You never expected me to be someone I wasn’t. You told me I was kind and clever out of my own merits because you saw me . Yes, there were things I wish you had told me sooner, and been more honest about, but we can’t change what happened.
“You hurt me but that doesn’t mean I don’t forgive you.”
Sophia falls forward so you pull her into a hug as she sobs, running your fingers through her damp hair. Your hands come back stained blue.
“I’m sorry,” she chokes out. “I’m so sorry.”
You hum softly, a gentle soothing noise and eventually, slowly, the sobbing quiets and Sophia huddles into your arms.
“Sophia,” you murmur. “I forgive you. Remember that, ok?”
“Mhm.”
You help Sophia wash the dye from her hair, the blue running rivulets down the bath drain with each scoop. When the water runs clear, she wraps her hair in a soft towel and together you exit the bathroom, closing the door on the cold tiles and sadness it contains. She wraps herself in a thick dressing gown and you stoke the fire, the cheery snap of the logs welcome as outside, a slow, crawling fog makes the sky dark and hazy. You sit together, on the floor, shoulder to shoulder in silence. She snakes a hand over and takes one of yours, and squeezes it. You squeeze back.
“What colour is your hair then?” You ask. “Naturally?”
“Sort of reddish,” Sophia says, rubbing her thumb over your knuckles. “Strawberry blonde.”
“I’d like to see it,” you say. “One day.”
She hums.
“One day.”