The Soulless Twins

As I gave her the budget reports for the hotel, Ophelia's body shimmered in a mystic white glow from time to time. The rust on her skin was cleared off on its own, and the more we spoke the more stable her situation got. Eventually, her frame was nearly as dignified as the first time I'd seen her. Yet the constant rubbing of her temples was a clear indicator that something was still wrong.

Holding onto the reception table, she coughed a few times before settling down in a chair. Leaning back, she reached under her pistoning neck pipes and pressed some kind of button. Emerging through her neck like foam, the special wax that gave her the human look clad her body in a matter of seconds.

"D-done…" She huffed, as though having run a marathon.

Panting heavily while leaning back into the chair, she glanced over our faces before correcting her demeanor. Sitting upright, her eyes locked with Maiko who was standing right beside me.

"Can you, uhm…" Pressing her lips shut for a moment, a nervous contour crossed her eyes. "Please make a cake? I'll add that to the budget used this week, don't worry!"

Glancing between me and Ophelia, Maiko was utterly confused. Staring at me, however, she waited for my mark to tell her what to do.

"Please," I said, nodding at the elven witch.

Nodding back, she slid her hand across my shoulder while making her way to the kitchen. Accompanying her was Cinder, who wasn't too fond of the coarse smell of the ocean coming from Ophelia. Turning my attention back to the front, I decided to finally push her for answers before she recovered any further.

"You said you were punished for trying to kill me, but didn't mention by who," I said nonchalantly.

"Hmm?" Still wheezing, Ophelia looked up at me, her eyes frowning from a headache. "You don't need to know. Just be grateful, he contacted me in time or else you'd be dead right now."

She muttered something under her breath right after those words, but the only things I heard were the words 'souls' and 'twins'. Was she referring to the Genji had brought over? Or was it something else entirely? I had no clue, thus naturally I had to dig deeper.

"I still don't get why you're so loyal to the embassy when they treated you like this," I'd expected her to retort, but she remained quiet. That is until she suddenly began chuckling to herself.

Her laugh grew louder by the second, and eventually, she spoke up.

"I suppose the two of us aren't all that different," shaking her head with a smile, she appeared to have dropped the tensed facade. Looking back up at me, she stared into my eyes for a moment before speaking again. "You're not dead, because you can't die. I'm not dead because I've already died twice. It's quite the twist of fate that we stumbled across each other, lacking our souls not even knowing why we're still alive."

"A riddle?" I asked. 

She shook her side to side, looking disappointed.

"I've already spoken too much, so stop trying to interrogate me like some kind of prisoner," turning her attention to the clipboard on the desk, Ophelia grabbed it in her hand and spoke to me one last time before going quiet for the rest of her visit. "Besides, if I knew anything of this before, I wouldn't have tried to kill you and gotten myself in trouble."

She was right. Given her current state and the way she acted when trying to kill me, I doubt she knew much about me before. However, that still didn't change the fact that she was hiding stuff from me that she must've just recently learned of.

'I will find out why you're so loyal, one way or the other.' With that thought, I left her alone. Getting back to my room, I changed into my work clothes and headed back down. As I descended this time, I noticed Maiko serving the Machina a serving of cake, which Ophelia wolfed down in less than a minute. 'Is that sugar really healing her?'

The more time he spent after consuming sweets, the better her condition got, until eventually, she was in as pristine a condition as she could be.

"Such a strange trail of magic," Maiko muttered, watching Ophelia heading out the front door with the report in hand.

"What do you mean?" I asked, curious about what she'd caught.

"Just…" Heaving a sigh, she patted her apron and turned her head to me. "That metal she is made of, it's brimming with magic like a mature oak that breathes life into its surroundings. The magic itself is foreign as well, I doubt the humans conjured it or even monsters for that matter."

A bit confused, my eyes frowned on their own.

"If the magic is so foreign then how did she get it?" Shrugging her shoulders, Maiko raised herself on her toes and planted a kiss on my cheeks.

"I wish I knew, but I don't," putting herself down on her feet again, she patted my shoulder before walking away with a smile. "The new guests must be arriving soon; we should get preparing."

Grabbing the clipboard from the reception, I looked through the names of the new guests arriving soon. This time unlike the last, there will be a huge crowd coming over to stay for a while. Some of them will stay longer than the rest, so we'd need to prepare accordingly. Not to mention the fact that they will be here on vacation so I doubt they'll do anything by themselves.

'Thirty-two people, and I thought I could get some peace to get my head on straight.' Throwing the clipboard on the desk, I made my way towards the dining. We all gathered there every morning to discuss our tasks while enjoying lunch, and today was no different.

'No murderers this time, please.' I wished, hoping this batch of guests would be worth less trouble than the last. But in the end, only the filthy rich with their fingers dipped in deep crimson could afford to stay here.