10. Mr. Oshiro Chase
Prompt: Damaged
A great many things have been damaged in a short span time, besides of broken and drained. Oshiro's patience among them.
He didn't want to say it or even think out loud, but he was convinced the causes of his most recent problems have been caused by Ms. Madeline's arrival.
The stress made him relapse into his ostentatious civilized and distinguished self of a host. The one that had allowed the hotel to be of great renown. But his actual efforts had been either ignored or been made mockery of. Oshiro just wanted to do his job, however Ms. Madeline was fixated on making her own way and Oshiro meant it. Ms. Madeline went through staff-only areas and made of them a living nightmare for Oshiro far and wide all through the hotel.
That had to be the only reasonable explanation for the hotel's poor state. It had to be.
Maybe he was not doing a good job. Maybe this was Ms. Madeline's way of asking—if he could call it that—for a better service. Oshiro had to use his best card. The presidential suite.
Right when Oshiro believed he had convinced Ms. Madeline of the quality and elegance his hotel had. His newest client ignored his efforts and continued to carry on with her own way.
He was so focused in making sure Ms. Madeline were not unsatisfied he didn't find strange when a purple floating copy of his client emerged from the body-size mirror with a loud thunderous sound and the mirror broke into hundreds of small pieces falling to the floor. Despite Oshiro floated as well, the mirror breaking almost startled him to the floor, and after that, his first thought was to clean the fragmented glass pieces off the floor.
"Madeline, sweetie, forget this loser."
"Loser?"
"You're in denial, old man. This resort is a dump. No one would ever want to stay here!" She reproached with more fierce than necessary before recomposing herself and laugh at his face like nothing. "Someone had to say it." Like nothing.
Oshiro trembled for a few seconds before he fell over his knees on the floor with his hands on his head.
Oshiro could tolerate many things. He could tolerate birds invading his hotel and disarrange every room they went through. He could tolerate guests making his job unnecessarily more complicated than it needed to be. He could even tolerate people making fun of him and his Japanese descent, squinting his eyes and pretend to speak Japanese when in reality they babbled nonsense, which, obviously, didn't cause Oshiro a trauma that he remembered such a specific taunt directed to himself.
But what he couldn't tolerate was people making fun of his hotel, and overall, damaging it, like the Ms. Madeline's doppelgänger just did causing a hole in the ceiling of the presidential suite before floating through it and leaving the room.
Ms. Madeline went after her shortly after, leaving Oshiro alone with his recurring thoughts and a question.
Why?
Why had she abused from his hospitality? Why had she pretended to be good with him if at the end he was just going to mock him and leave?
Oshiro followed Ms. Madeline through the hole in the ceiling upwards. He had to know. He just had to.
"She helps people to feed her twisted ego. She never cared for you. You're both pathetic."
Oshiro's left eye twitched upon hearing that. He returned his hands over his head and closed his eyes strongly.
"Pathetic? You just came here to humiliate me! I won't grovel at your feet any longer"
His vision turned blurry like if he was in the middle of a blizzard and all he could discern was Ms. Madeline's silhouette. And he only wanted to do one thing.
Damage.
Damage her before she could damage him.
Before she abandoned him…
"Like the others!...Like Charlotte…
"No! They didn't abandon you!"
"Where were they when I slept alone that night?"
"That was your fault!"
"Exactly!"
"ENOUGH!"
The next minutes passed like a fuzzy blur before his eyes. He only could distinguish some flashing moments of himself trying to catch Ms. Madeline while they traveled far and wide the hotel's rooftop. Once arriving at the end of the road, Oshiro cornered his objective at the edge of the awning they stood on above the hotel's back exit.
"Mr. Oshiro, wait! I just wanted to help!" was the only plead Ms. Madeline could voice before Oshiro damaged the platform they were in and stomped it with ferocity, cracking it in several pieces and falling to the ground.
Only after that hit Oshiro managed to return to himself abruptly, like a person that breathed heavily after being seconds away from drowning on the sea, kicking and looking for something to hold onto. Like if he had woken up from a bad dream. And in the same way, his first thoughts were to worry more over the hotel than himself.
"I've decided to close the hotel for repairs. Please just leave me alone." Oshiro turned around and encaged himself back into his hotel to deal with his problems in the only way he knew, leaving Madeline alone and free to continue his journey through the mountain.
Once he returned to his solitude, Oshiro floated tense with a paralyzed expression on his face towards his office full of boxes scrapping the ceiling and a broken picture window that Oshiro had told himself he would fix sometime soon. Boxes and…those…red spheres spread all over the room, doing nothing but taking space and worsening his problems. Problems…he did cause. He, the boxes, the spheres themselves. The hotel.
But for the first time in a long time, Oshiro didn't pay mind to them and sat on his desk filled with papers. Papers like inventory, bills, but also, thank you letters from old clients in their stay. Letters he did rejoice himself having and that he read from time to time when he doubted his work.
Letters. Old letters. Old papers. An old hotel, empty and full at the same time in the worst ways possible. But overall empty. Very empty.
Too empty.
Not the right kind of empty.
Oshiro took all the papers scattered across his desk and threw them into a small trash can next to his desk.
A full trash can.
The right kind of full.
Now he just needed to focus on one thing at once and give his office the right kind of empty.
A blue bird entered through the broken window and rested upon Oshiro's desk looking curiously at the ghost. Oshiro extended his hand to pet it but before he could touch it, the bird chirped at him and flew away, returning where he came from.
Oshiro's face remained frozen still except for a small and single laugh and what seemed to be a tiny outline of a smile. He had food for birds in the basement, did he not?