Chapter 1139 – #270_Find Your Luck (3)
#1133
1.
The Periwinkle Hotel.
It’s a brand that always appears when listing the world’s top luxury hotel chains.
Timeless, sophisticated interiors and meticulous, detailed service.
Dining options that have secured world-class chefs.
An image of the brand that embodies gravitas and tranquility, rather than being bustling with frivolous tourists.
And decisively, travel packages offered by the hotel itself, using private jets.
There was one commonality among all Periwinkle Hotel locations, which are beloved by celebrities and the wealthy worldwide.
On the top floor, there was a penthouse suite called the ‘Clover Suite,’ which was so lavish it could rival any other hotel.
This Clover Suite, which used the entire top floor of the hotel as a single suite, naturally commanded an exorbitant nightly rate.
Moreover, it wasn’t simply a matter of having a lot of money to stay there.
From the reservation stage, the hotel rigorously vetted the qualifications of its guests.
Notorious dictators, politicians, individuals involved in crimes, and anyone who could harm the hotel’s reputation were thoroughly rejected.
This policy, which had been upheld without exception since the hotel’s founding, continues to this day.
Some criticized this as an ‘outdated and arrogant management philosophy.’
However, most praised this meticulously calculated strategy of exclusivity.
When someone who happened to stay at the Clover Suite boasted about it on social media, garnering everyone’s envy, it was free marketing.
The title of ‘a hotel that expels the unnoble’ even satisfied the vanity of ordinary guests, making this policy the alpha and omega of the Periwinkle Hotel chain.
But the real reason why the Periwinkle Hotel was so strict about its qualifications was different.
Long ago, the actual owner stayed at another hotel because of another guest, and the next day, he exclaimed, ‘I told you not to accept just anyone because I need to use it!’
That hysterical cry became a company motto that the nominal owner’s family engraved deep in their bones, and it has been passed down through generations.
“Really? Okay, I understand.”
Today, Periwinkle, sipping champagne while gazing at the night view of the Eiffel Tower from the Clover Suite, put down the old-fashioned, elegant telephone.
She had just received a truly frustrating report from her vassal who managed the Periwinkle Hotel.
“This is driving me crazy. Is he really following me?”
In summary, the report stated that Shin Siwoo had begun a world tour to find Periwinkle.
Starting from Seoul, he had gone through two branches in Japan, and now he had landed in Austria, searching through all the Periwinkle Hotels in Europe.
Naturally, Periwinkle, the actual owner of the hotel, was able to receive the report through the guest list.
To hide her unease, she took another sip of champagne.
“……”
She had compromised.
She had given up.
Instead of acknowledging the limits of magic and improving the magic itself, she had chosen the easy path of suppressing her emotions.
Compared to the flood of luck that this magic brought, what Periwinkle had given up was very small.
She just had to avoid creating someone ‘special.’
She just had to dwell on the loneliness of ‘Am I lonely?’ just a little bit.
How fortunate was that?
Suddenly, Shin Siwoo’s last words came to mind.
‘To me, it looks like you’re running away because you’re scared.’
“Okay, I admit it. I ran away. But what’s so bad about that?”
Due to a past mistake and a wrong mindset, she had lost a precious friend.
Not repeating the same mistake was the least atonement Periwinkle could offer Valentina.
In a way, this whole situation was due to Periwinkle’s immaturity.
If she had kept her distance from him from the start.
If she hadn’t at least told him about her past circumstances, Siwoo wouldn’t have said things like ‘Let’s overcome it together!’ and the situation where Periwinkle had to draw a line and run away wouldn’t have happened.
“……”
Then.
What was the lukewarm stirring she felt when she heard that Shin Siwoo was looking for her?
What was she, who secretly thought she was happy?
Her ugliness, trying to repeat past mistakes, pushed him away.
They would never meet anyway.
There was no need to rack her brain.
By the time he arrived in Paris, Periwinkle would naturally leave the hotel, and an eternal game of tag, where they would never even pass each other, would begin.
“That’s enough. I’m lucky, after all.”
Periwinkle quietly refilled her glass.
2.
Periwinkle is loved by the world.
Periwinkle is not pleased with the situation where Siwoo is chasing her.
Therefore, Siwoo was facing a series of unexpected difficulties.
“I’m sorry! I didn’t recognize you, Count…”
“Yes, to Gehenna. Yes, yes. I’ll send him back. Ah, right now. Thank you for your trouble every time. Hup!”
“Kyaaaaak!”
Siwoo grabbed an unknown deportee, threw him into the Munich River to be sent to Gehenna, and turned off the crystal ball that was connected to the immigration office.
The deportee, who had just tried to take advantage of Siwoo for a big score, would be doing endless calculations like in an inferno until he had atoned for his sins at the Hesed Society.
“Is this even possible?”
Ten people. Already ten people.
Munich in Germany, Florence in Italy, Geneva in Switzerland, and Brussels in Belgium.
While looking for Periwinkle and meeting with the branch managers of each location point, he had been attacked by a whopping ten deportees.
There were no witches as strong as Cocoa or Miya, so he didn’t feel even a hint of tension.
But he was tired, so tired of the cliché lines that started with ‘Scammer!’ ‘Casanova!’ ‘If I just catch that bastard, my life will…’ and ended with ‘Please save me!’ ‘I didn’t recognize you!’ ‘If you give me just one chance…’.
It wasn’t like he had written ‘I’m going here and there’ on his forehead, and it wasn’t like someone had gathered witches to attack Siwoo.
The fact that all of this was purely a ‘product of coincidence’ was chilling.
Didn’t that mean that the power of ‘fate’ surrounding Periwinkle was that strong?
“Looking at the results, it’s not a bad thing.”
The fierce battles that followed the sealing of Hexennacht’s gate – the fight with Herja – and the subjugation of Lydia had not completely resolved the fatigue accumulated in his spirit body.
His veins still bulged grotesquely all over his body when he used magic, and he still felt incredibly tired.
Still, dealing with small fry was not a difficult task.
He had done an easy task and managed to take in ten deportees to make them his obedient Chunsiks, so the gains outweighed the losses.
The fact that it was not a decisive crisis but just an increase in ambiguous annoyances also made him feel optimistic, thinking, ‘Maybe Periwinkle secretly wants to meet me too?’
But that was a somewhat premature optimism.
Soon, an unresolved problem blocked Siwoo’s path.
-Thud!
The door to the room provided by the location point burst open as if it would break, and someone came tumbling in.
It looked as if someone had kicked them from behind.
Was it another attack? He was about to prepare for battle, but this time the repertoire was different.
“Cough…! Cough…!”
Clear sky-blue hair was stained red with blood.
It wasn’t just her hair that was stained with blood.
He could see dark red blood quickly spreading on the carpet where she had fallen.
Based on his experience, this meant a massive hemorrhage that required treatment within a second.
“What is this now? Hey, are you okay?”
He didn’t know the details, but as Siwoo quickly approached to help the fallen witch, he flinched.
The witch’s appearance, which he had expected to be a complete stranger, was very familiar.
“Godfather… Cough! Cough!”
The identity of the guest who had appeared covered in blood in the middle of the night was the guide of Las Werpanas, who had been in contact through the Round Table Conference and then had gone silent.
The witch of a thousand spirits, Nairy Derbana.
“I’ve dirtied your clothes… I’m sorry…”
Her eyelids trembled with apology as she grabbed Siwoo’s sleeve with a trembling hand.
“It’s okay, just stay still.”
Siwoo quickly turned her body over.
As he stained his hands with the unpleasantly slick blood and tore off the white dress that had turned red, he saw a horribly gaping wound.
There were five penetrating wounds.
“Oh no…!”
Whether it was from the impact of falling, the arteries that had been bound with telekinesis were gushing blood.
Even for a spirit body, this amount of blood loss would lead to shock.
He immediately used the crystal ball to ask the Munich branch manager to send a witch who could provide treatment, and then calmly found the blood vessel where the blood was gushing out most violently and bound it with telekinesis.
“Drink this. Slowly.”
He gave her an elixir he had prepared for emergencies and tried to imitate the process of temporarily restoring the spirit body through ‘distortion.’
From the start, treatment was not Siwoo’s specialty, and it was also the first time he had performed it on someone else’s body.
It was a makeshift magic, but seeing the wounds heal as if time was rewinding, it seemed that he had put out the immediate fire.
Nairy, who had seemed to be on the verge of death, had barely stopped at the threshold of death.
“……”
Nairy lost consciousness without saying a word, her face pale.
She must have desperately used her mental strength to crawl all the way here.
“What on earth is going on?”
“Please treat her. And please keep this matter a secret.”
“Yes? Yes, yes… First, the patient’s condition…”
The healing witch dispatched by the location point diligently treated Nairy and then took a generous amount of gold after swearing on her witch’s name that she would keep the secret.
After the treatment was over, Siwoo was about to leave after laying Nairy on the bed.
“…Godfather…”
“Are you a little more conscious?”
“……”
At that moment, Nairy, who had regained consciousness, desperately grabbed Siwoo’s hand as he tried to leave.
She was not in a state where she could communicate, like someone waking up during anesthesia, and Nairy quickly lost consciousness again, but the way she treated Siwoo was desperate, as if a lost child was looking for their parents’ hands.
Even though it was the first time they had seen each other’s faces.
“What is going on…”
Nairy, who would wake up soon, would give him the answer.
Siwoo stayed by her bedside until she woke up.
