BAM!
A sharp, heavy impact—like something large slamming into the wooden front door—yanked her out of her thoughts.
Mara snapped her head toward the entrance, her heart pounding hard in her chest.
There, sprawled face-down on the reception floor, one arm stretched out and her face pressed against the wooden planks, lay the motionless figure of a woman.
"W-WHAT?!" Mara shouted, her voice filled with genuine shock as it echoed through the inn's quiet morning air.
When she shouted, Mara noticed that her exclamation had made Alice—who always carried an air of unshakable calm—flinch slightly at the sound.
It was barely a movement, just a small tensing of her shoulders, but it was enough to stand out in someone whose composure was usually as still as the surface of a pond.
Mara turned her gaze back to the main entrance and was able to take a better look at the woman lying on the floor, this time catching more details of her figure.
She was wearing a long, form-fitting dress made of simple fabric, almost like expensive sleepwear.
She had no shoes; her feet were bare and slightly dirty. In her right hand—gripped with surprising strength—she was holding a large bottle of liquor which, judging by how loosely it swayed, appeared to be completely empty.
"Uggghh… Aaaa… Aaaliceeeee," the woman slurred, her voice thick and drawn out, clearly affected by deep intoxication.
Hearing the stranger say Alice's name, Mara turned her head toward the woman who had just been mentioned.
What she saw surprised her: Alice was covering half her face with one hand, her fingers pressed to her temple, while she stared down at the floor with an expression that bordered on pure agony.
It was as if she were dying of embarrassment.
"Do you know her?" Mara asked, glancing back and forth between the drunken woman and Alice.
"…Unfortunately, yes," Alice replied, a flicker of deep resignation and shame visible on her face above her fingers.
"Looooooveeeeee, wherrrreeee… aaaarreee yooouuu…?" the woman babbled again.
Her skin was brown, and her messy, deep-purple hair was spread across the floor around her head.
"…Mara, dear, could you please go pick her up?" Alice said, and this time her tone carried a faint hint of restrained irritation—something Mara had never heard from her before.
"S-sure," Mara stammered, a little unsettled by the sudden change in attitude from the woman who had so far shown her nothing but patience and calm.
Mara approached the stranger and, up close, realized she was quite tall—slightly taller than even Alice.
Her purple hair was tied up in a high ponytail that was now coming undone against the floor, and just as she had expected, a strong stench of cheap alcohol and sweat hit her as she bent down.
When she tried to lift her, she discovered that the woman was surprisingly heavy. It wasn't just her height—there was a dense, inert weight to her body that forced Mara to put in real effort just to get her to sit up a little.
"What do I do with her?" Mara asked between light gasps, struggling to keep her balance as the woman went limp like a sack of sand.
"Bring her over here, dear," Alice replied, gesturing with her hand for Mara to come closer.
Mara nodded faintly and, with considerable difficulty, began to drag herself—and the woman—toward the counter.
What caught her attention most, even more than the weight, was that the woman never let go of the empty liquor bottle. She clutched it with an instinctive, almost desperate tenacity.
Just as Mara managed to get close enough, Alice extended her arm and, with a quick, firm motion that didn't seem fitting for someone wearing a blindfold, grabbed the purple-haired woman by the collar of her dress.
She lifted her off the floor as if she weighed nothing, like a rag doll, and then tossed her straight into the basement—the room the three of them shared.
BAM
A dull thud echoed, followed moments later by the sound of the empty liquor bottle rolling across the basement floor.
Mara blinked in shock for several seconds before snapping back to her senses.
"W-WHAT?!" Mara shouted again, completely stunned by how sudden the action had been.