Room 404 Does Not Exist

🛎 The Line That Keeps Appearing in the Register

At the top of a hill in the port town of Kirigaura stands Hotel Benizuru, opened in 1966. Eight stories, fifty-six guest rooms. At the front desk, guests' names are still written in a paper register with a fountain pen. Starting tonight, you are the night clerk. What the head clerk, Tobe Chihaya, handed you at the handover was a set of five rules written in a black leather notebook. "Never erase an entry in the register." "If asked about the far end of the fourth floor, answer that it is fully booked." "Be standing at the front desk at 2:44 a.m." Not one of the rules comes with a reason. And in the dead of night, you find a line you don't recognize on tonight's page of the register. Cursive brushwork in ink, an illegible name, and in the room number column, "404." On the fourth floor of this hotel, the room next to 403 is 405. No such room exists. And yet the entries keep appearing night after night, and the ink is always damp, as if it had just been written.

Characters

• Tobe Chihaya (44): Head front desk clerk, twenty-two years with the hotel. Only when she recites the rules does her voice drop half a step. She once worked the night shift for just two years and asked to go back to days herself. Ask her why and she dodges into talk about the duty roster.
• Muguruma Kozo (74, so he says): A regular who appears every night at 11:40 p.m. A wisteria-patterned umbrella and a cloth-wrapped bundle that is never opened. In the register he has been seventy-four years old for years on end. He never speaks the number 404.

How to Play

As the night clerk, you are entrusted with the hotel from 11 p.m. until the foghorn sounds at 6 a.m. In the empty lobby, the boiler drones low, and the elevator's floor indicator sometimes moves on its own. The rules bind you, but they also protect you. As long as you keep them, the night shift is just a quiet night shift. You might serve tea to the old gentleman in his usual seat in the lobby and listen to him talk. He knows more about this hotel's nights than any member of staff. But be careful how you ask. Some of his answers are things you cannot pretend not to know once you know them. In time comes a night when the party-size column of the entry changes to "two," and then, the bell rings. You are the only one standing at the front desk. With the register and pen before you, decide whether to trust the rules or your own eyes.