Welcome to Dungeon Hotel Chapter 370 - Webtoon Side Story: Welcome to Dungeon Hotel Branch 4 (41)

Webtoon Side Story: Welcome to Dungeon Hotel Branch 4 (41)

 

“I’m sorry. For showing you such an unsightly side.”

 

“No. What do you mean unsightly.”

 

Vincent sat before me with his eyes cast downward.

 

With a complicated face, yet calmly, he told me his story.

 

“My father was a soldier. A soldier who fought in a place that wasn’t the front lines.”

 

I remembered seeing it in the library.

 

That several of the Paris Resistance members snuck in here and engaged in espionage activities.

 

It was said that the age range of the Paris Resistance was from their 20s to 40s, and sometimes there were even teenagers or those in their 50s.

 

People too young or too old to be deployed to the front lines fought their own war in a different way.

 

The villagers also knew to some extent that they were conducting espionage activities here, and secretly provided a lot of help.

 

‘Just like the bakery boy.’ 

 

And seeing that, I had thought this.

 

Wouldn’t about 40% of the bad rumors about this castle have originated back then?

 

Whenever villagers went grocery shopping or had a meal nearby, they used to call Liber Castle ‘a dangerous place’ or ‘a haunted place.’

 

That might partly be due to the mice secretly making wine in Liber and the unmanaged state of the castle, but to a certain extent, there might have been other reasons too.

 

For example, let’s imagine the boy working at the bakery had a younger sister.

 

There must have been a day when the younger sister asked the baker’s boy this:

 

‘Why do you go to deliver bread to that old castle every day? There are barely any people living there, but they order a lot of bread.’

 

The boy wouldn’t be able to tell his younger sister that the bread was actually food for unregistered residents, the Resistance, hiding there.

 

Because his young sister might tell her friends something.

 

So he probably just said this:

 

‘A ghost appears there, and they say if you don’t offer bread to that ghost, it eats people! If you go around talking about this, the ghost will take revenge on you?!’

 

Then the younger sister would be startled and remember Liber as an old castle haunted by ghosts.

 

Even after her brother died and she was left alone, the memory of Liber as a haunted old castle wouldn’t disappear.

 

That memory lingered for a long time, leading people to consider Liber as something like a haunted house.

 

“My mother and I were in Paris at the time, but my father abandoned us and fought alone, and when Paris was occupied, he came here avoiding the surveillance of the SS. The SS dragged my mother away instead of my father and interrogated her for two months at a time, and our neighbors didn’t want to get involved with us. The time spent without my father was like hell.”

 

Vincent clenched his teeth as he wiped away tears.

 

It was very brief, but it felt as if I could see Vincent’s childhood.

 

The face of a young boy who was scared and missed his father.

 

“But what was more terrible was when my father couldn’t return. My mother missed him terribly. The fact that my mother fell ill earlier than others and passed away probably isn’t unrelated to my father’s death. I still can’t forget.”

 

“Forget what…?”

 

“Because my father always said the French flag held a place in a corner of his heart.”

 

Vincent smiled faintly while making a gesture of thumping his chest.

 

That smile was nothing but bitter.

 

“Whenever he got drunk, he would thump his chest and say his love was here. Foolish man. I don’t know if he even properly saw Paris liberated before he died.”

 

“…Mr. Vincent.”

 

Vincent quietly stared at the handkerchief I offered.

 

He picked up the handkerchief as if a little embarrassed and waved his hand.

 

“I’m sorry. Such old stories must be uninteresting and boring to a young person…”

 

“No. We have a similar history in Korea too. So I listened with plenty of interest. Ah, of course, I don’t mean to say it’s merely interesting…”

 

I smacked my lips and lowered my eyes.

 

I simply didn’t know what to say.

 

“We believe we exist today because of those people. We consider it something to be proud of.”

 

“I am not proud of my father. Other Paris citizens might be, but I am not.”

 

Vincent shrugged his shoulders.

 

There wasn’t a trace of falsehood in his eyes.

 

“When I was young, everyone said my father did great things, so that’s how I remembered it. But as I reached my father’s age and had my own sons, my mind changed. I wouldn’t have done that.”

 

“…..”

 

“I don’t mean I wouldn’t have joined the Resistance. If it were me, I would have at least told them I love you more than the country. I would have told them I would definitely return. My father never once let me into his room. He always just said it was dangerous.”

 

“That might be because there were classified materials in there…”

 

And he wouldn’t have wanted to put his son in danger.

 

It was a naturally following assumption, but I couldn’t utter those words.

 

Because the heart of a young son who had never sufficiently felt his father’s love might not see it that way.

 

“Well, what can you expect from a father from whom I never even received a single letter? To my father, the country was more important than me.”

 

I felt like I could finally understand a little of Vincent’s old anger.

 

Vincent wasn’t simply resentful that his father abandoned him and his mother to fight.

 

The fact that he didn’t allow anything that could let Vincent feel his father’s love.

 

That was what made Mr. Vincent feel sorrowful.

 

“To think I expected such a father to say ‘I’m sorry’. It’s quite funny of me too.”

 

“Excuse me?”

 

At that moment, Vincent brought up something unexpected.

 

Vincent’s light brown eyes looked at me and smiled.

 

“I heard you are quite a competent Hunter. I’m told Hunters sometimes use illusions too?”

 

“…Ah, did you know?”

 

“About what? Being a Hunter? Or the illusion?”

 

“The illusion.”

 

Seeing Vincent shedding tears and crying, I naturally thought he believed he had met a real ‘ghost’…

 

But that wasn’t it?

 

“Ah, of course, the implementation of the illusion was very excellent. Even I was fooled for a moment. But my father is not the kind of person who would feel sorry towards me.”

 

I was quite surprised by Vincent’s resolute words.

 

I guess you can’t fool years of experience.

 

I bit my lip.

 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to deceive you… but I suppose it amounts to deceiving you, right? How should I express my apologies—”

 

At this rate, I’ll be branded as a hotel that blindsides the elderly for money.

 

As I was at a loss for what to do, Vincent shook his head and smiled benevolently.

 

“No. Not at all. There were many people who tried to deceive me to pocket my money. When I received a date for my death, my mind perhaps grew weak, and I even met a few spiritualists. But when I said there was someone I wanted to take ‘revenge’ on, they all offered to help with my revenge. They even said they would summon the ghost and let me torment it…”

 

“What kind of…”

 

Those swindler scumbags.

 

Thinking that to myself, I clenched my fists.

 

“But among such people, you are the only one who summoned a ghost that apologized to me.”

 

“…!”

 

“If what you did was also a scam, I’d like to call it a good scam.”

 

He smiled genuinely.

 

“I thought I wanted to take revenge on my father. I also wanted to show him my sick, diseased, and old self and say, ‘This is what the son you abandoned has become.’ But you…”

 

Vincent’s voice lowered.

 

Tears welled up in his eyes.

 

His wrinkled hand gently tapped the table.

 

“…The moment you let me hear the words ‘I’m sorry’, I realized that wasn’t what I truly wanted. Yes. I wanted to hear my father say ‘I’m sorry’. And… I wanted him to tell me his heart ached when he abandoned us…”

 

He sniffled and raised his head again.

 

“I’m sorry. For an old man to show such disgraceful behavior…”

 

“No. Please don’t mind that.”

 

I shook my head.

 

Tears welled up in my eyes as I shook my head.

 

I felt a sharp, tightening sensation in a corner of my chest.

 

I didn’t believe Vincent’s father ‘abandoned’ Vincent.

 

Even if Vincent’s father placed his country above his family, even that must have been love for Vincent.

 

Just like my dad did.

 

‘Junghyo. I’m so sorry I left you behind…’

 

‘Dad, how old is that story. Did you drink with the village headman again?’

 

‘No, it’s not because I drank…!’

 

‘You smell like alcohol. Just how much do you have to drink for an S-rank Hunter to get drunk?’

 

‘I, I know, right…’

 

‘…Dad.’

 

‘No, but! That’s not what’s important! What I mean is I never abandoned you. Junghyo. Because Dad loves you, because I have to save the world you’ll live in… that’s why…’

 

Recalling my dad, who would fall asleep telling the same story whenever he drank, made me feel that way even more.

 

But I couldn’t rashly say I completely understood Vincent’s situation.

 

Because in the end, my dad came back, and Vincent’s father didn’t.

 

‘I can’t even dare to imagine.’

 

So I picked up the wine bottles placed on one side of the table.

 

There were a total of two wine bottles.

 

Both were the same.

 

‘Grey. Tell me honestly. You hid one more bottle of this, didn’t you?’

 

‘Excuse me? Ah, well, that’s…’

 

‘You were going to feed it to other guests, right?’

 

‘…H-how did you…!’

 

Having seen the wine-making process, I couldn’t help but suspect. Since they couldn’t possibly make only one bottle at a time.

 

Like that, after shaking Grey down completely, there was one more wine bottle I brought.

 

Walk Through Time, Walk… Wine (B)

 

—If you empty the entire bottle, you can go see the past.

 

—Time limit: 3 minutes

 

—Expiration date: 1 hour

 

For reference, this one is in a slightly worse condition than the ‘Run Through Time, Run! Wine’.

 

I placed the wine in worse condition on my side, and the wine in better condition on Vincent’s side, and said.

 

“To express my apologies, I’d like to pour you some wine, is that alright? If you don’t mind, it would be nice if you could listen to my story too. I also have memories of waiting for my father for a long time.”

 

I made a decision.

 

To give him an opportunity to speak directly to Vincent’s father.