And somewhere above him, in Room 207, a shower turned on.

He logged out.

But the sticky note with the password? It was blank now. Just a yellow square of paper.

Arjun looked back at the screen. A new button glowed at the bottom of the dashboard: Below it, in fine print: “Note: Assisting an overdue guest requires manager presence. Please bring the registry key (golden skeleton key in safe #1). Do not accept tea from them.”

The boiler had been wailing for an hour.

Arjun stared at the blinking cursor on the login screen. The old CRT monitor hummed in the back office of the Hotel Estuary , a once-grand dame of a building that now catered mostly to jet-lagged businessmen and the occasional ghost story enthusiast.

Instead of the usual property management system—room occupancy, billing, housekeeping alerts—a single, stark dashboard appeared. It was titled:

He decided not to mention it in the morning log.