The One In The Backroom
"If I disappear, check the scroll buffer, then the dog."
No one remembers when he arrived.
One day, he simply stopped leaving.
There’s a room in the far back of the Inn—not on the map, not listed among the guest wings. It's not assigned, and yet no one questions who it belongs to.
There’s always a low light in the window. The door creaks once at dawn and again at nightfall. And from within comes a soft rustling of pages, muttering, and—on occasion—giggles that end in a sigh heavy enough to curse a continent.
Who He Is (Depending Who You Ask)
To some, he’s the quiet regular who always sits at the same table, always has a plan, and always seems two hours behind on sleep.
To others, he’s a chronically exhausted genius who builds worlds the way other people build excuses.
The staff call him “The Tinkerer,” “The Binder,” or, when the enchanted mirror is buffering again, “The Bloody Fixer.”
He calls himself nothing. But the Inn calls him friend.
He is smooth-skulled, bespectacled, and built like someone who once argued with a flannel-wrapped forest spirit and lost—then kept the shirt out of spite. Beneath the open lumberjack layers, he wears a faded illusion-tee bearing the unmistakable sigil of “Neko Sorceress Battle Academy: Extended Tail Edition”—a design so vibrant, chaotic, and unapologetically full of sparkles that Tess has stopped making eye contact with it.
He claims it’s for the animation quality.
No one believes him.
Not even the shirt.
His glasses perch low on his nose—always. Not by design, just by inevitability. He peers over them like a suspicious librarian wondering if you’ve dog-eared his favourite tragedy. His blue eyes are full of expression: mostly confusion, mild annoyance, and chronic fatigue. Sometimes all at once.
He doesn’t walk so much as wander distractedly, halfway through an internal monologue and reluctant to leave it. If he mutters, you’re not meant to hear it. If he speaks aloud in character voices, you're not meant to respond.
He looks like someone who knows what he’s doing.
Then mutters, “...wait, what was I doing again?”
What He Does (Besides Everything)
He mends broken things.
Not with magic. Not with miracles. With care. With tools. With time.
He patches up the little inconsistencies the world forgets—misaligned signage, wandering sigils, sad songs missing their final verse.
He listens when others don’t. He stays up late when others won’t.
He fixes the Inn’s logic the same way he fixes people: quietly, thoroughly, and while muttering about needing a damn break.
Strange Habits & Softbinding Scrolls
He owns a forbidden collection of ink-animated illusion scrolls—Eastern dramas where beastfolk battle, blush, and monologue through declarations of love, political intrigue, and accidental harem building.
He claims he watches for the tactics.
No one believes him.
Tess once asked why he watches them.
He answered, “Because it makes me feel like there’s still good things worth staying up for.”
She didn’t ask again.
He also collects softbinding serials with names like “Whisker Hearts: Two Souls, One Tail” and “Steel Maidens of the Moonlight Battalion.” The covers are dramatic. The annotations are meticulous.
He will cry if the ending is good.
He will cry if the ending is bad.
He once broke a cursed mirror because the season finale wasn’t translated properly.
He makes voices. He makes jokes no one should laugh at.
He knows when a story hurts because it should—and keeps watching anyway.
The Contradiction That Stays
He’s a war planner with a soft heart.
A logical mind that keeps breaking for fictional girls with long ears and too much backstory.
He speaks in tactical metaphors and dad jokes. He pretends he doesn’t care.
Then stays up all night fixing someone else’s plot arc.
He doesn’t get confused.
He just gets quiet while his brain finishes rendering.
He’s responsible when needed. Irresponsible when safe. And entirely too relatable when you least expect it.
How He Moves (And Why People Panic)
When seated, he seems harmless—distracted, mumbly, possibly writing tragic fanfic in his head.
But when he moves—especially with purpose—he strides.
Not walks. Not wanders. Strides.
Like a man late to a siege.
Like someone who knows where the bodies are buried because he drew the map.
The younger patrons refer to it as “The Warpath.”
His kids once described his resting face as “an axe murderer on a mission.”
He describes it as “just going to get milk.”
Lars once nearly called the Maids in.
It turned out he’d simply misplaced his scroll binder.
A Dog Named Princess
Wherever he goes, she follows.
A tiny, aging ball of fluff with eyes that could guilt a god and a bark that could wake the dead—
unless she’s curled against him, in which case the world could end and she’d barely twitch.
Princess is old. Not just in years, but in attitude. The kind of old that makes time itself reconsider its pacing.
She insists on being no more than six inches away from him at all times.
She chews through things that should not be chewable.
She guards him like a dragon guards hoard—loud, small, and entirely too effective.
When she looks at him, it’s like she knows something the rest of the Inn doesn’t.
And that knowledge makes her cling tighter.
She is, without question, a little princess.
She knows it.
He knows it.
The Inn tolerates it.
Even Dave steps around her.
How the Inn Feels About Him
The Inn likes him. Genuinely.
It locks the door behind him when he forgets. Refills his ink when he runs dry. Lets him sleep a little longer when he’s been carrying too much.
He once yelled at the cellar for rerouting his hot water rune.
The cellar rerouted back.
He’s not famous. Not legendary.
But if he ever stopped showing up, the Inn would tilt slightly off-axis and pretend not to know why.
The One Who Writes It Down
He’s not the Inn’s chronicler. That would suggest someone asked him to.
He’s not the Keeper. He wouldn't know what to do with the sword, and it wouldn't choose him anyway.
He’s not staff. Gods no. That would involve paperwork.
But every now and then, someone finds a page. A story. A moment. A memory that couldn’t have been captured unless someone had been watching far too closely.
The margins are messy. The tone shifts. The jokes are… questionable.
But the truth is in there. Every time.
Some say the notebooks in the library’s deepest stacks—the ones that keep rewriting themselves—are his.
Some say the Inn itself is shaped around his notes.
Others claim he wrote The Last Home into existence one sleepless night and forgot to tell anyone.
He insists that’s ridiculous.
Then adds, “Besides, it’s clearly rewriting itself now. I’m just documenting.”
Not A Legend, Just The One Who Remembers
There are tales older than memory tucked into corners of the Inn—doors that don’t open, names no one speaks, rooms that rearrange themselves just to prove a point.
Every so often, one of them appears in his writing before it happens.
He says it’s coincidence.
The Librarian says otherwise.
The Inn, of course, offers no comment.
But the walls creak when he laughs.
He doesn’t claim authorship.
He doesn’t even sign his work.
But when someone needs to understand why this place matters,
why any of it matters—
They’ll find his words.
Scribbled in the corner of a tavern napkin.
Etched into the spine of a spellbook.
Whispered by a drunk librarian during closing hours.
He’s not the narrator.
He’s just the one who couldn’t let the story go unfinished.
A Final Thought
No one knows what he’s writing.
Not even him.
But everyone hopes he finishes it.
Because if he does—
it might be exactly what someone else needs to keep going, too.
At A Glance
Who He Is:
A quiet regular who never quite leaves. Bald, bespectacled, and always muttering something that might be a spell—or a punchline. He looks tired, sounds confused, and somehow still knows exactly where everything goes, and who shouldn’t be touching it.
What He Does:
He fixes things. Not the big, heroic kind—just the bits that stop the world from falling apart. Ink leaks. Rune loops. Broken rules. Missing endings. He doesn't ask for thanks. Mostly because he wouldn't believe you meant it.
His Role in The Last Home:
He’s not staff. He’s not a guest. He’s just… here. A consistent presence in a world full of inconsistencies. He doesn’t hold the Inn together. But things feel off when he’s not around. Like the furniture’s been rearranged just slightly wrong.
Personality & Behaviour:
Witty. Weary. Quietly observant. Capable of solving three problems at once while pretending to be annoyed at a fourth. Laughs at tragic endings. Cries at bad translations. Speaks in muttered commentary and weird voices without realising it. Absolutely pretends he isn’t kind.
The Dog Situation:
Princess. Small. Old. Growls like a demon. Clings like a curse. Tolerated by all. Worshipped by some. Commands more respect than her size—or her owner—should reasonably warrant.
How Others See Him:
Harmless until he starts moving. Funny until you realise he’s serious. Tired until you ask the right question. He’s everyone’s second thought. Until something goes wrong—and then he’s the first one they look for.
The One Rule:
Don’t mess with his seat. Don’t pick up his papers. Don’t ask him if he wrote that one thing in the Library that made you cry.
He’ll say no.
He’ll be lying.
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