VIRELUX HOTEL

“Black isn’t always black, and white isn’t always white.”

The words were embedded in my mind like a rusted nail. My mother whispered them to me every night, just before reading me an unusual bedtime story—a tale about the fall of the Devil.

Mother said the Devil had once been the greatest of all angels. But his pride led him to refuse to bow before mankind, and God cast him out of Heaven. Yet the Devil did not simply accept his fate. Once he realized there was no way back into Heaven, he made a single request to God.

Immortality.

Until the end of the world.

Vengeance transformed that angel into a monster hungry for corruption.

As a child, I often wondered whether Mother was really telling me a bedtime story—or if she was secretly telling me about herself.

Mother loved Father in a way that made no sense. She worshiped that man like an angel, even though Father treated her horribly.

I remember that afternoon, when I was twelve.

I hid behind the corner of a damp hallway, watching Father lose his temper. The sound of shattering glass struck the floor, mingling with Mother's hysterical screams. A glass flew through the air and struck her squarely in the forehead.

Fresh blood trickled down her pale face.

The reason was nothing new.

Father had another woman.

Mother, who had endured every beating for years, finally broke when she realized that her blind devotion had been betrayed.

Father stormed out, the roar of his car fading into the distance, leaving Mother crumpled on the floor among the shards of broken glass.

I approached her and gently patted her shoulder.

Mother looked up. Her swollen eyes, surrounded by dark bruises, met mine.

She smiled—a smile that was clearly forced.

“Everything will be okay,” she whispered before pressing a kiss to my forehead.

That night, Mother came into my room.

She told me the story of the Devil, just as she had on every night before. But something was different. Her voice was calm.

Too calm.

As if every storm inside her head had finally gone silent.

I fell into a deep sleep in her arms, never knowing that it was a farewell embrace.

The next morning, the house felt unnaturally quiet. There was no smell of toast. No clinking of dishes from the kitchen. I climbed out of bed and walked through the silent hallway toward the front yard.

There, hanging from the cherry tree where I used to play on the swing, I found Mother.

She was no longer crying.

Her frail neck was bound by a rope, her body hanging stiffly as the morning breeze gently swayed her back and forth. She wore white, the fabric moving softly in the wind as though she were an angel about to take flight.

I didn't scream.

I simply stood there, staring at Mother's feet dangling above the ground. My mind suddenly filled with thousands of what ifs.

What if I hadn't turned a blind eye to her bruises all those years? Would she still be alive?

But I was only twelve.

All I could do was stand there frozen until Aunt Jocelyn's scream shattered the silence. People came rushing over. Police officers filled the yard, and they looked at me with pity.

I hated that look.

Father returned half a day later, drunk.

He tried to fight the police, rolling around on the ground like a madman before they finally handcuffed him.

But justice is a joke in this world.

Father received nothing more than probation and a minor fine for domestic violence.

And me?

I was sent right back to the same man who had killed my mother's soul.

The years that followed turned that house into a silent hell. Father continued gambling and drinking until cancer took his life when I was seventeen.

At his funeral, soaked by rain, I simply stood there without a trace of emotion.

No tears.

Only a silent curse in my heart, wishing he would fall into the deepest depths of Hell.

I remained in that dead house until I turned twenty, before finally deciding to leave as far away as I could.I packed my trauma into a suitcase, left that small town behind, and headed for Manhattan.

I thought I could run.

But I had forgotten one thing.

The shadows of the past never stay behind.

They walk beside you.

---

Manhattan wasn't as beautiful as it was in the movies.

To me, the city was nothing more than a collection of towering concrete buildings trying to hide the rot beneath them.

I stood on a crowded sidewalk, letting people in a hurry bump against my shoulders as they passed. My eyes remained fixed on the email displayed on my phone. The subject line was written in glaring capital letters: INTERNAL RESTRUCTURING ANNOUNCEMENT.

My eyes went still as I read through every stiff, corporate-sounding sentence.

I had been demoted.

Not because I was incompetent, but because I didn't have connections.

I was nothing more than an orphan with no influential family name—someone who could easily be pushed aside so the owner's child could bring their friend into the company.

My world was collapsing.

Just like the moment Father had smashed that glass against Mother's head.

That same helplessness came crawling back, tightening around my throat.

“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath.

I walked aimlessly, trying to quiet the noise in my head as it began blaming me all over again. My steps came to a halt at a red light.

There, sitting on top of an unusually clean trash bin, was an elegant brochure with striking gold lettering.

The Grand Virelux Hotel: An Exclusive Celebration.

At first glance, it looked more like a thin folder than an ordinary brochure, folded from both sides like the doors of a cabinet. The paper was thick, its surface smooth beneath my fingertips—not as stiff as cardstock, but not as soft as ordinary paper either.

Flexible, yet surprisingly heavy.

Its color was ivory white, bordered by a thin golden line.

There wasn't much printed on the front. Only the hotel's name, neatly embossed at the top. And beneath it, in small letters:

Open me.

At the center was the hotel's emblem: a phoenix on the left flap and a serpent on the right. The two halves were connected by a small, deep-red seal, joining the phoenix and serpent together in a circle.

Slowly, I unfolded it.

The inside was arranged neatly, almost like a miniature cabinet with several compartments. Each section had its own purpose.

The left side introduced the hotel and featured testimonials from previous guests.

The center listed the hotel's facilities and amenities.

And the right side contained a detailed floor plan of the hotel.

Every word was printed with immaculate precision.

Almost too precise.

There wasn't a single flaw.

It looked less like something printed on paper and more like every letter had been carved into it by hand with impossible precision.

At the bottom was a small line of text: A limited lottery for selected invited guests. An experience that will change your life forever.

On the back was the hotel's address, located in the most exclusive part of the Upper East Side.

I knew the place.

It was somewhere people like me weren't even supposed to step into, let alone stand in the lobby.

I slipped the brochure into my hand. I had never been someone who believed in luck.

To me, luck was simply another word for a trap. But at that moment, I saw it as something else.

A free opportunity to escape.

Maybe this was the universe's way of mocking me or maybe it was simply an escape route—something to distract me from the pressure closing in around me.

My thoughts returned to Mother's story.

The Devil had been granted an extended life because he had asked God for one chance.

And now, this pamphlet in my hands felt strangely similar.

A chance.

I had no money. My position at work had just been taken from me, and I barely had a reason left to stay in my cramped apartment.

I stared at the pamphlet for a long moment. Its expensive texture felt almost absurd against my rough palms.

If I went to this hotel, at least I could experience what it felt like to live as an “angel” before falling back into the depths of Manhattan's poverty.

I slipped the brochure into my coat pocket.

Tonight, I would enter the lottery.

After all...

When would I ever get another chance like this?