Blake was back in the hall and before thinking about what to do next, a well-known brown-haired girl caught his eye.
"Hehe, I see you took a long time in the bath, now come with me." Like deja vu, Blake again was dragged against his will where no one could hear him screaming for help. Without exaggerating too much, they both ended up at what appeared to be a small counter, Sakuya took a seat and motioned for Blake to do the same. "Well, once you tried the baths at the inn, you must have realized the quality of our work and that if you don't rent a room, it will be a regret that will haunt you for your whole life, and it won't let you sleep at night thinking in the opportunity that left your hands."
Blake felt that comment was too specific as if what Sakuya had just said could really happen.
"Our rooms have the latest magical artifacts incorporated for the comfort of our guests, the furniture in each room has been imported from the most exotic places in the world, and our food is made by the best chef in the empire, not to mention the cute girls who take care of customer service. So, have you made up your mind? What is your name for the reservation?"
"Actually... I already have a place to live." Blake was a little nervous, he had felt a bit pressured by all the characteristics of what seemed to be the best inn in the world and he wondered if everything Sakuya said was true.
"Huh! What do you mean... Wait... Hmmm..." Sakuya jumped her face very close to Blake's, and Blake could see carefully the delicate features of her face as well as her huge pink eyes, and he was about to ask something when Sakuya spoke again.
"That blonde hair, those blue eyes, those clothes that would surely sell for a fortune to the highest bidder." Blake felt like some kind of merchandise as Sakuya analyzed it carefully, he felt a typical need to flee when he met new people from this town, but in the end, it was not necessary. "Ah, you are that boy who moved to the Sharance tree, right?"
"Yes, that's me."
"Hehe, my intuition never fails! My name is Sakuya, nice to meet you!"
"I am Blake."
"Sigh... It ended up being a bit disappointing..."
"Excuse me?"
"I thought I could rip off-, I mean, get a new customer. If you didn't live in the tree, you could have stayed at the inn, it would be a win-win relationship!"
"I-I guess that's true."
"Hmm, maybe if I talk to Shara later..." Blake thought he heard something disturbing but decided it was best to ignore it. "But if you want to start living at the inn, you can always do it, hehe."
"I appreciate the suggestion..."
"Well, since the inn business failed, it's time to promote my own." Sakuya didn't seem to have lost her merchant spirit at any point, and when he least expected it, Blake was surprised by what happened. Sakuya had pulled a rope that was next to her and after that, it could be seen many pieces of colored paper fell and a kind of sound like trumpets sounded as a cloth fell from the ceiling with some words on it.
"Ta-chan! Welcome to Sakuya's gift shop!... Affiliated to the Miyako inn." She said that last with little enthusiasm. "Would you like to buy something?"
"I don't know... Maybe, I'm not really sure..."
"Well, if you're not buying, you can always watch! After all, watching is free!"
'Maybe I should...'
"But a lot of people end up buying something after looking, so I recommend that you carry a lot of coins on top of you!"
"Before that... What exactly are you selling?"
"Hehe." That laugh didn't inspire much confidence. "It's called a gift shop for a simple reason. I sell all the gift's that I have brought from my travels, I have from strange minerals to things that even I do not know what they are, if you are looking for anything, you may find it here. What do you say? Are you interested?"
"I see, it sounds very interesting."
"Of course, in the future, everyone will know about my business and I will bathe in lots of gold, hahaha!" Sakuya had entered a kind of dream, and it seemed that her pupils had taken the form of coins. "Oh, I'm sorry about that. Just imagining it feels like I'm escaping from reality."
"I understand..."
"It doesn't matter, since it's your first time here, I should give you a juicy offer... I know, this will totally depend on your luck!" Blake did not like the direction this was taking, but he did not see a way to escape without ending up unscathed in the process. "For just a hundred coins you can lose everything or make unimaginable gains, would you like to take a chance?!"
Blake wanted to decline, but something inside him couldn't help but feel like he should get the money out of him and let fate do its thing. Even he was surprised when he took the 100 coins from his inventory and placed them on the counter, but for some reason, an emotion emerged from within him.
"Let's do it!"
"Hehe, I like your attitude. Well, thank you for your purchase, now you can choose only one." In that, Sakuya placed 3 medium boxes on the counter, each one of different color and aesthetics, one was brown with what appeared to be pieces of herbs and flowers, another was made of intense reddish color and around it was covered with what seemed to be hair and the last one was white with nothing else in it. "The situation is as follows, you can choose one of these boxes and take its content, simple, right?"
"What's the trick?" Blake wasn't quite sure; he didn't know what was inside them and the peculiar image of the boxes only confused him more.
"There is no trick, you see, these are called mystery boxes, each one of them has something inside it, but nobody knows what is actually inside them, they appear randomly all over the world for some reason and within them, there may be an infinity of things, from a piece of junk to a diamond. I have obtained these three in recent years, but I have not wanted to open them, there are rumors that there are times that demons appear inside them, but they are only legends that adults tell their children, although it is never bad to prevent, hehe." With that simple explanation, Blake felt a great curiosity that he had to satisfy, he had already lost his coins in it, so he only had to believe that the goddess of luck was still with him.