A Well-Meant Nuisance

I went to a theme park in Nagasaki called Huis Ten Bosch for work. The person in charge there arranged a room at a luxury hotel within the grounds for our lodging. When I was checking in at the front desk with the young man assisting me, the woman at reception, oddly fidgety, asked, “The room we’ve prepared is our very finest, so please enjoy it. Will one key be all right?”

My assistant and I looked at each other… we’ve been misunderstood, we communicated wordlessly. I couldn’t help firing back, in a rather loud voice, “Two, please.”

Afterward, only upon entering the room prepared for us did I understand why the receptionist had been so fidgety. Every bit of the wallpaper in that room was made up of a red-rose floral pattern—just the thing for newlyweds, no doubt, but for two men to be in this space, it was far too incongruous and unsettling. The thought of sharing this space with him until morning was nothing but agony.

I was made to realize that flowers can, at times, become madness.

But to us, who had endured the torment, a bright morning of checkout arrived, as if a reward. Ever since, that experience of the finest becoming the lowest has become a precious story of mine to tell.