Front Desk Diary

My name is Lin Miaomiao. I'm a hotel receptionist, and I've been on the job for five years. On my first day, I walked right into a wife catching her husband cheating. I was the one who'd swiped the room key for him. The wife didn't hit the mistress. She pulled out a calculator and divided up the property on the spot: "The house is mine, the car is mine, and you leave with nothing." The scumbag knelt and handed over his phone, while I secretly recorded everything from the doorway. Don't ask. I needed material for my novel.

My mentor, Sister Wang, has a little notebook full of every guest's secrets from the past twelve years. Her first lesson: "If one person checks in and two stay, the front desk isn't liable." Her second: "This tells you who's safe to mess with and who isn't." The third was the harshest. She pulled out an old photo from 2013. Room 818. A housekeeper had fallen to her death. She was Sister Wang's own sister. The police ruled it an accident, but Sister Wang didn't believe them. She'd been waiting at the hotel for twelve years.

At first, I just wanted to enjoy the gossip, collect material, and write my novel. But the more I learned, the more I realized that behind every closed hotel room door lurked a truth you could never guess. And adultery was only the appetizer. The real main course was the unsolved murder from twelve years ago.

"A king-size room reveals character, a room by the hour reveals human nature. A suite? That reveals your conscience."