Sen Getsusa stepped from the bathroom wrapped in a towel, barefoot.
A trail of palm-sized footprints was left across the floor.
Wet hair clung to her cheeks, steaming faintly.
She wrapped herself tightly in a dark-green robe—
Like a mermaid hiding in seaweed she glided to the bed and sat, hand on the bedpost.
Two taverns stood on this street; she often caught the rich scent of liquor drifting through the window.
Evening fell; the roar of machines and vehicles softened. Laughter of men and women mingled, punctuated now and then by a young woman's playful shriek and the nightingales' song piercing the dark.
She had arrived across dimensions only days earlier and had to make do with a rented room as a temporary base.
The house belonged to an elderly widow—because of Sen Getsusa's age the white-haired lady in black-rimmed glasses asked about her family and whether she needed help. Perhaps because the girl paid promptly, she kindly helped buy some daily necessities.
In this era the layout was the common multi-storey row-house style. Steps rose from the pavement to the front door; you climbed to enter the ground floor.
Past the entry porch and dining room were the Master's chambers and parlors.
The rooms were furnished with old pieces that evoked the Empire's heyday decades earlier. Bookshelves wore thick dust; boards creaked at a touch.
A stair in the hall led to the second floor, where the finest rooms lay—Sen Getsusa's chosen bedroom among them.
The drawing-room took up most of the floor, partitioned by arches into two or three areas; clearly the previous owner had used it as a music room—a heavy brownwood round table stood surrounded by comfortable settees, chairs, a piano, and a crooked coat-rack by the door.
In a corner she noticed several sheets of forgotten, scrawled manuscript music.
Beyond lay the parlor and bedroom, and farther in, a balcony spacious enough to run on.
At dawn you could set out a high-back lounger, sip hot tea while sunlight pierced the morning mist and slowly bathed you. Watching the busy street below, take a sip, bite into a buttery biscuit... ~( ??? )~ pure lazing!
Of course the balcony had been like this when she moved in; any 'love of comfort' was the previous tenant's fault.
She was merely the inheritor and mover of that laziness.
Along the balcony's edge stood pot after pot of plants—cosmos, roses, all kinds of blooms; a faint floral scent greeted you if you stepped close.
Among the flowers only one pot held a withered plant.
Its greenish stem stood crooked, head drooping.
The stem split in two after breaking the soil.
It spread a little left and right, then joined again at the tip, forming a diamond ◇ shape.
On either side Heart-shaped leaves hung limp; no flowers, the whole plant looking listless.
Sen Getsusa had never seen such a plant.
A rhombic stem... Heart-shaped leaves?
Out of curiosity she asked the landlady—the old woman clearly cared little for anything that couldn't be turned into cash and waved it off: throw it out or do whatever, the previous renter had left it.
Sen Getsusa left the plant alone, giving it a little water mornings and evenings, following a 'make-do' principle to keep the half-dead thing from dying by her hand.
Then, not long ago, the 'little diamond Heart' came back to life!
Yes—Sen Getsusa crouched by the pot, big eyes fixed on it, staring for the longest time—
It had definitely come back to life.
The entire rhizome, shaped like a diamond, seemed a bit more spirited; the Heart-shaped leaves began to stand upright, stretching upward, their tips tinged with faint pink veins.
Do I actually have a gift for growing flowers?
Days ought to pass just like this—plain and unhurried. The girl stayed busy buying, busy trying on all sorts of pretty little dresses and frilly frocks.
Maybe in a few days she could even call on those famous painters and writers who once lived in the Source World—and who might exist here as well.
She could savor every charm this era had to offer.
At long last she'd landed in a normal World free of strange magic and inhuman beings; consider it a vacation.
—Until yesterday, when she gloomily realized her happy days were probably gone for good.
That suspicion surfaced after she ruled out a burglar; after all, no thief would sneak in just to steal a fork.
Yes—one of the forks from her kitchen had vanished without a trace.
Just an ordinary metal dining fork.
Sen Getsusa noticed its absence not because she had some memory quirk or hyperthymesia… there had simply been only one fork.
(╯‵□′)╯︵┻━┻
A green-lacquered drawer with brass pulls: inside lay a gleaming spoon and pair of chopsticks, and the single fork Sen Getsusa had recently bought.
Now it was gone.
Sen Getsusa scanned the countertop.
There, along the edge of the cabinet, a line of tiny footprints stretched into the distance—
Very small, each no bigger than a fingernail.
Only because the intruder had stepped through a puddle of water did the trail become visible.
She quietly shifted two ceramic decorative trays; in the wall appeared a hole half a finger wide.
Pitch-black, leading who-knew-where.
So… after the blond punk flyer and the capitalist witch, was she now fated to keep bumping into the Tontatta Tribe?
Sen Getsusa brushed a footprint with her fingertip, hesitating over whether to disturb such a fantastic creature.
Were they friendly, or…?
She opened the overhead cupboard; among the rows of glass spice jars, the sugar jar's lid was slightly ajar.
As if something had tugged it open with force.
They ate human food and hid inside human homes?
She slid the trays back, covering the hole.
After a moment's thought she calmly set out two white sugar cubes in plain sight, filled a teacup with drinking water, then tiptoed upstairs in her bathrobe.
Behind the trays, a red figure flitted past the dark opening.
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