## Chapter 228 — The Names on the Doors Mugi left shortly before dawn. The rain had weakened to a fine steady fall, and the balcony no longer held standing water except inside the green saucer. Isha opened the door and waited beside it without calling. The tortoiseshell cat climbed out of Thomas’s laundry basket, stretched each foreleg separately and crossed the room with no sign that sleeping upon a stranger’s clean clothes required explanation. At the threshold, she stopped. “Wait,” Isha said. Mugi sat. Thomas, carrying the towel they had used to dry her, stopped behind them. The cat remained entirely still while Isha checked the balcony, moved the saucer out of the narrow path and looked through the divider toward the exterior stairs. Only when Isha stepped aside and said, “Go,” did Mugi pass through the door. She crossed the wet concrete, slipped beneath the balcony partition and vanished. Thomas watched the empty space. “Cats do not generally do that.” “She may understand tone.” “She understood two separate instructions.” “Dogs understand many.” “Mugi is visibly not a dog.” Isha picked up the saucer. “Your knowledge of cats may be incomplete.” Thomas looked at the laundry basket. His dark shirt contained a shallow hollow lined with tortoiseshell hair. “My evidence is developing.” Mugi returned that evening and ignored every instruction Thomas offered. She accepted water from him, rubbed once against his ankle and allowed him to touch the back of her neck. When he asked her to remain outside while he carried washing through the balcony door, she walked directly between his feet and entered the flat. Isha looked up from the sofa. “Mugi,” she said. The cat stopped. “Outside.” Mugi turned and went back onto the balcony. Thomas closed the door behind her. “That was the same word.” “Your pronunciation was adequate.” “I was speaking Japanese to a Japanese cat.” “Perhaps she finds you unconvincing.” Mugi sat beyond the glass, looking at Thomas with the composed indifference of an animal whose judgement required no appeal. The matter remained unresolved. --- The power outage changed the building more permanently than the storm damaged it. Before that evening, Thomas and Isha had known the residents mostly as footsteps, names beside doorbells and people whose schedules occasionally intersected with theirs near the lift. Afterward, greetings lasted longer. Someone had seen Isha carry the emergency water. Someone else had eaten Thomas’s improvised noodles. Containers needed returning, and returned containers often arrived holding something else. The Nakaharas sent pumpkin simmered in soy and stock. Saitō returned Thomas’s largest container with pears arranged inside it and denied having bought them specifically. Yoshimura appeared with a printed list of household emergency supplies and asked whether the wording was clear enough for residents whose first language was not Japanese. By the end of August, Thomas could identify several people by their footsteps in the corridor. Saitō Fumiko lived alone in 203. Her husband had died six years earlier, a fact she mentioned while explaining why every account and household contract had once been in his name and was now spread across paper records that disagreed with one another. She used a cane outside the building and avoided it indoors whenever no one was watching. Arakawa Shigeru lived in 305, almost directly above Thomas and Isha. He was seventy-four, widowed, broad-handed and slightly stooped after four decades maintaining railway equipment. His daughter lived near Yokohama and called every Sunday, although his tablet regularly prevented this through updates, forgotten settings or what he described as malice. Fujii Masato occupied 202. He was sixty-eight, unmarried and retired from teaching science at a municipal middle school. He wore ironed shirts even when taking rubbish downstairs and had the attentive, slightly delighted manner of a man who had spent years watching young people discover that the physical world did not care what they had expected. Yoshimura had lived in 105 for eleven years and, as far as Thomas could determine, had been drafted into the residents’ committee because she was capable and had once failed to avoid eye contact at the wrong meeting. She lived alone, worked irregular hours for a local insurance office and knew which residents would reject help unless it appeared to be part of a larger task. Most of the older residents were alone. Some had adult children elsewhere. Some had siblings, former colleagues or neighbours who checked upon them. Their solitude varied from chosen independence to an arrangement life had gradually produced. The building did not treat them as abandoned, but neither did it automatically provide company. Thomas and Isha became part of the spaces between those facts. It began with Saitō’s municipal letter. She knocked on a Sunday afternoon carrying three envelopes, a smartphone and the expression of someone prepared to prove that the documents had initiated hostilities. “I do not need you to complete them,” she told Thomas after sitting at the low table. “I need you to explain why the paper says I may apply by post, but the enclosed sheet says online applications are processed sooner, and the website says I should use an application number that does not appear upon either sheet.” Thomas spread the papers in date order. “That seems like a reasonable complaint.” “It is not a complaint. Complaints are filed separately.” Isha brought tea and sat near the balcony door, where Mugi rested outside in a narrow strip of shade. The cat had begun appearing often enough that the saucer no longer returned to the cupboard. Thomas found the application number beneath a removable grey strip printed to resemble an unimportant part of the page. Saitō stared at it. “They concealed it.” “They would say they protected it.” “From the applicant?” “Possibly from anyone reading over your shoulder.” “No one who steals this letter will be stopped by politeness.” Thomas agreed, but explained the process rather than improving its philosophy. Saitō wanted to apply for a municipal health examination appointment and had assumed online submission would require creating an account. It did not, although the website presented three different buttons before revealing this. Thomas placed the phone between them. “Would you like me to enter it, or would you prefer to do it while I explain?” Saitō looked at him, then picked up the phone. “You explain. If you do it, the machine will remain your acquaintance rather than mine.” She typed with one finger and corrected every error before Thomas could mention it. The process took twenty minutes, mostly because the website returned to the first screen after she paused too long while locating her insurance card. Thomas did not take the phone from her. When the confirmation arrived, Saitō read it twice and took a screenshot after he explained where screenshots were stored. “You are patient,” she said. “I work with forms.” “That is not always the same thing.” She glanced toward Isha, who had been reading while listening to enough of the exchange to understand its progress. “Does he explain everything at home as well?” “Yes,” Isha said. “Sometimes before I have asked.” Thomas continued stacking the papers. Saitō nodded with sympathy directed entirely toward Isha. “A difficult habit in a young man. You should correct it early.” “I have begun.” “She is very diligent,” Thomas said. Saitō ignored him. At the balcony, Mugi stood and placed one paw against the glass. Isha opened the door. “Not inside,” she said. The cat looked past her toward the tea and papers, then sat on the outer mat. Saitō watched this. “Mugi does not obey the woman behind the hardware shop, and she feeds her.” “I do not feed her,” Isha said. “Perhaps she respects deprivation.” “She has reliable food elsewhere. Additional feeding would be irresponsible.” Saitō looked at Thomas. “She explains as well.” “Yes.” “That may be why they remain together.” --- The weeks passed through small requests. Arakawa’s tablet stopped showing his daughter’s face during calls. Thomas discovered that an update had removed camera permission from the application while retaining microphone access, producing conversations in which Arakawa could see his daughter but appeared to her as a grey circle bearing his initials. “Why would it remove only half?” Arakawa asked. “Possibly because the update changed how permissions are handled.” “That is not a reason.” “No,” Thomas admitted. “It is only the nearest explanation.” They sat at Arakawa’s dining table beneath a model locomotive kept in a clear case. The apartment was tidy but contained the accumulated decisions of two people, only one of whom remained to alter them. A woman’s ceramic flower vase stood beside a railway timetable twenty years out of date. Photographs of a daughter at school, university and her wedding occupied one shelf. Nothing appeared preserved as a shrine; it had simply stayed because removing it would also have been a decision. Thomas restored the camera permission, increased the text size and showed Arakawa how to check whether the microphone and camera were active before answering. Arakawa wrote every step in a notebook. “You could take a photograph of the screen,” Thomas suggested. “A notebook does not change its arrangement because a company in California has improved something.” “That is a defensible position.” While they worked, Isha carried a boxed electric fan from the entrance hall to Fujii’s flat. The delivery driver had left it downstairs after finding no answer. Fujii had been on the exterior landing watering a row of plants he insisted belonged collectively to the third floor despite most residents denying responsibility. The lift was working, but the box was long enough to make turning inside it awkward. “I can take one end,” Fujii said. “That would make the lift harder to use,” Isha replied. The fan weighed less than twenty kilograms. She raised the box against one shoulder, kept one hand beneath the lower end and carried it up two flights because the stairs offered more room. Fujii followed, carrying the instruction manual and apologising only once. At his door, Arakawa emerged from 305 in time to see Isha lower the box without allowing the corner to strike the floor. “That is good lifting,” he said. The compliment was directed at technique rather than surprise. Isha looked up with immediate interest. “The weight was not difficult.” “That is why I said lifting, not strength. Most people carry a long load by leaning away from it, then complain about their backs.” Fujii adjusted his glasses. “The strength is also evident.” Isha wore a sleeveless dark top because of the heat. Carrying the box had drawn the fabric more closely across her shoulders and upper back, where lean muscle moved without bulk. She straightened slightly under the assessment. “You train,” Fujii said. “Several things. Judo, climbing and some athletics. Archery as well.” “Your shoulders suggested swimming or throwing. The posture is too balanced for someone who only uses machines.” “I do not use many machines.” Arakawa nodded as if this confirmed a professional judgement. “Good legs too. Not built only above the waist.” The observation remained matter-of-fact, almost agricultural, and stopped well before intimacy. Isha accepted it in the same spirit. “Thank you.” Fujii smiled. “Young people usually pretend not to enjoy being praised.” “I prefer accurate praise to inaccurate modesty.” Arakawa laughed loudly enough for Thomas to hear from inside the flat. He came to the doorway as Isha opened Fujii’s apartment and carried the fan inside. Arakawa looked at him. “You are fortunate.” “I know.” The answer arrived without hesitation, depriving the older man of the opportunity to make it a lesson. Arakawa considered Thomas’s ordinary build, then glanced toward the apartment where Isha was setting down the fan. “Do you train with her?” “We attend judo together.” “Can you throw her?” “Sometimes when she permits the technique to proceed correctly.” “That means no,” Fujii called from inside. “It means judo has rules,” Thomas replied. Isha returned to the corridor. “He has thrown me.” Both older men looked at Thomas with renewed respect. Isha allowed it to last before adding, “During cooperative practice.” Fujii laughed. Arakawa placed one broad hand against his own doorframe to steady himself. Thomas looked at her. “You could have left the first answer intact.” “It lacked context. You value context.” She passed him on the way downstairs, visibly pleased with herself and, Thomas thought, with the earlier praise. Later, when they were alone, he asked whether the comments had bothered her. “No.” “They were looking at your body.” “They were observing evidence of training. Neither attempted to make the observation into ownership.” Isha tied her hair higher from the back of her neck. “Arakawa noticed how I carried the weight before he praised my strength. Fujii identified the wrong sports but the correct physical qualities.” “You enjoyed it.” “Yes.” The admission carried no embarrassment. “In the old world, people often saw an Elf, an escort or an archer before they saw the work inside the body. Here most people see an attractive woman and become uncertain whether saying anything is permitted.” She looked toward the ceiling, approximately beneath Arakawa’s flat. “They were old enough not to be frightened by a compliment.” Thomas leaned against the kitchen counter. “Fujii also said you had good legs.” “He was correct.” “I had noticed.” “That assessment has a different context.” “Yes.” Isha crossed the narrow kitchen and placed both hands upon his waist. “You may continue making it privately.” Thomas did. --- The older women admired Thomas less directly. Saitō asked him to check a message claiming her bank account required immediate verification. Thomas confirmed that it was fraudulent, helped her report and block the sender, then showed her how to open the bank’s real application without following links in messages. Yoshimura asked him to turn the residents’ emergency list into a simple spreadsheet because the previous version existed as a photograph of a photocopy of a handwritten table. Thomas rebuilt it with large text, printable pages and no personal information beyond apartment numbers and volunteered assistance needs. Nakahara’s wife brought him an old laptop that started slowly, displayed seven weather widgets and opened a shopping website every time she launched the browser. Thomas removed several unwanted extensions, updated the operating system and explained why the machine would still remain slow afterward. Each woman remained beside him while he worked. None allowed him to leave without tea, fruit or something wrapped for later. “You make yourself very useful,” Yoshimura said one evening as Thomas tested whether the emergency list printed correctly. “I am trying not to become the building’s unpaid technical department.” “That is wise. Saitō-san has already described you to two people on the fourth floor.” Thomas stopped the printer before it produced a second unnecessary copy. “Described me how?” “As someone who will explain without pressing buttons too quickly.” “That is not an unreasonable service.” “It becomes unreasonable after the fifth person forgets their password and blames you for not knowing it.” Yoshimura checked the printed list. “I told them to ask me first. I will decide whether the problem is urgent, simple or caused by refusing to read what the screen says.” “That appears severe.” “I work in insurance.” The explanation was sufficient. Saitō’s teasing took a more domestic form. She found Thomas alone near the mailboxes one morning, carrying rubbish downstairs while Isha had already left for work. Mugi sat outside the entrance beneath a parked bicycle, cleaning one shoulder. “Your partner works today?” Saitō asked. “Yes. She has the early shift.” “And you have been left to manage the household.” “We divide it.” Saitō inspected the recycling bag. “Correctly sorted. Good. A woman like that should not have to supervise bottles as well.” “Isha does not supervise me.” “No?” “She makes observations.” “Frequently?” “Only when reality requires correction.” Saitō smiled. “You have learned the safe answer.” Thomas deposited the recycling in the appropriate container. “Did your husband have one?” “My husband believed silence was the safe answer. This was sometimes correct and usually too late.” She watched Mugi rise and approach the doors. The cat ignored Thomas’s attempt to keep her outside and slipped into the entrance when another resident opened it. Saitō pointed with her cane. “Your authority is incomplete.” “I have never claimed authority over Mugi.” “A safe answer again.” Isha entered from the exterior stairs carrying a small bag from the convenience store. Mugi stopped halfway toward the lift. “Not upstairs,” Isha said. The cat sat. The resident holding the door looked from Mugi to Isha. “How do you do that?” “I ask clearly.” Thomas folded his arms. Saitō noticed. “He asks clearly as well.” “Mugi does not agree,” Isha said. The cat waited until Isha opened the outer door, then walked back into the morning without protest. Saitō watched her leave. “That woman could make half the building behave.” “Only half?” “The men would volunteer. The women would require reasons.” Thomas looked toward the stairs where Isha had disappeared. “Young couples improve a building,” Saitō continued. “Not because you are young. Youth is noisy and forgets collection days. But it is pleasant to see two people still choosing to return through the same door.” Thomas’s answer took longer than the teasing had. “We have had practice.” Saitō could not know how much. She touched his arm once with the end of her folded umbrella—not intimate, merely enough to bring him back into the entrance. “Then keep practising.” --- By early September, the heat began withdrawing at night. The days remained hot, but morning air occasionally entered the flat without bringing the whole summer behind it. Cicadas grew less constant. The narrow river path gained the first fallen leaves that were not merely damaged by drought. Mugi’s visits became longer. She remained a community cat. The woman behind the hardware shop still fed her, and two other households provided shelter during bad weather. Isha did not change this arrangement. She bought no cat bed, no collar and no food intended to establish their flat as Mugi’s primary home. Nevertheless, Mugi began waiting near the exterior stairs around the time Isha returned from work. She followed Isha to the third floor, sat outside while shoes were removed and entered only when invited. If Isha said the balcony, she went to the balcony. If told to wait outside Saitō’s flat, she remained in the corridor until released. Thomas continued receiving ordinary cat treatment. Mugi accepted his touch when she wanted it. She slept upon his papers, stood upon his laptop keyboard and once bit the corner of a form he had spent twenty minutes completing. She came when he opened the balcony door because the movement might indicate food, shelter or opportunity. She did not come when he called her name unless Isha was already present. One evening, Mugi followed them into Saitō’s apartment while Thomas examined a printer that insisted it was out of paper despite containing paper. “No,” Isha said from the entrance. “Wait outside.” Mugi reversed and sat in the corridor. Saitō looked over the top of her glasses. “That is unnatural.” “She has learned the boundary,” Isha said. “She has learned your boundary. Yesterday she entered while I was carrying soup and refused to move until I stepped around her.” Thomas removed the paper tray and found a small torn corner wedged beneath the feed rollers. “Perhaps she remembers Isha from before.” Both women looked at him. Thomas continued examining the printer. “Not literally. But animals may respond to posture, scent, attention and patterns we do not consciously notice.” “You mean she thinks Isha is an Elf,” Saitō said. Thomas’s hand stopped. Isha’s expression remained calm. “He means my behaviour may resemble something the cat recognises.” “An Elf,” Saitō repeated, amused by a cultural reference she understood only as fiction. “That would explain the hair.” “It would not explain the ears,” Thomas said. Isha looked at him with warning disguised as patience. Saitō laughed and returned to sorting the pages she wanted to print. Later, in the flat, Thomas found Isha sitting on the balcony with Mugi beside her. Neither looked at him when he opened the door. “You enjoyed that suggestion,” he said. “I did not confirm it.” “You also did not reject it.” Isha stroked one finger between Mugi’s ears. The cat’s eyes narrowed with approval. “My body is human. Whatever she senses cannot be elven physiology.” “Behaviour, then.” “Perhaps.” Isha watched Mugi’s ears turn toward a sound below. “Cats lived near several Wood Elf households despite refusing most ownership. They preferred people who did not pursue them.” “That describes you.” “It also describes Elven courtesy toward creatures with knives attached to their feet.” Thomas sat beside her. Mugi sniffed his hand and permitted him to touch one shoulder. “Humans domesticated them.” “Cats dispute the direction of that achievement.” “Another point of Elven sympathy?” Isha smiled. “They are selective, graceful, patient hunters who enter human homes without surrendering independence. The resemblance is not insulting.” Mugi left Thomas’s hand and pressed against Isha’s side. Thomas looked at the cat. “Subtle.” “She values discernment.” --- The neighbours’ requests did not remain entirely digital. When Arakawa replaced a low storage cabinet, Isha helped carry the old one downstairs. It was not especially heavy, but its shape required turning through the stairwell. Arakawa took the lower end until Isha realised his right knee made descending backward uncomfortable. “I can carry it alone,” she said. “It is wide.” “So am I.” She shifted beneath the centre, lifted the cabinet against her back and descended slowly while Thomas walked ahead to keep doors open. Fujii encountered them on the second-floor landing. “You should charge by the kilogram,” he told her. “I have not established a rate.” Arakawa rested against the rail. “She has better shoulders than most men half my age.” Fujii considered this. “Most men half your age do not carry anything heavier than opinions.” Isha laughed. The cabinet remained steady across her back. At the entrance, she lowered it onto the protective sheet Yoshimura had prepared. Her arms and shoulders tightened visibly during the controlled descent, then relaxed as the weight reached the floor. Arakawa regarded the movement with open appreciation. “Magnificent,” he said. The word was too large for ordinary politeness and too sincere to become flirtation. Isha stood a little straighter. “Thank you.” Fujii nodded toward Thomas. “He knows, at least.” “I have received repeated evidence,” Thomas said. Yoshimura emerged from the meeting room carrying labels for the municipal collection service. She looked from the cabinet to Isha, then to the three men. “You have all finished admiring the lifting?” Arakawa showed no embarrassment. “Good work should be acknowledged.” “Yes. It should also not delay the collection form.” She handed the form to Thomas. “You are using our respective weaknesses efficiently,” he said. “I am using available residents.” Saitō arrived with her cane and examined the cabinet. “Still useful,” she said. “Why is it being thrown away?” “One drawer sticks,” Arakawa replied. “So repair it.” “I bought another.” “That was foolish.” Within fifteen minutes, the cabinet had moved into the meeting room rather than the collection area. Arakawa agreed to repair the drawer. Saitō intended to use it for emergency supplies. Fujii produced tools. Yoshimura altered the inventory list. Isha carried it twice more. The second time, she looked at Thomas before lifting. “More evidence?” “I had reached a conclusion some time ago.” “Still accurate?” “Yes.” Her smile remained with her as she raised the cabinet. The older women noticed that as well. When Thomas later helped Saitō attach printed labels to the drawers, she said, “You are not jealous.” “Of the cabinet?” “Of people looking at her.” Thomas placed batteries beneath the correct label. “Looking is not possession.” Saitō considered him. “You answer like an older man.” “I have had an unusual education.” “She enjoys it.” “Yes.” “Good.” Saitō pressed one label firmly into place. “Beautiful women are often expected to pretend praise is either meaningless or dangerous. It may be either. It may also be pleasant.” Thomas looked across the room. Isha stood near the doorway speaking to Arakawa and Fujii about exercise after knee injury. Neither man stood too close. Neither tried to touch the arm whose muscle they had admired. They listened because she knew something and because her presence brightened an ordinary afternoon. “She knows the difference,” Thomas said. “That is why she chose you?” “I think there were additional considerations.” Saitō gave him a sideways look. “You should hope so.” --- The call came on a Tuesday evening while Thomas was helping Yoshimura recover a document she had saved somewhere the computer considered obvious. They were in the meeting room. Isha sat at the far table checking the condition of the emergency water packs while Mugi occupied the chair beside her. The cat had been told not to climb onto the table and, with conspicuous virtue, kept all four paws upon the seat. Thomas found the missing document inside a folder named **New Folder (3)**. Yoshimura looked offended. “I did not name it that.” “The computer may have created the number because two folders already had the same name.” “Then it should have asked me to choose a useful one.” “That would require the software to admit uncertainty.” Isha’s phone rang. The number was unfamiliar but local. She looked at Thomas only long enough to register that he had noticed, then answered in Japanese. “Yes, this is Isha Vaeloren.” Her posture changed during the introduction—not defensive, but formal. Thomas heard the words district public prosecutors office and turned his attention fully toward her without approaching. Yoshimura heard them as well. She gathered the printed pages quietly and moved to the other side of the room, offering privacy without making a display of leaving. Isha listened. “Yes. The police told me the case might be referred to you.” A pause followed. Mugi raised her head. “I understand. I can attend.” Isha opened the calendar on her phone while holding the call against one ear. “Tuesday morning is possible. My shift begins in the afternoon, but I would need enough time to travel.” The caller spoke for longer. Isha’s eyes narrowed slightly, not from confusion but concentration. “You want a supplementary account of the restraint I used.” Another pause. “Yes. I understand that he disputes whether the force was necessary. The station video does not show every part because of the pillar.” Thomas remained seated. His anger did not return in the same form it had held at the station. This was expected work, part of the consequence Isha had chosen when she made the complaint. Expectation did not make the burden fairer. Isha glanced toward him. “My partner may accompany me to the building, but I will give the account myself. Is that acceptable?” The answer appeared to be yes. The caller explained something further. Isha asked for one phrase to be repeated, then confirmed her understanding. “No decision has been made about trial. If the case proceeds and my testimony is required, I may be contacted by the court later.” She listened once more, thanked the caller and ended the call. For several seconds, the meeting room held only the sound of the air conditioner and Mugi’s collarless body shifting upon the chair. Yoshimura did not ask what had happened. “Do you need the room?” “No,” Isha said. “Thank you.” Thomas closed the laptop. “What do they need?” “The prosecutor wants to hear the sequence directly, particularly the second man’s involvement and why I changed from releasing the first man to controlling him on the floor.” Isha placed her phone face-down. “The first man accepts that he held my arm, but says I could have walked away after breaking the grip. He describes the later contact as an attempt to stop me from attacking him.” “Despite following you across the concourse.” “The video shows that.” “And the second man?” “He says he touched your—” Isha corrected herself before the pronoun became distance. “He says he touched my back only to separate us. He denies pulling my blouse.” “The witnesses saw part of it.” “Yes.” She was not distressed. She was tired in advance of explaining force to people who had not needed to calculate it while two bodies acted upon hers. Thomas crossed the room and sat beside her. “Do you want me there?” “At the office, yes. Not answering unless I ask.” “Of course.” Mugi stood upon the adjacent chair and stepped toward the table. “No,” Isha said. The cat stopped with one forepaw suspended above the edge, withdrew it and sat again. Yoshimura stared. “I have lived near that cat for four years.” “She responds to consistency,” Isha said. “She responds to you.” Thomas looked at Mugi, then at the notes Isha had made during the call. “The prosecutor said you may be required as a witness?” “Later, if charges proceed and the court needs me. This is only an interview.” The word *only* carried no dismissal. It marked the current boundary. Yoshimura placed the emergency list into its folder. “If you need someone to receive a delivery or speak to the building manager while you are out, tell me. That is what neighbours are for.” The offer was practical enough to accept without ceremony. “Thank you,” Isha said. They completed the water inventory before leaving. Thomas renamed Yoshimura’s folder **Emergency Committee Documents** and showed her where it was stored. She wrote the location on paper. Saitō was waiting near the lift when they reached the second floor. She held a small bag of plums and appeared unsurprised to find Mugi following Isha down the stairs. “The prosecutor called,” Yoshimura told her. Thomas looked at her. Yoshimura raised one shoulder. “She would ask why you both looked serious. This saves time.” Saitō studied Isha. “Do they need you to go somewhere?” “Next Tuesday.” “Then take the plums. Government buildings rarely provide useful food.” Isha accepted the bag. Saitō looked at Thomas. “You will go with her.” “Yes.” “Do not explain too much.” “I had received similar instructions.” “Good. She is improving you.” Isha’s expression warmed. Mugi rubbed against Saitō’s cane, ignored the older woman’s request to move and followed Isha when she continued upstairs. At their door, Thomas opened the flat while Isha remained in the corridor. Mugi waited beside her without being told. “You did not ask her to stay,” Thomas said. “No.” “Perhaps she understands prosecutorial procedure.” “Cats recognise when humans have made a simple event unnecessarily complicated.” “That would explain their long association with us.” Isha entered. Mugi followed after receiving a small movement of her hand. On the kitchen table, Isha placed the plums beside the appointment details she had written during the call. Thomas added the date to their calendar, leaving enough space around it that the morning did not appear to consume the whole day. Mugi jumped onto a chair and stretched one paw toward the paper. “No,” Isha said. The paw withdrew. Thomas watched the cat settle against Isha’s hip. “One creature accepts your account without requiring repetition.” Isha stroked the tortoiseshell head. “Cats are more advanced.” The slight Elven superiority in her voice was almost certainly deliberate. Thomas left it unchallenged.