## Chapter 230 — The Distance Between Rooms

The first sign that Isha was ill was not the cough. She coughed only once while removing her shoes, a small dry sound turned into her sleeve before Thomas had properly looked up from the kitchen. It might have meant dust from the climbing centre, the cooler evening air or nothing at all. More revealing was the care with which she placed one hand against the wall after standing again. Isha did not normally need walls to confirm where the floor was.

Thomas lowered the knife he had been using on spring onions. “How long have you felt unwell?”

She considered the question as though its wording might allow a more favourable answer. Her work shirt had darkened slightly between the shoulder blades, although the evening outside was cool enough that she should not have been sweating. “My throat became rough during the last hour. I am tired.”

“That is not all.”

“No,” she admitted. “The stairs were less cooperative than usual.”

Thomas crossed the narrow kitchen and touched the back of his fingers to her forehead. She was warm, but not dramatically so. Isha remained still beneath the examination, watching him with the patient suspicion she usually reserved for devices whose purpose had been explained but whose judgement had not yet been earned.

“There is a thermometer in the bathroom cabinet,” he said. “Sit down while I get it.”

“I can retrieve it.”

“You can. Sitting down remains the better use of the next minute.”

That earned him a brief narrowing of her eyes, but she moved to the sofa. Mugi, who had been sleeping on the balcony side of the glass, rose as soon as Isha sat and placed both front paws against the door.

Thomas fetched the thermometer, washed his hands and returned with a glass of water. Isha accepted all three parts of the procedure without argument. The result was 37.8 degrees: enough to explain the stairs and not enough to make the number itself alarming.

“You have a mild fever,” Thomas said. “Probably the beginning of a cold or another ordinary respiratory infection. We should assume you are contagious until it becomes clearer.”

Isha looked at the thermometer. “It is an unimpressive number.”

“The body is capable of producing considerable inconvenience with modest figures.”

She drank half the water, then turned toward the balcony. Mugi had begun making silent demands through the glass, opening her mouth without sound.

“Let her in,” Isha said. “She has already been near me this week.”

Thomas opened the door. Mugi entered, ignored him and went directly to Isha, sniffing first her knee and then the hand resting upon it. The cat’s ears angled forward. Instead of climbing onto the sofa, she sat beside Isha’s feet and looked up.

“She knows something is different,” Thomas said. “Usually she begins by inspecting whether you brought food.”

Isha rested one hand beside Mugi without touching her. “She knows I have returned home.”

Mugi remained motionless, which supported his case more than any further argument would have done.

Thomas returned to the kitchen. Dinner had been intended as grilled mackerel, rice and miso soup, but the smell of fish reached the living room before the pan was hot. Isha’s face tightened almost imperceptibly.

Thomas turned off the pan before it heated. Isha had not objected aloud, but she did not need to; he wrapped the mackerel and returned it to the refrigerator.

Rice was already cooking, and the soup could remain simple. He added more water to a smaller portion of rice once it was done, simmering it until the grains softened into something easier to eat. The result was plain enough that no one could mistake it for a hidden talent: rice porridge with egg, ginger and the spring onion he had already cut.

Isha managed half a bowl. She claimed this was sufficient because her body had not performed enough work to justify more, an argument Thomas rejected on metabolic grounds without turning dinner into a contest. When she began shivering despite the warm room, he found the lighter winter blanket they had not used since spring.

The blanket was stored in the second room beneath two suitcases, Isha’s blue bow case and a box of university papers neither of them had yet decided whether to keep. Removing it required shifting the camping rucksacks, folding one drying rack and temporarily placing a printer in the corridor.

Thomas returned carrying the blanket and an awareness that their spare room had become spare only in the grammatical sense.

Isha had stretched out along the sofa. Mugi sat on the floor beside her head, close enough to monitor her breathing but not touching. The cat moved when Thomas spread the blanket, then resumed her post near Isha’s shoulder.

“You should sleep in the bedroom,” Thomas said. “It will be quieter, and the air conditioner can keep the temperature steady.”

Isha looked toward the closed door, then toward the corridor where the printer had appeared. “And you intend to sleep in the second room after moving its contents through the rest of the flat.”

“The arrangement is temporary,” Thomas said. He had improved access to the floor, though not enough to make her description unfair.

The exchange might have become a negotiation if another cough had not interrupted her. This one was deeper, followed by a wince she tried to disguise by reaching for the water.

Thomas crouched beside the sofa. “The mattress will fit once I move the boxes. I would prefer not to become ill at the same time, and you will rest better without me getting in and out for work.”

Isha’s hand closed around the glass. She disliked practical separation even when she had proposed far harsher versions of it during danger. Thomas could see the old reflex arrive—the calculation of whether she remained capable of reaching him, whether a closed door represented distance or merely architecture—and then settle beneath the smaller facts of the room.

“Leave the bedroom door open,” she said. “And do not sleep beneath the window. You only notice that draught after waking cold.”

Thomas tucked the blanket around her legs. He had noticed it before then, but this was not a useful moment to defend the quality of his observation.

The compromise was accepted. He helped her stand only when she offered her hand, and she made it to the bedroom without losing balance. Mugi followed until Isha stopped in the doorway.

“Not on the bed,” she told the cat. “You may stay outside.”

Mugi sat in the corridor.

Thomas watched her obey. “She understands quarantine better than many humans.”

“She understands me.” Isha lowered herself onto the mattress and closed her eyes. “That is a smaller category.”

By ten, her temperature had reached 38.3 degrees. Thomas checked the ordinary guidance supplied by the clinic after the accident, then called the local after-hours medical advice line because the world contained services for questions that were neither emergencies nor nothing. Isha’s breathing remained normal. She had no chest pain, confusion, severe headache or difficulty drinking. The advice was rest, fluids, simple fever relief if needed and medical assessment if symptoms worsened or persisted.

He wrote the warning signs on his phone, not because he expected to forget them but because anxiety was less likely to invent new ones when given a bounded list.

Cleanse could remove sweat from a patch of skin or residue from a surface. It could not treat infection, lower fever or reveal what was happening inside her body. Thomas knew this already. Knowing did not prevent the old part of him from reaching for Status, Appraise, Minor Heal and every other absent answer before his conscious mind finished naming the problem.

Nothing appeared.

Isha opened her eyes while he sat beside the bed. “You tried to reach for the old answers.”

“Only by habit, and they failed as expected.” Thomas adjusted the cool cloth at the back of her neck. The gesture was ordinary and less precise than magic had once allowed, but she leaned into his hand. “The fever is not dangerous at present. I dislike that I cannot verify more than that.”

“You have verified enough to choose the next action,” she said. Her voice had roughened, and each sentence cost more air than usual. “You used to tell me that certainty was not required for every useful decision. The principle does not become worse because the uncertain person is me.”

Thomas preferred the principle when it was protecting someone else, but arguing that point would only prove hers.

The answer exhausted her. Thomas stayed until her breathing settled into sleep, then moved the floor mattress into the second room.

It fitted only diagonally.

One corner pressed against the desk chair. The other blocked the lower cupboard. If Thomas wanted to leave without stepping over the mattress, he had to turn sideways between the printer and the wall. He could have returned some of the boxes to the corridor, but the arrangement would then obstruct the route to the bathroom in darkness.

He stood in the centre of the room—or as close to a centre as remained—and considered the accumulated evidence of a life that had outgrown the available floor without either of them noticing. Their work bags occupied hooks by the door. Archery equipment leaned beside camping gear. Judo uniforms required drying space. Isha’s climbing shoes lived in a sealed box because no amount of affection made their presence in the bedroom acceptable. Thomas’s university papers had multiplied. The cat did not belong to them, yet a towel, saucer and small brush now belonged partly to her.

None of this made the flat unlivable. It made every function depend upon another function temporarily moving aside.

Thomas slept badly, though not because of the mattress. Every change in Isha’s breathing reached him through the open doors. Twice he woke and found Mugi still seated in the corridor between the rooms, her paws tucked beneath her and her attention directed toward the bedroom.

At three in the morning, Isha called his name.

He reached her before she tried to stand. Her fever had broken enough to leave her damp and chilled, and she wanted the bathroom. Thomas offered his arm rather than lifting her. She accepted, leaning more weight into him than she usually permitted outside deliberate intimacy.

The short walk exposed the narrowness of the corridor. The printer remained on the floor against one wall, the folded drying rack against the other. Thomas had to move ahead, clear the path and return to her while she waited with one hand upon the bedroom frame.

“This is poorly arranged,” Isha said as she waited for him to clear the corridor. “The flat was designed by people who assumed every room would keep one purpose.”

“That may have been optimistic.” Thomas returned to her side, and she rested against him on the journey back to the bedroom.

At the bedroom, she looked toward the mattress visible through the second doorway. “You cannot sleep there for several nights.”

“I can.”

“You can also sleep beneath a wagon. That does not make it a suitable home.”

Thomas helped her sit and waited until the dizziness passed. “We are not choosing a new flat at three in the morning.”

“No,” Isha said. “We are identifying a defect.”

Even ill, she sounded satisfied by the distinction.

---

The next day belonged to tissues, warm drinks and the slow distortion of time produced by fever.

Isha called the climbing centre herself shortly after opening. She explained her symptoms, apologised once and stopped when Ishikawa told her not to apologise for staying away while contagious. Thomas took annual leave rather than attempt to work from the kitchen while monitoring her. Mori’s reply contained no objection, only a reminder to log the absence correctly when he returned.

By mid-morning, Saitō knew.

Thomas had not told her. Yoshimura had seen him taking a rubbish bag of used tissues downstairs while wearing a mask, and the building’s information network required no formal committee once supplied with adequate evidence.

Saitō left a thermos of barley tea, a packet of throat sweets and two pears outside their door. Her message instructed Thomas not to return the thermos until it had become inconvenient, which he interpreted as permission to wait several days.

Yoshimura sent a shorter message asking whether they needed groceries. Arakawa offered a portable humidifier, then withdrew the offer after Thomas explained that they already owned one. Fujii sent an article about respiratory humidity whose abstract was more useful than its conclusion.

Isha read the messages from bed. “They mobilise quickly.”

“You carried half their furniture and emergency water,” Thomas reminded her.

“That was different. I was well enough to be useful.”

Thomas peeled one of Saitō’s pears over a bowl. The skin came away unevenly because the knife was small and the fruit softer than expected. “Neighbourhood reciprocity appears not to depend upon whether the recipient is impressive at the time.”

Isha watched his hands. Illness had stripped some of the usual sharpness from her face, leaving her pale and younger-looking until she spoke. “I do not object to the help. I object to being unable to repay it today.”

“You are proving Saitō’s birthday message remained necessary.”

That silenced her longer than argument would have done.

Thomas divided the pear and placed half beside the bed. Isha ate slowly, then surrendered the plate with two pieces left. Mugi had been admitted to the flat after the rain began, but Isha’s bedroom rule remained in force. The cat sat outside the threshold, moving only when Thomas passed with water or medicine. She had ignored every toy and most of the food he offered.

“She is waiting for permission,” Thomas said.

Isha opened one eye. “Mugi.”

The cat stood.

“You may come to the doorway. Not the bed.”

Mugi advanced exactly as far as the wooden threshold and lay down across it.

Thomas looked at the cat, then at Isha. “That cannot be normal.”

“I am ill. You should avoid distressing theories.”

“Mugi is the distressing theory.”

Isha’s mouth curved faintly before she closed her eyes again. The humour did not continue; sleep took her within minutes.

Thomas sat at the desk in the second room while she slept. He answered only urgent personal messages, moved the printer back onto its shelf and began sorting the boxes that had prevented the mattress from fitting properly. Most contained objects they had inherited rather than chosen: duplicate cables, old course materials, stationery, two small appliances and a set of curtains that did not fit any window in the flat.

He could have discarded much of it. Space would improve through subtraction before it required money.

Yet even an emptied room would still need to serve as office, storage, guest space, drying space and emergency bedroom. The flat had been adequate for two recorded students whose lives were represented by photographs and possessions. It was less adequate for two working adults accumulating equipment, routines, friends and the possibility that ordinary life would continue expanding.

Thomas opened a property website, then closed it before searching.

Looking while Isha was feverish would turn a practical thought into a unilateral plan. He returned to the boxes and labelled one for donation.

Her fever rose again that afternoon but remained below the previous night’s peak. She took the recommended medicine, slept, drank and complained that being human involved too many fluids moving in the wrong directions.

“You were not immune to illness before,” Thomas said from the chair beside the bed.

“No, but this body produces congestion with unnecessary enthusiasm. Elven illness was not more dignified; we were simply less inclined to describe it to humans.”

Thomas handed her another tissue, accepting that Wood Elf reserve had probably improved several human misconceptions.

She accepted it with a look that would have carried more authority if she had not immediately sneezed.

By evening, Thomas’s own throat felt suspicious. He tested himself, found no fever and decided that awareness had become unreliable through attention. They ate separately but in sight of one another: Isha in bed with another bowl of porridge, Thomas at the small kitchen table with the mackerel he had postponed. He opened the bedroom door fully so conversation did not need raised voices.

The distance between them was less than five metres. The arrangement still felt larger because the walls divided sight into angles.

“I dislike this,” Isha said after a while.

“The porridge?”

“The separation.” She set down her spoon. “Not because I think you should risk becoming ill. I understand the reason. I dislike that the flat turns a sensible distance into exile.”

Thomas looked from the table toward her. The bedroom allowed only a narrow view from where he sat: one side of the bed, the lamp and the edge of her pale hair against the pillow. “The second room does the same thing. It exists, but only after several other purposes are displaced.”

“When I am well, we should look.”

“For a different flat?”

“For what different flats cost, first. Looking is not moving.”

Thomas had expected to be the one who delayed the idea. Instead he found himself measuring the relief contained in her phrasing. No decision was required. They could examine a possible future without promising it would arrive immediately.

“We should calculate what remains after rent, transport, savings and the costs we have not yet encountered,” he said. “My contract is fixed-term. Your hours are regular but not full-time. Moving also requires deposit, fees and replacement costs that listings tend to treat as details.”

Isha listened without impatience. “Then we learn the details. If the answer is not yet, it remains an answer. We will look when I am well and when you stop imagining symptoms because I coughed near you.”

Thomas noted that he had checked his temperature three times rather than four. The correction did nothing to improve Isha’s assessment of him.

---

The cold lasted four days.

On the second, the fever eased but left Isha weak enough that showering required the small plastic stool from the bathroom. Thomas waited outside rather than inside, listening for any change in movement and answering when she called for a clean towel. Cleanse might have removed sweat from exposed skin, but using it would not replace washing, warmth or the ordinary comfort of water. Isha preferred the shower once she could manage it.

On the third day, she moved from the bedroom to the sofa and remained there without claiming recovery. Mugi climbed into her lap only after permission and slept with her head pressed against Isha’s abdomen. Thomas was allowed to stroke the cat twice before Mugi repositioned one paw over his fingers and made further contact inconvenient.

Saitō visited the open doorway while wearing a mask. She did not enter. After confirming that Isha’s fever had gone, she told Thomas he looked more tired than the patient and left another container whose contents proved to be simmered pumpkin.

“You are popular when I am ill,” Isha observed after the door closed.

“They believe I require supervision.”

“They are correct.”

Thomas carried the pumpkin to the refrigerator. Isha’s defence was that three days of instructions from bed had merely preserved household standards.

The exchange ended there because Isha’s attention had already shifted to the balcony, where the first dry leaves were moving along the concrete in the afternoon wind. Summer had receded while they were indoors. The air entering through the narrow opening smelled cooler and faintly of damp soil.

On the fourth morning, Isha woke hungry.

This was the first symptom Thomas trusted more than the thermometer. She ate rice, miso soup, egg and half of the pumpkin, then stood at the balcony door while Mugi drank from the green saucer outside. Her posture had not fully recovered; one shoulder rested lightly against the frame. Yet the stillness was chosen rather than imposed.

“I could work tomorrow,” she said.

“You could, but whether you should depends upon your energy this afternoon and what Ishikawa says.”

“I will ask rather than announce,” Isha replied. The formality showed that she recognised his approval before he expressed it, and the look she gave him made clear that she also knew why.

Thomas would have preferred another teaching method.

She crossed the room and leaned into him, resting her forehead against the side of his neck. Thomas held her without testing her temperature. The habit had become unnecessary, and continuing it would have turned care into inspection.

“I am still tired,” she said, “but I also want to leave the flat.”

“Those conditions can coexist. We can walk to the river and turn back at the first bench.”

They went out near noon. Isha wore a mask and moved at a pace that would once have seemed absurdly slow for her. Thomas did not comment on it. The river path had begun collecting yellow leaves beneath the cherry trees, and the light no longer struck the water with summer’s hard white glare. They reached the first bench, sat for ten minutes and returned by the same route.

The outing exhausted her, but it also marked the end of confinement. That evening, they opened the property website together.

---

Thomas connected the laptop to the larger screen because floor plans became more honest when enlarged. Isha sat beside him at the low table with a blanket around her shoulders, not from fever but because the evening had cooled. Mugi occupied the sofa and regarded the exercise as less important than the folded laundry beneath her.

They began with their current district and immediately discovered that listings could make three photographs and a diagram perform the work of optimism. Rooms appeared wide because the camera had been pressed into a corner. Balconies were described as generous when they held one air-conditioning unit and half a drying pole. “Ten minutes from the station” sometimes meant ten minutes for a person without shopping, rain, traffic lights or human knees.

Thomas explained the recurring charges and initial fees only when they mattered to a specific listing. Isha asked about each category until she could distinguish rent from management fee, deposit from key money and an agency charge from the cost of changing the lock. She did not treat the system as incomprehensible; she treated it as a culture that had found several names for the privilege of beginning to pay.

“This flat costs more before we enter than several months after,” she said. “The owner receives money because we are grateful to rent it.”

“That is the traditional explanation for key money, although not every property requires it.”

Isha read the total again and concluded that the tradition favoured the owner. Thomas could not dispute that many durable traditions did. They rejected the listing.

A cheaper apartment farther from the centre had two genuinely separate bedrooms and a larger kitchen, but the journey to Thomas’s workplace required two transfers. Another stood close to Isha’s climbing centre but was on the fifth floor without a lift. She did not object for herself; she pointed out that Saitō would never visit and Arakawa would pretend he could manage the stairs.

Thomas had not included the neighbours in his first calculation.

“You expect them to visit?” he asked.

“If we remain near enough. A larger home that removes us from everyone we know would solve one problem by creating another.”

Thomas looked at the map. Their current building sat within a network that had become visible only after the outage: Saitō below, Arakawa above, Yoshimura near the entrance, Fujii across the landing, the hardware shop, supermarket, river and routes they no longer needed to check before leaving. None of those ties were permanent, but they were real enough to affect distance.

“We should search within the same part of the city first,” he said. “Not necessarily the same streets, but close enough that moving does not erase the life around the flat.”

Isha drew the laptop closer and adjusted the map radius.

Their requirements accumulated slowly. Two rooms that could remain usable at the same time. A kitchen with enough counter space that opening the refrigerator did not interrupt whoever stood at the sink. Storage for archery, judo, climbing and camping equipment. Good ventilation. A bathroom that did not require laundry baskets to migrate whenever someone showered. Access to transport without turning either commute into a daily expedition.

Thomas added a maximum rent based upon their current income and a conservative savings target. The result reduced the available listings sharply.

“That is less discouraging than I expected,” Isha said. “There are still options, although several appear to have stains on the ceiling.”

“The photographs may be old.”

“That does not improve the argument.”

They saved three listings for comparison rather than because any had become a plan. One was an older building with a broad kitchen and unfashionable rooms. Another offered less space but better transport. The third sat near a small park and had enough storage to keep the second bedroom from becoming a corridor with paperwork.

Isha examined the third listing for longer than the others.

“Pet consultation required,” she read.

Thomas followed her gaze toward Mugi. The cat had abandoned the laundry and moved onto the floor beside Isha, where she sat with her tail wrapped neatly around her paws.

“Mugi is not our cat,” he said. “She belongs to the neighbourhood without belonging to a household.”

“I know that.” Isha returned to the listing and enlarged the balcony photograph. “A future building should not forbid a possibility merely because the possibility has not chosen us.”

Thomas considered the sentence. It applied to more than the cat, though neither of them needed to name every future that might require room.

He added **pets permitted or negotiable** to the search criteria, and the listing count dropped again.

Mugi stepped onto Isha’s thigh, crossed the small space between them and settled partly across both their laps. She accepted Thomas’s hand upon her back without preference or objection, then placed her head against Isha.

They did not contact an agent that night. Thomas’s contract still had months before renewal became clear, and Isha had only recently established regular work. The current flat remained affordable, familiar and adequate once no one needed to sleep diagonally among boxes.

They sorted one more container for donation and returned the floor mattress to the cupboard. Thomas moved the printer permanently onto a higher shelf. Isha labelled one empty space for nothing at all, refusing to let storage expand immediately into whatever room they recovered.

Before bed, Thomas saved the housing search beneath a neutral name rather than **Future Home**. Isha changed it while he was brushing his teeth.

When he returned, the folder read **More Room**.

She was already beneath the blanket, still tired but no longer feverish. The bedroom door remained open. Across the hall, the second room contained a visible rectangle of clear floor where the mattress had been.

Mugi sat within that empty space for several minutes, as though testing whether it would remain available. Then she crossed the corridor, waited for Isha’s permission and settled outside the bedroom threshold.

The flat had not grown, but for the first time it contained a place they had deliberately left open.