## Chapter 289 — The Wish She Keeps Isha opened the door before Thomas finished turning the key. He had enough time to register bare feet in the genkan, pale hair left loose after her walk and the white overshirt protecting the healing tattoo. Then she stepped forward, put both arms around him and held. Thomas’s work bag remained trapped between them. One of his shoes was inside the flat and the other still touched the corridor. Isha made no examination of his eyes, balance or breathing. She did not ask whether the office had been difficult or whether his head hurt. Her cheek rested against his hair, and the pressure of her body carried no instruction beyond staying where he was. Thomas lowered the bag carefully and returned the embrace. The corridor behind him remained public enough that a neighbour could turn the corner. The possibility usually made Isha aware of posture and duration. This evening she appeared willing to let Flat 202’s open door become someone else’s minor observation. After a while, Thomas said, “My right foot is still outside.” “I know.” “The building may interpret this as obstruction.” “The building has tolerated bicycles.” “Not on the second-floor corridor.” Isha’s arms tightened. Thomas accepted that the argument had not improved his circumstances. He moved the outside foot across the threshold. Isha moved with him. He reached behind her to close the door, misjudged the angle because she remained attached and caught the handle on his coat sleeve. The door closed on the second attempt. Isha stayed where she was. Thomas looked down at the top of her head. “Should I understand this as affection or detention?” “Affection.” “No monitoring?” “No.” “No medical concern?” “None.” “Have I done something unusually admirable?” Isha lifted her face. Her green eyes were calm and a little tired after the conversation beside the river. “No.” Thomas considered the answer. “That is reassuring.” He kissed her forehead, then reached for his shoes. Isha allowed him to bend only by bending with him. The arrangement placed her shoulder against his back and one arm around his middle while he untied the first lace. “You could release me for approximately twenty seconds,” he said. “I could.” The hold remained. Thomas removed both shoes one-handed, placed them badly beside the wall and stood. Isha shifted behind him, joined her hands across his stomach and rested her chin near his shoulder. The new position gave him access to the hall. He began walking. Isha followed without separating, her longer stride shortened into small deliberate steps behind him. They moved past the washroom, the two smaller rooms and into the widening LDK as one poorly designed domestic unit. Thomas stopped beside the dining table. “My bag is still in the genkan.” “It may remain there.” “It contains a university document.” “Is the document needed for dinner?” “No.” “Then it is safe.” Thomas glanced sideways at her. “You have adopted Mori’s management style.” “She would have made you put the bag away before leaving work.” “That is true.” The apartment carried late-summer warmth despite the air conditioner. Isha’s overshirt brushed his arm whenever they turned. Beneath it, the transparent film over the tattoo had begun lifting faintly at one corner, still secure but increasingly irritating. Thomas knew better than to touch or inspect it while she was offering something unrelated to care. He walked to the refrigerator. Isha came with him. Thomas opened the door and considered its contents while she looked over his shoulder. Cooked rice from the previous evening. Two portions of chicken and aubergine. Cucumber. Tofu. Half a carton of eggs. Enough stock for soup if neither of them improved the plan into a larger meal. “I intended to make dinner,” he said. “You should.” “This normally involves independent movement.” “Does it?” Thomas took out the rice and passed it backwards. Isha accepted the container with one hand while retaining him with the other. He removed the chicken next. The tofu required reaching lower. Isha followed the movement until her hair fell over his shoulder and into the refrigerator light. “This is not efficient,” Thomas said. “I did not say it was.” “You usually value efficient movement.” “I value this more.” The simple answer stopped his objections for several seconds. Isha had spent the afternoon explaining to Kanno why protection sometimes clung too tightly to him. She had described rooms where Thomas’s comfort became leverage, the Crown Deep, the false death and the damage that taught him to agree before asking what refusal might cost. Now she wanted to hold him without correcting anything. Thomas understood enough not to ask her to justify it. He shut the refrigerator. Isha put the containers on the counter and returned both arms around him before he had fully turned. They travelled together to the rice cooker. Thomas opened it, discovered it empty and remembered that the cooked rice was already in Isha’s hand. “I have been misled by routine,” he said. “You knew the rice was in the refrigerator.” “My body disagreed.” “Your body has held several lives. It may be permitted one incorrect appliance.” Thomas leaned back against her. Isha took the added weight easily, though the gesture was only playful and did not test anything. “Would you like to tell me about the walk?” he asked. “Later.” “Was Kanno all right?” “She cried. She understood enough. She still dislikes Voss.” “That suggests sound judgement.” Isha’s cheek returned to his hair. “She knows why I watch you.” The sentence carried the only summary Thomas needed. He placed one hand over hers at his waist. “Thank you for telling her.” “She needed to know.” “Yes.” They stayed beside the empty rice cooker until the refrigerator issued a quiet warning tone because one container had prevented its door from closing completely. Thomas looked towards it. Isha sighed against him and allowed the domestic unit to separate. He closed the refrigerator properly. When he turned, Isha stepped directly into him again, arms settling around his waist from the front. Thomas laughed once under his breath. “I require both hands for the knife.” “You are heating leftovers.” “The cucumber remains structurally whole.” “It may remain so.” “I had intended a salad.” “You may tear it.” “With my hands?” “You have them.” Thomas looked towards the cucumber. “This is how civilisation fails.” Isha’s mouth moved against his shoulder. They compromised. Thomas reheated the rice, chicken and aubergine while Isha stayed behind him with her hands resting at his hips. He tore the cucumber into rough pieces, which proved less disastrous than predicted, and dressed it with salt, sesame oil and vinegar. Isha released him for the brief use of the knife on spring onion, then resumed contact as soon as the blade returned to the board. The miso soup contained tofu cut into inconsistent cubes because Thomas worked while looking sideways to see whether Isha would attach herself again. She did. By the time dinner reached the table, the mood left by Crownholt had loosened enough for hunger to return. Isha sat beside Thomas rather than opposite him. Her thigh remained against his under the table, and her right hand rested loosely around his forearm between mouthfuls. The food required no admiration. The reheated aubergine had softened farther than Thomas preferred, the cucumber pieces held dressing unevenly, and one tofu cube was large enough to require its own decision. Isha ate everything. Thomas finished first and looked at her hand on his arm. “Do you intend to continue through washing up?” “I had not decided.” “The sink is narrow enough for one person.” “Flat 202 was chosen partly because the kitchen allows two.” “That argument has returned under hostile interpretation.” Isha released him at last. Thomas stood, collected the bowls and discovered her immediately behind him. She carried the cups. “That is ordinary help,” he said. “Yes.” “You are very close.” “Yes.” Thomas set the bowls in the sink. Isha leaned her forehead between his shoulder blades while he turned on the water. He smiled where she could not see. --- The transparent film came off on Wednesday evening. They followed Nagase’s instructions with clean hands, warm water and no spell. The skin beneath was dry, faintly shiny and beginning to flake around the black lines. The surrounding redness had disappeared. Isha washed it gently, patted it dry and applied less aftercare cream than Thomas first believed sufficient. Nagase had warned them that too much product could cause its own problems. Thomas accepted the correction because it belonged to someone who had placed the ink. Cleanse remained excluded from the arm. The rest of the week resumed its ordinary shape. Thomas worked, trained lightly at lunch and left the office on time. Isha handled climbing-centre duties that kept harness webbing away from the healing skin and attended neither judo nor MMA. Kanno completed the annual report, received another replacement table and returned it with a new estimate rather than donating the evening. On Thursday, the first large Tanabata decorations appeared in the photographs people sent from central Sendai. Kanno posted one to their shared thread: a shopping arcade filled with coloured paper streamers descending from enormous ornamented balls. People passed beneath them in both directions, their heads disappearing behind long strips of red, blue, gold and green. Her message followed. **Saturday. Final afternoon. We are going. I refuse to learn about another world only to let you avoid the largest festival in this city.** Thomas answered: **We have lived here through one complete year. Avoidance has not been established.** Kanno replied: **Then demonstrate compliance voluntarily.** Isha looked at the photograph for several minutes. The paper ornaments transformed a covered shopping street into something between forest canopy, woven banners and weather made by hand. Nothing in the image appeared useful in the narrow sense. **Yes**, she wrote. --- By Saturday afternoon, central Sendai had become crowded enough that the station concourse seemed to release people faster than the streets could absorb them. Kanno met them near the edge of the main flow. She wore light trousers, a dark-blue sleeveless blouse and the new black bag whose strap Isha had inspected before purchase. Her hair had been tied back against the heat and had already escaped near both temples. She looked first at Thomas’s face out of recent habit, then caught herself and shifted deliberately to Isha’s arm. The three-line tattoo showed beneath a loose green sleeveless top. The healing skin had stopped shining, though small dry edges remained near one curve. “It looks quieter,” Kanno said. “It is less black than the first day.” “Still wanted?” “Yes.” Kanno nodded and did not turn the question into another discussion of bodies, worlds or permanence. They entered the covered arcade beneath the first streamers. The decorations hung lower than they had looked in photographs. Each central ball carried layered paper flowers, geometric panels, cranes, stars or local designs, with long fukinagashi strips descending almost to head height. Air moved through the arcade and set them swaying in different rhythms. Thomas passed beneath the first cluster cleanly. Isha’s head and shoulders met the outer paper. She stopped as red and gold strips folded around her face. Kanno looked back. “You are being attacked by civic decoration.” Isha emerged slowly, careful not to tear anything. “It has insufficient clearance.” “It has standard clearance.” “Then the standard excludes me.” Thomas lifted a blue strip over her shoulder. “The festival has encountered an exceptional case.” Kanno continued walking before the couple could turn the paper into a planning dispute. Families, tourists and groups of students filled the arcade. Several people wore yukata, though ordinary summer clothes were more common. Children carried small paper stars or sweets on sticks. Shop staff stood near entrances with fans, chilled drinks and festival goods arranged where the streamers left enough room. Isha initially tracked the movement around her with familiar care. The crowd came close from every direction, stopping unpredictably for photographs or to read decoration cards. No single path remained clear for more than a few metres. Thomas stayed at her left. Kanno walked half a step ahead where the density increased, not clearing space for Isha but giving her one known movement among the others. The crowd proved busy rather than threatening. People apologised after accidental contact. Parents pulled children away from oncoming feet. Staff redirected clusters blocking intersections. A man carrying four drinks raised them over his head and announced his route as if moving unstable cargo through a warehouse. By the third arcade, Isha had stopped checking every person who came close enough to touch her sleeve. She began looking up. One decoration used thousands of folded cranes arranged in a colour gradient from white to violet. Another carried painted sea creatures, including an octopus whose cheerful face resembled the key ring on Isha’s work bag. A set farther along had been made from recycled paper printed with fragments of newspapers, maps and packaging. “Those strips contain train times,” Thomas said. Kanno followed his gaze. “Do not attempt to board one.” “The schedule is outdated.” “You identified that from three moving lines above a crowd?” “The departure minute was visible.” Isha looked between them. “Thomas has found administrative archaeology.” They bought iced barley tea and grilled sasa-kamaboko from a temporary stall. The fish cakes came on short bamboo skewers and required no plate. Thomas examined the browned surface long enough for Kanno to warn him that this was food, not a professional consultation. He ate it. Isha chose one with shiso and found the flavour more delicate than the smoke suggested. Kanno selected cheese-filled, then defended the choice before anyone criticised it. They reached a display explaining the seven traditional ornaments used in Sendai Tanabata decorations. The panel showed paper strips for wishes and improvement in learning, folded cranes, paper clothing, purses, nets, wastebaskets and the long streamers overhead. Isha read the Japanese twice. “The ornaments ask for skill, health, prosperity, fishing and careful use of materials.” “Yes,” Thomas said. “All within one festival.” “People rarely want only one category.” Kanno pointed towards the paper clothing. “That one may concern sewing skill.” Isha looked at her tattoo, then at the decorations above them. “Kelda would have preferred metalwork.” “Kelda would have inspected the supports before accepting the symbolism,” Thomas said. Kanno knew enough now to picture the action. “She would also object to the streamers striking Isha’s face.” “She would call it evidence of incorrect measurement,” Isha replied. The memory passed through the three of them without requiring explanation or grief to become the centre. Kanno had never met Kelda. She could still recognise how Kelda would enter a badly designed festival. Near the end of the arcade, a temporary wish station occupied a recessed shopfront. Bamboo branches stood in weighted holders, already crowded with coloured tanzaku. Tables offered narrow paper strips, pens and printed guidance in several languages. No donation or name was required. Kanno changed direction immediately. Thomas saw the sign. “Was this the actual purpose of the outing?” “The decorations were the first purpose. This is the administrative conclusion.” “You have criticised that structure in clients.” “I criticise poor conclusions.” She selected three strips from the remaining colours: dark green for Isha, pale blue for Thomas and yellow for herself. Isha accepted hers. Around them, children leaned over the low tables while adults wrote standing. Wishes covered the branches in different handwriting. Good examination results. Health for grandparents. A successful sports season. Better Japanese. A new job. A pet. Someone had drawn only a cat and several hearts. Thomas chose a place at the end of the table. Kanno moved to the other side and shielded her yellow strip with one hand when he glanced towards it. “That is not how privacy works,” she said. “I was checking whether you needed more space.” “You were reading upside down.” “I can do both.” Isha remained between them with the green strip blank beneath her fingers. She had expected the task to be simple. A wish was only a named desire. She had named desires under far greater pressure: reach Thomas, protect Aelira, find Kelda, hold the road, return home, stop the First Hand, keep the world from ending. On Earth she had chosen work, sport, a dress, a tattoo and a life beside the river. The blank strip resisted because no immediate need stood behind it. Her first thought was that Thomas should remain alive and unharmed through the next passage. The wish was hers in one sense, but its subject was still his body. Kelda should continue safe work and know they lived. Mira, Rowan, Mara, Tessa, Sereth and Ruvan should receive every future page. None of those lives belonged to Isha’s wishes to command. She could ask for victory in a future match that did not yet exist. The idea felt too close to converting enjoyment into proof. She could ask for language, work, strength or skill. Each had already become a road she knew how to walk. Kanno finished writing and capped her pen. When she saw the blank green strip, she did not offer an interpretation of Isha’s difficulty. “You are allowed to be selfish on paper,” she said. “The festival staff are unlikely to prosecute.” Isha looked at her. “What did you write?” Kanno covered the yellow strip more completely. “That question demonstrates why privacy remains necessary.” Thomas had finished too. He placed his blue strip face down and returned the pen to its holder. Neither of them waited impatiently. People moved around the table, wrote, tied their wishes and left. A child abandoned one pink strip after making a mistake and began again on white. Staff collected the discarded paper into a marked box rather than treating the error as failure. Isha looked up at the decorations. Every streamer required skill, planning and support. They also existed to alter the appearance of a street for three days. After the festival, workers would remove them. The paper would not become armour, route markers, reports or evidence of competence. People had made thousands of careful objects whose purpose ended in being seen, moved by air and remembered. She lowered the pen. In Japanese, she wrote slowly: **I want to learn to make something beautiful that no one needs.** The final character sat slightly too far from the others. Isha considered rewriting the strip and chose not to. She turned it over before Thomas or Kanno could read. They carried the wishes to the bamboo. Thomas tied his pale-blue strip first. His knot held without improvement. Kanno attached hers higher, using the reach available to her without requesting help. Isha selected a branch near the outer edge and raised both arms. The tattoo appeared fully beneath her left arm, three black paths against human skin. She tied the green paper beside a folded crane. Wind from the arcade moved it before she released the branch. Kanno stood beside her and looked upward. “Are we sharing?” Thomas turned his strip so they could read it. **I want to stop reviewing every judo throw before I stand up.** Isha read it twice. “That is within your control.” “A wish may still involve work.” “You review events because you want to improve.” “I also review events because the floor has surprised me.” Kanno showed her yellow strip. **I want one Saturday each month when no client can reach me.** Thomas looked at her phone inside the black bag. “You can turn it off.” “That would create Monday.” “Monday already exists.” “Exactly.” They both looked towards Isha. She considered keeping the green strip private. The words did not expose anyone else. They were difficult only because they belonged entirely to her. “I wrote that I want to learn to make something beautiful that no one needs.” Kanno’s expression changed first, interest replacing the humour without becoming solemn. Thomas looked towards the strip moving above them, then back at Isha. “What kind of thing?” he asked. “I do not know.” “Clothing?” “That has use.” “A picture?” “It may record.” Kanno folded her arms. “You are turning uselessness into a specification.” “I need to understand the boundary.” “No. The wish specifically removes that requirement.” Thomas glanced towards a nearby stall displaying packets of patterned origami paper. “There may be an available controlled trial.” Kanno followed his gaze and began walking. The packets contained squares printed with stars, flowers, goldfish, summer fans and geometric patterns. Kanno selected one with goldfish and placed it in Isha’s hand. “This has no assigned destination,” she said. Isha examined the paper. “It can carry a message.” “Not effectively. There are goldfish across the writing surface.” “Messages concerning goldfish remain possible,” Thomas said. Kanno looked at him. “You are undermining the experiment.” “I am preserving valid categories.” Isha bought the packet. They continued beneath the streamers while she held it against her chest with both hands, careful of the healing tattoo and of paper that had not yet been asked to become anything.