## Chapter 374 — The Good Kind of Late Saturday, 20 November was not Isha's birthday. Kanno established this within thirty seconds of entering flat 202. “You turned twenty-six twelve days ago.” “I know.” “Then this is not a birthday party.” Isha looked at the small bakery box in Kanno's hands. Kanno followed her gaze. “This is unrelated.” Thomas took Kanno's coat before the argument could acquire evidence. Outside, the morning had been cold without quite becoming winter. The first breath beyond the building entrance had shown faintly, but the pavement remained dry and the trees along the road still carried enough late leaves to make December seem farther away than it was. Kanno changed into guest slippers and carried the incriminating box towards the LDK. “I was told there would be lunch.” “There is lunch,” Thomas said. “That can also be unrelated.” “It is becoming difficult to identify what event brought you here.” Kanno set the cake on the table. “You invited me.” That survived every objection. Isha closed the door behind them. Her actual birthday had been Monday the eighth, the morning after they returned from Miyato. It had contained work, messages, tea and a small cake Thomas had bought rather than turned into an exercise. They had both been tired from the honeymoon in the pleasant way of people who had walked too far by choice and come home with laundry. Nothing about the day had required another event. Then another week had happened. Work. Training. The final preparation of a Common page. Monday's passage. And after Monday, very little had behaved according to the categories they had possessed before it. So the first Saturday on which Kanno came to 202 after all of that had acquired cake. Isha was willing to permit the terminology to remain disputed. Lunch was deliberately difficult to turn into a performance. Thomas had made chicken and mushroom rice, miso soup and roasted kabocha. The rice had required timing but no architecture. Kanno inspected the table as though searching for hidden courses, found none and accepted a bowl. “You have shown restraint.” “I routinely show restraint.” Isha sat opposite her. “He has been informed that there is already cake.” “I brought cake because I know him.” Thomas put the rice paddle down. “I was not going to make dessert.” Both women looked at him. He reconsidered the sentence. “I had not yet decided to make dessert.” Kanno nodded. “That is why I brought cake.” The meal moved away from birthdays after that. Kanno's work had produced another request for a file described as final and then changed twice before noon on Friday. Thomas's office had reached the point in the semester when students who had ignored several routine notices began discovering that routine notices could eventually become deadlines. Isha described a child at the climbing centre who had spent fifteen minutes refusing every route offered to him before choosing an easier traverse for reasons none of the adults present had successfully identified. “Did he finish it?” Kanno asked. “Yes.” “Then perhaps he identified the correct reason.” Isha considered that. “Possibly.” Thomas watched the exchange over his soup. For nearly twenty minutes there was no other world. That was useful. Not because the other world needed to be kept away, and not because what had happened on Monday could be made smaller through domestic routine. It was useful because rice cooled if left alone, Kanno still hated clients who moved text after approving it, and Isha could be interested in a seven-year-old's unexplained route choice while knowing that a photograph of her mother now existed six metres away in the flexible room. The three facts did not compete. After lunch, Thomas cleared the bowls while Kanno tried to help and was ordered to carry only the tea. “This is a birthday gathering now?” she asked. “No,” Isha said. “Good. Then I do not have to obey birthday privilege.” “You have never obeyed birthday privilege.” “That is because it encourages abuse.” The cake remained unopened. Thomas put water on for another pot of tea and looked towards Isha. She had gone quieter. Not distressed. Kanno noticed that difference now. There had been a time when any change in Isha's expression around the other world made Kanno wait for Thomas to interpret it. Months of friendship had removed that habit. Isha was simply deciding where to begin. “We have something to show you,” she said. Kanno's gaze moved briefly towards the locked correspondence storage. Thomas saw it. “Not the page archive.” “All right.” No disappointment. No automatic claim. That remained one of the reasons they could show her more. Isha stood. “The thing Ian arranged.” Kanno put down her cup. “The gift?” “Yes.” They had given Kanno only the shortest version during the week: Monday's passage had worked; Thomas had recovered normally under protection; something unprecedented had followed; both of them were safe. Kanno knew enough not to ask for the explanation over messages while either of them was at work. Now Isha went to the flexible room and returned carrying a book. Kanno stood before she seemed aware she had done it. The album was not large. Its pale wooden boards caught the weak November light from the balcony doors differently from anything mass-produced in the flat. Muted forest-green cloth covered the spine. Nothing had been stamped into the cover. No title, crest or decorative claim explained what it was. Isha laid it on the table. Kanno did not touch it. “That came from there?” “Yes.” “Through the monthly passage?” “No,” Thomas said. The distinction arrived before anything else. He brought his correspondence notebook from the office but left the locked archive where it was. One page contained Monday's Earth-side log in his handwriting. **15 NOVEMBER 2027** **20:17 — protected passage** Beneath it were the send and receipt counts, recovery time and the familiar final status: **16 OUTGOING / 14 INCOMING** **30 CYCLES TILL NEXT PASSAGE** A line farther down, separated deliberately from the System record, began another category. **EXTERNAL / IAN-ASSOCIATED — NOT TRANSFER** Thomas tapped that line. “The page crossed normally. One page went. One came back. The counter reset. This arrived later, after we agreed to receive it.” Kanno looked from the notebook to the album. “And the counter did nothing.” “Nothing.” “No System message.” “No.” “Thomas did not lose consciousness again,” Isha added. “Nothing suggested the System was involved.” Kanno took that in before returning her attention to the book. “What did the page say?” Thomas and Isha exchanged a glance. This was where knowledge stopped being automatic. Kanno knew correspondence existed. She had witnessed one passage months earlier. That had never meant every page became hers to read. Isha gave her the part that mattered. “Kelda wrote with Aelira, my mother, Ruvan and Lethira. Ian had appeared there.” Kanno's expression changed. “He went to the fantasy world.” “Yes.” “Physically?” “As far as they could observe.” “And still did not come back here.” “No.” Kanno looked at the album again. Thomas said, “They chose to make something for us. Ian provided the impossible part. They chose what was recorded, what stayed, what was sent. The page asked whether we wanted to receive it.” “And you said yes.” “Yes.” Kanno remained standing for another moment, then sat. The book stayed between them. Isha rested her fingers lightly on the upper board. “You can look.” Kanno's eyes lifted to hers. “All of it?” “The photographs I show you. There are recordings too. Some of those are private.” “All right.” Again, no difficulty. Isha opened the cover. The first page held a road. Kanno leaned closer. The photograph had been placed with generous space around it. A track approached three houses beneath open sky. It looked unremarkable until the mind began noticing everything that made it impossible to have come from anywhere Kanno knew: roof forms, timber, field edges, tools, the absence of wires, asphalt, poles, vehicles or any other modern interruption. The photograph itself was excellent. That seemed to offend Kanno professionally. She looked at Thomas. “How?” “Ian supplied the means. We don't know more than that.” “The photograph existed there first?” “Yes.” “And then the physical book arrived here with it already inside.” “Yes.” Kanno looked back down. “That is a terrible answer.” “I know.” “It is also the answer.” “Yes.” She examined the next page. The view was from above. Three houses, workshop, tracks and fields formed a small cluster within the wider landscape. A pony stood near the centre. One figure worked outside. The whole arrangement made distance legible in a way the ground-level image had not. Kanno stared longer at this one. “No hill?” Kelda's Green Road homes stood on an old charcoal shelf, but nothing nearby supplied that angle. “No,” Isha said. “Ian made this image. Kelda chose to include it.” Kanno's gaze sharpened slightly at the wording. “He made. She chose.” “Yes.” That answer mattered enough to require nothing more. Isha turned another page. Porridge appeared with dignity. The first photograph showed the pony standing in profile with the serious expression of an animal who had no understanding that his image would later cross realities. Kanno smiled. The next image was less dignified. Porridge's nose occupied most of the frame. Kanno stared at it. “What happened?” “Kelda was holding the device.” Thomas reached for the phone. “She has a moving version.” Isha handed it to Kanno after finding the file herself. The recording began with a section of Green Road, the frame moving slightly as Kelda tried to hold it steady. Porridge entered from one side, noticed the unfamiliar object, approached with increasing confidence and put his nose directly into the camera. Kelda's voice broke into laughter. The image became fur, nostril and motion. Then the recording ended. Kanno looked at the black screen. “Again.” Isha laughed. “You have understood it.” “I am checking continuity.” Thomas sat back in his chair. “That is not what that word means.” Kanno replayed it anyway. The second viewing did nothing to improve Porridge's dignity. When she handed the phone back, Isha was still smiling. “He always did that with things Kelda wanted him to leave alone.” Kanno looked at the book. “You can hear her.” “Yes.” The smile changed but did not disappear. “That is the first time since we came here.” Kanno said nothing immediately. The page beneath Isha's hand held a pony's nose. That helped. She turned another leaf. The workshop came next: Kelda's bench, tools and the room around them. Kanno had heard enough about Kelda to recognise that Isha's attention changed around images of the place even before she could identify what she was seeing. “This is hers?” “Yes.” “The new bench?” Thomas looked more closely. “The one she wrote about, yes.” Kanno glanced at him. “You knew she had made it.” “We knew in words.” The difference needed no expansion. A later page held Kelda herself behind the bench. She looked stronger and younger than the woman Thomas and Isha remembered from the first western roads, though still unmistakably Kelda. Her stance had the settled weight Isha had described to Kanno before. One hand rested near the work rather than on it. A short caption sat below the photograph in Common. Kanno pointed. “What does that say?” Isha read it. “Still here. Still working.” Kanno's hand stopped near the page. She did not touch the photograph. “I see.” Isha turned the protective leaf. The river came after that. Kanno saw the woman before either Thomas or Isha explained her. Sereth stood near the water, pale hair bound away from her face, posture different from Isha's but close enough in some small arrangements that Kanno understood before the name arrived. Her eyes went to Isha. “Your mother?” “Yes.” The answer was quieter. Kanno looked back at the photograph. Sereth was not posing formally. She looked towards something outside the frame, expression caught between attention and amusement. The next image showed her beside Kelda. Both women were laughing. Isha had looked at that photograph enough times since Monday to know every visible detail. The way Sereth's hand had lifted towards her own mouth too late to hide the laugh. Kelda's shoulders turned slightly away. The blurred edge of river behind them. She still leaned closer. Kanno watched her rather than the image for a moment. Isha noticed. “I have never seen my mother in a photograph.” Kanno looked back down. “No.” “Thomas remembered her face. I remembered her face. That is different.” There was a direct recording from Sereth as well. Isha did not offer it. Kanno did not ask. Instead Isha moved to the next still. Ruvan's practice ground appeared mostly empty: targets, repair, worn earth, an ordinary place where Isha had once trained. Then Lethira's platform, changed slightly since Isha had known it. Then paths through the Wood Elf settlement, the immense central tree appearing only in part because no photograph could comfortably contain its scale. Kanno stopped several times for names. She did not know every relationship with equal depth. Thomas and Isha translated captions where needed and left other pages to the image. Aelira appeared without ceremony. No crown. No throne. No public posture. She stood at a working table with papers or local equivalents spread before her, listening to someone outside the frame. Kanno looked at Isha. “The princess.” “Yes.” “The one Ian—” “Yes.” Thomas covered part of his face with one hand. Kanno's mouth moved. “I wasn't going to say anything.” “You were.” “I had not chosen the wording.” “That was the dangerous stage.” Isha looked entirely too pleased. Aelira's photograph remained dignified enough to survive the conversation. They went no farther into the album for several minutes. Kanno sat back. The tea had cooled. The cake was still unopened. “This is much larger than the arrow.” Thomas knew she meant more than mass. “Yes.” “And they wanted you to have it.” “Yes.” “Not Ian.” Isha looked at the pages. “Ian made it possible. They made it ours.” Kanno accepted that wording. She looked towards the phone. “What else did you receive?” “Moving records. Places. A meal. Messages.” “From your mother?” “Yes.” “Private?” “Yes.” Kanno nodded. Nothing else. Thomas closed the album gently and left it on the table. “There was also proof.” Kanno's attention sharpened. “Of Ian being there?” “Yes. Aelira recorded with him at the old pilgrim bridge.” The room lost some of its light despite the weather remaining unchanged. Kanno knew what bridge meant. She knew enough of Revive to understand why Thomas had once been unable to explain the spell without explaining Isha's death. She had never been given those chapters as an object. She knew event, outcome and cost in the bounded form Thomas and Isha had chosen to tell her. “He chose that place?” “Yes,” Isha said. Kanno waited. Isha's eyes had gone to the closed album, though nothing in it required the bridge. “He also recorded something else there. Separately. We had to ask to receive it.” Thomas's hand rested near hers on the table. Kanno looked between them. “What?” Isha answered. “He told me the part he had not told me on the train.” The train had already contained enough. Kanno's expression made that clear. Thomas said, “He chose the bridge.” Kanno frowned. “I thought you already knew he chose bad things in the story.” “We knew he said he chose pain sometimes,” Thomas said. “This was more specific.” Isha's voice stayed controlled. “He chose my death there because he wanted a good story and because he wanted to push Thomas towards becoming the Hero.” Kanno said nothing. A vehicle passed on the road below. Its tyres made a brief dry sound against the pavement and faded towards the intersection. Kanno's face changed by degrees. “He did not tell you that on the train.” “No.” “He asked you to decide whether he could remain connected to your life.” “Yes.” “And left out the part most likely to affect that decision.” “Yes.” Kanno looked down at her hands. When she spoke again, her anger was plain enough that nobody needed to identify it for her. “That was cowardly.” “He called himself a coward afterward,” Isha said. “That does not improve it.” “No.” Thomas pushed Kanno's cooling cup slightly nearer to her. She ignored it. “What did you tell him?” Isha remembered the bridge recording on the phone. Ian's face. Aelira beside him. The place itself looking almost offensively ordinary after all the meaning Thomas and Isha had carried away from it. “I told him he does not get to call what he did necessary because we are happy now. He does not get to use our present life as proof that the bridge was a good decision.” Kanno looked at her. “And?” “I am still allowing him to remain connected to me under the limits I gave him before.” That surprised her. It did not make her argue. “Why?” Isha thought before answering. “Because the truth made me trust him less. It did not make every other thing false.” She looked towards the album. “He asked these people rather than taking from them. He let them refuse him. He gave them control over what came here. He admitted the thing he most wanted not to admit, even if he admitted it late.” Her fingers closed lightly around Thomas's. “I am angry with him.” Kanno waited. “That is not the same as wanting him gone.” Kanno nodded once. Then she looked at Thomas. “And you?” “I didn't give him Isha's permission by association.” “I assumed.” Thomas gave her a dry look. “I told him that if he wants something that depends on my choice, he asks me first. I haven't given him a general right to my life.” “That seems sensible.” “It was not phrased as a contractual licence.” “I was going to be disappointed.” The brief joke landed and was allowed to stop. Kanno finally drank the cold tea. Her expression suggested she regretted it. Thomas stood and took the pot away before she could accuse anyone of serving it deliberately. “There is more,” Isha said. Kanno looked at her. “Of course there is.” This time the humour was mostly exhaustion. Thomas returned with fresh water for the pot and his phone. “We haven't told you the recent contact yet.” Kanno sat straighter. “The senderless messages?” “Something like them.” That qualification mattered. Thomas unlocked the phone and opened the folder where they kept screenshots and written notes. Kanno had seen earlier material from the Ian encounter. She knew they kept observed facts separate from explanations. The newest record was messier. The first message after Monday's gift had been Ian apologising for withholding the bridge truth. He had said he had broken down afterward and asked the people there for help. He repeated that he would not physically return to Earth. He also offered to face Thomas's family if Thomas and Isha wanted him to. Isha had answered with the boundary they had already agreed between themselves. Kelda should ask first. No surprise arrival. If Mira, Rowan, Mara or Tessa said no, it ended there. Kelda should be present. Aelira too if she chose. Thomas had added his own condition: one refusal was enough. Kanno read the screenshot carefully. “You made him ask them to consent before he went.” “Yes,” Thomas said. “Good.” The following message was shorter. Ian said he would ask Kelda to go and that whatever happened, he would share the result. Then, almost as an afterthought: **I'm glad you liked the weather.** Kanno stopped. Her eyes moved slowly towards Isha. Isha's expression was entirely composed. “He said that.” “I can see that.” “I replied.” Kanno scrolled. **I did like the weather, Ian. Thank you for asking first.** Kanno stared at the exchange. “So.” Thomas leaned against the kitchen counter. “So.” “The weather.” “Still not proved.” Kanno looked at him. “He said he was glad she liked it.” “Yes.” “That is considerably more suggestive than the forecast.” “Yes.” “And you're still saying not proved.” Thomas folded his arms. “I am not rewarding him for ambiguity by improving the evidence.” Kanno considered that and accepted it. Isha was less cautious. “I think he helped.” “I know.” “I still cannot prove it.” “I also know.” Kanno handed the phone back. “That would already have been enough for one update.” “It wasn't the latest one,” Thomas said. He opened another set of screenshots. The sender field in these did not appear blank. It was worse. A captured frame showed a small rectangle of coloured noise where a name, number or account should have been. Fine pixels seemed to refuse any stable pattern even in the still image. Thomas had three screenshots from three points in the same exchange; the pattern differed in each. Kanno leaned over the phone. “That moved?” “Yes.” “And there was a reply control?” “Yes.” “An actual reply control.” “Yes.” “You used it.” “Yes.” Kanno sat back. For a moment she looked less angry than professionally offended by a user interface that violated causality. “That is new.” “Very.” Isha turned the phone towards herself. “It appeared when he needed an answer from us.” “What answer?” The first request had been careful. Ian said he was with Thomas's family, Kelda and Aelira. They wanted to read the account of the old pilgrim bridge. He asked whether Thomas and Isha permitted them to read the chapter as it had been written, including interior thoughts, or whether those should be suppressed. Kanno's eyes went back to Thomas. “Your family said yes to meeting him.” “At least enough for this request to exist,” Thomas said. “You know they were actually there.” “We know Ian said they were together, named all six, and asked for permission that only made sense if they had asked to read it. We answered on that basis.” Kanno nodded slowly. That was the maximum the evidence held. No more was added. “What did you choose?” “Raw,” Thomas said. Kanno blinked. “The thoughts too?” “Yes.” She looked at Isha. Isha nodded. “For Mira, Rowan, Mara, Tessa, Kelda and Aelira together. Those chapters only. No other private material.” Kanno's attention returned to Thomas. “That is a great deal.” “It was.” “Why raw?” Thomas took time with the answer. “Because the bridge is not only what happened to Isha. It is what I did while it happened. If they were asking to understand that day, taking out the part where I was terrified and trying to bring her back would make a cleaner account than the one we lived.” Isha added, “And they were not given permission to keep it.” Kanno looked between them. “You could have said no.” “Yes.” “You considered it?” “Yes.” That was enough. The next screenshot made Kanno close her eyes briefly. Ian had realised the immediate event occupied two chapters rather than one. He had asked again. Thomas and Isha had extended permission to the second chapter, through the immediate aftermath and return to the lower guest house. Then there had been a mistake over where the permission ended. Ian had stopped the reading at Thomas's first awakening because his description of the permitted section had been wrong. He asked Earth again. Thomas and Isha clarified that the permission had always been intended to include the whole second chapter and the immediate aftermath through the lower guest house. Kanno read the final clarification. Then she put the phone on the table. “He made a scope error.” Thomas's mouth moved. “Yes.” “While showing your family a written account of your death-adjacent resurrection event across realities.” “Yes.” “And came back to ask instead of assuming.” “Yes.” Kanno rubbed the bridge of her nose. “I dislike that this is improvement.” “So do I,” Isha said. Silence settled for a few moments. The album remained closed beside the phone. Kanno looked at both objects. Then at the date in the corner of Thomas's screen. “How long ago did that happen there?” Thomas's answer came immediately. “We don't know.” Kanno waited. He pulled the notebook towards them again. The Monday passage had an Earth time. Every later Ian contact had an Earth reception time. Nothing had a fantasy date beside it. Thomas had deliberately written: **OTHER-SIDE ELAPSED TIME: UNKNOWN** under the cluster. “The first correspondence already told us time there does not map neatly to time here,” he said. “Kelda had lived months before the first reply reached us. Ian has also told us his own time doesn't match ours. These newer messages don't give us a conversion.” Kanno looked at the sequence. “But they arrived here during this week.” “Yes.” “So whatever he was doing there was happening somewhere in relation to these messages.” “Somewhere,” Thomas said. “That is all.” Isha took over because Thomas was beginning to sound like an evidence note. “We know that when he asked the first permission, he was with those six people. We know they wanted to read the bridge account. We know later he needed the second chapter and then the rest of it. That gives us order.” “Not duration.” “No.” “Could five days have passed there?” “Yes.” “Five minutes?” “We do not know.” “Months?” Isha hesitated. “We do not know enough to say no.” Kanno looked towards the balcony. The answer plainly irritated her. That made three of them. “And Ian's time?” Thomas shook his head. “Worse. We don't convert it. We record what reaches Earth when it reaches Earth.” “The monthly passage?” “Separate. Monday reset it to thirty cycles. The next expected opening is around the fifteenth of December. None of these messages changed that.” Kanno tapped one finger near the impossible sender field. “And this?” “Not the System as far as we can observe. No counter. No protection notice. No physical effect on me. No transfer status.” “Can you reply now?” “No.” She looked at the phone. “The thread is there.” “The record is. The route isn't.” Thomas opened it and showed her. There was no functioning sender address. No button that produced a destination they could trust. The reply opportunity had existed while Ian's question was present. They had answered the question. They had not used it to ask for a report, demand to see the family, or turn the temporary opening into a conversation. Kanno noticed that too. “You didn't ask what they said about him.” “No,” Isha replied. “Or whether your family were all right.” “No.” “Why not?” Isha looked down at the moving-noise screenshot. “Because he asked us for permission. That was what the route was for.” Kanno's eyes lifted. “And because if I had started using it to ask everything I wanted to know, I would have made it into something we had already decided we did not want.” Thomas added, “We don't know whether it would even have worked.” “But you didn't test it.” “No.” Kanno nodded. The reply field had appeared. They had used it for replies. That was enough evidence for one week. “What do you know now about your family?” she asked Thomas. Thomas's answer was careful. “That they consented to enough contact with Ian to be in the same place with him and ask to read those chapters. That Kelda and Aelira were with them. That they finished reading what we permitted, because the last clarification was used.” “And after that?” “Nothing.” “You don't know what they asked him.” “No.” “You don't know what he told them.” “Only whatever was necessary for the permission requests, and even there I won't fill in missing parts.” “You don't know whether he stayed.” “No.” “What they think of him.” “No.” “Whether they made anything for you.” Thomas looked at her. “No.” That answer carried no hidden knowledge. Kanno had accidentally reached the edge of the next chapter of another world and found nothing beyond it. She accepted the blank. “If they want to tell you?” “Normal passage,” Thomas said. “Or Ian may send something exceptional again. We are not assuming he will.” Kanno looked at the album. “The first gift came through him.” “Yes.” “But only after the page asked you whether you wanted it.” “Yes.” “And you asked for the proof and confession separately.” “Yes.” Kanno was silent for several seconds. Then she said, “All right.” It was not approval of Ian. It was an organisational conclusion. The impossible things had categories again. Not safe categories. Usable ones. The cake finally became necessary. Kanno stood and opened the bakery box herself. Inside was a small chestnut cake with cream, modest enough for three people and entirely free of written congratulations. Isha inspected it. “This looks like a birthday cake.” “It is a cake on a Saturday.” “There is a candle.” Kanno removed one narrow candle from the paper bag. “It was supplied.” “You brought it separately.” “It was supplied by the shop after I requested it.” Thomas looked between them. “I think that establishes intent.” Kanno pointed at him. “You are not participating in this hearing.” He brought plates. The candle was singular rather than twenty-sixfold. Kanno said she had no intention of setting fire to a bakery product merely to prove Isha's age. Isha accepted this as reasonable. Thomas lit it. For the first time that afternoon, nobody mentioned another world. Kanno sang nothing. Thomas attempted one line of “Happy Birthday” and stopped when Isha looked at him. “That was poor.” “I was unsupported.” “You were correctly unsupported.” Kanno folded her arms. “Blow out the candle before he tries again.” Isha did. The tiny flame vanished. Thomas cut the cake. Chestnut cream, light sponge, a little too much decorative cream along one edge. It was good in the ordinary way of a competent bakery and required no analysis. Isha ate half a slice before looking towards the album again. Kanno noticed. “What?” Isha set down her fork. “I was thinking about the birthday.” “The one that happened twelve days ago.” “Yes.” Kanno waited. Isha looked at the closed book. “My mother laughed.” Nothing in the sentence needed clarification. “I can hear Kelda laugh. I can see Ruvan's practice ground. I know Lethira still chooses irritating captions. Aelira looks tired when she works.” Her smile was small. “I know Porridge still puts his nose where it should not be.” Kanno glanced at the phone. “That is the strongest evidence so far.” Thomas made a quiet sound of agreement. Isha rested her hand on the wooden album cover. “It was not made for my birthday.” “No,” Kanno said. “It arrived a week after.” “Yes.” “I think I am counting it.” Kanno picked up her fork. “You are twenty-six. You may administer your own birthday.” Thomas looked at her. “That sounds dangerously permissive.” “It is not transferable authority.” Isha laughed. The conversation moved elsewhere. Kanno asked whether Nagai's full wedding set had arrived yet. “Not yet,” Thomas said. “Only the preview.” “That is normal.” “I know.” “Do you?” “Yes.” “You have checked?” Thomas gave her a level look. Kanno smiled into her cake. Isha told her which preview photograph they had sent through Monday's passage: the courtyard image after the ceremony, Thomas in the navy suit and green tie, Isha in ivory, neither looking at the camera, the rings visible without being the point of the photograph. Kanno remembered it. “That one.” “Yes.” “Good.” Thomas waited for editorial qualification. None came. Kanno finished the slice and looked towards the album. “Can I see your mother again?” Isha's hand paused around her fork. Then she smiled. “Yes.” The cake stayed on the table. Isha opened the book back to the river pages and turned it so Kanno could see. For a while the three of them looked at Sereth and Kelda laughing beside water under another sky. Then Kanno's eyes moved to the preceding Porridge page. She hesitated. Isha saw it. “No.” “I didn't ask.” “You were going to.” “I was considering whether one more viewing would establish motive.” Thomas reached for the phone. “I support further study.” Isha stared at both of them. Then she unlocked the device and played the recording again. Porridge approached the impossible camera with absolute confidence. His nose filled the screen. Kelda laughed from a world none of them could place on a clock. This time all three of them laughed with her.