## Chapter 377 — The Farm as It Is

Wednesday, 15 December had already become an ordinary evening when the passage opened. Thomas had come home later than Isha by twenty minutes. Dinner had been reheated curry from Monday, improved mostly by time and a little extra stock, and the dishes were drying beside the sink. The bruising from Isha's bout against Naruse had faded into the less dramatic colours of healing. Shibata's Monday review had confirmed what she remembered well and corrected enough of the rest to keep memory from becoming evidence: Naruse had taken the first round clearly; the second had been close; the decision remained Naruse's.

None of that needed attention tonight. The Common page waiting beneath a clean weight in the flexible room did.

They had finished it the previous evening. When the familiar directional pressure gathered behind Thomas's eyes at 20:11, Isha saw him stop in the doorway and asked only, "Now?"

"Yes."

Within two minutes they had the old arrangement in place: Thomas seated on the mat, Isha behind and slightly to his right, timer and water within reach. Protection had made recent passages kinder, but neither of them had turned that into permission to become careless.

Thomas lifted the outgoing sheet one last time. Common covered both sides.

> **Kelda, and everyone who reads this with her,**
>
> We received the book and the pictures that move and carry voices which you chose for us after the last passage. We asked for them, and they came separately from the little System road. Thank you.
>
> Isha has seen Sereth laugh. Thomas has watched Porridge put his nose into the picture-device more times than he admits. We have seen Ruvan's practice ground, Lethira's old platform, Aelira working, Green Road, the meal you shared and the places that continued after us. The bound book is safe in our home.
>
> We showed our friend Kanno some of the still pictures we chose to share and the moving picture of Porridge. She asked to see that one twice.
>
> Ian also gave us the separate truth he had withheld when Isha met him here. He told us that he deliberately chose Isha's death at the old pilgrim bridge because he wanted the story to be good and wanted to push Thomas towards the Hero-shaped road. Isha remains angry that he asked to stay connected to her while leaving that out. Her earlier permission remains under the same limits, but she trusts him less. Thomas has given no general permission. If something depends on Thomas's choice, Ian must ask Thomas.
>
> Later, through a temporary way of answering Ian which we had never seen before, he asked whether Mira, Rowan, Mara, Tessa, Kelda and Aelira could read the written account of the bridge and the immediate recovery, including the parts that described our thoughts. We gave permission for those people and those sections only. When Ian discovered that he had stopped the reading too early, he asked again rather than assuming. We confirmed the intended limit. We do not know what happened after that.
>
> Isha fought again on 11 December in the agreed Earth fighting sport. The other woman, Naruse Kana, won after two rounds by the decision of the officials. Isha has bruises and a small cut that is nearly healed. She is well. Naruse also stood afterward and was well when Isha last saw her.
>
> Thomas is well. We are both working. We are still very happy to be married.
>
> We love you. We are safe. Tell us what you choose to tell us.
>
> **Thomas and Isha**

Isha read the last line over his shoulder. "Still yes."

"Still yes."

Her hand settled over his. Thomas brought Kelda Flintvein into focus as he had many times before: the person, the relationship, Green Road, the old recognition the System still seemed able to follow across a distance neither world could measure.

"Send what we chose," he said quietly. "Accept what Kelda chose to return."

Grey-white interference moved through his sight.

**PROTECTION ENABLED**

The page disappeared. A cream sheet replaced it.

Thomas saw Kelda's compact handwriting and then lost the room. Isha lowered him onto his side, started the timer and kept two fingers against his wrist. His breathing remained even. At forty-seven seconds his eyelids moved; at fifty he took a deeper breath, and at fifty-two he opened his eyes.

"Flat 202," Isha said. "Sendai. Wednesday, 15 December 2027."

Thomas focused on her face. "Fifty-two?"

"Yes." Isha watched his eyes settle.

"No headache," he said.

Isha kept watching him. "I did not ask yet."

He almost smiled. "Efficient reporting."

She checked the rest anyway. Nothing unusual followed: no nausea, weakness, visual disturbance or confusion. Thomas sat after another minute and drank while the returned page remained untouched beneath the weight.

The interface resolved again.

**TRANSFER SENT**

**TRANSFER RECEIVED**

**30 CYCLES TILL NEXT PASSAGE**

Nothing else appeared. Thomas recorded the essentials in the notebook: **17 outgoing / 15 incoming**. Thirty more cycles made the next opening roughly mid-January, subject to the same uncertainty they had always kept around the count.

They waited the full ten minutes before touching the cream sheet. Then Isha lifted it, and the first lines were enough to draw Thomas closer.

> **Thomas. Isha.**
>
> This is my hand because the little road still knows me most easily. The words below were agreed with Mira, Rowan, Mara and Tessa. Aelira was present for the parts she witnessed. This page was written after Ian left us.
>
> First: your family are well.
>
> After your last gift reached you, Ian returned to me and showed me what you had answered. You said that if he was to meet Thomas's family, I should ask first and one refusal ended it. So I asked.
>
> Mira, Rowan, Mara and Tessa each agreed to meet him. They agreed separately. Their terms were that he arrive outside, knock, have me present and Aelira present if she wished, bring no gifts or demonstrations unless asked, change nothing on the farm, use no private-thought access and leave if anyone told him to leave. He accepted those terms and kept them while he was there.
>
> Tessa asked him about the arrow. He said he had wanted to make Isha happy and had taken something important before thinking properly about what its absence would do here. Tessa told him she is still glad Isha has it and still angry that he took it without asking. She told him again that it is not to be returned and not to be fired.
>
> Mira, Rowan and Mara asked him other questions about what he chooses, what the thing he describes does when it does not follow his wishes exactly, and what he thinks he owes people after learning that what he treated as story is lived by us. We did not settle what Ian is. He did not pretend that we had.
>
> Your family also asked about the pilgrim bridge. When the written account became relevant, we did not read it until Ian asked you and your permission returned. We read only what you allowed. When the first reading stopped before the part you had meant to include, we stopped and waited for the correction from you.
>
> Thomas: Mira, Rowan, Mara and Tessa have now read what you permitted of your thoughts during Isha's death, Revive and the immediate recovery. They understand more about that day than they did. Mara asked me to write clearly that permission to read those thoughts once does not make them theirs. They have not kept the pages.
>
> Ian also showed us one of the small devices he carries. On it were words describing the room and some of what was happening while we were there. We can witness that the words appeared. We cannot tell you whether the device causes what happens, predicts it, records it or receives it from elsewhere. Aelira asked that I write that distinction exactly.
>
> The morning after the first long conversation, your family decided they wanted to make something for you.
>
> Ian was not part of making it.
>
> Aelira and I helped them learn the picture-device. Your family chose what to record and what to delete. Ian carried a request to Lethira for a blank bound book and left the farm. Three full days passed **here** before he returned with the finished blank book. During those three days your family made the pictures and moving records themselves. We do not know what those three days were to Ian or to Earth.
>
> They have made a gift for both of you.
>
> There is a bound album. The original stays at the farm. After every page had been chosen and arranged, Ian made an exact second copy. That exact copy is the one offered to you.
>
> It shows the farm as it is now: the house from the track, the whole holding from above without changing or tidying it, fields and work, Rowan repairing a gate, Mira in the kitchen, all four together, ordinary things around the yard, Mara and Tessa being foolish over a list, Thomas's old room as it is now, and the fairy circle. There are blank pages after the family pictures. Nothing has been placed in them for you.
>
> They also chose three moving records to send: one around the farm and yard, one at the kitchen table, and one short record of all four together. Each of Mira, Rowan, Mara and Tessa made a separate spoken message for you as well. There are also the still pictures used in the book and three additional still pictures which they wanted you to have but did not bind into it.
>
> Many other pictures were made while they learned. They deleted them. What remains is what they chose. There are no hidden better versions waiting for Ian to improve.
>
> Nothing from this gift has been sent to you yet.
>
> If you want it, ask for the exact album copy and the selected pictures, moving records and spoken messages. If you do not want some part, say so. If you do not want any of it, that is also an answer.
>
> Tessa asked one more thing. If you want, and only if you want, she would like to know whether one day you can send pictures that move and carry your voices in return. This is not a price for anything and not a condition of this gift.
>
> Ian made one final request before he left. He asked whether, on a later passage, each person who wishes would write what they think of him. Mira, Tessa and I said we would. Rowan said he may write that he does not yet know. Mara will decide when the time comes. Aelira said she would write her own answer and carry the question to Sereth, Ruvan and Lethira. No one has been promised to him. Silence is permitted.
>
> Those answers are not on this page.
>
> Your family asked me to finish with this:
>
> **We love you. We are well. The farm is still here.**
>
> — **Kelda**

Thomas reached the bottom and stayed there. The simplest line kept returning through everything else Kelda had written.

*Your family are well.* Isha leaned against his shoulder. After a while she touched the paragraph about the three days.

"Three days there. While he was away."

Thomas nodded. "That's the only clock we have for it."

He added one sentence beneath the passage log: **Three fantasy-side days explicitly passed during Ian's absence from the farm; Earth/Ian relation unknown.** There was no useful conversion to invent. The harder question sat on the low table in front of them. The gift existed. It had not yet been given.

Isha touched the paragraph about the spoken messages. "I want those first."

Thomas felt his throat tighten. "So do I."

They did not ask immediately. Thomas finished his water and let another ten quiet minutes pass. At 20:49 he brought his phone from the dining table and set it beside the cream sheet.

Nothing unusual appeared. No sender field, no offered button.

Thomas looked at Isha. "I want all of it."

"So do I."

He spoke towards the room because there was nowhere more specific to aim. "The exact copy. Every selected still. The three shared moving records. All four messages."

Isha added, "Exactly what they chose. Nothing deleted, nothing improved, nothing added."

Then, after a glance at Kelda's page, she said, "Ian, if this is something you can carry as they offered it: yes. We want the whole gift they made."

Thomas's hand found hers. "If it cannot arrive as the selected gift, don't substitute something else."

For five seconds, nothing happened. Then Thomas's phone vibrated once. A new folder existed in their private photo storage. Before he could do more than see the headings—**STILLS**, **SHARED MOVING RECORDS**, **MESSAGES**—a soft weight settled onto the low table where there had been empty wood.

Neither of them saw the arrival itself. The book was simply there: pale wooden boards, deep blue-green cloth spine, warm cream page edges.

Isha squeezed Thomas's hand. "Messages first."

He left the book closed and opened the phone folder. Four files waited beneath the family heading.

**Mira. Rowan. Mara. Tessa.**

For a moment Thomas's thumb would not move. Isha put her free hand around his wrist, holding rather than guiding.

"Mira?"

"Yes."

He opened the first recording.

---

His mother was sitting at the kitchen table. That fact struck before anything she said. Thomas knew the uneven edge where Rowan had planed a repair rather than replace the whole board. Something unfamiliar now hung on the wall behind her. The picture sat slightly low, as if whoever had positioned the device cared more about getting Mira naturally into frame than making a portrait.

Mira looked at the camera for a few seconds before speaking. "Thomas. Isha. This is strange. I have spoken to you through pages for a long time now, but those pages did not look back at me."

A faint smile touched her face. "We saw the picture from your wedding. You both looked happy. I know a picture is one moment. I still liked that moment very much."

Her hands folded once on the table and came apart again. "Thomas, I have been proud of you for things I understood only afterward, and angry with you for some of the same things while they were happening. Reading the bridge account did not make me wish I had known everything inside your head when you were young. I think mothers already know too much and too little at the same time."

Thomas made a sound that might have become laughter under different conditions. Mira went on. "You are older now. I can see it, even if I have not watched the years happen properly."

Then she looked directly at the camera. "Isha. Thank you for loving him."

She stopped, dissatisfied with the sentence she had just made. "That is not a debt. I am not thanking you because you must carry him, protect him, improve him or make his choices for him. I am thanking you because I love my son and I am glad the person he loves loves him too."

Isha's fingers closed around Thomas's. Mira looked down, collected herself and tried again.

"The farm is well. We are well. There is work tomorrow. Rowan has repaired the gate. Tessa says I must not tell you whether the repair is attractive."

A voice somewhere beyond the picture said, "Because it isn't." Mira closed her eyes. "Tessa."

Laughter came from farther away. When Mira faced the camera again, her eyes were wet.

"We miss you. We love you both."

She reached forward, and the recording ended. Thomas did not move to the next file. Isha rested her head against his shoulder and let the silence remain useful.

After a while he wiped his face with the heel of one hand. "That was Mum."

"Yes."

It was the only description he needed. He opened Rowan's message.

---

His father had chosen outside. Rowan stood near one of the farm buildings with his coat fastened high against the weather. Behind him, a field ran towards a hedgerow Thomas remembered and could no longer have described accurately before seeing it.

Rowan looked uncomfortable with the camera. "Thomas. Isha. There isn't much I know how to say here that isn't already on a page. You can see the farm now, so I suppose that removes some of the work."

He paused. "Your mother has already said she misses you. I was not going to repeat everything she said."

His gaze dropped briefly to his hands, then returned to the lens. "We do."

Thomas stopped breathing for a moment. Rowan continued before the sentence could become a ceremony. "The gate is fixed. Tessa's opinion is not relevant to structural work."

Somebody off-screen objected. Rowan ignored it.

Then he looked more directly into the camera. "Isha. You are family. I thought I should say that directly at least once."

There was no explanation after it. Rowan only nodded once and added, "We're glad you're both well."

The recording ended. Isha stared at the frozen last frame. One tear reached her cheek, then another.

Thomas set the phone down and turned towards her. Isha pressed her forehead against his.

"He said it."

"Yes."

She began, "I know they already—" and stopped herself. Thomas stroked the back of her hair once. "You don't have to make it smaller because you knew."

They stayed like that until she was ready for Mara.

---

Mara had chosen the kitchen too, though not the same chair. She appeared to have prepared for the recording and resented the evidence.

"This is the third attempt."

Thomas laughed before she reached the next sentence. Mara frowned towards somebody outside the frame. "The first became an analysis of why this is strange. The second sounded as if I were writing to a magistrate. I have been told this one must contain normal human speech."

Mira's voice came from somewhere behind the device. "I did not say normal."

"You meant it."

Mara looked back into the camera. "Thomas. Isha. I am glad we read what you allowed us to read about the bridge. I am also glad we do not still have it."

Her expression settled. "There are things in those pages I may want to ask you about one day. That does not mean you owe me answers because you once permitted me to see your thoughts during one terrible day. If I ask, you may refuse."

She left the sentence there and moved on. "We are all right. Tessa remains Tessa. Dad remains Dad. Mum has somehow become better at dealing with impossible things than any of us, which I consider suspicious."

"I can hear you," Mira said from off-screen. Mara did not turn. "I know."

Thomas laughed hard enough that he had to wipe his eyes again. Mara's mouth moved at one corner.

"The farm is still the farm. Your room is still there, although it is not a shrine and nobody has preserved the dust for you. Some things have changed because time is allowed to happen when you are absent."

She drew a breath. "I love you, Thomas."

Then, with less hesitation than he expected, "I love you too, Isha." The image held for another second.

"That's enough."

Mara reached towards the device and missed the control the first time. The recording ended while she was muttering.

Thomas put the phone against his knee. "I would have expected her to learn the button first."

Isha was still wiping her face. "She may have refused on principle."

The fourth file waited: four minutes and seventeen seconds. Thomas looked at the length. Isha saw it too.

"Of course," she said. He opened Tessa's message.

---

Tessa sat sideways at the same kitchen table as Mira, one knee apparently tucked beneath her despite somebody having told her at some point not to do that. She looked older.

Thomas had known she would. The knowledge had done nothing useful.

For several seconds Tessa only looked at the camera. Then she said, "Isha first."

Thomas laughed through his nose. "I am glad you kept the arrow. I am still angry about how it got there. I told Ian that. He apologised. I believe he is sorry. That doesn't make the asking happen before the taking."

She glanced down. "I do not want it back. This is not me being noble. It was yours when I gave it to you, and if it had stayed here for the rest of my life it would still have been yours in a box I happened to be keeping."

Her expression sharpened. "Do not shoot it."

Isha laughed softly. "I have made better arrows since then. I refuse to have that feather become the surviving evidence of my craft."

A voice off-screen that sounded like Mara said, "You chose to send this message."

Tessa did not look away. "I know."

Tessa looked back at the camera. "There is no debt. You do not owe me something because it crossed worlds badly. If one day you send us something because you want to, I want it. That is different."

She shifted in the chair. "Thomas. We read the bridge."

His hand tightened around Isha's. "I knew you loved her. Obviously. Everybody knew. You were unbearable."

A pause. "I did not know what it was like inside your head when she died."

Tessa looked away. "I was going to say I won't make this sad."

She wiped beneath one eye. "That has already failed."

No one off-screen teased her. "The farm is here. Your room is here. It has changed. Mara was right about that, unfortunately. Mum uses part of it for storage sometimes. There are different covers. Some things are still yours because nobody had a reason to move them. It is not waiting exactly as you left it."

Thomas looked down. "Dad fixed the gate."

Rowan's voice came from another room. "Correctly."

Tessa raised her voice without turning. "Structurally."

A silence followed. "Aesthetically, there are questions."

"Tessa."

She smiled. "Mara is annoying. Mum is Mum. Dad is pretending he cannot hear me."

"I can hear you."

"I know."

The smile lasted another moment and then weakened. "And I'm twenty—" She stopped, frowned at herself and shook her head. "You know how old I am."

Then, more quietly, "I miss you." Thomas lowered his head.

Tessa swallowed. "And Isha. I didn't know you as long as Thomas did. That does not mean I only miss him. I miss you too."

Isha pressed both hands around Thomas's. "I love you both."

Tessa's hand came towards the camera and stopped. "One more thing. If you send moving pictures back someday, do not make them all speeches. I want to see your house. And Thomas doing something normal. And Isha doing something she actually does there. Not only things you think we need to know."

She considered this. "Also maybe your cat."

Thomas laughed into Isha's shoulder. Tessa nodded as though she had completed a formal requirement. "Now I'm done."

The recording ended. The room in flat 202 remained quiet afterward. Thomas had expected the messages to hurt; the expectation had been too simple. His mother had spoken from the kitchen table. His father had stood outside and called Isha family. Mara had failed twice before finding the version she could live with. Tessa had become older while remaining entirely capable of insulting a repaired gate across realities.

They had continued. Isha reached for the tissues. Thomas took one, then another. They sat close enough that neither needed to ask whether the other wanted touching.

Eventually Isha looked towards the phone. "The shared ones?"

Thomas inhaled carefully. "Yes."

---

The first shared recording began with Tessa's voice and a view of the farmhouse from the yard. "This is the farm."

Mara, somewhere beside her, said, "He knows." "This is Thomas's family farm," Tessa corrected. "For Isha."

"That is slightly better."

The picture moved as Tessa walked. Footfall lifted the frame; once the ground filled it completely; wind pushed across the microphone. A chicken crossed the yard with no interest in cross-world communication. Rowan was working farther out.

Tessa aimed the device towards him. "That is Dad."

"Do not narrate me," Rowan called. Mara laughed from behind the camera-holder.

The horse appeared near the fence because it happened to be there, looked towards Tessa and returned to whatever horses considered more important. Mira opened the doorway halfway through and asked whether they intended to film the entire morning. The recording ended near the lower boundary with the farmhouse behind them.

Thomas watched the last frame fade. "I had forgotten that slope."

Isha looked at him. "Not the field. The amount of it from the house."

Nothing required him to repair the memory. The second recording lasted eleven minutes and placed the device somewhere fixed at the kitchen table. For the first forty seconds all four members of Thomas's family became people who knew they were being recorded. Rowan looked at the device too often while trying not to; Mira asked whether it was actually working; Mara said yes; Tessa told everyone to stop behaving strangely and immediately behaved strangely herself.

The awkwardness eventually exhausted itself. They talked about farm work and weather, something Tessa had borrowed and failed to return, and then a repair Thomas had made at thirteen.

Thomas stiffened. "No."

On the recording, Tessa said, "That was unfair." Rowan's mouth moved faintly. "He'll know which hinge."

Isha turned towards Thomas with immediate interest. "What hinge?"

"No." Thomas kept his eyes on the recording.

"Your father has introduced evidence," Isha said.

Thomas kept his eyes on the recording. "The invitation was not addressed to you."

The family carried on while he refused to supply the missing story. Near the end Tessa looked directly at the camera.

"We are still here."

Mara turned towards her. "That was deliberately emotional."

"Yes."

Rowan said, "He'll cope." Mira laughed. The recording ended less than a minute later.

The third was shorter than two minutes. All four stood outside, visibly less comfortable without a table to occupy their hands.

"This is much worse than a photograph," Tessa said. "You demanded moving pictures," Mara reminded her.

Mira laughed. Rowan looked towards the device. "Hello, Thomas."

He paused. "And Isha."

Mira linked one arm through his. "We're well."

Mara looked at them. "They know."

Tessa said, "They can hear it twice." Rowan glanced sideways at her, then faced the camera again. "We're well."

That was how the recording ended. Isha let the tears remain until they stopped.

Only then did Thomas touch the album. The blue-green cloth felt like cloth. The pale boards carried a slight grain beneath the finish. Nothing about the construction looked miraculous.

He opened it. The farmhouse from the track occupied the first page. No one posed outside it. A bucket sat where somebody had left it; one shutter needed maintenance; the fence had not been straightened for the picture. Thomas stared at an approach he had walked thousands of times and found that the photograph refused to become memory. It was the farm now.

The next page made him inhale sharply. The entire holding lay beneath the impossible camera: house, yard, outbuildings, fields and their boundaries, the track. Four human figures stood outside, each small enough to require a second look and clear enough that recognition still arrived.

Mira. Rowan. Mara. Tessa.

No one had been arranged into a symbol. They had simply been outside when the picture was taken.

Isha leaned close enough for her hair to fall across Thomas's shoulder. "That is all of it?"

"Most of what matters from here."

He traced the field boundaries in the air, not touching the print. "The lower one looks smaller."

"Is it?"

"I don't know."

The next spread showed a nearer view of the working yard and fields, Rowan distant with timber over one shoulder, then Rowan crouched beside the gate with tools around him. Isha studied the repair. "Tessa may have a point."

Thomas looked at her. "You have no structural evidence."

"I have aesthetic evidence."

He turned the page before disloyalty spread. Mira appeared in the kitchen with flour on one sleeve, looking beyond the camera. Opposite her was the empty kitchen itself: table, chairs, bread, morning light. Thomas stayed there for a long time. The kitchen had changed less than his room, or perhaps kitchens changed in ways memory found easier to absorb.

The next full page held the family portrait. Mira and Rowan stood close enough for their shoulders to touch, Mara on Mira's other side, Tessa shifted towards Mara. Nobody was centred perfectly.

The facing page was blank. Isha touched the edge of the empty paper. "They left this."

"Yes."

Thomas did not decide what belonged there. The following spread held muddy boots by the back entrance and the horse looking over a fence on its own terms. Then came Mara and Tessa laughing at the kitchen table over a written list. The smaller reproduction beneath it was legible.

**THINGS THOMAS WILL PRETEND NOT TO CRY AT**

The line had been crossed out. Beneath it, in another hand:

**DO NOT OPTIMISE FOR THIS**

And below that:

**BUT IT MAY HAPPEN NATURALLY**

Thomas stared. Isha began laughing. "They planned against you."

"I object to the premise." Thomas tried to sound injured and failed.

Isha wiped at one eye. "You have cried for most of the evening."

"That is unrelated to prediction methodology."

She leaned against him, still laughing, and Thomas had no useful appeal available. The next page stopped him again.

His old room, photographed from the doorway. Different bedding. Storage where he remembered open floor. Some familiar objects and some he did not recognise. Nothing had been opened for the camera; no private paper had been placed where its writing could be read.

Tessa had told the truth. The room was there. It had continued.

Thomas turned the page himself. The fairy circle came last: trees, leaf litter, an incomplete ring of mushrooms, nobody standing inside it. The place where Homegate had first brought Green Road to the edge of his family life, and later the place where Thomas had waited after making Crownholt believe him dead, now held only empty woodland.

Several blank pages followed. Thomas ran one thumb carefully along the edge of the first. Isha closed the book with him.

They did not fill anything tonight. The three unbound still pictures waited on the phone. The first showed the farmhouse in evening light; the second held Mira and Rowan together in the yard, neither posed especially well. The third was technically the worst. All four family members were laughing because Tessa had almost dropped the device. The frame tilted, Rowan's head sat too near one edge, Mara's hand had blurred and Mira had already turned towards Tessa rather than the camera.

Thomas favourited it. Isha saw the mark appear. "Yes."

"You were going to choose it too?"

"I already did."

He found her favourite mark beside his. The returned cream page still lay open near the correspondence notebook. Tessa's question waited there: if they wanted, one day, could they send moving pictures and voices back?

Thomas looked around flat 202—the LDK, the balcony glass reflecting two people on the sofa, his office beyond the hall, the flexible room holding two albums from a reality the building had no way to explain. Isha followed his gaze. "I want to."

"So do I," Thomas said.

Isha left the question on the table between them. "Not tonight."

"No."

Wanting to answer did not create a mechanism. They left the decision there.

The other unresolved line belonged to Ian. He had asked people to write what they thought of him.

Thomas read Kelda's summary again and shook his head faintly. "He asked Dad for a written opinion."

Isha's mouth moved. "He asked Kelda too."

"That may be worse." Thomas glanced towards the shelf.

"Kelda warned him," Isha said.

Thomas glanced towards the shelf. "I assume that did not stop him."

Her expression answered before she did. "No."

Thomas looked towards the album. "I do want to read them."

Isha took a moment. "So do I."

That answer surprised neither of them. It also did not make the next passage arrive sooner.

Thomas returned to the correspondence log and added the external event beneath the normal swap:

**FAMILY GIFT ACCEPTED AFTER EXPLICIT OFFER.**

**PHYSICAL ALBUM + SELECTED DIGITAL MATERIAL RECEIVED.**

**NO SYSTEM NOTIFICATION / NO COUNTER CHANGE / NO PHYSICAL EFFECT.**

Below it he added the chronology note: **RETURNED PAGE WRITTEN AFTER IAN LEFT FAMILY FARM. THREE LOCAL DAYS CONFIRMED DURING HIS ABSENCE FROM THE FARM. EARTH/Ian CLOCK RELATION UNKNOWN.**

Isha read it over his shoulder. "That is enough."

Thomas capped the pen. For the first time since Ian had begun moving through events Earth could see only in fragments, the missing middle no longer contained an unknown family outcome. Thomas and Isha knew that his family had agreed to meet Ian; they knew the terms, what had been read, and what the family had made during his absence. The precise relationship between those days and an Earth calendar remained blank, and nothing in Kelda's page asked them to fill it.

It was nearly eleven. The album stayed on the low table. Isha sat beside Thomas with her legs tucked under her and looked once more at the frozen final frame of Tessa's message.

Then Thomas's phone vibrated. A message screen opened by itself. At the top, where an ordinary sender name or number should have been, colour moved continuously through a field of tiny pixels—the same restless, unrepeatable pattern they had seen during Ian's temporary reply route.

There was no message beneath it yet. No System text appeared.

Neither Thomas nor Isha touched the screen. The sender field remained open.

Then words appeared.

> **Thomas, Isha. I found the time with your family very hard. But also lovely. They are wonderful people. They didn't need to let me in, at all. They did. I still found it incredibly hard. I am glad you accepted their gifts, I hope you enjoyed them. I asked them if I may visit again, they said yes.**

Thomas read it once without moving, then handed the phone to Isha. She slowed at the final sentence.

"He says it was hard," Thomas said. Isha looked at the album. "I can imagine parts of why."

The word remained broad enough to avoid pretending they had witnessed the conversations. They knew Mira at the table, Rowan outside, Mara and Tessa in their messages, Kelda and Aelira as witnesses. The rest belonged to the people who had been there.

"I'm glad they said yes to another visit," Isha said after a while. Thomas looked at her.

Thomas looked at the closed album. "It is their house. Their choice."

"I know." Isha rested her fingers on the album's blue-green spine. "I am still glad."

He found that he was too. His thumb hovered over the reply field. It was there now, another temporary opening with no contact address behind it.

"I think I want to answer."

"Then answer."

Thomas tried twice and deleted both attempts. The first thanked Ian for the book, which was wrong in a small but important way: his family had made it. The second sounded like a report.

Eventually he wrote:

> **We watched all four messages and the three shared recordings tonight, then looked through the album. Mum's voice was exactly as I remembered it. Dad told Isha she was family. Mara required three attempts. Tessa remains Tessa. We loved them.**
>
> **Thank you for making it possible for them to send what they chose, and for not making yourself part of making it.**
>
> **I'm glad they let you in. I'm glad you asked whether you could go back. Whether you visit them again belongs to them, but I'm glad they said yes.**

The words felt more exposed than the longer Common page. Thomas sent them anyway and put the phone beside the album.

Isha's phone vibrated. The notification carried the same impossible sender field, but only one sentence.

> **Isha, I am sorry for not telling you the truth before.**

Isha stared at it. Ian had apologised after the confession already; she had told Thomas she believed the apology. This one came without explanation or request for reassurance.

She rested the phone on her knee. "I am still angry."

Thomas leaned back into the sofa. "I know."

Isha looked at the message again. "He knows, probably. That is not the same as saying it."

She opened the reply field and typed:

> **I believe you are sorry. I am still angry that you did not tell me when you asked whether you could remain part of my life.**
>
> **I have not withdrawn what I told you on the train. The same limits still apply.**

Isha read it once and sent it. The sender field stayed active.

She watched it for several seconds, then looked at Thomas. "Do you want to ask him anything?"

Thomas thought about the farmhouse from above, his old room, his mother's voice. "Not yet."

Isha nodded. Her own question had already formed.

> **Do you understand why hiding that from me mattered?**

She sent it without adding a softer ending. The reply came in less than a minute.

> **Yes, I do. It was more than cowadice. It was selfish. Your family asked a lot about it. More after reading the reality in text. I pointed out that you would have never stayed dead, and that Thomas never would have died. It didn't help, I don't think I really thought it would. I am just man, who doesn't remember why he did things, this makes it difficult. There was one discussion with Rowan and Tessa, that i think helped: he admitted to reading stories of people dying, she admitted to writing stories of killing robbers. Tessa said "I don't know what I would have done if i met their mothers". This doesn't get me 'off the hook', but it was the most powerful way of .. explaining it. Of course it came from Rowan, and Tessa. I regret saying i'd never come to your Earth again. But, if you did want to meet. Either alone, or with Thomas, I have a solution, i think. It may be easier for you to communicate if nothing else. Only if you wish.**

Isha reached the end and stayed there. Thomas read beside her, then took the phone and began again from the top.

The sentence about the bridge caught him. *You would have never stayed dead.*

"I understand what he means," Thomas said. "I still don't like reading it."

At the bridge Thomas had possessed no such assurance. He had possessed Isha's body, a narrowing span in which Revive might answer, and the belief that failure would be final. Whatever Ian imagined he could have done from elsewhere had not existed inside the experience as safety.

"I was trying to bring you back because I thought you were dead."

Isha's voice was quiet. "I was dead."

"Yes."

They left the sentence there. The part about Rowan and Tessa held Isha longer. She could imagine Tessa inventing a robber, killing him on a page and never having to wonder about a mother beyond the story because no such mother existed unless Tessa chose to write her. Rowan could read about someone dying and feel the death while remaining safely outside it.

"That does help me understand him," Isha said. "Not the bridge. Him."

Thomas nodded. "Dad found a very Dad way to explain something impossible."

Ian's admission that he no longer remembered why he had done some things was easier for Thomas to accept than perhaps it should have been. Daniel's memories contained gaps large enough to hold decisions whose reasons had gone missing while consequences remained.

"I believe him about not remembering," Thomas said.

"So do I." Isha's thumb rested against the edge of the phone. "It doesn't make the reason better, but I would rather he say he doesn't know than invent one now."

The last part of the message waited below: Ian regretted promising never to return physically to Earth, but believed he had another solution. Thomas did not feel jealousy. The old romantic possibility had been closed clearly enough on the train. What bothered him was the word *solution*. Ian's solutions had a habit of arriving with consequences that became understandable only after somebody lived through them.

"What do you want?" Thomas asked.

Isha did not answer at once. "I want to know what he means. I don't want curiosity to open a door here, and I don't want asking the question to count as saying yes."

"Agreed on both."

Thomas found himself curious too. "I don't know if I want the meeting yet. I do want to hear the proposal."

Isha began typing. She let Thomas read before sending.

> **I understand what you mean about Rowan and Tessa. It helps me understand you better. It does not make the bridge all right.**
>
> **When you say that I would never have stayed dead and Thomas would never have died, remember that we did not know that. Thomas believed I was dead. I was dead. What you might have done from outside did not exist for us as safety while we lived it.**
>
> **I also understand that you may genuinely not remember why you made every choice. I would rather you tell me that than invent a better reason now.**

She sent that much first. Then, after another glance at Thomas, she added:

> **I am not asking you to break your promise and I am not agreeing to meet yet. Thomas and I are willing to hear what your solution is. Explaining it is not permission to move either of us, open anything here, change anything, or begin the meeting.**
>
> **What is your solution?**

The field of impossible colour continued moving. A little under a minute later the first part of the answer arrived.

> **Briefly, on memory, your family quizzed me deeper on the process: I provide a few sentences for a chapter, the broad-brush strokes, sometimes specifics, like 10x mana. The machine then generates the story. I keep each chapter. I do not keep my prompt -- this makes it very hard to remember what *i* did vs. what *it* did in specifics. You also need to understand there are almost 2mil words over 370+ chapters. I can use a computer to search it, but i can't remember it. (1/2)**

Isha lowered the phone. "One of two."

"We wait."

The explanation gave shape to several inconsistencies that had bothered Thomas since the train: Ian's confidence about large choices beside uncertainty over details, the way he could remember wanting Isha's death and Thomas's Hero-shaped development but not whether a particular consequence had been specified by him or supplied around the request.

Thomas reread the example. "Ten times the mana."

Isha nodded. At the bridge that detail had mattered enormously. If Ian remembered supplying it, then broad direction and exact instruction had met there.

"He remembers some specifics," Thomas said, "but not enough to separate everything from what the machine did."

"And he did not keep the instructions." Isha considered that for a moment. "Mara would object."

Thomas smiled faintly. "Kanno would object professionally."

That earned a small smile. A few minutes later the second message appeared.

> **We could meet here. Where I live, or, at least another reality of it. Not your Earth, not the reality I habit, not the other world. I can step-in, you can step-in. You can step-out whenever you wish. In the real world i live in a town called Otley, in West Yorkshire, England. And yes, that is why you are both from here in your Earth, I think. We can meet at a café there. It would be a purposefully artificial construct that would not persist except whilst we are there. Our memories would. This way I do not interfere with your world by being there. Anyway, it is an idea. The cakes are very nice though. 😊 (2/2)**

Thomas reached the cake before anything else. "He has proposed an artificial temporary reality between worlds and included a café recommendation."

Isha's mouth curved. "Yes."

"That may be the most English thing he has done."

Then both of them returned to the beginning. The offer felt different from Ian physically returning to Earth. If his description was accurate, there would be no hotel or train in Sendai for him to occupy, no weather or geography in their world to alter merely by being present. The meeting place itself would exist only for the meeting.

Thomas knew West Yorkshire and only vaguely knew Otley. Daniel's England had been Leicester. Nothing in the town name produced hidden recognition.

Ian's next claim was harder to place. "He thinks that is why we're both from here in our Earth," Thomas said.

Isha drew one knee beneath herself. "He said *I think*."

Her supplied history made her British and Icelandic, born in Reykjavík and raised in England from early childhood. Thomas's current records made him English-born. Ian might have influenced that. The machine might have borrowed familiarity from him. Neither of them had enough evidence to decide why tonight.

The practical questions were clearer. "What does step-in mean?" Isha asked. "Would our bodies here disappear? Would time pass? Could one of us leave without the other?"

Thomas set his mug down. "And can he or the machine ever prevent us leaving? Can anything there injure us here?"

Isha's gaze stayed on the screen. "Thoughts."

Ian had already admitted that narrative interiority could reach him and that he could not honestly promise perfect control over it. A temporary café did not make that boundary disappear.

Thomas asked, "Do you want to meet him?" Isha held the mug between both hands. "I think I do. Not alone."

"You want me there."

"Yes."

Thomas tried to imagine the ordinary-looking man Isha had described standing across a café table after having been in his parents' kitchen. Curiosity remained alongside distrust.

"I want to meet him too."

Isha watched his face. "Are you sure?"

"No. I still want to."

"Better answer."

She opened the reply field.

> **The explanation about your prompts helps us understand why you can be certain about some choices and uncertain about details. It does not settle responsibility between you and the machine, but we understand the record problem better.**
>
> **We are interested in meeting. Together. We are not agreeing to step in yet.**
>
> **Before we decide: what happens to our bodies and to time on Earth while we are there? Can either of us step out immediately without the other? Can you or the machine ever prevent us leaving? Can anything that happens to our bodies there injure or alter our bodies here? Does entering the construct change your access to our thoughts in any way?**
>
> **If those answers are acceptable, I think I want to meet you. Thomas does too. Together first.**

Thomas read it once. "That's what I mean."

Isha sent it. The answer came while Thomas still held his tea.

> **This is not intended to be a threat or scary: with enough specificity the machine will do whatever I tell it. The more i 'write the story' the less i feel attached to it, and now, the more i feel i am doing some strange mind-control shit, so I hate it. But I can do whatever, I guess. You would leave and return at the same point in time, so if, say, Kanno was there. She might just see you turn instantly 90 degress, or perhaps some cream might appear on your upper lip. I hope she would see a smile instantly appear, and not red eyes. If one of you left before the other, I can either then let time pass normally, or time doesn't pass before the second of you returns. Unfortunately, there are no limits to my power to control your world, nor the limits on unintended consequences, or me being a fairly useless normal man. I promise to let you leave together or individually. I promise to not prevent you leaving. Your bodies will not be harmed. Thoughts are thoughts, wherever you are. The construct just ensures (hopefully) the machine doesn't start changing your reality, or that of the other world. Ask more if you're not sure. Also, Google 'secret garden cafe otley', it's my favourite.**

Isha read the final line and went back to the beginning. "That is much less reassuring than the first sentence hoped."

Thomas gave a short breath of laughter. "He did warn us."

The message did not offer a mechanism that could overrule Ian. It offered Ian's promise, plus whatever precision he could impose on the machine, alongside his own warning that unintended consequences remained possible.

"I believe he intends to let us leave," Isha said. "And not to hurt us."

"So do I," Thomas said.

She looked at him. "That doesn't mean nothing can go wrong."

"No."

The reference to Kanno changed the practical shape of the idea. If she remained in flat 202, she might see an instantaneous change of posture or some physical trace of the café. Her presence would not make the meeting safe, but it could give Earth a witness who already knew what Ian was supposed to be doing.

"Kanno could be here," Isha said.

"If she wants to," Thomas replied.

They did not decide that for her. The stranger part was Ian's statement about absolute control. Thomas had spent two lives around systems that became more dangerous when people trusted intentions more than consequences. There was no list of technical questions that could turn Ian's promise into an independent safeguard.

What remained possible was to make the promises specific. Thomas opened a note on his own phone.

"I don't want him asking the machine for what I'm thinking."

Isha nodded. "Neither do I. If it gives him something anyway, he can wait until I say it before answering."

Thomas wrote that down. "Memories," he said next.

"Yes. And feelings."

He looked up. Isha's expression had gone still. "If he wants me to like him, he has to tolerate that he cannot make me."

Thomas added the condition exactly where it belonged. The rest took shape more slowly. No deliberate alteration to their Earth bodies, clothes or belongings. No object returning with them unless they had agreed to it. No third person in the construct without prior agreement. If something unintended began happening, Ian told them instead of silently correcting it. If either asked to leave, that person left immediately; if one returned alone, Earth time resumed normally for that person rather than placing them in another frozen interval while the other remained behind.

The list was longer than either liked, but Ian's own phrase—*there are no limits*—made small assumptions worth speaking aloud. "Not tonight," Thomas said.

"No."

They could want the meeting and choose when it happened. "We ask Kanno tomorrow," Isha said.

"When she has time."

Thomas glanced at the last line of Ian's message. "Are you going to search the café?"

"Eventually."

"I would prefer to decide whether we're entering the artificial reality before evaluating cake."

Isha regarded him. "That is unnecessarily ordered."

"Two lives in administration."

"And still no priorities."

Thomas let the menu wait. Together they drafted the reply.

> **That is frightening, but clearer. We understand that there is no technical safeguard outside what you choose to tell the machine and your promise to us. We also understand that you are warning us about unintended consequences rather than promising perfect control. We still want to consider the meeting.**
>
> **We are not stepping in tonight. We want to ask Kanno whether she would like to be here on our side when we eventually do it. She would not be responsible for supervising or protecting us. We would simply prefer that someone who already understands the situation be here before and after, if she wants that.**
>
> **Before we say we are ready, we want you to agree to a few things explicitly. Please do not deliberately ask the machine for either of our private thoughts. If it gives you something we have not said, do not answer or act on it as though we said it. Do not alter, remove or add to our existing memories, our feelings, or our relationship. In particular, do not make either of us like, trust or forgive you more than we choose to.**
>
> **Do not deliberately alter our Earth bodies, clothing or belongings through the meeting, and do not send an object back with us unless we have agreed to it. No other person should enter the construct unless we agree first. If something begins happening that you did not intend, tell us rather than quietly correcting it.**
>
> **If either of us asks to leave, let that person leave immediately. If we ask to leave together, return us together. If one of us leaves alone, let Earth time resume normally for the person who has returned; do not hold them in another frozen interval while the other remains with you. The second person must still be free to leave independently whenever they choose.**
>
> **Agreeing to these conditions is still not us saying we are ready. If you agree, please wait until we tell you that we are.**

Isha read the message herself before sending. Nothing in flat 202 moved afterward.

A photograph arrived next. It showed a desk in an ordinary room: a large monitor, a webcam balanced above it, stone wall behind, cables and objects at the edge of the frame. A browser filled most of the screen. Their current conversation was visible there, including the purple instruction block Ian had been given before this part of the chapter began.

Isha enlarged the image with two fingers. The words were readable.

> **The authentic in-character agency of Thomas and Isha must be preserved.**

Below it was another instruction saying that if Ian became involved, the chapter should pause before supplying his consequential action or dialogue and wait for his own response. The assistant's visible answer repeated the same intention in different words.

Isha read the section twice. "So that is what he means."

"At least what he asked for this time," Thomas said. A photograph of an instruction could not prove obedience. It did show Ian placing their agency into the input before the scene continued.

His accompanying message appeared beneath it.

> **I attached a photo of how i try to ensure the system does not make me programme your thoughts and brains. It is not perfect. I do not go back end edit, rarely it produces things physically impossible or contradictory, i shout at it and ask it to try again, i do ask it to change the grammar as it is sometimes really annoying. Kanno can come with you. Or she can remain there. Time for her can pass, or not. Whatever I can do to make it more comfortable. Your agency matters to me, more than if I am liked.**

Thomas stopped at *It is not perfect*. "He isn't claiming the rule always works."

"No. He says he makes it try again if it produces something impossible or contradictory."

Thomas looked at the photograph again. "And he's not telling it to make us willing to meet him."

Isha's attention stayed on the final sentence. "Your agency matters to me, more than if I am liked."

"That matters," she said. Thomas knew why. Ian had finally given her the bridge truth even though it risked making her dislike him more. Late truth remained late, but it had still cost him something he wanted.

Thomas's phone vibrated with a second message.

> **I might like to meet Kanno, after my failed courtship of Aelira, Kanno is single, isn't she?**

For a few seconds the proposed artificial reality and the ethics of narrative control lost their place in the queue. Isha spoke first. "Failed courtship?"

"Apparently," Thomas said.

"With Aelira." Isha looked back at the message.

"That is what he wrote."

Isha's expression shifted towards amusement. "I would like to have seen that."

"I believe you."

Then the other problem arrived. "Do we know if Kanno is single?" Thomas asked.

They tried to remember and found no answer they trusted. Kanno had never presented her private life as a missing field in their knowledge.

Before either could decide whether Ian expected a serious answer, the phone vibrated again.

> **That was a joke about Kanno. Yes I am deflecting**

Isha laughed. Thomas put the phone down. "At least he diagnoses himself quickly."

The joke had not removed the problem beneath it. Ian had just told them there was no external limit they could rely upon, then tried to deflect from the discomfort of that admission. The speed of the third message made the deflection easier to recognise and less irritating than it might otherwise have been.

They still had to ask Kanno for herself. "We don't decide whether she comes," Isha said. "And we don't decide how time works for her."

"Agreed."

They sent a shorter reply.

> **The photograph helps. It does not prove that the machine always follows the instruction, but it shows us that you are explicitly telling it to preserve our agency and stop before supplying your choices. That matters.**
>
> **So does what you said about our agency mattering more to you than whether we like you. I believe that you are trying to act that way now. I am still keeping the rest of my judgement.**
>
> **We will ask Kanno tomorrow whether she wants any involvement. We will not decide for her whether she stays here, comes with us, or how time should work for her. If she wants to come, she may have conditions of her own. Please do not do anything involving her until she has chosen it herself.**
>
> **We do not know whether Kanno is single. I do not think either of us has ever asked her. In any case, that is hers too.**
>
> **We noticed the deflection.**

Ian answered a little later.

> **You do not need to reply today, or now. Discuss it with Kanno. Reply when you feel up to it. Browse the menu. And thank you for at least talking.**

Isha read it once and put the phone down. "No reply tonight," she said.

Thomas nodded. "We should sleep."

They did not move immediately. The two albums, Kelda's page, the photograph of Ian's monitor and the messages about unlimited control and cake all belonged to the same evening without becoming one neat explanation.

Eventually they put things away. The two other-world albums returned to the shelf in the flexible room, touching at their spines. Kelda's page went into the correspondence archive after both sides were photographed. The new family files received a local backup. Ian's messages and the photograph of his screen went into the existing external-evidence folder, separate from the Hero-System correspondence.

By the time the kitchen light went out, flat 202 had returned to the practical shape of a home shutting down for the night. Neither phone lit again before they slept.

---

Thursday allowed no metaphysics before breakfast. Thomas went to the university. Isha went to the climbing centre. Kanno went wherever Kanno's publishing supplier expected her to be when clients discovered that December had not abolished deadlines.

The separation helped. Thomas spent his morning with an overseas student's arrival date that had been entered correctly by the office that owned it and then copied incorrectly into somebody else's spreadsheet. Six months earlier he might have corrected both records himself because he understood the discrepancy. Instead he sent the mismatch back to the owner of the second record with the source date attached and continued with his own queue.

At 11:14 the other office corrected it. Nobody thanked him.

Thomas considered that an excellent outcome. At the climbing centre, Isha's morning contained no fights, other realities or cameras carrying messages from another world. A beginner objected to changing shoes because the rental pair felt wrong around one toe. Isha tried another size, listened when that was rejected too, and eventually found a folded sock seam.

The child climbed afterward. At lunch Isha checked her phone. Ian had sent nothing further. She did not find herself disappointed.

Then she opened the browser.

**Secret Garden Cafe Otley**

Thomas had wanted to decide whether they were willing to enter Ian's proposed construct before evaluating cake. Isha had respected that priority for almost ten hours.

The search results looked stubbornly ordinary: a café, hot drinks, photographs of food and cakes. The existence of the place interested her more than any particular item. Ian had not invented a fantasy tea room for their benefit. He wanted to meet them in a copy of somewhere he genuinely liked.

She sent Thomas one message.

**The cakes look credible.**

His reply arrived during her break.

**You have compromised the investigation.**

Isha smiled.

**I have advanced it.**

That was all they said about Ian until after work. They decided to ask Kanno in person. Thomas wrote while standing on a train platform and showed Isha the message before sending.

**Something new happened after the passage. Ian offered something that may involve you if you choose. Nothing has been done. Could you come to 202 tomorrow evening if you're free?**

Kanno answered eight minutes later.

**Yes. 19:00. “May involve you” is ominous wording.**

Thomas showed Isha. "She's correct."

"You wrote it," Isha said.

Thomas put the phone away. "I can recognise quality criticism."

Friday passed much the same way as Thursday. That was one reason neither of them resented waiting. The world continued when Ian was quiet.

At 18:57 the intercom sounded. Kanno had arrived three minutes early.

---

Kanno entered 202 carrying her black work bag and a convenience-store paper bag containing three bottled teas.

“I assumed whatever this is would produce inadequate hydration.”

Thomas took the bag. “That is unfair.”

“Was I wrong?”

He looked towards the table, where he had prepared tea but nothing cold. “Partially.”

Kanno changed into guest slippers and reached the LDK before Isha said, “Ian invited us to meet him.” She stopped. “Physically?”

“Possibly,” Thomas said. “The definition has become difficult.”

Kanno set down her work bag. “Start before that sentence.”

They did. The explanation took nearly twenty minutes because none of them tried to make it impressive. Thomas began with Wednesday's normal passage, the family gift and what had arrived afterward. Kanno already knew the gift was expected, though not its contents. Isha told her Rowan had called her family. Thomas told her about Tessa's request for moving pictures in return. They described the four personal messages but did not play them again.

Then came Ian. Thomas showed her the first two messages: his difficulty meeting the family and the separate apology to Isha. Isha showed her own replies. They went through Ian's explanation of prompts and generated prose, the missing original instructions, nearly two million words of retained chapter text and his uncertainty over which details had been his and which the machine had supplied.

Kanno read in silence until her publishing face appeared.

“He keeps the output and not the input.”

“Yes,” Thomas said. Kanno closed her eyes briefly. “I dislike him professionally now.”

“He has other problems.”

“I can dislike people in multiple categories.”

The proposal to meet in an artificial version of Otley took longer. Kanno read Ian's description twice, then his answers about time, bodies, leaving and the absence of any absolute limit on what he could ask the machine to do.

“And you still want to meet him,” she said. Isha answered first. “Yes.”

Thomas nodded. “I think so.”

Kanno's fingers rested on the edge of the phone. “Why?”

Isha had already answered versions of the question for herself. “Because I am still speaking to him. I could stop. I have not.”

She glanced towards the flexible-room door. “He did something terrible to me before he understood me as real. Then he hid an important part of it because he wanted me not to hate him. I am angry about both. He also asked my mother before recording her, let Kelda and Aelira set terms, asked Thomas's family before entering their home and asked us before showing them our private thoughts. I want to meet the person who is making those choices now.”

Kanno looked at Thomas. “I've never met him,” he said.

“You've exchanged messages.”

“Yes. That's different.”

Thomas looked towards the shelf where the family album now sat. “He has been in my parents' kitchen. Dad talked to him. Tessa argued with him. Mum let him into the house. I want to know who they said yes to.”

Kanno leaned back. Neither answer was certainty, and she did not ask them to manufacture it.

Isha opened the photograph Ian had attached on Wednesday. “This is the part that involves you more directly.”

Kanno enlarged the purple instruction block on Ian's physical monitor and read the agency rule, then the visible response beneath it.

“He tells it not to write his part.”

“Yes,” Thomas said.

“And tells it not to write yours.”

“Yes.”

“Does it work?”

Isha answered. “Not perfectly. He says sometimes it produces contradictions or impossible things and he makes it try again. He corrects grammar too.”

Kanno looked at Thomas. “Of course the reality engine has a copy editor.”

“I knew you would focus on that.”

“It may be the most comprehensible fact in the file.”

She read Ian's accompanying message. The joke about Kanno came last.

Her eyes moved from the phone to both of them. “He asked whether I am single.”

“Yes,” Isha said.

“And then admitted he was deflecting.”

“Yes.”

Kanno's mouth moved. “Coward.”

There was enough amusement in it that the remark needed no defence. Isha studied her. “Are you?”

Kanno stared at her. Thomas turned very carefully towards the kitchen.

“You have waited this long to ask because a man outside reality made a bad joke.”

“Yes,” Isha said.

“That is offensive.”

“I can withdraw the question.”

“No. That would make it worse.”

Kanno opened one of the bottled teas. “I am single.”

Thomas looked back despite himself. Kanno pointed the cap towards him. “Do not make this information narratively significant.”

“I was not going to.”

“You looked surprised.”

“I realised we genuinely had never asked.”

“Because it has not mattered.”

“Yes.”

“Good. Continue behaving that way.”

Isha smiled, and the subject ended there. Thomas opened the conditions he and Isha had sent Ian. Kanno read them carefully: no requested private thoughts, no acting on accidentally revealed thoughts, no changes to memories, feelings or relationship, no deliberate alteration to Earth bodies or belongings, no unapproved objects, no hidden correction of unintended effects and independent exit.

When she finished, she handed the phone back. “These are yours.”

“Yes.”

“You haven't added me to them.”

“No.”

“Good.”

Kanno sat in silence for a little while. Thomas had learned not to fill that kind of pause merely because it existed. The refrigerator cycled; a car passed below; the heating clicked somewhere behind the wall.

Eventually Kanno said, “I don't want to go with you.” Isha nodded. Thomas felt no disappointment.

“I am curious,” Kanno continued. “Very curious. I already met Ian once when I thought he was an English customer who had appeared too many times. But this first meeting is not mine. He wants to talk to you. You want to talk to him. If I come, I become another person whose reactions he has to account for and whose boundaries the machine has to preserve.”

She glanced at the photograph of Ian's monitor. “That sounds like adding complexity to the part everyone says goes wrong when it gets complicated.”

Thomas considered it. “Yes.”

“And I would rather be here. For myself as well as for you.”

Isha asked, “To see what happens on this side?”

“Exactly. I cannot rescue you if a man who claims unlimited narrative control breaks his promise. I can at least know what Earth did while you were gone.”

The wording was less comfortable than reassurance would have been. It also fit the situation better.

Kanno set her bottle on the table. “I want one thing clearly. Do not let Ian do anything to my time.”

Thomas and Isha both became still.

“He offered to let time pass for me or not. I don't want either option selected as a favour. I stay here in normal Earth time, under whatever Earth would have done if I came over for tea and none of this happened. If you disappear from my perspective, I see that. If you return in the same instant and Thomas has turned ninety degrees or Isha has cream on her face, I see that too. If an hour passes, an hour passes.”

Thomas understood. “You don't want the construct arranging your experience around ours.”

“Correct.”

“And your memory of it stays yours.”

“I would prefer all of me to stay mine.”

Thomas winced slightly. “Yes.”

Kanno looked towards Isha. “If Ian somehow receives one of my thoughts because the machine is narrating this room, I cannot stop that. I want the same practical rule you gave him: if I have not said something, he does not answer it.”

Isha nodded. “We can send that exactly.”

“No.” Kanno's correction was immediate but not sharp. “You can tell him that I chose it. Do not make it your condition on my behalf.”

Isha accepted the distinction. Kanno took out her own phone. “I'll write it.”

She began with several false starts. Her final version fit on one screen.

> **Kanno: I am choosing to remain in flat 202 if Thomas and Isha meet you. Do not alter, stop, accelerate or otherwise arrange my experience of Earth time for their meeting. Do not alter me, my memories, belongings or feelings. If your system gives you any thought or interior information from me that I have not spoken, do not answer or act on it. I am not attending as their supervisor or granting you general access to me. I am only choosing to be here before and after because I want to be.**

Thomas read it. Isha did too. Neither suggested a change.

Kanno locked her phone. “How do I send that?”

The question stopped them. There was no address to forward. Isha held out her hand. “If you want, I can copy it exactly and say it is yours.”

Kanno considered the offer and passed over the phone. “Yes.”

Isha copied the words without changing punctuation. At the top she added only:

> **Kanno asked us to send this exactly as her choice:**

Kanno checked the final version herself.

“Send it when you send yours.”

Isha had not yet pressed anything. There was still the practical question of when.

“Tomorrow?” she asked.

Kanno thought about her own day. “I can come after lunch.”

Thomas checked the shared calendar. Saturday afternoon was empty. “Two?”

“Two.”

Isha looked at Thomas. He felt the familiar temptation to ask whether she was certain and chose a better question. “Still want to?”

“Yes.”

“Me too.”

Kanno watched both of them. “If either of you wakes tomorrow and does not want to, I remain capable of spending a Saturday afternoon drinking your tea.”

“That seems manageable,” Thomas said.

“It had better be.”

Isha returned to the Ian thread and typed slowly.

> **We have spoken with Kanno. She chose to stay in flat 202 rather than come with us. Her conditions are below, in her own words.**
>
> **Kanno asked us to send this exactly as her choice:**
>
> **Kanno: I am choosing to remain in flat 202 if Thomas and Isha meet you. Do not alter, stop, accelerate or otherwise arrange my experience of Earth time for their meeting. Do not alter me, my memories, belongings or feelings. If your system gives you any thought or interior information from me that I have not spoken, do not answer or act on it. I am not attending as their supervisor or granting you general access to me. I am only choosing to be here before and after because I want to be.**
>
> **Thomas and I still want to meet you together. If we both still want to tomorrow, we propose Saturday at 14:00 here. Kanno will be with us before we step in and when we return, under the conditions she chose.**
>
> **Our conditions from the previous message still apply. We are not asking you to open the construct now. Tomorrow, when we are together and ready, we will tell you explicitly. Until then, please do nothing.**
>
> **If you agree, you do not need to persuade us further. Just confirm that you accept Kanno's conditions and ours, and wait.**

Thomas read it. Kanno read it too. Isha sent it.

Kanno's phone vibrated before hers received an answer. All three looked at it.

The phone lay screen-down beside the bottled tea. Kanno had never contacted Ian from it. Her words had been copied into Isha's message only seconds earlier.

It vibrated again, once, and stopped. Kanno turned it over. The lock screen carried no ordinary sender name. A strip of moving colour occupied the place where one should have been.

Thomas stood without noticing. Kanno looked at him. “Sit down.”

He sat. “That was not reassurance,” he said.

“I know.”

She unlocked the phone herself.

> **Kanno, I understand, I will do as you say. It might be nice to meet one day. I have made a note in the canon files of reality that you are single.**

Kanno read it twice. Her expression changed at the final sentence.

“No.”

Isha leaned closer. “Which part?”

“The phrase *canon files of reality*.”

Thomas covered his mouth. Kanno pointed at him without looking away from the screen. “Do not.”

“I haven't said anything.”

“You were about to.”

“I genuinely wasn't sure which problem came first.”

“All of them.”

She put the phone flat on the table, one finger still resting on its edge. The direct arrival mattered more than the joke. Kanno had agreed to have her words relayed. She had not agreed to a standing direct contact route.

Thomas asked, “Do you want us to tell him not to use your phone again?” Kanno thought for a few seconds. “No. I want to tell him.”

The reply field existed beneath Ian's message. She touched it and a keyboard appeared.

“This is extremely rude technology.”

Thomas said, “I don't think technology is the operative category.”

“I am choosing one I can dislike.”

She typed, deleted part of it, and eventually turned the screen so they could read.

> **I understand. You may record that I told Thomas and Isha I am single. That is different from making it true because you decided it should be.**
>
> **Also, I did not give you a standing invitation to contact my phone. I am answering this because you answered my conditions directly. Please ask before doing it again.**
>
> **Maybe it would be nice to meet one day. Not tomorrow. Tomorrow is theirs.**

Thomas read the final line twice. Isha smiled.

Kanno noticed. “What?”

“I like the sentence.”

“It is accurate.”

She sent the message. The field stayed open for several seconds, then became inert when she closed it.

Thomas recorded only the observation they had actually made: **17 DEC — DIRECT MESSAGE APPEARED ON KANNO'S PHONE AFTER HER WORDS HAD BEEN RELAYED THROUGH ISHA. NO PRIOR DIRECT KANNO THREAD. KANNO REPLIED ONCE AND REQUESTED ASKING BEFORE FUTURE DIRECT CONTACT.**

When he looked up, Isha's phone vibrated. Ian's answer contained four words.

> **Tomorrow it is.**

Isha read them aloud. Kanno looked at the clock. “Fourteen hundred.”

“Yes.”

“Here first. You tell him when you are actually ready. The clock reaching two is not consent.”

“That was already the plan,” Isha said.

“Good.”

Thomas leaned back into the sofa. Tomorrow afternoon, if both of them still wanted it, they would tell Ian they were ready. Then something that did not exist now would exist long enough for them to enter it.

A copy, perhaps, of a café in a West Yorkshire town Thomas knew only vaguely. A constructed version of somewhere Ian liked. Normal Earth time left alone for Kanno. Independent exits. No deliberate thought requests. No changes to their memories, feelings, bodies or relationship. No quiet correction if something went wrong.

Beneath all the conditions, a meeting. Thomas looked at Isha. She was watching him too.

“Nervous?” he asked.

“Yes.” Her thumb moved once across the side of his hand. “You?”

“Very.”

Kanno opened her bottled tea. “Good. I would be more worried if either of you had decided this was normal.”

Isha laughed softly. “It is not normal.”

“Excellent.”

Nobody sent Ian anything else. Kanno stayed another half hour. They kept the practical planning modest. She would arrive shortly before two. She would remain in the LDK unless either of them wanted something different. Her phone stayed with her. She would not start a timer unless they asked; if Earth time passed, the clocks already existed.

Thomas began suggesting written instructions for what she should do if an hour passed and stopped when Kanno looked at him.

“You may tell me tomorrow what you want if an hour has actually passed,” she said. “You do not need to design every failure tonight.”

“That is less prepared than I naturally prefer.”

“Yes.”

Isha squeezed his hand. Thomas surrendered.

They decided one thing. If either Thomas or Isha returned alone, Kanno would first ask whether the other had chosen to remain and whether the returned person wanted help. She would not convert independent exit into proof of catastrophe merely because the possibility existed.

“If one of you appears terrified,” Kanno added, “I reserve the right to become less procedural.”

“That seems fair,” Isha said. At ten past ten Kanno stood and put on her coat.

At the genkan she looked at them both. Her dry expression softened slightly.

“You don't have to go because you arranged it.”

“I know,” Isha said. Thomas nodded.

“And if you do go,” Kanno added, “you do not owe him a successful meeting.”

Thomas considered asking what successful meant, saw the answer already forming in her face and let it go. Kanno opened the door. Cold corridor air moved around her coat.

“I'll be here at two. Do browse the menu. Apparently this is important.”

Isha laughed. Thomas closed the door after her.

For a few seconds they remained in the genkan. Tomorrow had acquired a shape, but the apartment had not changed to accommodate it. Thomas's work bag remained where he had left it. Isha's climbing things were drying properly. The family albums rested together in the flexible room. Their wedding rings caught the hall light when Isha reached for Thomas's hand.

“We can still say no tomorrow,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Either of us.”

“Yes.”

She studied his face. “Do you think you will?”

Thomas took his time. “No.”

“Neither do I.”

That was where they were tonight. They turned off the remaining lights and went to bed. The alarm was still set for an ordinary Saturday morning.