## Chapter 384 — What We Carry New Year’s Day began after eleven. Thomas woke first, looked at the time and decided that the first decision of 2028 could wait. The curtains admitted a narrow winter brightness around their edges. Isha was warm beside him, one arm across his waist and her face turned into the pillow, breathing with the deep regularity that meant she had no intention of acknowledging clocks yet. They had returned from their walk with Kanno after one in the morning. Kanno had taken the train she had already checked, sent a short message when she reached home, and ended the year’s final conversation by telling Thomas not to reply merely to prove he was awake. He had obeyed. At eleven twenty-three, Isha opened one eye. “Morning.” “Technically.” She found the clock, closed her eye again and shifted closer. “Still morning.” Thomas had no useful objection. They stayed in bed until hunger became more persuasive than warmth. The first meal of the year was therefore assembled from black beans Kanno had brought, rice, miso soup, pickles, egg and the remaining pieces of chicken Thomas had promised himself would disappear before they became a household institution. He made coffee afterward. Isha made tea and stood by the balcony door while the kettle cooled, looking out at a bright, cold sky. The necklace was already on. She had put it on after showering, as she had on the days since Christmas when there was no climbing, MMA or other reason to leave it in its box. The fine gold-coloured chain disappeared beneath a cream jumper. Unless someone knew where to look, there was nothing remarkable about it. Thomas knew where to look. Isha caught him doing so while she drank. “You are thinking about the world.” “I was looking at my wife.” “That answer had preparation behind it.” “It did not.” She gave him the expression reserved for claims whose evidential basis was weak, then turned back towards the window. They had spoken on New Year’s Eve about visiting a shrine in daylight rather than joining the midnight crowd. By one, neither had invented a better plan. They dressed for the cold, checked the local route on Thomas’s phone and walked towards a neighbourhood shrine they had passed often enough for its approach to feel familiar even though neither had entered before. The streets were busier than their midnight walk but quieter than a normal Saturday. Several shops were shuttered. Families and pairs moved in the same broad direction, some carrying small bags, some dressed no differently from anyone going to a supermarket. The air was dry enough to sting the inside of Thomas’s nose when he breathed too sharply. Isha kept one gloved hand in Thomas’s and the other in her coat pocket. Near the shrine approach she slowed. “This is religious.” Thomas glanced at her. “Yes.” “I know people do this culturally as well.” “Yes.” “That was not my question.” Thomas smiled slightly. “I know.” They stopped beside a low wall before joining the short queue. Through the entrance they could see the movement of people ahead: coats, children, an older couple, a young man holding a paper bag while his companion adjusted her scarf. The shrine buildings sat beyond them under bare branches and dark evergreen, smaller than Isha had expected from the word *shrine*. “What are you asking?” Thomas said. “Whether it is strange for me to do the actions when I do not know if I believe what the actions mean here.” Thomas took a moment. Daniel’s memories supplied familiarity rather than doctrine: New Year visits, coins, bells, crowds, the shape of a bow performed often enough that the body remembered it. Thomas himself had inherited that familiarity along with everything else and had never turned it into a firm account of belief. “I don’t think you have to claim certainty,” he said. “We can be respectful. We can visit because this is where we live.” Isha looked through the entrance again. Her fingers moved beneath her coat, brushing the place where the pendant rested. “And I am carrying another world into it.” Thomas followed the gesture. “I don’t think anyone here has a rule for that.” “Convenient.” “It is one of the few administrative gaps I am comfortable leaving open.” That earned him a small smile. They joined the queue. Isha watched what people ahead of them did without copying each movement instantly. At the purification basin she followed Thomas’s lead after seeing several other visitors use the ladles. At the main approach she waited until the space ahead cleared, then stepped forward with him. Thomas placed a coin in the offering box. Isha did the same. The movements after that were simple enough to learn: bows, two claps, hands briefly together, another bow. Thomas closed his eyes. He did not construct a request. For several seconds he stood with cold air across his face and Isha beside him, aware of the new wedding band beneath his glove and of the year that had just ended. That was sufficient. When he opened his eyes, Isha still had hers closed. She stood very still. The chain at her neck was hidden by scarf and coat. Beneath both, the tiny globe rested against her chest: oceans, continents, the western island, weather, people who had no idea they were present in this place. Isha opened her eyes and bowed with Thomas. Neither asked what the other had thought. They moved aside for the next visitors. On the way out, Isha stopped at a rack of ema for longer than Thomas expected, reading the examples and instructions. She did not buy one. “Too public?” he asked once they had moved away. “Too specific.” He waited. Isha looked back towards the shrine through the bare branches. “I already said what I wanted.” Thomas did not ask her to repeat it. They bought hot canned drinks from a vending machine on the walk home and took a longer route than necessary because the weather was good and neither wanted the day to become another afternoon on the sofa by default. Thomas chose coffee. Isha chose corn soup and then complained that the last pieces of corn resisted the opening. “You know this happens every time.” “I expect engineering to improve.” “It is a can.” “That is not a defence of the design.” Thomas drank his coffee rather than volunteer for a systems review. By the time they reached 202, both drinks were empty and Isha had successfully recovered most of the corn. She removed her coat, scarf and gloves in the genkan. The fine chain emerged again above her jumper. She touched it once while hanging the scarf, then stopped with her fingers still at her throat. Thomas noticed the pause. “Something wrong?” “No.” Isha drew the pendant out. The little lattice settled in her palm. In daylight it looked almost modest. The chain and cage had the colour of inexpensive gold jewellery, warm but not rich. The object inside ruined any attempt at modesty. A whole atmosphere caught the light. Cloud moved over an ocean smaller than Thomas’s thumbnail. They remained in the genkan longer than the task required. “I thought about them at the shrine,” Isha said. Thomas rested his back against the wall beside the shoe cabinet. “Your family?” “All of them. Mother. Ruvan. Aelira. Lethira. Kelda. Your family too.” The names stayed between them. “They are alive,” she continued. “That makes this difficult to name.” Thomas understood before she explained further. Since Christmas he had privately reached for several categories and discarded each. Keepsake was too small. Relic suggested something sacred or dead. Memorial was worse. A window implied they could look through it. The pendant was literal and still somehow failed every literal description. Isha turned the lattice between two fingers. “I do not like *memorial*.” “Neither do I.” “Kelda would object.” “Probably loudly.” “She would say she is not dead and ask why I have put her in jewellery.” Thomas smiled. “Then she would ask how the lattice was made.” “Yes.” The imagined complaint faded, leaving the globe still turning in Isha’s hand. “Does it make you homesick?” Thomas asked. Isha’s eyes remained on the world. “Sometimes.” There was no delay in the answer. “More than before?” “I do not know yet.” She closed her fingers loosely around the lattice, careful by habit despite the promise that nothing she did could affect it. “Before, missing them had distance in it. The letters changed that a little. The album changed it more. Seeing Larchmeet made the distance feel physically ridiculous.” Thomas nodded. “This makes it smaller again.” “Yes. And it does not make them nearer.” She opened her hand. The western edge of the main continent had turned into view. At this scale there was no road, no house, no person. The world existed in enough detail to be real and too little to satisfy the desire it created. Thomas moved closer. “Do you regret keeping it?” “No.” The answer was firm enough that he did not ask it again in another form. Isha looked down at the pendant and then at him. “I like wearing it. I like knowing where it is. I like that I can touch it and think of them.” Her thumb moved along one strand of the lattice. “I also like that I cannot use it to look through their windows.” Thomas laughed softly. “That is a specific benefit.” “It matters.” He knew it did. Isha tucked the globe back beneath her jumper. Her palm stayed against it for a moment before falling to her side. “Near my heart was too sentimental,” she said. Thomas considered Ian’s card. “A little.” “It was also accurate.” He looked at her. Isha had already started towards the LDK. Thomas followed. The conversation did not produce a better noun for the pendant. By mid-afternoon they had stopped trying. Isha read at the dining table. Thomas sorted photographs from the wedding and then abandoned the task when choosing between two nearly identical images began to feel like employment. They reheated soup for dinner and spoke about the shrine again only when Thomas asked whether Isha had wanted to write an ema. She said no. He left the question there. --- Tuesday, 4 January, returned Kanno to work. The regional publishing supplier had entered the year with three emails marked urgent, two client files whose filenames both contained **FINAL**, and one print job that had apparently acquired a new logo during the holiday without anyone deciding whether the old colour specification still applied. Kanno spent the morning establishing which changes were real. At lunch, she opened her calendar. The coming Saturday was free. She had known that before opening the calendar. Checking it made the decision feel less like something she had been carrying around since December and more like a date that actually existed. **Saturday, 8 January.** She looked at the square for several seconds. The following Friday was the approximate next passage date for Thomas and Isha. Kanno did not organise her own meeting around their System, but she preferred leaving distance between the two things. She also wanted a day when she could return home afterward without work waiting the next morning. Saturday worked. She closed the calendar and finished lunch. The decision survived the afternoon. At five forty-three, after the final proof had gone back to the client and somebody else had accepted responsibility for confirming the new logo colour, Kanno put on her coat and sent a message to Thomas and Isha. `Kanno: I am thinking Saturday 8 January at 14:00 for meeting Ian. I still want to meet him alone. Are you both willing to be in 202 while I do it?` She did not send it to the group chat. This part belonged to the three of them first. Isha replied while Kanno was waiting for the lift. `Yes. We can both be there.` Thomas’s message followed before the lift arrived. `Yes. Same conditions as before from our side: ordinary Earth time, and we are there because you want us there, not to supervise.` Kanno read Thomas’s sentence twice. `Kanno: Correct. Also do not spend the entire time staring at the flexible-room door.` The lift opened. By the time she reached the ground floor, Isha had replied. `Isha: I cannot promise for Thomas.` Kanno smiled despite herself and put the phone away. She did not contact Ian that evening. There were details she wanted to state clearly, and writing them while standing on a station platform would turn the message into the sort of compressed instruction she disliked receiving from clients. --- Wednesday evening, Thomas and Isha were eating grilled mackerel when Kanno called. Thomas answered on speaker after she asked him to. “I am not calling to discuss the time,” Kanno said. “The time is still Saturday at two.” Thomas swallowed. “Understood.” “I want to check the Earth-side arrangement before I send him my conditions.” Isha put down her chopsticks and shifted closer to the phone. Kanno wanted what she had described before: Thomas and Isha in flat 202, normal Earth time continuing for all of them, and one confirmation message after she entered and another after she returned. She did not want running updates. If she left the construct early, she wanted to come back to 202, not to her own flat or some location Ian considered more convenient. Thomas asked whether she wanted the flexible-room doorway used as the entrance. Kanno considered. “Yes. It gives me a known exit and gives you a known door. I do not want Ian appearing in the LDK to collect me.” Isha’s mouth moved slightly. “That was already unlikely.” “I am specifying it because unlikely things have become expensive.” Kanno continued before the exchange could become banter. Thomas and Isha were not to enter if she stayed longer than expected. If Kanno messaged **come in**, that would be different; silence meant she was still handling her own meeting. She would keep her phone. If messaging failed unexpectedly, she would use the exit instead of assuming Thomas and Isha should solve the failure from outside. Thomas listened with the particular attention he gave to procedures and, to his credit, did not improve any of them. When Kanno finished, he said, “Yes. We can do that.” Isha added, “And if you change your mind before Saturday, you change your mind.” “I know.” They returned to dinner after the call. Thomas looked at the phone once it went dark. “I am going to stare at the door.” Isha picked up her chopsticks. “Obviously.” “I will try not to make it visible.” “That is more realistic.” The mackerel had begun cooling. They ate. --- Kanno drafted the message on Thursday night. The photograph Ian had sent her hung beside the desk. She noticed it while writing and found that it no longer changed the emotional temperature of the room. It was a picture she liked, made by someone she had decided to meet. That was closer to what she had wanted. Her first draft was too long. The second sounded like a contract. The third was six lines and omitted one thing she cared about. Kanno left it overnight. On Friday, 7 January, she returned from work, made tea and opened the draft again. She removed a sentence explaining why she did not want demonstrations. Ian already knew enough about her to ask if he wanted the reason. She kept the condition itself. The final message read: `Kanno: I am ready to propose tomorrow, Saturday 8 January, at 14:00.` `I want to meet you one-to-one in a neutral construct. Thomas and Isha will remain in flat 202 in ordinary Earth time because I have asked them to. Please use their flexible-room door as my entrance and return route, but do not open it until I explicitly say I am ready.` `My existing boundaries still apply. Do not alter my body, memories, feelings, belongings or Earth time. Do not use unspoken/private information as though I gave it to you. No third person. No demonstrations or changes of setting unless I ask. If something unexpected happens, tell me.` `If I ask to leave, I leave immediately. I keep my phone and must be able to message Thomas and Isha. Please do not ask me to explain them to you or speak for them.` `If that is acceptable, we can agree the final details.` Kanno read the message once more. Then she sent it. The wall beside her desk stayed still.