## Chapter 388 — A Quiet Saturday

Saturday, 15 January began after Kanno had already read the letter.

She had come to 202 on Friday evening, eaten a late bowl of rice with Thomas and Isha, and listened while they translated Kelda's crowded page from beginning to end. She laughed at Lethira, read Rowan's section twice and spent considerably longer on Ruvan and Kelda than she admitted. When Thomas offered to make a copy for her private record, she declined.

“It was sent to you.”

She had not asked them to forward any part to Ian either. The choice could be revisited if she wanted. For Friday, reading it had been sufficient.

By half past nine she was gone, the original page was back in the correspondence file, and flat 202 had returned to containing only two people who lived there.

At eight fourteen on Saturday morning, it contained three.

Mugi appeared outside the balcony door with the expression of a cat who had found the January temperature personally offensive. Isha let her in. The tortoiseshell crossed the threshold without gratitude, inspected the water saucer, drank for long enough to imply serious deprivation and then occupied the warm patch of floor beside the dining table.

Thomas was assembling his archery things.

His range bag contained the armguard, finger tab, towel, water bottle and the small collection of objects which had gradually accumulated around being a beginner. One object was absent.

He checked the side pocket twice.

Isha watched from the kitchen. “If it was not there the first time, the second inspection may not improve it.”

“I have experience with objects hiding beneath other objects.”

“That is called being underneath.”

Thomas ignored the linguistic correction and looked towards his office. They had been speaking Common since breakfast, mostly because Friday's translation had left the language sitting comfortably in both their mouths.

“I put the finger sling under the green notebook in the top desk drawer,” he said. “I remember moving it because it kept catching on the zipper.”

“I'll get it.”

Mugi stood.

Neither noticed immediately.

The cat stretched her front legs, lifted her tail and walked out of the LDK before Isha had moved from the counter. Her route took her down the short hall and into Thomas's office.

Thomas looked after her.

“She has excellent timing.”

Isha dried her hands and followed.

Mugi had jumped onto Thomas's desk chair. She was facing the upper drawer, which remained closed. As Isha entered, Mugi put one paw against the drawer front.

Then she looked at Isha.

Isha stopped.

Thomas came up behind her.

Mugi tapped the drawer again.

Thomas opened it.

The green notebook lay on top of two charging cables, a packet of spare arrow-rest adhesive and the miscellaneous stationery that had escaped better categories. Mugi stepped from the chair onto his lap before he had fully crouched, placed both front paws on the edge of the open drawer and pushed her nose against the notebook.

The notebook shifted.

Beneath it lay the black finger sling.

Mugi looked at it.

Then at Thomas.

Then she climbed out of the drawer area and sat on the chair.

For several seconds, nobody said anything.

Thomas picked up the sling.

Isha looked from it to Mugi. “You did not ask her.”

“No.”

“You were speaking to me.”

“Yes.”

“In Common.”

Thomas's attention moved to the cat.

Mugi began washing her shoulder.

He tried the sentence again in his head. *I put the finger sling under the green notebook in the top desk drawer.*

There had been no pointing. The office was out of sight from the kitchen. He had not said Mugi's name. The drawer had been closed.

Thomas sat on the edge of the desk.

“She may have associated the bag with archery, heard us looking for something, followed the direction we were talking about and—”

“Found the correct closed drawer and the correct notebook.”

“Yes.”

Isha crouched beside Mugi. The cat permitted two strokes down her back before shifting one centimetre farther from easy reach.

Thomas looked at the open drawer again. “I could put something else somewhere and—”

“No.”

The answer came without sharpness.

He looked at her.

Isha scratched gently beneath Mugi's chin when the cat chose to lean back into reach. “She did something strange. That does not mean she volunteered for a test.”

“No.”

“Write down what happened if you want to remember it accurately.”

Thomas considered the cat, the drawer and his wife.

“That was going to be my next suggestion.”

“It was going to be your suggestion after the experiment.”

“I accept the correction.”

They made one note in the private continuity notebook.

**15 January 2028. Mugi appeared to respond to a Common sentence addressed to Isha, identifying Thomas's closed upper desk drawer and the green notebook covering the missing finger sling. No gesture or request was directed to Mugi. No repeat test performed.**

Thomas added the last sentence himself.

Isha read the note.

“Good.”

Mugi jumped down from the chair, walked back to the LDK and climbed onto the folded laundry Thomas had intended to put away.

The possibility that she understood Common survived the next hour without becoming useful.

Thomas finished packing. Isha folded the laundry around the occupied section until Mugi eventually moved of her own accord, then took possession of the warm towel Thomas had placed on top of the pile.

Nothing else happened.

That helped.

By ten thirty Thomas was at the municipal range, where the bow behaved with reassuring indifference to metaphysics.

His first end at eighteen metres spread itself across enough of the target to make grouping an aspirational term. The second was better. The third contained one clean release, two acceptable ones and three arrows whose relationship with his intentions had weakened somewhere between draw and target.

Nakahara adjusted the position of Thomas's elbow once and then left him to work.

There was no revelation. Thomas did not suddenly become an archer because his wife's community cat might understand an impossible language. He shot, collected arrows, reset and shot again. A reasonable group was followed by a poor one. His left shoulder tired before his concentration did, so he ended the session there instead of purchasing another hour to prove the previous one had counted.

Isha spent the same part of the morning west of central Sendai.

She returned to the paper and bookbinding shop she had used before, looked through individual sheets she did not need and bought two anyway: one grey with irregular fibres and one dull green that became more interesting when held against light. The second paper hanging in 202 remained unfinished. Neither sheet had a planned place in it.

She also opened the Coach 1 information Ishikawa had forwarded.

The document stayed on her phone for twelve minutes before she closed it. There were course components, expectations and enough unfamiliar educational language that she would need to read it properly at home. She had wanted information. The information had arrived.

A Saturday café was a poor place to decide what it meant.

Thomas messaged just after noon.

`Finished. Archery remains difficult.`

Isha replied from outside the paper shop.

`Good.`

His response took nearly a minute.

`I am choosing to interpret that as encouragement.`

She put her phone away.

They met near the station for lunch. Thomas had already removed the archery gear from his shoulder and was holding the range bag between his feet beneath the table when Isha arrived carrying the two sheets of paper in a flat shop envelope.

“You bought more materials.”

“Yes.”

“For the hanging?”

“I do not know.”

Thomas looked at the envelope.

Isha looked at him.

He abandoned the next question.

Lunch was noodles in broth, inexpensive and hot enough that Thomas had to wait before eating while Isha demonstrated less patience and immediately regretted it. They discussed the range, the two papers, whether they needed milk and what Mugi had done that morning.

The last subject stayed small.

Thomas had thought of several possible explanations while shooting. None explained all of it elegantly. Cats could learn words. Mugi knew their routines. She had previously fetched named objects. Thomas and Isha spoke Common often enough at home that its sounds were not new to her.

The precise sequence remained difficult.

“I dislike the closed drawer most,” Thomas said.

Isha lifted noodles from the broth. “I dislike that she was not asked.”

“You dislike her being helpful?”

“No. I dislike that the strongest part is that she chose to involve herself.”

Thomas considered that.

Mugi had not responded to a command. She had heard them discussing a missing object and inserted herself into the solution.

“That does make it worse.”

“I did not say worse.”

“More difficult to explain.”

“Yes.”

The noodles occupied them for a while.

They did not message Kanno. They did not put the event into the group chat. Thomas did not address Ian, the System or any hypothetical reader of their Saturday.

After lunch they bought milk, mushrooms, cabbage, mandarins and the wrong quantity of yoghurt because Thomas thought one tub remained in the refrigerator while Isha was certain they had finished it.

Thomas checked the household list.

“The list says none.”

“You made the list.”

“Yes.”

“So your own evidence disagrees with you.”

“I may have failed to update the yoghurt state.”

Isha put two tubs into the basket.

“This is why we need redundancy.”

Thomas stared at her.

She continued towards the vegetables.

The afternoon remained similarly unimportant.

They took the longer way home along the river because the light was clear and neither wanted to board another train for the final part. Old snow survived in narrow places where buildings blocked the sun. The main path was dry, with dirty white ridges beside the railings and occasional darker patches where meltwater had frozen again overnight.

Isha carried the groceries in the day pack and one cloth bag. Thomas carried the range bag and the lighter supermarket bag. The compact first-aid pouch remained in the bottom of Isha's pack beneath the paper envelope, where it had lived on longer walks since she completed the course.

They stopped once at a bench because Thomas wanted a mandarin.

“You bought those twenty minutes ago.”

“That has no bearing on ripeness.”

“You inspected them in the shop.”

“I inspected the bag.”

Isha handed him one anyway.

He peeled it while they walked.

The accident happened two streets later.

It was small enough that Isha heard the groceries before she understood the fall.

A paper bag struck the pavement. A carton rolled towards the gutter. A shoe scraped sharply over frozen water, followed by the heavy, inelegant sound of a person reaching the ground too quickly.

A woman had slipped beside the entrance to a narrow pedestrian bridge.

She looked to be somewhere in her forties, dressed in a dark wool coat and thin knit gloves, one shopping bag now on its side beside her. She had landed on her left knee and right hand. By the time Thomas and Isha turned, she was already trying to push herself upright.

Isha reached her first.

“Please stay there for a moment.”

The woman looked up, startled more than frightened.

Isha stopped at arm's length rather than taking hold of her. “You slipped. Can I help you?”

“Yes. Sorry.”

“You do not need to apologise.”

Thomas collected the carton before it reached the road and moved the fallen shopping bag away from the walking line. Two pedestrians passed around them after he pointed out the thin strip of ice.

Isha crouched.

“Did you hit your head?”

“No. Hand and knee.”

“Any pain in your neck or back?”

The woman shook her head. Her breathing was quick, but she was fully alert and answering clearly. The right glove had torn across the palm. A dark patch of blood was beginning to spread through the knit.

Isha looked at it.

“Your hand is bleeding. I have first-aid supplies. May I look?”

The woman nodded.

Isha removed her day pack, found the compact pouch and put on the disposable gloves inside. The sequence felt almost disappointingly familiar. Ask. Look. Keep the injured person answering. Deal with the obvious problem before inventing another one.

She asked the woman to remove the torn glove herself if she could. She managed it slowly.

The palm had a shallow irregular cut and scrape where it had met the rough pavement. It bled steadily, more than the injury deserved visually, but slowed when Isha placed folded sterile gauze over it and asked the woman to press.

“Hold that firmly.”

The woman did.

Her left knee hurt where it had struck the ground, but the trousers were intact and she could move the leg while seated. Her right wrist was the part she kept returning to.

“It hurts here.”

She touched the thumb side with her left hand.

Isha did not press the place she indicated.

“Can you move your fingers?”

The woman opened and closed them, then stopped because the wrist movement hurt.

“Do not keep testing it.”

“I thought moving it meant it wasn't broken.”

“I cannot tell you whether it is broken.”

The answer seemed to surprise her.

Isha checked that the fingers remained warm and normally coloured and asked whether sensation felt the same as the other hand. It did. There was no obvious deformity. That was useful information and no more.

Thomas had recovered the rest of the shopping. He placed the woman's phone beside her after finding it where it had slid beneath the paper bag.

“Do you want us to call someone?”

“My husband. I can call.”

She used her left hand.

While she spoke, Isha checked the gauze. The bleeding had slowed considerably. She added a clean pad and secured it with a simple bandage, firm enough to hold the dressing and loose enough that the fingers remained comfortable.

The woman's embarrassment had begun replacing shock.

“I cannot believe I fell there.”

Isha looked at the almost invisible patch beside the bridge.

“I can.”

That made the woman laugh.

The movement pulled at her wrist and stopped the laugh quickly.

Isha waited.

When the call ended, the woman said her husband was driving over from nearby and wanted to take her to be checked because of the wrist.

“That sounds sensible.”

“You think it is bad?”

“I think it hurts after you landed on it. Someone who can examine it properly should decide the rest.”

The woman looked down at the bandaged hand.

“You are a nurse?”

“No. I have first-aid training.”

Thomas, crouched beside the collected groceries, glanced at Isha.

She ignored him.

They stayed until the woman's husband arrived. By then she could stand carefully under her own power. Isha offered an arm and let the woman decide whether to use it. She did for the first few seconds, then found her balance.

The husband thanked them several times, inspected the patch of ice as if it had acted maliciously and loaded the groceries into the car. His wife kept the right hand against her coat and climbed into the passenger seat.

Before closing the door she looked back at Isha.

“Thank you.”

“You're welcome.”

Then they were gone.

Thomas and Isha remained beside the bridge with one used pair of gloves sealed inside a small waste bag and a first-aid pouch lighter by several pieces of gauze and one bandage.

The entire event had lasted perhaps fifteen minutes.

Thomas looked at the patch of ice.

“I assume we do not investigate whether the pavement has supernatural intent.”

“No.”

“Good.”

Isha put the pouch back into her pack and adjusted the paper envelope so it stayed flat.

They resumed walking.

After half a street, Thomas said, “You were very good.”

Isha considered it.

“The course was good.”

“That was not what I said.”

“I know.”

She took the supermarket bag from his hand because its handle had begun cutting into his fingers, then passed him the lighter paper-shop envelope instead.

At the next crossing she opened the household list on her phone.

Thomas glanced over.

“What are you doing?”

“Replacing what I used.”

She added two lines.

**Sterile gauze.**

**Small roller bandage.**

The signal changed.

They crossed.