## Chapter 412 — No Briefing

By Friday evening, Kanno had decided that wanting to meet someone and wanting an event were different problems.

She came to flat 202 after work with no frames, no camera and nothing in her hands except the black shoulder bag she carried most days. Thomas had made curry because he had started it before she confirmed she was coming and because three portions required almost no change in plan. They ate at the dining table while the last light faded from the balcony windows.

The subject waited until the plates were mostly empty.

“I think I want to meet Lethira first,” Kanno said.

Isha looked up from her water. “First?”

“Before Aelira. Before Kelda. Before a room containing everyone who knows things about you that I do not.” Kanno considered that description. “Especially before that room.”

Thomas smiled. “Reasonable.”

Kanno had been willing to meet the fantasy-side people on the reunion Sunday, after the family meetings and only if Thomas and Isha still wanted anyone else there. By the time those meetings ended, Thomas and Isha had been finished with people. Kanno had accepted the postponement with no sign that an incomplete social schedule offended her.

Two weeks later, it no longer felt like unfinished reunion business.

That was probably why she wanted to do it now.

“I still want the same condition,” she said. “Do not give Lethira a new briefing about me before I arrive. She knows whatever she already knows from the letters and from you before. That is enough.”

Isha nodded immediately. “Yes.”

“I also do not want another briefing about her.”

Thomas set his spoon down. “We weren't planning one.”

Kanno gave him the look she normally reserved for a proof whose author had just claimed there were no further changes. “You sometimes explain when nervous.”

“That is fair.” Thomas accepted it before the explanation could become self-demonstrating.

Isha's mouth moved slightly. “You know she is my friend, a Wood Elf and a warden. You also know she is dangerous and enjoys other people's embarrassment.”

“I know that from both of you,” Kanno said, looking between them. “This is already becoming a briefing.”

They stopped.

After dinner, Isha opened the four-person chat. She wrote the request herself because Lethira was her friend and because Kanno had asked for an introduction, not for Ian to decide what shape the introduction should take.

`Isha: Kanno would like to meet Lethira, just the two of them, if Lethira still wants that. Same kind of neutral place and direct return. They need to be able to understand each other. No recording. Please do not give Lethira a new summary of Kanno first. Ask her.`

Kanno read it over Isha's shoulder.

“Good.”

They waited.

Ian's answer was brief.

`ian: I've asked Lethira she is fine to meet`

Kanno looked at the message.

Isha did too.

Thomas said, “That was efficient.”

Kanno put her phone away. “Do not complain.”

“I wasn't.”

The meeting could wait until Sunday. Nobody attempted to derive what Sunday afternoon in Sendai meant under the Elven Woods. Lethira had agreed to meet; her local timing remained her own.

---

On Sunday, 2 April, Kanno arrived at 202 shortly after one with a copy of *Until Replaced* in her bag.

Isha noticed the absence before the presence.

“No camera.”

Kanno removed her shoes. “I am meeting her.”

Thomas, carrying three mugs from the kitchen, looked towards the bag. “You brought the book.”

“She has apparently heard about it for months. I thought she might prefer the object to another description of the object.”

The flexible-room door remained ordinary while they drank tea. Kanno did not ask Thomas or Isha to come through with her, and neither offered. She had already travelled with Ian without them. A quiet room containing one Wood Elf required less supervision than Venus.

At thirteen forty-six, Kanno checked the time and put her mug in the sink.

“Ready.”

She sent the word into the chat herself.

Ian replied a few moments later.

`ian: The doors now act intentionally, message if you need me.`

Nothing followed.

Kanno read the sentence once, put her phone into her bag and stood before the flexible-room door.

Isha came with her as far as the hallway.

“If you change your mind, come back.”

“I know.”

“And you do not have to tell us what you talk about.”

Kanno glanced at her. “I know that too.”

Isha accepted this with a small nod.

Kanno put her hand on the handle with the intention of going to meet Lethira.

The door opened somewhere else.

The room beyond was smaller than the reunion café Thomas and Isha had described and less English than the café where Kanno had met Ian. A low table stood between two upholstered chairs. Beyond wide windows lay a garden whose plants belonged to no season Kanno could identify. There was tea already present, along with water and nothing that suggested either participant had been assigned a preferred snack by an invisible host.

Lethira was standing near the window.

Kanno stopped just inside.

The first impression was height. Lethira was roughly Isha's height, though the resemblance ended quickly. Ash-brown hair was tied back simply, with several strands loose near long pointed ears. A narrow silver cuff followed one ear. Her clothes were practical green-brown layers, fitted for movement and free of anything Kanno would have described as court dress. She looked about thirty by human instinct, which Kanno knew was nearly useless here.

She also looked very much like someone who had noticed Kanno noticing all of that.

Lethira smiled.

“Emi Kanno?”

The words reached Kanno in Japanese.

Kanno watched Lethira's mouth. The sounds had not been Japanese. The mechanism sat between them cleanly enough that meaning arrived without pretending their languages had suddenly become the same.

“Kanno is fine.” She bowed by habit, then wondered what Lethira had received from the gesture. “Lethira Dawnleaf?”

“Yes.” Lethira's smile widened slightly. “Lethira is also fine.”

That solved the first problem.

Kanno stepped fully inside. The door closed behind her without becoming a wall; when she looked back, the handle remained where it should be.

Lethira noticed that check too.

“I did the same thing.”

“When?”

“More than once.”

Kanno believed her.

They sat.

For several seconds, neither rushed to improve the silence.

Lethira broke it first.

“I was told not to be told anything new about you.”

Kanno looked at her and felt an unexpected amount of relief at hearing the awkward instruction arrive intact. “Good.”

Lethira counted what remained with mild amusement. “I know your name. I know you are Thomas and Isha's friend. I know you make books with photographs, including one about repairs and signs. I know you know enough about our world that I need not spend the afternoon pretending elves are imaginary.”

“That is approximately the correct amount.”

“I thought so.”

Kanno opened her bag and took out the booklet.

“This is the book.”

Lethira leaned forward immediately.

Kanno passed it across the table.

The Japanese title remained Japanese. Whatever mechanism was helping spoken language had not quietly rewritten ink on paper. Kanno was relieved by that. Lethira turned the cover over in her hands, inspected the binding before opening it, then began looking through the photographs.

She did not hurry.

Kanno had watched enough people handle *Until Replaced* to recognise different styles. Some read captions first. Some searched for the photograph that had appeared online. Some flipped to the centre because twenty-four pages seemed small enough to sample rather than obey.

Lethira looked at each spread as an object. Her fingers paused over margins, image edges and the places where a photograph crossed the fold. When she reached the retraced arrow, she stopped.

Lethira asked whether the arrow had been redrawn. Kanno confirmed it, and Lethira followed the newer line with one fingertip held just above the paper.

“By whoever still needed people to go that way,” she said. “And the old mark is underneath.”

“Yes.”

“That is better.”

Kanno waited.

Lethira looked up. “You expected a longer answer.”

“I was deciding whether to ask why.”

“Ask.”

“Why?”

Lethira turned the booklet back towards herself. “Because whoever renewed it did not erase the first hand completely. You can see that somebody else was there before.”

Kanno looked at the page she had looked at hundreds of times.

“That is one reason I kept it.”

“Then your photograph is behaving.”

It was not how anybody at the Small Works event had phrased it.

Kanno liked it anyway.

The next spread showed a temporary notice whose corners had been replaced with different tape over time. Lethira frowned at the printed text she could not read, then ignored it and followed the sequence of repairs visually.

“Do people leave instructions everywhere on Earth?” Lethira asked. When Kanno said yes, she looked again at the layered tape. “That sounds exhausting. In the forest we mostly use people.”

Kanno considered Aelira, wardens, messengers and a settlement built around living routes. “People are harder to print.”

“Usually.”

The first laugh arrived there, small and easy.

By the time Lethira reached the clear plastic patch over the cracked panel, the meeting had stopped feeling like a diplomatic encounter and begun feeling more like Kanno sitting beside someone at a book table after the crowd had thinned.

Lethira touched the edge of the photograph rather than the image itself.

Lethira asked whether the panel had eventually been repaired. Kanno said she did not know; she had not gone back yet.

The answer caused no disappointment. Kanno realised she had been waiting for one.

“You do not need endings for all of them?” Lethira asked.

“No.”

“Good.”

The answer was so immediate that Kanno smiled.

Lethira saw that as well.

“You are less severe than I expected.”

“Expected from what?”

“The way Thomas describes being corrected by you.”

Kanno stared at her.

“That is an unreliable source.”

“I suspected so.” Lethira's smile widened. “I am beginning to see why Isha likes you.”

Kanno took her tea.

It was very good tea. She resented that slightly.

Lethira closed the booklet but kept one hand resting on it.

“Why did you want to meet me?”

The question was direct enough that Kanno answered in kind.

“Because you kept appearing in their stories.”

Lethira waited.

“When Thomas and Isha first told me the truth, most of your world was names attached to things that had already happened. Kelda. Aelira. Sereth. You.” Kanno looked towards the garden beyond the window. “Then the letters kept coming. Then Ian started making the distance less theoretical.”

She paused.

“I did not want the first time I met you to be in a room full of people where everyone already knew what the meeting was supposed to mean.”

Lethira's expression became more thoughtful.

“That is why you asked for no briefing.”

“Yes.”

“And why me first?”

Kanno looked back at her.

“Isha talks about you as if you are a problem she misses.”

Lethira laughed loudly enough that Kanno felt vindicated at once.

“That sounds like her.”

“It was not a direct quotation.”

“It should have been.”

Lethira opened the booklet again, apparently unwilling to surrender it yet.

“I wanted to meet you too.”

“Why?”

“You kept appearing in their new life.”

Kanno recognised the symmetry and let her continue.

“Your name kept returning in the pages. Then your work did. Then things you had done together.” Lethira tapped the cover. “You became part of the life they were describing.”

Kanno looked down at her tea.

“She is my friend,” Kanno said.

“I know.”

No one explained it further.

---

They spent most of the next hour not discussing Thomas or Isha.

Kanno learned that royal messages were often delayed by the people sending them because important people believed changing a sentence four times counted as improving it. Lethira learned about publishing clients who marked a file final and then supplied six further revisions. Both professions contained people who regarded urgency as something they could create for other people by waiting themselves.

“That sounds like court work,” Lethira said.

“It is worse. Nobody wears a crown, so they have less excuse.”

Lethira considered that seriously. “Fair.”

The silver ear cuff caught Kanno's attention several times before she finally asked.

“May I ask about that?”

Lethira touched the cuff and turned her head enough to give Kanno a clearer view. “Royal service. Not rank by itself. There are variations. You have been looking at it for half an hour.”

“I was deciding whether asking was rude.”

“It would become ruder if you stared for three hours.”

Kanno accepted this correction.

Lethira asked about Kanno's work in return: not whether photography was magic, because she already understood the broad mechanism, but why Kanno sometimes photographed a thing instead of simply remembering it.

Kanno took longer over that answer.

“Memory changes the arrangement.”

Lethira's eyebrows lifted.

“So does photography,” Kanno added. “I choose where to stand, what stays outside the frame, when to press the shutter. But afterward I have evidence of what that choice looked like at that moment.”

“Evidence for whom?”

“Sometimes me.”

Lethira nodded slowly.

Kanno expected another question about Ian's impossible camera, Venus or the fantasy-side albums. None came.

Instead Lethira asked, “Did you bring your camera today?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I came to meet you.”

Lethira's expression changed slightly.

Kanno added, “If I bring a camera another time, you will know before I arrive.”

“Good.”

There was no disappointment in the answer, only approval.

After a moment Lethira smiled. “I might say yes.”

Kanno looked at her. “To a photograph?”

“Yes.”

“That would be your decision.”

Lethira's smile acquired more mischief. “I had noticed.”

Kanno realised, belatedly, that Lethira had given her the possibility partly because watching her respond to it was entertaining.

“You really are a problem,” Kanno said.

“Isha was right to miss me.”

Kanno laughed.

That seemed to settle something between them.

---

The meeting ended because two hours was enough for a first meeting, not because the room asked them to leave.

Lethira returned *Until Replaced* across the table.

Kanno pushed it back.

“You can keep that copy if you want it.”

Lethira looked at the Japanese text on the cover. “I cannot read it.”

“You looked at almost all of it without reading it. The photographs are the work.”

Lethira considered the book again, weighing the object now as something offered rather than merely borrowed. “Then yes. Thank you.”

She took it.

The gift did not require a speech.

Kanno stood and put her bag over one shoulder. Lethira rose as well, immediately restoring the height Kanno had mostly forgotten while they were seated.

“If you want to meet again,” Lethira said, “I would.”

“So would I.”

“Aelira will become unbearable when she learns you met me first.”

Kanno thought of the woman she had not yet met, whose absence from photographs had already become a rule in her head.

“Good.”

Lethira's grin widened.

“You may be dangerous after all.”

Kanno turned towards the door.

The intention was enough. When she opened it, flat 202 waited on the other side.

Isha was sitting at the dining table with a book. Thomas was in his office; Kanno could hear the faint click of a keyboard down the hall.

Isha looked up as Kanno stepped through.

The door closed behind her and became the flexible-room door again.

“Well?” Isha asked.

Kanno put her shoes back where she had left them. “She is worse than you described.”

Isha's smile arrived immediately. “You like her.”

“Yes.”

The answer was enough to bring Thomas out of his office. He stopped in the hallway rather than turning the return into a reception. “Successful, then?”

Kanno considered the word. “We spoke for two hours. Nobody required rescue. I gave her my spare copy of the book.”

Thomas looked towards her bag. “You gave Lethira *Until Replaced*?”

“Yes. Before you ask, she cannot read the Japanese.”

Thomas paused.

“She has eyes,” Kanno said.

He accepted that.

Kanno declined tea, having already consumed enough in the neutral room, but stayed another twenty minutes anyway. She told them broad things because she wanted to: Lethira liked the retraced arrow, thought Earth used too many written instructions, and considered delayed royal messages suspiciously similar to publishing clients.

She did not provide minutes.

Isha did not ask for them.

When Kanno finally stood to leave, she took out her phone to check the train and saw the four-person chat still open beneath the day's messages.

Two lines from Ian.

Nothing before them that morning. Nothing after.

Kanno looked at the screen for a moment longer than necessary.

“He is quiet today.”

Isha glanced towards the phone.

“Yes.”

Neither sent another message merely to fill the space.

Kanno put the phone away and reached for her coat.