## Chapter 440 - Paper and Chalk On Friday, 28 April, Kanno made a photograph of a Wood Elf princess into a piece of paper. The sentence would have annoyed her if anyone else had said it that way. At seven twelve in the morning, the image existed on the monitor in her small workroom, filed with the other five photographs Aelira had allowed her to bring back to Earth. The directory was private, and the one image Aelira had permitted Kanno to show Thomas and Isha was marked separately from the rest. The photograph on screen was the formal portrait Kanno had promised to print: Aelira facing the camera in the neutral room with the formality she had chosen for herself. Aelira had asked for a physical print of it. That should have made the decision easy. Kanno had already rejected glossy paper. It made the darker parts of the room look deeper on her small printer, but it also turned every lamp and window into a surface reflection. The heavier matte sheet beside it behaved better under the light from her desk lamp. She held both blank sheets at an angle, put the glossy one away, then checked the file once more. No crop. No skin work. No stray-hair removal. No cleaning of the background. The print profile changed how the file would become ink on paper; it did not give her permission to improve Aelira after the fact. Kanno lowered the monitor brightness, checked the margins and sent a single copy to the printer. The machine woke noisily enough to make the act feel less dignified than its subject. Rollers engaged. Paper disappeared. For a while nothing happened except the small mechanical movements Kanno had heard hundreds of times from proofing equipment in offices and from the smaller machine in her own flat. Then the sheet emerged. Kanno left it on the output tray while she went to the kitchen, put water on and discovered she had forgotten to buy coffee filters. She stood in front of the cupboard for several seconds, considering whether this represented a crisis worthy of instant coffee, then made tea instead. By the time she returned, the print had settled enough to handle by the edges. On paper, Aelira looked slightly different. The image itself had not changed; the monitor had light behind it, while the print had to live with whatever light the room gave it. Kanno moved the print from the desk lamp to the window and back again. The pale morning light made the neutral-room background quieter. Aelira's face held attention more firmly than it had on screen, and the fine detail in her hair and clothing was still there without becoming the point of the photograph. The result was good. Kanno found that mildly suspicious. She looked for the thing she had missed. The lower edge was straight. The margins were even. Nothing had clipped in the shadows. The printer had not introduced a colour cast she could see. She placed the approved file beside the print and compared them for another minute. Then she stopped. Aelira had asked for a print, not for Kanno to turn one request into an afternoon of progressively more expensive paper. She left the sheet flat on the desk to finish drying, closed the private directory and went to get ready for work. Before leaving, she put an empty archival sleeve beside the print. That was as far as the project needed to go before breakfast. --- Isha's Friday shift began with rental shoes. A school group had returned twenty-three pairs into three bins in approximately the order that children understood the word *pair*. By the time she had restored the first bin, she had found two shoes without partners, one chalk-covered sock that nobody had claimed and a left shoe nested inside another left shoe of a larger size. Yoshida came through the equipment area carrying a coil of rope and stopped when she saw the nested shoes. "That is impressive." Isha pulled the smaller shoe free. "It is inefficient." "I meant the child." "Then yes." Yoshida laughed and continued towards the main floor. Coach 1 had changed one line in the centre's training record; Friday's rota looked much the same. The course materials were at home. Ishikawa had congratulated her once and then put her back onto the floor. At ten thirty, Isha was checking harness wear near reception when Ishikawa brought over two first-time visitors and their booking sheet. "Forty minutes on the beginner wall," she said. "Then I need you back on floor. Reception is covered until eleven." The two customers were colleagues from a local office, both perhaps in their thirties. Horie was shorter, compact through the shoulders and already staring at the wall as though she expected it to reveal a trick. Kameda was taller and had spent most of the equipment check pulling gently at the leg loops to make sure they remained where they had been put. Isha introduced herself and asked the same question she had used before the course, then waited through the pause instead of filling it for them. "What would you like to do today?" Horie looked at Kameda. Kameda looked at the wall. "Get off the ground," he said. Horie said, "I want to reach the top of something. A small something." "Good." The beginner wall offered several routes low enough to be unintimidating from the floor and high enough to become less so once a person was on them. Isha took them through the safety points, watched each repeat what mattered and gave Horie the first turn because she had stepped forward while Kameda was still adjusting his chalk bag. Horie climbed the easiest marked line with determined arms and almost no use of her legs. Halfway up, she stopped with both elbows bent, looked down and said, "This is already unfair." "What is?" "My hands are tired and the wall has done nothing." Isha smiled. "Straighten your arms when you can. Let your legs hold more of you." Horie tried. The change did not transform her into a climber. She shook one hand, moved a foot twice before trusting it and reached the final hold with an expression of offended satisfaction. When she came down, Kameda applauded once. "You said small." "It became larger halfway up." Kameda's first attempt was different. His height gave him access to holds Horie had needed to move for, but he kept reaching before his feet were settled. Twice he swung away from the wall and recovered. On the third time, Isha asked if he wanted one suggestion. "Only one?" "For now." He considered the route. "All right." "Move your left foot before the next right hand." Kameda looked at the foothold. He moved the foot, then reached. The awkward swing did not happen. "Oh." He climbed two more moves and then put the wrong foot on a hold, became tangled and came down laughing before Isha said anything else. "I used up the advice," he said. "You may have another after you try again." Isha stood with her hands loose at her sides and waited while Kameda tried the same beginning again. This time he moved the left foot without being told. He still came off three moves later. The forty minutes finished with Horie reaching the top of a second easy route and Kameda deciding that he preferred movement problems to heights but disliked rental shoes with personal intensity. Ishikawa appeared near the edge of the mat as they were returning equipment. "Good?" Horie answered first. "I reached the top twice." Kameda lifted one rental shoe. "These are criminal." Ishikawa nodded gravely. "Then you have both had a normal first visit." She took the booking sheet from Isha, checked the small completion box and moved on to a family waiting near reception. Isha returned to floor duty. For the next hour she gave no lesson longer than a sentence. A university student asked whether the blue route was easier than the yellow one. Isha told him the centre grade marked blue easier, though he might find otherwise once he tried them. A girl with long hair retied it before starting her session. An older man had tightened his harness correctly but left the waist belt low on his hips; Isha asked him to reset it and checked again. Near noon she saw Sakai arrive. Sakai saw her too. The woman gave a small bow, then looked past Isha towards Yoshida, who was finishing with another customer near the low wall. "Yoshida-san today, if she is free?" "She will be free in a few minutes," Isha said. "Thank you." Isha showed her where to wait and went to answer a question about shoe sizes. When she passed the low wall later, Sakai was talking while Yoshida watched her climb. Yoshida answered something with both hands, demonstrating the shape of a movement from the floor. Sakai laughed, tried again and came down before the top. Isha kept walking. At twelve forty she took her break in the staff room with rice, grilled salmon and pickled vegetables she had packed that morning. Her phone contained a message from Thomas about a university vending machine that had accepted his coin and declined to provide either the drink or the coin back. Beneath it was a photograph of the machine with a handwritten **OUT OF ORDER** note taped over the payment slot. `Thomas: Institutional resolution achieved.` Isha looked at it while eating. `Isha: Did you write the sign?` The answer arrived a minute later. `Thomas: No. I located someone with tape.` She smiled and put the phone away. Her break ended before the salmon did. She ate the last two bites standing, washed the container and returned to the floor. The afternoon grew busier in small ways. Shoes went out and came back. A child cried because his older brother had reached a hold he could not. Someone spilled a bottle of sports drink near the seating area and apologised six times while Isha fetched a cloth. Yoshida asked her to cover the desk for eleven minutes. Ishikawa changed one staff allocation because a booking arrived early and another arrived late. At three, Nishimura appeared beneath a pale-green problem and waved Isha over. "One question." Isha stood beside the mat and looked up at the route. "Yes?" Nishimura pointed to the move she had been trying. "I keep reaching that with my right hand and losing the left foot. I know you are going to tell me this is because I am trying to be tall again." "I was not." "You were thinking it." Isha looked at her. Nishimura laughed. "Fine. What were you thinking?" "I want to see it once." Nishimura climbed. She reached, her hips turned away, the left foot peeled and she dropped safely onto the mat. Isha watched the line from Nishimura's left hip to the foothold, then looked back up at the hand she wanted. "Try the same right hand," she said. "But turn your left knee inward before you reach." Nishimura made a face suggesting this was too small a change to justify having asked. She climbed again. The left foot stayed. Her right hand reached the hold. She paused there, surprised, then continued and fell at the next move. When she returned to the mat she pointed at Isha. "That one was useful." "Good." "Do not look pleased." Isha had not known she did. Nishimura walked back to the start of the route. Isha left her to it. --- Kanno thought about the print twice at work and opened the file zero times. The first thought came during a brochure correction whose photographer had supplied three versions of the same portrait under filenames differing only by *new*, *new2* and *realnew*. Kanno identified the approved version from the client's written instruction, renamed nothing, and sent one question back about a missing caption. The second came when a colleague asked whether she was staying late. "No." She left at six thirteen. At home, the print waited where she had left it. The evening light was warmer than the morning had been. Kanno turned on the same desk lamp, then looked at the sheet without immediately comparing it to the monitor. Aelira looked composed. Kanno had several other approved frames in which the First Princess seemed closer to the woman who had laughed at her own bad photograph of a chair and frowned at unfamiliar camera controls. This was the formal image. Aelira had wanted it. Kanno picked it up by two corners. There was a temptation, now that the print existed, to make another one slightly larger. She put the thought away. The requested object fit comfortably in both hands, could travel inside a stiff sleeve without needing a portfolio case, and held its detail under the ordinary light of the room. Kanno slid it into the archival sleeve. On a separate piece of plain card she wrote: **AELIRA — REQUESTED PRINT** Below that she added the frame number and the date she had printed it. The card went behind the photograph, facing outward, so the pencil never touched the print itself. She put the sleeve into a shallow archival box and closed the lid. No message followed. Kanno went to the kitchen and discovered the coffee-filter problem still existed. She added filters to the shopping list. --- By six thirty, chalk had worked its way into the lines around Isha's fingernails despite two hand-washings. The centre was still open, but her shift was ending. She finished the equipment count with Yoshida, returned two harnesses to the inspection rack because their labels needed checking and found the missing partner from the morning's school-group shoes under a bench near the lockers. "Twenty-three pairs," Yoshida said when Isha held it up. "Eventually." "A successful coaching outcome." Isha looked at the shoe. Yoshida started laughing before Isha answered. Ishikawa came through the equipment area with the next shift's notes tucked under one arm. "Go home, both of you." Yoshida obeyed immediately. Isha finished placing the recovered shoes together and followed her towards the staff room. At the lockers, Ishikawa stopped beside Isha long enough to say, "Horie and Kameda booked another beginner session for next month. Not necessarily with you." "Good." Ishikawa nodded and continued on. Isha changed shoes, collected her bag and checked her phone only after she had signed out. Thomas had sent another message. `Thomas: Vending machine has been repaired.` A second followed. `Thomas: The sign has been removed.` Isha stood near the staff entrance with her bag over one shoulder and typed back. `Isha: Did you keep it?` The typing indicator appeared. `Thomas: I am not Kanno.` Isha laughed aloud, startling a young staff member coming through the door behind her. She apologised, stepped outside and headed home with chalk still caught under one thumbnail.