## Chapter 445 — The Next Period Monday morning began with Isha taking her residence card out of her wallet and placing it beside a folder on the dining table. The expiry date had been familiar for months: **30 JUN 2028**. May had arrived close enough to make the folder more interesting than breakfast. Thomas had already gone to work. Before leaving, he had offered to check the contents a final time and accepted her refusal, although he had correctly remembered that the previous application copy was filed behind the tax papers. Isha had told him this was useful, which seemed to disappoint the part of him hoping to be accused of excessive administration. She spread the documents across one end of the table: passport, residence card, current employment papers from the climbing-centre operator, tax and municipal records, the previous application, and the record of their marriage because her legal circumstances had changed since the last renewal even though her name had not. The operator's administrative office had prepared its own material after Ishikawa forwarded her request. Their main question had been whether she intended to continue on her current independent work basis. Her answer was yes. Isha worked through the form in Japanese, slowing whenever the language became institutional. Current address belonged to the flat she remembered choosing. Current employer belonged to work she remembered applying for and learning. Marital status belonged to a decision she and Thomas had made themselves. Then she reached a date connected to her recorded arrival in Japan, and her pen stopped above the box. The previous application supplied the answer, supported by the older records in the folder. University, residence and work had accumulated behind that date, along with photographs and people who remembered her being here. Looking at the figures produced no scene of an airport, a train or a first room in Japan. She copied the date carefully and moved to the next box. A year earlier, paperwork like this had made both of them hesitate over almost every old fact; now she knew where the older records were kept and which office documents could answer which question. The arrival itself stayed beyond recall. When the form was finished, she returned the papers to order and placed the folder in her work bag. Her next climbing shift was Wednesday, so she had kept today clear for the application. Before putting on her shoes, she sent Thomas a photograph of the closed folder with **Leaving now.** He answered, **Good luck. I promise not to remotely organise you.** Isha smiled as she tied her shoes and replied, **A difficult morning for you.** --- Across the city, Kanno received an email telling her that a client would send corrected images "shortly." She stared at the word. The job had already contained *final*, *final revised*, *final revised 2*, and a folder called **USE_THIS_FINAL** whose contents had been superseded before lunch on Friday. The layout itself was easy. Waiting for the materials was what made the morning unusable. Kanno answered that she would review anything received by three that afternoon; later material would move to the next work block. She removed a sentence explaining the boundary before sending it, worked on another job for ten minutes, then looked at the camera on the shelf. The Mercury edit sat at three provisional survivors and could tolerate being ignored. The wall photographs had passed through Small Works still unresolved. Kanno picked up the camera with no assignment in mind and went outside. Sendai had the loose rhythm of the days around Golden Week. Plenty of people were working, some shutters were down, children appeared in places where weekday children usually did not, and luggage moved through the city in greater quantities than the mild weather seemed to require. Kanno left her coat open and chose streets as they came. A rectangular notice had been removed from a utility pole ahead of her. Four pale tape marks framed a cleaner patch beneath them, with one dirty triangle of adhesive left at the corner. She raised the camera and saw the composition immediately. The wall series had trained her eye so thoroughly that the scene arrived already behaving like one of her photographs, and after a few seconds she lowered the camera and walked on. Near a restaurant preparing for lunch, six red chairs had been stacked upside down behind the front window. Their metal legs crossed above the tables in a dense geometry. Kanno moved two steps left and waited for the reflection of a delivery van to clear the glass, but a cyclist passed through the frame first. She pressed the shutter, waited another few seconds and made the cleaner version she had originally intended. On the rear screen, the second photograph was tidier. She preferred the cyclist crossing through the chairs and found the preference mildly irritating. For another half hour the camera spent more time at her side. Laundry moved on a narrow balcony above parked bicycles. Someone had arranged planters around a broken paving slab. A transparent umbrella hung from a fence by blue string. Kanno noticed each thing, sometimes stopped, and kept going. A vending machine beside a small parking area finally caught her again, mostly because an upside-down blue bucket had been placed on the pavement in front of it. The bucket was scratched, faded and cheap, with a strip of handwritten tape across one side. Against the bright white machine it looked less composed than abandoned in position. Kanno crouched and made a frame. A man walking past glanced from her to the bucket and back, apparently waiting for the reason. She made another photograph while he was still looking and left him without one. --- The immigration office waiting area contained several languages and the particular quiet produced by people guarding documents. Isha took a number and sat with the folder on her knees. A family two rows ahead kept passing a sleeping toddler between them. A young man in work clothes read the same page several times. Near the wall, an older couple compared two envelopes and disagreed softly over which held a photograph. When her number appeared, the official at the counter checked the residence card, passport and application before moving through the supporting papers. She was perhaps in her forties and spoke carefully at first, then a little faster once Isha answered easily. "Same employer and address?" "Yes to both." The woman read the employment certificate. "And this is still indefinite short-hours employment?" "Yes. Twenty-four guaranteed hours each week." The supporting page confirmed it. The official compared the dates, made a small mark and continued. Marriage produced only a question about whether Isha's legal name had changed. It had not, and the acceptance record went back into the stack. At the employer section, the woman paused over one signature date. "This page is older than the others." Isha opened the divider the operator had labelled for replacements. "They included a newer original." The official compared them, retained the current page and gave the older one back. After a second check, the packet was accepted for processing and Isha received a receipt. Her residence card returned to her hand; the decision would come later. Before leaving the counter, she asked what to do if her employment conditions changed during processing. The answer included a reporting route and timing she wanted precisely, so she wrote it on the back of the operator's checklist. Outside, Isha messaged Thomas: **Submitted. Packet accepted. Decision later.** His reply came several minutes later asking whether the employer-date issue had mattered. She told him the operator had already supplied the replacement page, and he sent back, **I withdraw one unit of administrative anxiety.** Isha answered, **Keep some for your actual job.** The typing indicator appeared, vanished and returned before **Harsh but fair.** She found a busy place serving grilled fish, rice, soup and pickles and ate lunch alone. The application receipt went into the folder before the food arrived. Through the edge of the copied form beneath it, part of the arrival date was still visible, unchanged by having been accepted at a counter. Her phone vibrated midway through the meal. Kanno had sent a photograph of the red chairs behind glass, their inverted legs crossing one another while the pale reflection of a cyclist moved through them. Isha enlarged it, looked at the cleaner second version that followed, and called her. "The person crossing is better." "The second one is cleaner." "I did not say cleaner." Kanno was walking; traffic and a pedestrian signal moved faintly behind her voice. "I know. Unfortunately, I agree with you." Isha smiled. "My renewal was accepted for processing." "Good. Any trouble?" "One older employer page. They had already given me the replacement." Isha moved her rice bowl aside. "The form also wanted the date I first entered Japan. I copied it from the previous application." Kanno was quiet for a moment. "One of the recorded dates." "Yes. I don't remember arriving." Isha rested her chopsticks across the bowl. Through the restaurant window, a delivery scooter stopped at the kerb and pulled away again while the line stayed quiet. "Did they ask you to explain the date?" "No." "Then the previous application did its job." That was sufficiently Kanno that Isha laughed. Across the line came the sound of a bicycle bell and then Kanno stepping somewhere quieter. "I remember last year's renewal," Isha said. "That feels different." "It should. You were there for that one." "Thomas made a list." Kanno had stopped walking somewhere quieter; the traffic in the call faded, leaving only wind against the phone microphone. Her small sound of recognition needed no explanation. "Of course he did." "He made fewer lists this time." "Marriage has changed him." Isha could hear the dryness before the sentence ended. "Where are you?" "Walking because a client said 'shortly' and then vanished. I gave them until three." "Continue walking." "That was the plan." They ended the call a few minutes later, after Kanno promised to send anything else that survived her own first edit. Isha finished lunch and slid the phone back into her bag beside the renewal folder. --- The client remembered Kanno at 14:47. By then she was walking home with eleven frames on the card, though she remembered making nine. A duplicated exposure and a near-identical chair frame explained most of the difference; the bucket had apparently earned a third attempt. The corrected client files were actually corrected. Kanno completed the layout, exported the proof and sent it back before importing the morning's photographs. She put the two chair photographs side by side. The clean version had stronger geometry and would reproduce well. The cyclist frame had the interruption she kept returning to, so Kanno marked that one and moved on. The blue bucket appeared a few images later. It fit none of the folders she was currently using. The frame held a bright vending machine, scratched plastic and a small oil stain on the pavement, with the bucket occupying the foreground for reasons that remained obscure even to the person who had crouched to photograph it. Kanno adjusted the crop by less than a degree, reversed the adjustment and printed it small. While the print dried, she made tea. Across the city, Isha took the river path home. The cherry trees had finished flowering and fresh leaves now hid more of the buildings. A child on a small bicycle stopped at the edge of the water while his father waited ahead; two women carried identical supermarket bags side by side; a swallow cut beneath the nearest bridge and disappeared along the channel. Isha slowed for a few steps where moss showed between older stones and newer concrete, then continued towards the flat. Thomas came through the genkan at 18:14 carrying spring onions and tofu. The renewal folder was on the dining table; Isha sat nearby with one of her unfinished paper pieces in her hands. "Still accepted?" he asked after taking off his shoes. "They have not changed their minds in the last five hours." "Promising." He washed his hands, put the groceries away and returned to the table. His gaze went to the receipt, but he left the folder where Isha had placed it. "There was a date from when I first entered Japan," she said. "I copied it from the previous application." Thomas sat opposite her. "One you don't remember?" "Yes. It was strange." Isha turned the residence card beneath her fingers. "Last year we did this too. I remember that renewal." Thomas glanced at the card. "So this time the expiry has a previous expiry you actually remember." Isha set the card flat beside the receipt. Thomas had already begun to smile at the shape of his own sentence before she needed to answer. "I'm approaching philosophy through paperwork." "You are." "I'll retreat to tofu." Isha laughed. "Good." He stood before the subject acquired another sentence and went back to the kitchen. Their phones buzzed almost together. Kanno had sent the same new photograph to both of them: a blue bucket upside down in front of a vending machine. Thomas looked from his screen towards Isha. "Do we know why?" Isha asked Kanno. The reply came after half a minute: **I don't know.** She looked again at the bright rectangle of the machine and the worn plastic bucket in front of it, then typed, **Keep it.** Kanno answered, **Already printed it.** In the kitchen, Thomas opened the wrong drawer, closed it and found the knife in the next one. Isha slid the receipt into its clear sleeve, closed the renewal folder and returned it to the shelf before joining him.