## Chapter 453 — A Little More Time Wednesday, 3 May, began with Thomas having nowhere he was required to be. This was unusual enough that he noticed it before getting out of bed. The university was closed for the public holiday. His work phone remained on the bedside table, alarm disabled. No arrival guide required revision. No working-group terminology belonged to him today, even temporarily. Whatever disagreements the other offices still possessed would survive until the holiday block ended. Isha, by contrast, had a shift. She was already awake beside him, sitting against the headboard with her phone in one hand and the climbing-centre schedule open on the screen. Her hair was still loose from sleep. The morning light had reached the bedroom curtains without yet becoming strong enough to demand anything from either of them. Thomas looked at the screen. "Busy?" "Probably." "Useful prediction." Isha lowered the phone. "It is a public holiday. Yesterday Ishikawa said the bookings were high and the unbooked floor traffic was likely to be worse." Thomas considered this. "Then yes. Probably busy." "Thank you." He accepted the correction. They got up without hurry on his side and with enough structure on hers to keep the shift from becoming somebody else's problem. Breakfast was rice, egg and the last of a container of pickled vegetables. Thomas made tea. Isha packed the work clothes she needed and checked that the sapphire ring and wedding band had a safe place before contact work. The second paper hanging moved gently on the wall while they ate. It had survived its first night in position. From Thomas's chair, the pale-grey loop nearly disappeared behind the cream. When the air conditioner changed speed, smoky blue moved forward, then turned away again. The off-centre placement still made the whole object look more intentional than centring it would have. Thomas glanced at it. "Still finished?" Isha looked over her shoulder. "Yes." "Good." A pause. "Are you going to ask again tomorrow?" "I have three days off. I need structure." Isha gave him a level look. "You have books." "I also have the capacity to annoy my wife." "That is not a hobby." Thomas glanced towards the room where several perfectly adequate alternatives to bothering her already waited. "It has recurring practice." Her mouth moved. Thomas finished his tea. By the time Isha was ready to leave, the flat had settled into the peculiar shape of a workday belonging to only one person. She stood in the genkan tying her shoes while Thomas remained in house clothes, which gave him the faint appearance of someone being abandoned at the beginning of a school holiday. "Do you have plans?" she asked. "Very few." "Actual few or Thomas few?" He considered the distinction. "I may go for a walk. Buy food. Read. Possibly achieve nothing measurable." Isha stood. "Good." "That sounded suspiciously managerial." "It was approval." Thomas regarded that as a more serious offence than instruction. "Even worse." She kissed him before opening the door. "Do not accidentally volunteer for work." Thomas placed one hand over his chest. "On a national holiday?" "You have done less sensible things." That was sufficiently true that he let her leave with the point. --- The climbing centre was busy before Isha's shift had properly begun. Not dangerously so. Just full. Shoes accumulated behind the rental counter in sizes which had apparently stopped corresponding to the feet requesting them. Parents stood beneath route boards attempting to interpret colour systems their children had understood almost immediately. Two university-age men had arrived convinced that being generally fit would make their forearms immune to climbing. A small group near the beginner wall had been waiting ten minutes and already developed three competing theories about what their instructor was going to make them do. Ishikawa stood behind the main counter with a booking list and the expression of someone whose predictions had been confirmed in the least rewarding possible way. "You are here." "I was scheduled." "That is why I am pleased." Isha put her bag away. Yoshida passed behind them carrying four harnesses. "Do not sound too enthusiastic. She may think today is special." Ishikawa handed Isha the floor sheet. "It is special. Everyone else also decided to come." The first hour gave Isha almost no opportunity to climb. She checked harnesses, answered equipment questions, redirected people away from areas already at sensible capacity and corrected a rental-shoe exchange before two identical black pairs became permanently separated from their original owners. Coach 1 had changed some of the work without changing the centre around it. People now arrived at the desk already assigned to her for small beginner blocks. Ishikawa could hand her a pair of first-time customers without needing to treat the decision as an experiment. Isha still worked inside the same floor structure and still handed problems to more experienced colleagues when they belonged there. Her first booked pair were sisters, both adults, neither interested in height. The older one said this immediately. "I want to try it because she keeps asking me. I do not want to be high." Her younger sister looked embarrassed. "I said we could stop." "You said I might like it." "That too." Isha looked at the lower traverses. "Then we do not need height." The older sister glanced towards the taller walls as though checking whether this answer was allowed. Isha led them to a low section where falling meant stepping onto the mat. They spent most of the session moving sideways. The younger sister reached farther than she needed to and had to recover her feet. The older one remained cautious for the first ten minutes, then became unexpectedly annoyed by a blue hold which required turning her hip rather than pulling harder. Isha watched one failed attempt. "Your left foot is already doing most of the useful work." The woman looked down. "It doesn't feel useful." "Try turning your knee towards the wall before you move your hand." She did. The position changed. "Oh." Isha left the discovery there. By the end of the booking neither woman had gone more than a short distance above the mat. The older sister had completed two traverses and spent the last five minutes returning voluntarily to the blue hold that had offended her. Her sister thanked Isha on the way out. The older woman corrected her. "I climbed it." "You did." "She only told me about the knee." Isha nodded. "Also true." Both women left apparently satisfied with the accounting. The floor became busier. For the next two hours Isha's work was less coherent. She stopped a child from walking beneath another climber, found a dropped chalk bag before it became a slipping hazard, showed a nervous first-time customer how to sit back in a harness before anyone asked her to trust it several metres above the floor, and told one enthusiastic man that no, his friend could not stand directly underneath him to give advice. Yoshida passed her near noon. "Have you climbed anything?" "No." "Excellent coaching." Isha looked at her. Yoshida kept moving before the judgement could arrive. Lunch happened in the staff space later than intended. Isha sat with a bottle of water and food she had brought from home while voices from the main floor continued through the wall. Her shoulders were not especially tired. Her attention was. Ishikawa came in long enough to drink half a cup of tea standing up. "Afternoon bookings are worse." "I expected that." "You can still leave at the end of your shift." Isha looked at her. "I know." Ishikawa took another drink. "I am stating it now so I do not have to discover at closing that you decided the building required you personally." That was unfair enough to be funny and accurate enough that Isha did not object. "I will leave when scheduled." "Good." Ishikawa returned to the floor. Isha finished eating. Someone outside dropped what sounded like an entire container of plastic clips. She closed her eyes for one second. Then went back to work. --- Thomas successfully avoided volunteering for anything. He considered this an achievement. After washing the breakfast dishes he looked at his work phone, saw no urgent notification on the lock screen and put it face down without opening the mail application. The act felt more deliberate than it should have. A year earlier, a day with no formal obligation could still acquire useful tasks almost by gravity. There was always something which could be improved, checked, prepared, answered early or made easier for somebody else. Today he changed into walking clothes and left the flat. The river path was busier than on an ordinary weekday. Children rode bicycles in unstable groups. A man walked a small white dog which had become fascinated by one particular retaining-wall crack. Two older women occupied a bench beneath the cherry trees and had arranged drinks between them with the settled confidence of people who expected to remain there for some time. Most of the blossom was gone. Leaves had taken over. Thomas walked without measuring the distance. Near the recreation ground, a father was trying to throw a ball accurately enough for a child to hit it with a plastic bat. Neither of them possessed the required skill. This did not appear to reduce the pleasure of the exercise. Thomas continued past them. At the supermarket he bought exactly what was on the short list he had made before leaving. Then he added strawberries. He stood looking at them for several seconds. This was not a governance failure either. He took them home. The apartment was very quiet without Isha. Thomas put the shopping away, made lunch for one person and ate it at the dining table beneath the new hanging. From this position pale grey almost disappeared again. He resisted asking the empty flat whether the placement was still final. After lunch he read for nearly an hour. Then he fell asleep on the sofa for a little under half an hour, which had not been on any plan and therefore probably represented the day's strongest success. When he woke, his phone contained a photograph from Kanno. It showed two small prints lying nowhere near one another on a work surface. One was the blue bucket. The other was the red chair interrupted by the cyclist. Thomas enlarged the image. **They continue not to belong together**, Kanno had written. Thomas replied: **Congratulations?** Three dots appeared. **Yes. Probably.** A second message followed. **The cyclist needed printing to prove it.** Thomas considered asking what exactly had been proved, then remembered enough about Kanno to avoid it. He sent: **Both look good.** The reply took longer. **That is allowed to be sufficient.** Thomas smiled and put the phone down. --- Kanno had printed the cyclist because the digital file had become irritating. Not badly irritating. Merely present. The chair had remained on the screen for two days while the bucket existed as paper, and the difference between those conditions had begun contaminating any attempt to compare them. So she had made a small proof. Nothing archival. Nothing final. The red chair sat beyond glass, clean enough to command attention until the cyclist cut across the lower part of the frame and made the whole arrangement temporary. The image without the cyclist remained technically clearer. She still preferred this one. Kanno placed the new print beside the blue bucket. That was wrong. She moved it farther away. Better. The bucket wanted closeness. Its scratches, the vending machine and the patch of pavement mattered more when the print sat within easy reach. The chair wanted enough distance for the cyclist to become interruption before becoming person. Kanno stood. Then moved another half-step back. Yes. She took a phone photograph of the two prints only because Thomas and Isha had already seen both images in some form and because she found herself wanting to show them the failure to connect. Thomas replied with congratulations and then, more usefully, that both looked good. Kanno left the prints where they were while making coffee. On returning, she put the bucket back into its sleeve. The chair stayed loose on the desk. This did not make it the beginning of a series. She opened the client file she had promised herself she would ignore until tomorrow, stared at it for three seconds and closed it again. Public holidays, she decided, could apply to freelancers by force if necessary. She took the camera from the shelf. Then put it back. The room contained enough photographs. --- Isha came home tired in a way that did not belong to exercise. Thomas heard the door and met her in the hall. She stepped out of her shoes, straightened and immediately leaned her forehead against his shoulder. "Busy?" he asked. "Yes." Her arms went around him. Thomas held her for several seconds before she moved again. "No injuries," she said into his shirt. "Good." "One crying child. He was not injured. His sister reached the top before him." The remaining concern left Thomas's face. "Severe." "He recovered." Thomas kissed her hair. Dinner was already mostly prepared. Nothing elaborate had occurred. Rice, grilled fish, miso soup and vegetables occupied the table. The strawberries waited in the refrigerator because Thomas had decided cutting them into anything would only create work between the fruit and eating it. Isha changed, washed and returned. The hanging moved above them while they ate. Thomas asked about the shift only after she had finished enough food to stop looking like someone still mentally allocating rental shoes. "Did coaching happen?" "Some." She told him about the sisters who had wanted no height, the blue hold and the older woman's insistence on receiving proper credit for climbing it herself. Thomas smiled. "I like her." "So did I." "And the rest?" Isha glanced towards the empty space beside her plate as though it contained several hours of rental shoes, children and poorly positioned spectators. "Mostly crowd control." Isha ate another piece of fish. "One man asked whether his friend could stand beneath him and tell him where to put his feet." "What was your professional coaching answer?" "No." Thomas nodded. "Strong methodology." Isha's mouth shifted. After dinner, he brought out the strawberries. She looked at the container. "Those were not on the list." "I made an executive decision." "You were unsupervised." The strawberries remained between them as evidence. "I warned everyone." They ate them from the container. No cream. No cake. No event. Later, Isha stood beneath the paper hanging and watched it move through another air-conditioner cycle. Thomas came beside her. "Still finished?" She elbowed him lightly in the ribs. He accepted this as the answer. --- The immigration notice arrived on Monday, 15 May. Thomas found it with the rest of the mail when he came home. It was addressed to Isha. He placed it on the dining table beside nothing else. The renewal folder remained on the shelf where she had returned it after submitting the application. The receipt was still inside. Her current residence card remained in her wallet. Thomas did not open the notice. He did, however, look at it twice while making tea. Isha arrived forty minutes later. Her eyes went to the table before she had completely removed her bag. "That came today?" "Yes." She picked it up. Thomas stayed where he was. Isha read the notice once. Then again more slowly. Her expression did not reveal enough. Thomas waited. "They want me to come back for the result." "Is that good?" "The listed things include the fee for permission." Thomas exhaled. "That sounds encouraging." "It does." She looked at the paper again. The office did not ask for new employment evidence. It did not request clarification of the arrival date she had copied from the previous application. There was no demand for another explanation of the marriage record, tax documents or work arrangement. Just the result. Isha folded the notice along the existing crease. "Tomorrow." "You can go?" "Yes." Thomas nodded. He did not offer to come with her. Isha noticed that too. Her hand found his for a moment as she passed. "Thank you." "For what?" "For not offering." Thomas looked offended. "I am capable of personal growth." "Occasionally." --- On Tuesday morning, 16 May, Isha returned to the immigration office. The route was no longer new. That mattered more than she expected. Last year's renewal existed in her own memory now: the waiting, the documents, the card returned to her hand afterward. The first application behind that still belonged partly to records she could read but not remember living. This one belonged entirely to her. She carried her passport, current residence card, the application receipt and the notice. The waiting area looked almost exactly as it had two weeks earlier. Different people occupied the chairs. A child slept against one parent's arm. Someone near the far wall was trying to complete a form while holding three other documents and a phone at the same time. Isha took a number. When it was called, she went to the counter. The official checked the notice first, then the receipt and her identification. There was no interview hidden behind the collection. No question about memory. No demand that she perform gratitude for having been permitted to continue the life already recorded around her. The procedure moved. Documents changed hands. The required fee was dealt with. Her existing card went away. Then a new one came back. The official placed it on the counter facing Isha. "Please check the details." Isha did. Name. Photograph. Address. The status line matched the one she had carried before. Her eyes moved to the new expiry date. **30 June 2031.** She looked at it again. Three years beyond the date on the card she had just surrendered. The official waited while she checked the rest. Everything matched. Isha looked up. "It's correct." The passport came back as well. The official gave the brief practical reminder that the new card now controlled her current permission and that ordinary notification rules still applied if relevant circumstances changed. Isha listened. Then thanked her. That was all. She stepped away from the counter with the new card in her wallet. Outside, the day was mild and bright. Traffic moved. A delivery driver stood beside a van checking something on a handheld terminal. Two people near the entrance were discussing which direction the station was. Nobody knew that Isha had just received three more years of permission to remain in a country whose records insisted she had once arrived on a day she still could not remember. She took out her phone. Thomas was at work. She sent: **Approved.** Then: **Three years.** His reply arrived less than a minute later. **Three?** **Yes. To 30 June 2031.** There was a longer pause this time. **I am at my desk and therefore responding with appropriate professional restraint.** Isha smiled. **Of course.** Another message appeared. **That is very, very good.** She looked at it for a while. Then she sent Kanno a shorter version. **Residence renewal approved. Three years.** Kanno replied several minutes later. **Good.** Then: **That is a much better interval between forms.** Isha put the phone away. She had nowhere urgent to go for another hour. So she walked. Not towards a landmark. Not to mark the approval with a photograph, meal or purchase. She simply took a longer route towards the station, passed a small planted square she had never noticed before and stopped once because a crow was trying unsuccessfully to remove something from beneath a vending machine. The crow eventually abandoned the task. Isha continued. --- Thomas saw the new card that evening. Isha handed it to him after dinner while he was still sitting at the table. He took it carefully. The date drew his eyes immediately. "2031." "Yes." He gave it back. Isha returned the card to her wallet. The renewal receipt was still in the folder on the shelf. She took it out, looked at it once and placed it behind the copy of the application rather than throwing it away immediately. Thomas watched from the table. "Keeping it?" "For now." "Reasonable." She closed the folder. That was the end of the administration. Thomas had apparently expected more because he remained looking at the shelf. Isha noticed. "What?" "I don't know." He smiled faintly. "I think part of me expected the universe to provide a more ceremonial response to three years." "It provided a plastic card." "Very institutional." Isha looked towards the wallet where she had already put it away. "Yes." She came back to the table. Thomas reached for her hand. "This means we don't have to do that again next spring." "No." Thomas appeared to test the distance experimentally. "The spring after that?" "No." His expression brightened. "The spring after—" "Thomas." He stopped. "Sorry." Isha squeezed his fingers. "June 2031." "Right." A moment passed. Then Thomas said, "That is a reassuringly distant administrative problem." Isha looked towards the wall. The second hanging shifted slightly in the evening air. "Yes." She did not need to decide what every part of the three years would contain. The card had not asked. --- The Earth date did not map onto Merrowford. Whatever relationship existed among those clocks remained unknown, and nothing about Isha's Tuesday established how long Ian's world had taken to reach its own evening. There, the Sun Father's visit still belonged to the same local day. Night had settled over the western house. The windows of the upstairs bedroom had gone dark enough to reflect the room faintly back at itself. The stream remained audible beyond the rear of the house, quieter than conversation and more persistent than the occasional small sounds of timber cooling after the day. The southern-parcel papers and standing-use agreement were still downstairs. The clerks had long since closed. In the bedroom, Ian and Lethira were in bed. Among the clean folded clothes on the chair, Ian's leather bracer lay with the hidden clock turned inward. Its small analogue dial sat a few minutes before **XI**. Lethira lay facing Ian in the darkness, close enough that there was no useful space between them. Her eyes were open. Ian opened his eyes. "Hello, fair Elf maiden." Lethira's mouth curved in the dim room. "Hello, mysterious human attendant." Her voice was soft with sleep. One hand moved from where it had been resting between them and settled against his cheek, warm and unhurried. "You've been drifting in and out." She studied him for a moment in the faint reflected light. "Feeling any better?" "I'm in bed in my world now too. I'm glad to be synchronised." Ian kissed the wrist of her hand on his cheek. "I did not like today. I should have let you or Aelira deal with it and not let you see this body suffer. I'm sorry." A pause. "But being here with you makes me feel better." Lethira's thumb moved once against his cheek. "I didn't like it either." She did not try to make that smaller for him. Her hand slid behind his head and drew him closer until their foreheads touched. "But don't decide afterward that I shouldn't have been there. Aelira and I chose to come. You warned us. You told us you were safe." Her arm tightened around him. "I hated watching it. That's different." The firmness left her voice. She kissed him gently. "And yes. This is better." Ian moved closer to her. The height and position meant his head fit beneath hers, his face buried a little in her chest. He wrapped his arms around her. Lethira shifted around him immediately, making room for the position. One arm settled firmly across his back. The other came over his shoulders, her hand resting behind his head as she held him close against her chest. For a while she said nothing. Her breathing remained slow beneath his cheek. She did not tease him about hiding there or ask him to explain the day again. Eventually her fingers moved gently at the back of his head. "Stay there." Ian squeezed tighter. Lethira answered by closing both arms more firmly around him. Her chin rested lightly against the top of his head. She held him there, warm and solid in the dark. Ian moved slightly up in the bed, not quite level with her, an inch or two below. He looked up into her eyes, smiled, closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep, content. Lethira drew the blanket a little higher around them. Then she leaned down and pressed one quiet kiss to his forehead. Her arm stayed around him as she closed her own eyes. Outside, the stream continued through the darkness.