## Chapter 502 — Working Copies

The café they eventually chose was two streets farther than any of them had intended to walk. Thomas rejected the first because every table visible through the window was occupied. Kanno rejected the second after seeing a queue almost to the door. The third had no obvious defect beyond being on the opposite side of a crossing when the light changed against them.

Isha looked at the red signal. “We could still go there.”

Thomas glanced along the street as though another café might emerge from architectural shame. Behind them were the full tables and the queue; across the road there was at least somewhere they had not yet rejected.

Kanno adjusted the cardboard tube on her shoulder. “We agreed on coffee.”

“We did,” Thomas said.

“And now we have refused two places which sell coffee.”

Kanno shifted the tube against her shoulder. The queue they had left would have been an awkward place to stand with it while other people squeezed past.

Thomas glanced back towards the first café as though occupancy remained a valid defence. “One was full.”

“The other was popular.”

“That can also be a problem.”

Isha smiled. When the light changed, she crossed towards the third café before Thomas could discover a further criterion.

It was cooler inside than the June street and quieter once the door closed behind them. A narrow counter ran along one side, with small tables occupying the rest of the room. They found a four-person table at the back where Kanno could put the tube against the wall without creating another public hazard. Thomas looked at it.

Kanno sat. “No.”

“I didn't say anything.”

“You were going to ask whether the print had improved since lunch.”

Thomas considered lying and apparently decided the evidence was poor. He had already tried asking at lunch; the tube had stayed closed throughout.

“Yes.”

“It has not.”

Isha put her own sleeved print against the wall beside Kanno's tube. Thomas did the same with his. Three people who had spent the morning looking at printed work had now carried some of it into a café so they could stop looking at it. Their drinks arrived a few minutes later.

For a while the conversation stayed with the event. Kanno had recognised more people than she expected without knowing most of them well. Thomas had discovered that asking a printer how something was made could produce either a thirty-second answer or ten minutes of joyful detail with almost no warning. Isha had spent longer than she realised with the woman who made the winter-road print because neither of them had been in a hurry to end the discussion once the mountain ceased being the interesting part.

Kanno rested both hands around her glass. “I keep thinking about the little book.”

Thomas glanced towards her bag. “The stitched one?”

“Yes.”

The book was still in her bag. Kanno could picture the small drawings more readily than its cover; she had been returning to their order since lunch.

“You bought it. You're allowed.”

“That isn't what I mean.”

She looked towards the window rather than at either of them. The order of the pages stayed with her more clearly than any single finished picture.

“The drawings were small. Most of them were not individually enough for anything. A drain grille. The back of a vending machine. A stair. But putting them in sequence made me look differently at the next one.”

Isha took a drink. “Do you want to make a book?”

“No.”

The answer came quickly enough that Thomas's mouth closed before he could ask anything else.

Kanno noticed, then turned back to Isha. “That was useful.”

“What was?” Isha asked.

“Finding out I knew the answer as soon as you asked.”

Thomas nodded. Kanno had surprised herself with the quick refusal. Until Isha asked, a book had remained one more possibility to consider. Kanno's thumb moved once over the condensation on her glass.

“I think I have been treating the wall photographs as though I have to decide what they become before I do anything with them. Book. Prints. Series. Nothing.” She frowned slightly. “They're files.”

“You have prints of some of them,” Isha said.

“A few. Finished enough that I made decisions about them.” That was the problem, apparently.

Kanno had forty-five wall photographs in the working set now. Marks left by removed signs. Cleaner rectangles where boards had protected paint from years of light. Screw holes, filled holes, adhesive ghosts, mismatched repair, newly painted sections whose edges made the previous thing more visible by trying to erase it. She had been arranging them on a screen for months. The screen kept making every arrangement reversible.

“I think I want bad prints,” she said. Thomas looked at her. Kanno's expression remained serious. “Cheap. Small. Not corrected properly. Enough to spread all forty-five across a floor or table and move them around with my hands.”

Isha nodded before Thomas did. “Working pieces.”

“Yes.” Kanno took another drink. “If one gets bent, it gets bent. If I write on the back, good. If I hate twenty of them once they exist as paper, also good.”

She spread her free hand briefly over the table, imagining the small sheets taking up real space. Forty-five would need considerably more room than the patch beside her glass.

Thomas looked faintly relieved. “I thought bad prints was going somewhere more philosophical.”

“It wasn't.”

“Good.”

Kanno gave him a dry look. He seemed prepared to leave her with the practical problem. Across the table, Isha had been listening to what she would actually need to do.

Isha leaned back slightly in her chair. “Do you want help?”

Kanno thought about that. “Not yet.” No one objected. “I want to make them first. Then I want to see what happens when I cannot hide them behind one another on a screen.” She looked down at her hands. “Today made me want to work. I think this counts as work.”

Thomas nodded. He did not tell her what it might become.

Kanno looked at him. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For not saying anything useful.”

Condensation had left a wet circle beneath Kanno's glass. She turned it on the table while Thomas considered that peculiar expression of gratitude.

Thomas accepted that with more dignity than it deserved. “I can do that more often.”

“I know.”

Isha's laugh was quiet enough not to carry beyond the table. Around them, the café continued its quieter afternoon business; the sounds of cups and conversation reached them from the counter.

Their drinks were half finished when Thomas looked towards the two print sleeves and Kanno's tube against the wall.

“I should at least decide whether mine actually belongs near the desk before buying a frame.”

Kanno followed his gaze. “You have been proposing the desk since you bought it.”

“Yes.”

Thomas looked again at the sleeve, trying to picture its edges beside the desk. The remembered wall was proving less useful than he had hoped.

“You could hold it against the wall.”

Thomas looked at her over the rim of his cup. “I could.”

“At your home.”

He had left the print tucked safely beside Isha's. There was hardly room to hold it up at their café table, much less judge where it should go.

“That is generally where the wall is.”

Kanno stared at him. The suggestion of going to 202 hung between them while he took his time over his cup. Thomas drank his coffee. Isha rescued neither of them.

Kanno eventually said, “I can come and tell you it's too high.”

“I haven't chosen a height.”

“It will be too high.”

Thomas turned the cup between his hands. Kanno seemed quite comfortable judging an arrangement that existed only in his head.

Thomas put his cup down. “You cannot know that.”

“I have watched people hang things.”

“So have I.”

At the back of the café, neither of them had a useful wall to point to. Isha let them exhaust the available evidence over their drinks.

Kanno's expression suggested that this evidence had not helped him. “And yet.”

Thomas looked towards Isha. She considered him with suspicious neutrality. “I am not getting involved before seeing the wall.” Thomas's betrayal remained private.

Kanno glanced at the time on her phone. The visit would fit, provided she left herself some afternoon at home.

“I can come over for a little while. Then I'm going home.”

“To work?”

“To order bad prints.”

Kanno put the phone beside her glass. The drinks were nearly finished, and the tube would soon have to come out of its sheltered place against the wall.

Thomas nodded. “Reasonable.”

Kanno pointed at him. “Don't sound proud.”

Thomas denied it and reached for his coffee, leaving Kanno with the last word.

Kanno let him drink before answering. “You were close.”

They finished their drinks before the accusation needed evidence.

Outside, the afternoon had become hotter without becoming less crowded. Kanno adjusted the tube again. Thomas kept his sleeve tucked beneath one arm. Isha carried the winter road carefully enough that none of them commented on it anymore. They turned towards home.

---

On another Earth, Alice Green woke because the room was unfamiliar. The confusion lasted less than a second. White ceiling. Pale curtains. The edge of the serviced-apartment wardrobe rather than the living canopy of her realm. Then London returned in full.

Alice stayed beneath the sheet for a while. No prayer pressed against her attention. No root called from elsewhere in the garden. No living thing within miles had become hers to notice merely because she could have reached towards it.

Pleasant was too simple a word for the absence. The first time she had spent a night in London, the separation had been experiment, exhaustion and stubbornness tangled together. Now the room belonged to a decision she had made herself and paid for in her own name, even if Ian had supplied the money which made the first month possible. The distinction had survived sleep.

She sat up. Her passport remained in the drawer where she had left it. That pleased her disproportionately.

Nothing had moved it into a safer place while she slept. Nobody had decided she would be more comfortable with her clothes arranged differently. The grocery bag from yesterday had become food in cupboards and a refrigerator because she had put it there. The dark-green mug stood upside down beside the sink after being washed. The goddess who had once treated life itself as something she could correct before it made a mistake had apparently acquired strong feelings about being allowed to misplace her own socks.

Alice got out of bed. The shower was straightforward. The washing machine was not. She crouched in front of it after breakfast with the detergent bottle in one hand and the building's instruction folder open on the floor. The first page assumed she already understood several symbols.

The browser on her phone helped, though the search results immediately attempted to improve the task by recommending products she did not own and machines which were not the one in front of her. Alice narrowed the question. The second attempt was better.

She read the detergent label again, checked the compartment, loaded a small amount of clothing rather than everything she possessed, then stopped with one finger above a button. There were situations in which divine perception would have given her the state of every fibre, every residue and every living organism involved. She pressed the ordinary button instead. The machine locked and water entered.

Alice watched through the glass for several seconds. “So far, excellent.” Nothing exploded, which appeared sufficient reason to leave it alone.

The London book lay on the table beside the street atlas. Her new notebook sat on top of both. The first page still held the florist's street name. Alice looked at it. Yesterday she had needed food, detergent and towels. Those needs had given the day a shape before she could decide whether the florist mattered. Today it still mattered. That was enough.

She changed into jeans and one of the tops she had bought on her first London outing, checked that she had her phone, bank card, key card and passport, then reconsidered the passport and put it back. The woman at the flower shop did not need to see it merely because Alice owned one. She left the apartment.

The route was easier this time. Not easy. London continued to object to the idea that roads should keep the same name or proceed in the direction a new walker expected. But the phone told her when she had chosen badly, and she had begun recognising enough larger streets that correction no longer felt like failure. She passed St Dunstan at a distance without going in. The florist was where she remembered it.

The sign remained in the window.

PART-TIME ASSISTANT WANTED

Alice stopped outside. The arrangements had changed. One she had disliked was gone. A tall display near the centre used pale flowers and green stems with much more empty space than the previous version, which improved it considerably.

The woman inside was trimming something at the counter. Alice opened the door. A small bell sounded above her. The florist looked up. For a second there was no recognition. Then her eyes flicked towards the window.

“You were looking at the job sign the other day.”

“Yes.”

Alice was absurdly pleased that the woman remembered her without having been made to. She could see the sign from inside now, its lettering reversed against the street.

“I couldn't apply then.”

The florist put down the stems in her hand. “And now?”

“Now I can.”

That answer was clearly unusual enough to invite another question, but the woman did not ask it immediately. Alice waited beside the counter, aware of the stems the woman had set down to speak to her.

“All right. What sort of work are you looking for?”

Alice glanced towards the sign. “I was hoping you could tell me what that work actually is before I claim to want it.”

The florist laughed. “Fair.” She came around the counter.

The shop was narrower than it looked from outside. Buckets occupied part of one wall. A refrigerated display held cut flowers farther back. Shelves carried cards, pots, ribbon and other things Alice had noticed only as background on her earlier visit. The job was less romantic than the window. Deliveries arrived early. Buckets needed cleaning. Stems needed trimming and conditioning. Water went everywhere. Flowers had to be moved, wrapped, priced and carried. Customers often wanted something attractive without knowing the names of what they liked. Saturdays could become crowded. There was sweeping, rubbish, lifting and time spent in the small rear work area where nobody passing the window would see anything beautiful.

“Good,” Alice said.

The florist paused. “That puts some people off.”

“I would have been suspicious if the work was only arranging flowers.”

The woman smiled. Alice had listened just as closely to the sweeping and rubbish as to the flowers. The next questions were more practical still.

“Have you worked in floristry?”

“No.”

“Retail?”

Alice hesitated. The fictional pub existed in records. Nothing inside her remembered a shift there. She would not borrow competence from paperwork merely because Ian had made the paperwork defensible.

“Not in a way I can honestly claim experience from.”

The florist's eyebrows rose slightly. The cut stems lay between them on the counter, giving Alice somewhere to direct her attention while she worked out how much of that answer needed explaining.

Alice continued before the sentence became stranger through explanation. “I know plants. Living ones much more than cut flowers. I garden. I can carry things, clean things and follow instructions. I know very little about selling flowers to people.” That was true. Possibly too true.

The florist considered her. “What kind of gardening?”

Alice nearly answered extensive. She stopped. “Mostly by hand.”

Also true. Soil beneath her fingers and the resistance of roots were familiar enough to talk about. Explaining the scale of the place they grew was another matter.

“Vegetables?”

“Some. Herbs. Flowers. Trees.”

“How big a garden?”

Alice looked towards the shop window. The arrangements filled a space she could take in at a glance. Her garden offered no comparison she could make casually across this counter.

“Large.” The florist waited. Alice decided that making the answer worse would not improve it. “Very large.”

A small smile appeared at the corner of the woman's mouth. “All right.”

She lifted a bucket containing several bunches of flowers and set it more securely on the floor. Alice watched the bunches settle against one another; this was the part of plant care she had come to learn.

“What do you know about cut flowers?”

“That the plant has already lost most of its ability to correct the mistake.”

The florist stared at her. Between them lay a perfectly ordinary cut stem, and Alice could hear how her answer must have sounded in a flower shop.

Alice closed her eyes briefly. “I mean—once the stem is cut, everything becomes about slowing decline rather than keeping a whole plant healthy.”

“That is a less alarming answer.”

“I realised.”

The woman laughed. Then she picked up one of the stems she had been trimming. The flower was close enough for Alice to examine without knowing anything the woman beside her could not see.

“Show me what you notice.”

Alice looked at it without reaching beyond what her eyes, fingers and ordinary knowledge gave her. The lower leaves would sit beneath water if left in place. The stem end had begun drying. One outer petal was bruised. The flower itself was otherwise sound. She said so.

The florist nodded. “Anything else?”

Alice looked again. “No.”

That appeared to be the correct answer. The woman stripped the lower leaves and recut the stem.

“Commercial flowers have their own habits. Storage, transport, varieties bred for things you may not care about as a gardener. Customers have other habits.”

“I can learn those.”

“I expect you can.”

Alice looked towards her. So far the woman had seen her notice low leaves, a drying stem and a bruised petal. The unfamiliar work filled the rest of the shop.

“You don't know that.”

“No.” The answer pleased her.

The florist leaned one hip against the counter. The conversation moved from what Alice knew to what the shop would need from her on a busy day.

“The job is part-time. Usually a few shorter shifts, some weekend work, more if somebody is away or we are busy. I need someone who will turn up, listen, not treat sweeping as beneath them and not panic when three people all want bouquets at once.”

“I have never panicked because three people wanted flowers.”

The florist's mouth twitched. “Good start.”

Alice pictured the narrow space with three customers waiting while the buckets still needed cleaning. She had imagined learning about flowers more readily than deciding whose request came first.

“I have also never had three people want flowers from me.”

“More relevant.”

Alice smiled. The woman asked about availability. Alice had almost no existing commitments. That was the advantage of possessing a new life whose calendar contained no existing employer, children, classes or appointments. It was also dangerous to answer too eagerly.

“I am flexible at the moment. I would rather start with fewer hours until I know whether I'm useful.”

The florist studied her again. Alice let the answer stand. She could offer time; she had yet to find out what a morning of this work would ask of her.

“You're not desperate for full-time work.”

“No.”

“Why this shop?”

Alice looked towards the window. Because she had stopped outside it during the first day she navigated London alone. Because the vacancy had transformed identity from paperwork into possibility. Because flowers were familiar enough not to make her entirely helpless and unfamiliar enough that being the Lifegiver did not answer every question.

She chose the smallest true piece. “I noticed the sign before I was able to apply. I kept thinking about it.” That was apparently enough.

The florist reached beneath the counter and took out a single sheet. Alice took out her notebook beside it; the street name on the first page had brought her this far.

“Give me basic contact details. If you've got a CV, fine. If you haven't, don't invent one for my benefit.”

Alice almost laughed. “I don't have a useful CV.”

“Then don't bring one.”

The woman looked down the sheet. Alice waited with her notebook in hand. There was very little employment history she could usefully put on paper, but she could write down what to do next.

“I'd rather have you come in for a short paid trial and see whether you hate the actual work. Bring proof you can work here before then. Passport is easiest if you have one.”

“I do.”

The answer still felt strange. The passport was waiting in her drawer, where she had put it back before leaving. A real passport. Her passport. The florist named a morning later in the week. Alice checked it twice before writing the time into her notebook.

“Wear something you don't mind getting wet.”

Alice looked around the shop. “From water?”

“Usually.”

That qualification improved the job. Alice supplied her phone number. The florist read it back. When she said Alice, there was no divine title beneath the word. No revelation. No expectation that the woman answering should know anything about blood, birth, healing, hunger or the world. Alice confirmed the number.

The florist put the form aside. “See you then.”

Alice stood there for perhaps half a second too long, then remembered that this was the point where ordinary applicants left. “Thank you.”

Outside, the street had not changed. People passed the window carrying bags, talking into phones, avoiding one another badly. Alice walked three doors down before stopping. A laugh escaped her.

She took out the notebook. The appointment was still there. She had acquired work which did not yet exist. That seemed more satisfying than receiving a job would have been.

---

Flat 202 had accumulated evidence of Kanno's visits over the years without acquiring any permanent Kanno space. She had a preferred place to put her bag where nobody tripped over it. She knew which cupboard held the glasses. The flexible room had accommodated her overnight without turning into her room, and the dining table had hosted enough papers, food and impossible conversations that none of them treated her presence there as an occasion.

The cardboard tube still looked temporary. Kanno put it beside the wall after taking off her shoes.

Thomas carried his print into the office. Isha followed with hers.

Kanno remained in the doorway. “I am not curating your home.”

“No one asked you to.”

Thomas held the sleeved print against the wall beside his desk. Kanno looked at it.

“Too high.”

Thomas stared at her. From where he stood, the paper obscured the piece of wall he was trying to judge; Kanno had the easier view from the doorway.

Isha folded her arms. Kanno's expression did not change.

“You said that before seeing the wall,” Thomas said.

“Yes.”

He kept holding the print in place. “That makes it less credible.”

His fingers covered the edges of the paper. From this close, most of the desk was outside his view; he had to rely on the two people looking past him.

“It makes you predictable.”

Thomas lowered the print by perhaps five centimetres. Kanno shook her head. He lowered it again.

“Now?”

“Closer.”

Thomas looked towards Isha. She stepped into the room, considered the print and the desk beneath it, then placed two fingers against one corner and moved it slightly left.

“There.” Kanno nodded. Thomas looked personally outnumbered by geometry.

The print showed a temporary pedestrian route: something built to move people safely through a place which would later change again. Near the desk, it was quieter than Thomas had expected. The lines did not compete with what was already in the room. He held it there a little longer.

“Yes.”

Isha took her fingers away. Thomas looked at the wall around it. The chosen position gave him a border to consider as well as the picture itself.

“I need a frame.”

“You needed one this morning,” Kanno said.

“I needed to know where it went before buying one.”

For the moment he could hold it in place with his fingers. The empty wall offered no help with what to buy around it.

Kanno looked at the empty wall around it. “You could have estimated.”

“I have seen what happens when I estimate the size of household things.”

Isha's mouth curved. The large lunch container had not yet become historical enough to be safe. Kanno spared him.

Thomas lowered the sleeved print and leaned it carefully against the desk. The position was decided. The object was still not hung. That seemed sufficient. Isha's winter road remained in her hands. Kanno looked at it but did not ask where it belonged.

Isha left the office. The hallway failed immediately. She held the print against one section for perhaps three seconds, then lowered it.

“No.”

Thomas followed. “I thought we rejected the hallway at lunch.”

“I wanted to see why.”

Isha had barely held the print up before lowering it. Now she stepped back beside Kanno, leaving Thomas nearer the wall she had tried.

Thomas looked from the print to the interruptions of doors and corners. “Did you?”

“Yes.”

Kanno stood farther back. The pale road needed emptiness around it. In the hallway, doors and corners interrupted the distance. The image became a piece of decoration rather than somewhere the eye travelled.

Isha moved into the LDK. One wall had more room. She held the print there. Thomas considered it. Kanno did too. No one spoke. After a while Isha lowered it.

“Too busy.” Kanno nodded once.

The room itself was not visually crowded, but it was lived in. Dining table, kitchen, balcony light, movement between rooms. The print's empty road became a pause in the wrong sentence. Isha carried it towards the bedroom. Thomas did not follow immediately. She looked back.

“You may come into our bedroom, Thomas.”

Kanno made a sound suspiciously close to laughter. Isha was already carrying the print towards another wall. Thomas had paused between rooms with nothing left to hold, suddenly conspicuous in his own home.

Thomas looked at her. “I was giving her space.”

“You live there.”

Thomas gave Kanno a look. “I know.”

Kanno was enjoying his difficulty more than the question of where the picture should go. Beyond her, Isha waited with the winter road ready for another attempt.

“That usually grants access.”

Thomas went after his wife. Kanno followed only to the threshold.

The quieter bedroom gave the print more room. Isha tried one wall, then another. The second was better. Not right. Better. She held it there for longer. The distant mountain sat above the pale road. Much of what she had bought was absence: snow, space, the invitation of somewhere not yet reached.

Thomas stood beside her. “What do you think?”

“I think I don't want to decide today.”

He nodded. No disappointment. No attempt to solve it because the other print now had a place. Isha lowered the sleeve. Kanno leaned against the doorframe.

“That also counts.”

Isha looked towards her. “So does printing forty-five bad photographs.”

Kanno's eyes narrowed.

Thomas wisely moved out of the line between them. With the print lowered, he had room to stand a little farther along the wall and let them have the doorway.

“They are working prints.”

“You called them bad.”

“I am allowed to insult my own production method.”

Isha smiled and carried the winter road back towards the LDK. Kanno followed. The conversation might have ended there if Thomas had not put water on for tea despite all three having consumed enough café drinks already. Kanno accepted a glass of cold water instead.

She sat at the table and took out her phone. Forty-five wall photographs existed in a folder. She opened the first.

A removed sign had left a clean rectangle against weathered paint. Four filled screw holes remained, one with a ring of darker rust around it. The photograph was technically competent and emotionally inert on the phone. She swiped. Tape residue on tile. Swipe. A repair patch on concrete. Swipe. A lighter strip where something long and narrow had shielded a wall from grime.

Isha sat opposite her. “Do you still like them?”

“Some.”

“That sounds healthy,” Thomas said from the kitchen.

Kanno ignored him. She reached photograph twelve and stopped. It was one she had nearly removed from the set months ago. A white wall, several screw holes, a faint darker rectangle and a small scrape lower down where something had repeatedly touched the paint. Nothing about it announced loss. That was why she had kept it.

“I think these have been too clean.”

Isha looked at the phone but not closely enough to invade the examination. “The photographs?”

“The way I look at them.”

Kanno zoomed out to the folder grid. On the screen, every image was the same physical size. Each could become larger with two fingers. Each could disappear behind another. Nothing had weight. Nothing occupied more table than anything else.

“If I print them cheaply, some will immediately become boring.”

Thomas returned with his tea. “Wouldn't that be useful?”

“Yes.”

He sat. The cup occupied a corner of the table near the phone. Even one drink needed a space of its own; the photographs on the grid still shared the same little rectangle.

Kanno looked at the grid again. “I keep trying to solve them while preserving all of them.” She locked the phone. “That's probably stupid.”

Thomas opened his mouth. Kanno had set the phone down with the screen dark. She wanted to see what happened to the pictures on paper before deciding whether her method deserved defending.

Kanno pointed at him. “Not a request for reassurance.”

He closed it. For a moment the phone stayed untouched between them. Isha watched Kanno over the table, letting her leave the explanation where it was.

Isha leaned back. “What will you do with the ones that are boring?”

“Probably put them in a pile.”

Isha waited a moment. “And the others?”

Kanno looked at the dark phone again. A pile of rejected prints was easy enough to imagine; she had no corresponding arrangement in mind for the ones she wanted to keep.

“I don't know.” That answer no longer seemed to trouble Kanno. She drank her water. “I'll find out.”

Thomas's print remained beside the office desk in its sleeve. Isha's remained protected and unplaced. Kanno's forty-five photographs remained digital for another day or two. They had still moved.

Kanno stood. “I am going home before you feed me.”

Thomas looked towards the kitchen. “I wasn't—”

“You were within ten minutes of thinking about it.”

There was still tea in Thomas's cup and water in Kanno's glass. Another meal would extend the visit well beyond the little while she had offered at the café.

Thomas looked towards the kitchen again despite himself. “That isn't the same as doing it.”

“I know you.”

Isha rose and walked Kanno towards the genkan. Kanno collected her tube and bag. At the door, Isha touched the cardboard lightly.

“Are you going to show us what you bought eventually?”

“No.”

Thomas appeared behind her. With the tube upright beside Kanno, there was no more of either purchased image visible than there had been at lunch.

Kanno looked at him. “Especially not you.”

Kanno put on her shoes. She set the tube against the wall within reach, taking care to keep it clear of her feet.

Thomas stopped behind Isha. “What did I do?”

“You've been asking since lunch.”

“That is interest.”

Kanno bent to the laces. The tube began to tilt, and she steadied it against the wall before giving both hands to the knot.

Kanno finished tying her shoes. “It is ineffective.”

Then her expression softened slightly. “When they're on my wall, maybe.” Her two purchased prints. Not the wall photographs.

Thomas caught the distinction and nodded. The tube would go home with Kanno, while the two flat sleeves would stay here.

“Okay.”

Kanno looked towards Isha. “Send me a photo when his frame is crooked.”

“I heard that.”

Kanno had her bag and tube ready. She was facing Isha, but Thomas was only a pace behind her, quite within hearing.

“I know.”

She left. The apartment became quieter. Thomas stood beside Isha in the genkan.

“Do you think I hang things badly?”

“No.” A pause. “You measure too much.”

“That is the opposite problem.” He looked towards the office, where the print was still waiting beside the desk.

Isha glanced towards the office too, then back at him. She was close enough to kiss his cheek without either of them leaving the genkan.

“I know.”

She kissed his cheek and walked back inside carrying the winter road. Thomas followed.

---

Alice did not tell Ian about the florist immediately. The thought occurred to her three times: once while walking back towards the apartment, once while buying lunch, and once when the washing machine informed her with several electronic notes that it had completed a task she had already forgotten was occurring. Each time, she decided against it. The trial was not secret. She wanted to tell him. That was different from needing to tell him immediately.

Alice opened the machine. Her clothes were clean and wet. Success had apparently produced another problem.

The apartment contained a drying rack folded beside the wardrobe. She discovered this only after searching the building information and then noticing the object she had already walked past several times. She unfolded it. The first shirt went on badly. Alice adjusted it. The second went on better. By the fourth item she had acquired a method.

Nothing about the process improved her soul. That was refreshing.

She ate lunch at the small table by the window with her notebook open beside her. The florist appointment occupied one line. Below it she had written:

Passport. Clothes can get wet. Do not interfere with plants.

The third instruction had not been supplied by the florist. Alice underlined it anyway. The shop would contain living things. Not many, compared with her realm. Cut flowers occupied an ambiguous edge of her portfolio which she did not particularly want to examine while someone was paying her to sweep. Potted plants would be easier to read if she reached. Customers would carry bodies full of information she had spent aeons treating as permission.

London had become valuable partly because she could choose not to know. Employment would make that choice harder. She sat with the problem.

At the dinner, she had managed. Six people around one table. Her sister directly opposite. Aelira, whose body she had once attempted to inspect without permission. Mirelen, unknown enough to invite curiosity. Alice had eaten pudding instead. A shop full of strangers should not be harder merely because they arrived one at a time. Should not was not evidence.

She added another line.

If I cannot do it without reaching, leave.

That looked severe. It also looked correct. Alice closed the notebook. The garden waited behind a choice.

She used the private return from the apartment. One moment there was a London bedroom with her clothes drying nearby. The next, warm living air surrounded her.

Water moved through the garden channels. Insects worked among the beds. The separated basil plants occupied their pots near the work area, some recovering more successfully than others. Alice breathed. Here, awareness returned differently. This was her realm. Life answered more readily because the place had been shaped around the portfolio she had carried for longer than any mortal history could sensibly contain.

She walked to the basil. One division had wilted badly. Her old instinct arrived whole: restore it. Correct the damaged roots. Remove the cost of separation because she could. Alice crouched and touched one leaf between her fingers. Then she fetched water.

The plant might recover. It might not. The other divisions had done better. She watered only what the soil required and left the damaged one unchanged.

Thirty-two garden beds remained in Ian's absurdly well-paid debt. Alice looked towards them. She considered doing one herself out of spite. That would defeat several purposes at once.

Instead she checked the work she had already chosen for the afternoon, spent an hour in the garden and then returned to London carrying nothing with her.

The apartment reappeared. Her damp clothes were still on the rack. The room smelled faintly of detergent. Alice smiled. She had left one home and returned to another place where things waited because she had put them there.

The phone lay on the table. This time she picked it up. The text-message function Ian had explained remained nearly empty. She opened it. Then stopped.

She still had no obligation to tell him anything. That was precisely why she wanted to. Alice typed carefully.

I asked about the florist job. They want me for a short paid trial later this week. I did not heal anybody or accidentally become their agricultural deity. So far, successful.

She read it. The second sentence was perhaps unnecessary. She kept it. Then she sent the message and put the phone down before waiting for an answer could become the evening's activity.

The refrigerator contained food she had bought. The notebook contained an appointment she had earned. Her clothes were drying badly but successfully. Alice took out the tomatoes. Dinner would require more attention than destiny. For now, that suited her.

---

After Kanno left, Thomas went back into the office and picked up his print from beside the desk. He held it against the chosen place again. Isha stood behind him.

“Still there,” she said.

“The wall?”

“The decision.”

Thomas glanced over his shoulder. He could see Isha behind him, her own print still in her hands. Kanno's empty place in the doorway gave them room to look together.

“Yes.” He lowered the print. “Frame tomorrow?”

“If you want.”

He looked towards the sleeve in her hands. The pale road was still waiting for a place of its own, and the better bedroom wall had not made Isha want to settle it.

“And yours?”

“Not tomorrow.”

“All right.” That was the end of the negotiation.

Thomas placed his print safely against the desk and took the tape measure from the drawer, then stopped before extending it.

Isha noticed. His thumb rested on the tape's catch. A moment ago the room had been full of decisions; now he was hesitating over a measurement.

“You're learning.”

“I was going to measure the print for the frame.”

Isha's smile widened. “That is allowed.”

The hooked end of the tape was still flush against its case. Thomas loosened his grip enough to pull it free.

“Oh.”

He extended the tape. Isha laughed.

Later, her winter road, still in its protective sleeve, rested flat in the flexible room where nobody would damage it accidentally. It did not look abandoned there. It looked undecided.

Thomas wrote down the frame dimensions. In another part of Sendai, Kanno would soon reduce forty-five photographs to cheap pieces of paper and discover whether any of them objected to existing outside a screen. Nothing else needed finishing that afternoon.