Marriage and Life-Administration Arc

Use and authority

This file consolidates the life-administration discussion into one reusable planning source. It separates four categories:

• CANON: already established by chapter prose or the maintained references.
• PLANNING LOCK: the preferred future choice agreed for this arc, but not canon until written.
• WORKING RANGE: an authoring estimate to avoid repeated recalculation; not a fact characters must state.
• OPEN / VERIFY: intentionally unresolved, or dependent on law, employer rules, nationality procedure or future prose.

All money below is gross nominal Japanese yen per year unless stated otherwise. It excludes commuting reimbursements, irregular overtime, investment returns and one-off gifts. It also excludes any housing allowance unless a later chapter establishes eligibility. GBP conversions are deliberately not locked because exchange rates are volatile and have no in-world planning value.

Do not turn this document into a mandate for consecutive administration chapters. Passage, Kanno, sport, work cases, neighbours, ordinary domestic life and other ongoing material may interleave freely.

1. Canon anchors before the arc

Current date and household

• CANON: The active point is Wednesday, 17 February 2027 (Ch.326).
• CANON: Thomas is twenty-four; Isha is twenty-five.
• CANON: They are an exclusive established couple, unmarried, cohabiting in flat 202 and financially sustaining one household.
• CANON: Their relationship begins from the repaired post-Ch.322 state. Meaningful decisions receive direct speech; temporary reliance or domain-specific deference must not be treated as a relapse into the old control/compliance pattern.
• CANON: Their witnessed intention before the living bough was a serious public commitment in the fantasy world, but it was not full marriage (Ch.47-49).
• CANON: Marriage and children remain available long-term questions rather than promises, deadlines or obligations.

Thomas's work

• CANON: Thomas works in the university international-support office in a fixed-term role accepted after Ch.220 and begun by Ch.221.
• CANON: His work now includes substantive student guidance, bilingual procedural explanation, cross-department coordination and process design rather than only reception.
• CANON: His winter-arrival guide is designed to function from Sugiyama's desk, with source owners, update dates, fallbacks and handover. This is evidence that he can improve an institution without making himself privately indispensable.
• CANON: Mori, Endo and Sugiyama have reasons to regard him as unusually capable and trustworthy for his paper experience.

Isha's work

• CANON: Isha completed supervised paid training at the climbing centre and settled into three regular shifts by Ch.221.
• CANON: She is trusted with customer safety, equipment, records, beginner work, frightened or returning customers and useful procedural contributions. The regional safety workshop in Ch.256 gives direct evidence of value beyond exceptional climbing performance.
• CANON: Her current employment category, exact hourly rate, guaranteed hours, benefits and contract end date are not established.
• AUTHORING TERMINOLOGY: “Casual” is useful UK shorthand for the present discussion, but future Japanese-grounded prose should treat her current arrangement as a structured hourly/part-time role with three regular shifts, not a zero-hours job.

Nationality and existing immigration evidence

• CANON: Thomas is British/English-born and is a foreign resident in Japan.
• CANON: Ch.247 establishes that Isha's supplied identity has British and Icelandic passports, a Reykjavík birthplace and an England-raised history. characters.md records this while leaving her parents' exact identities and nationalities open.
• CANON: Both had passports and Japanese residence cards when they woke after the accident.
• OPEN: Their exact statuses of residence, card expiry dates and which nationality appears on Isha's residence card have not been established.

Near-term date-bearing canon

• The next passage was expected around 25 February 2027.
• Isha's next thyroid monitoring was expected around mid-March; the disease and active System correction remain closed.
• Kanno's birthday is Saturday, 17 April 2027. Her birthday should not be displaced or reduced to an interruption in the proposal arc.

2. Core planning decisions

Shared employment outcome

• PLANNING LOCK: Thomas and Isha receive their respective good news on the same day: Friday, 19 March 2027.
• PLANNING LOCK: Both new arrangements take effect on Thursday, 1 April 2027.
• PLANNING LOCK: They exchange the news while still at work or shortly after, go out for dinner because Thomas should not have to cook his own celebration, and later celebrate privately at home.
• Their private celebration may be affectionate, sexual and uncomplicated. It does not require another thematic consent lesson; the established relationship already carries ordinary familiarity and the ability to stop.

Thomas's route to permanence

• PLANNING LOCK: Thomas's fixed-term appointment was created as childcare-leave replacement work (育休代替) or a closely analogous temporary staffing arrangement.
• PLANNING LOCK: The absent regular employee ultimately decides not to return and resigns, relocates or otherwise leaves a genuine continuing vacancy.
• PLANNING LOCK: The university likes Thomas and explicitly wants him to apply for regular staff status. It does not convert him automatically or invent extra years on his CV.
• PLANNING LOCK: He enters an internal or competitive selection process, completes a proportionate application/interview/assessment sequence, and passes.
• PLANNING LOCK: His capability is informally regarded as perhaps two to four years ahead of his literal post-graduate experience, while salary placement expresses that advantage conservatively through several increments, relevant-experience recognition and early trust rather than an inflated title.
• PLANNING LOCK: He becomes a regular university administrative employee (正職員), initially remaining in international/student support.

Isha's route to permanence

• PLANNING LOCK: Isha becomes a short-hours regular employee (短時間正社員) with both role and workplace limited unless she later agrees otherwise.
• PLANNING LOCK: Her normal contract is three guaranteed eight-hour shifts / 24 prescribed hours per week.
• PLANNING LOCK: Extra shifts are offered separately and require her agreement. Refusing them does not endanger the guaranteed three.
• PLANNING LOCK: Her principal role is climbing instruction, beginner-session delivery, movement and safety assessment, customer supervision, equipment instruction and staff safety support. Reception, cleaning and generic floor duties remain ordinary incidental tasks, not the legal or professional centre of the job.
• PLANNING LOCK: She enters the proportional regular-staff pay, training, leave and benefit structure rather than merely receiving another fixed-term hourly renewal.

Residence position

These are preferred future revelations about existing cards, not canon at the Ch.326 baseline. A chapter must establish them before durable canon adopts them.

• PLANNING LOCK: Thomas's card is intended to show Engineer/Specialist in Humanities/International Services (技術・人文知識・国際業務).
• OPEN / VERIFY: Isha's exact status remains unresolved. Skilled Labor (技能) as a sports/climbing instructor is only a candidate because the existing prose does not establish the documentary experience normally needed for that route.
• PLANNING LOCK: Both current cards are intended to expire on 30 June 2027, following an earlier short renewal. The ordinary renewal filing window would therefore open around 30 March 2027.
• PLANNING LOCK: Both pursue independent renewals based on their own employment. Marriage is not needed to make either current position lawful.
• PLANNING LOCK: The new contracts strengthen the renewal cases but do not make either person a permanent resident.

3. Locked income model

Interpretation rules

• These figures are planning estimates, not canon dialogue.
• “Run rate” means the gross annual amount if the stated employment terms applied for a complete year.
• Calendar 2027 is lower than the new run rate because January-March use the old employment assumptions and Thomas's first regular-staff bonus may be prorated.
• No marriage-related tax saving is included. Income figures remain gross before income tax, resident tax, pension, health insurance and employment-insurance deductions.
• Isha's upper ranges assume better-paid specialist hours and occasional agreed additional work, not a compulsory fourth regular workday.
• Formal external route-setting income is not included during the first two years.

A. Chapter 326 baseline run rate

Use ¥5.05 million gross household income as the pre-arc central baseline.

B. Full-year run rate after 1 April 2027 conversion

The immediate steady-state increase over the Chapter 326 central baseline is approximately:

• Thomas: +¥0.8m/year
• Isha: +¥0.35m/year
• Household: +¥1.15m/year gross

C. Likely calendar-year 2027 gross

Use ¥5.85 million gross as the central calendar-2027 planning figure unless a later chapter changes the effective date or bonus treatment.

D. Two-year horizon: 2028 through spring 2029

Do not push Thomas above roughly ¥5.1m or Isha above roughly ¥2.1m inside this two-year window without a new material change in role, hours or employer. Neither should become implausibly highly paid merely because they are unusually capable.

E. What is excluded from the locked figures

• reimbursed commuting costs;
• uncertain housing allowance;
• unusual overtime or emergency call-out pay;
• external coaching or route-setting freelance income;
• gifts, inheritances or fantasy-world value;
• investment returns;
• any tax saving after marriage;
• parental leave, childcare benefits or reduced hours;
• a home purchase, mortgage or relocation.

4. Employment benefits and practical meaning

Thomas: fixed-term to regular staff

The current fixed-term post may already provide normal employee health insurance/pension, paid leave, commuting reimbursement and possibly a bonus. The move should therefore be written as:

a proper employee whose job has an expiry date becoming a member of the university's continuing career staff.

Immediate gains

• indefinite employment rather than a contract linked to another employee's leave or annual renewal;
• clearer annual salary progression;
• a regular twice-yearly bonus structure;
• formal staff-development and training routes;
• access to a long-term promotion and retirement/long-service framework;
• stronger institutional welfare, savings, insurance and loan facilities where eligible;
• a stronger residence-renewal evidential position;
• greater standing when coordinating across departments.

Trade-off

Regular university administrative employment is not a promise that Thomas will remain at one desk forever. A realistic career expects experience across several functions such as international affairs, student affairs, general administration, research support, finance, information or hospital administration.

The offer therefore means:

“We think you could have a career here,” not “you may do exactly this one job forever.”

This should interest and unsettle Thomas. Daniel understood how competent administrators can be drawn gradually into institutional management. Thomas may want the university career while remaining alert to usefulness becoming identity or obligation.

Isha: structured part-time to short-hours regular staff

A short-hours regular employee has an indefinite contract and shorter prescribed hours than comparable full-time regular staff, while the hourly basic-pay basis and methods for calculating bonus/retirement benefits follow the comparable regular-staff system.

Recommended written terms

Social-insurance preference

Preferred prospective consistency choice: establish in future prose that the climbing centre belongs to a regional or multi-site operator large enough for employee social-insurance coverage. Isha either already participates because her regular hours meet the threshold, or joins cleanly at conversion.

It is preferable that she already recognises pension and insurance deductions on a payslip. Her knowledge gap is not “money has been disappearing without her noticing”; it is that she has not integrated the deductions into a model of old-age, disability, survivor rights and long-term financial planning.

If a later chapter instead establishes that conversion newly brings her into employee health insurance and Employees' Pension, remember that her gross income can rise while immediate take-home rises less or briefly falls because she begins paying employee contributions. Do not use that complication unless it serves the scene.

5. Likely career paths

Thomas: institutional career progression

2027

• Passes regular-staff selection and receives conservative prior-experience salary placement.
• Remains in international/student support while completing regular-staff induction and training.
• Sees the winter-arrival guide operate from another person's desk.
• Begins learning which parts of his role are attached to the office and which belong to the wider university career structure.

2028

• Receives a normal increment and broader case/process responsibility.
• May join a cross-department working group, documentation/DX project, international-student process review or training exercise.
• Can be identified as having future supervisory or coordination potential without being promoted unrealistically quickly.
• A future transfer becomes imaginable but need not occur within this arc.

Guardrails

• Do not invent years of service.
• Do not make him a manager within months.
• Do not make the university abandon its salary table because he is talented.
• Do not turn regular employment into compulsory personal loyalty.
• His most valuable trait is not solving every case himself; it is humane judgement that becomes shared process.

Isha: certified expertise rather than more mandatory hours

Her long-term income should rise because an hour of her work can perform more specialised functions, not because every available day becomes employment.

Stage 1: Red Cross basic life support

• Planning name: Japanese Red Cross Basic Course / Red Cross Basic Life Supporter.
• Current official model: approximately four hours, covering casualty observation, CPR, AED use and choking/airway obstruction.
• This is easy for Isha physically but not trivial conceptually. She must learn modern Earth emergency doctrine, AED procedure, local scope and when not to improvise from fantasy-world field experience.
• The centre can sponsor the course shortly after the permanent offer.

Stage 2: Red Cross First Aid Provider

• Requires the basic course first.
• Current official model: approximately ten instructional hours plus breaks/assessment, covering acute illness, bleeding, bandaging, immobilisation, carrying and rescue.
• Gives Isha formal evidence for incident response and supports senior safety or shift-lead trust.
• It should produce a modest qualification premium or strengthen the next pay review, not transform her into medical staff.

Stage 3: JSPO/JMSCA Sport Climbing Coach 1

• This is the first significant coaching qualification and the main two-year earnings route.
• The current 2026 structure uses a 45-hour JSPO common online component plus JMSCA specialist instruction including online and in-person work. The exact 2027 schedule must be rechecked before use in prose.
• Isha's climbing competence is not the central challenge. She must learn modern coaching ethics, Japanese terminology, structured lesson design, sport-specific standards, beginner communication, record keeping and how to teach bodies unlike her own.
• Ishikawa/the operator should offer support rather than order her to do it.
• Isha should ask what duties, classes, responsibility and pay the qualification would actually change before accepting.

Stage 4: commercial route-setting apprenticeship — optional and later

• Commercial wall setting can begin informally under an experienced setter after Isha has demonstrated that she can design for ordinary customers rather than for her exceptional reach, strength and adaptation.
• Her retained spatial judgement and movement reading give her a high ceiling; her own body initially creates blind spots.
• Formal JMSCA route-setter pathways require more than being able to climb hard. Competition experience, prior setting work and grading/judgement matter.
• Do not make her instantly nationally certified.
• Not assumed in the locked two-year income figures. It remains a future branch if she enjoys designing movement for other people.

Isha pay progression model

These are internal story-planning values, not statutory Japanese tariff rates.

6. Residence and immigration plan

Immediate legal posture

The arc should contain background worry, not illegality or imminent deportation.

Both characters already possess valid residence cards. Their jobs and new contracts should make their position stronger. The problem is that employment permanence and residence permanence are different categories:

an employer can remove the end date from a contract while the residence card still has an expiry date.

Thomas has enough original-Earth experience to understand this distinction and to feel its weight before Isha does.

Thomas

Preferred planned reveal: Engineer/Specialist in Humanities/International Services.

His bilingual international-student guidance, document interpretation, procedural explanation and coordination fit this status better than the university “Professor” status. Becoming regular staff does not require a category change if his actual duties remain substantially the same.

Immediate tasks:

1. check the exact status and expiry printed on his card;
2. obtain the new appointment letter, contract and role description;
3. request the university's standard immigration-support documents;
4. obtain tax, employment and social-insurance certificates as required;
5. file promptly once the renewal window opens.

The university's reputation and indefinite appointment strengthen the application but do not guarantee a particular period of stay.

Isha

Candidate status requiring verification: Skilled Labor as a sports/climbing instructor.

If this route proves compatible with her actual supplied records, the role description matters. Her main documented work should be instruction and specialist safety/movement assessment. Generic reception or casual floor coverage can be incidental but should not dominate the contract or employer letter.

No substitute status is selected here. In particular, do not use the broad Japanese-university-graduate Designated Activities No.46 route merely because it permits a wider range of work: current official guidance frames that route around full-time employment and excludes short-hours part-time work, so it is a poor fit for the locked three-shift contract.

Immediate tasks:

1. verify the exact status, nationality entry and expiry on her card;
2. have the operating company issue a detailed specialist-duty description;
3. confirm that her guaranteed remuneration is stable and proportionate;
4. retrieve only the supplied education, activity and employment records that already exist, without inventing qualifying history;
5. obtain employer sponsorship/document support;
6. have the employer or a qualified immigration professional confirm the renewal strategy;
7. file promptly after the late-March window opens.

Canon constraint on Isha's documentary background

The Skilled Labor sports-instructor route normally requires at least three years of relevant practical experience; certain formal study and paid participation/instruction periods may count. Isha's fantasy-world decades cannot be submitted.

Existing prose does not safely provide those three years. Ch.215 gives her an environmental-studies degree and club records for archery and climbing. Ch.218 says her supplied history included regular use of the centre but no employment there, left her work history almost empty and recorded climbing as activity rather than remembered expertise. Ch.219 then has the centre hire and train her on that basis.

Do not add paid instruction, assistant coaching or qualifying study to canon merely to support a preferred immigration category. Before a chapter names Isha's status, either:

1. obtain a separately approved prose retcon covering Ch.215, Ch.218 and Ch.219 and then update the durable references;
2. revise the future work/residence design after current professional verification; or
3. leave the category unnamed while an employer or qualified immigration professional identifies a route compatible with the established record.

This plan uses the third course unless the author explicitly chooses otherwise. The employment, household and proposal beats do not depend on naming the category.

Isha's residence-card nationality

A Japanese residence card records one nationality/region. Isha's British and Icelandic passports remain canon.

• Recommended administrative choice: the residence record uses United Kingdom, because her England-raised and education history provide the most coherent Japanese administrative thread.
• OPEN: Icelandic can be used instead if a later chapter gives a stronger reason.
• Do not imply that one passport ceases to exist merely because the card records one nationality.

Marriage as residence fallback

Because neither partner is Japanese, marriage does not produce “Spouse of a Japanese National” status.

A legal marriage can create a Family Stay fallback if one spouse remains on a qualifying work status and supports the other. With separate permission, Family Stay generally permits work up to 28 hours per week; Isha's planned 24-hour contract could fit that ceiling.

This is not the preferred route because:

• Isha already has a plausible independent work status;
• Family Stay would make her residence more dependent on Thomas;
• her specialised employment is better represented by her own status;
• the proposal must not function as immigration rescue or pressure.

Use it only as one item Thomas discovers while researching resilience.

Permanent residence

The ordinary planning route generally requires roughly ten continuous years in Japan, including at least five years under qualifying work/residence statuses, plus good conduct, stable livelihood and proper tax/social-insurance compliance.

• OPEN: exact arrival dates are not canonised.
• If their supplied records represent a normal four-year Japanese university course followed by work beginning in 2025, a plausible first permanent-residence window is approximately 2031-2033.
• Marriage to each other does not by itself accelerate the ordinary route while both remain foreign work-status holders.
• Once one eventually becomes a permanent resident, the other's spouse-based options change; this is medium-term background rather than the current arc.

Immigration guardrails

• No hidden overstay.
• No sudden deportation countdown.
• No sham-marriage pressure.
• No employer using residence sponsorship as ownership.
• Thomas may organise and understand more, but he is not an immigration lawyer and should seek confirmation for Isha's less straightforward case.
• Exact 2027 rules, fees, forms and course schedules must be rechecked before a chapter relies on them.

7. Pensions, savings, wills and household administration

What Isha already understands

Isha is not financially naïve. She can understand:

• money as an abstract store and means of exchange;
• accounts, wages, prices, bills and household budgets;
• saving current resources for a later need;
• debt, obligation and unequal bargaining power in broad human terms;
• that deductions reduce take-home pay.

What she has not yet integrated are specifically modern, long-horizon systems:

• payroll social insurance and state-administered pension entitlement;
• old-age, disability and survivor benefits as related but distinct rights;
• inflation as a persistent reduction in purchasing power even when the nominal number remains unchanged;
• interest as both the price of borrowing and a return for lending/saving;
• investment risk versus the risk of leaving every long-term yen as cash;
• legal beneficiaries, statutory heirs and the difference between emotional family and administrative family.

Do not claim the fantasy world had no lending, interest or price changes. The gap is between scattered commercial concepts and a modern national payroll/pension/tax structure.

The new reliance on Thomas

This is not literally the first time Isha has depended on Thomas on Earth. Early after the hospital she relied upon him for language, technology and institutions.

The new movement is:

the first time since becoming independently competent that Isha deliberately gives Thomas the lead over a consequential part of their shared future.

Her desired posture is approximately:

“Tell me what I am deciding. Do not decide it for me.”

Thomas may:

• identify categories and sequence;
• translate specialist Japanese;
• compare documents and consequences;
• build a checklist;
• say which issue needs professional advice;
• recommend first-aid and Coach 1 routes.

Isha still decides:

• whether she wants the qualification;
• how many hours she will work;
• whether a role fits her identity;
• whether to accept a financial or residence trade-off;
• what marriage means to her.

Her temporary deference may be physically and emotionally noticeable, and Thomas may find her trust affecting, but it is contextual, chosen and non-regressive.

Suggested order of household decisions

Emergency savings

Do not lock a precise yen target until rent and essential monthly spending are canonised. The planning rule is:

• maintain a minimum emergency reserve equal to four to six months of essential household costs;
• because both are foreign residents with no usable local family safety net, prefer the upper end once affordable;
• keep emergency cash separate from retirement/investment money;
• do not treat job permanence as eliminating the need for liquidity.

A provisional authoring range of ¥1.2m-¥1.8m is plausible, but it should remain secondary to an eventual actual-expense calculation.

Pension explanation

Thomas should explain that Employees' Pension is not simply an individual savings pot with their name on each yen. It is compulsory social insurance that creates entitlements based on covered employment and contributions, including old-age pension and certain disability/survivor protections.

Marriage does not merge their pension histories. Both should continue building independent records.

A de-facto spouse can sometimes be recognised for pension/survivor purposes, but proof of the relationship and shared livelihood may be required. Legal marriage turns a fact that may need evidential argument into a standard recorded status.

Wills and beneficiaries

Before marriage, neither should assume the other is automatically a statutory heir under ordinary Japanese domestic rules. A will can leave property to an unmarried partner, but foreign nationality and cross-border succession make professional advice sensible.

Recommended near-term actions:

• obtain advice from a Japanese professional experienced with foreign residents/cross-border estates;
• make coordinated but independent wills;
• identify account, insurance and employment-benefit beneficiary nominations;
• record emergency contacts and important document locations;
• review the wills after marriage, children, a home purchase or a major nationality/residence change.

Marriage reduces some inheritance risk but does not make wills pointless.

Accounts and ownership

Do not write marriage as automatically pooling all property. Their salaries, accounts and assets retain ownership histories. Ordinary shared living expenses can be paid jointly, but a large transfer into the other person's savings or a jointly owned future home can have tax/ownership consequences.

A practical future model may use:

• separate personal accounts;
• one agreed household-expense account or contribution method;
• separate emergency/long-term records with clear ownership;
• joint decisions without pretending every yen is legally half-owned.

This structure is planning-only until prose establishes it.

8. What legal marriage would change for them

Marriage is not necessary to validate their relationship. They already chose each other through the living-bough intention, Green Road, death, survival and the Earth life they have built.

Its main Japanese practical effects are:

Spouse tax deduction in the locked income model

Under current verified thresholds, if Isha's salary-only income is:

• up to ¥1.60m, Thomas may qualify for the full ¥380,000 income deduction, subject to his own income ceiling;
• ¥1.60m-¥1.65m, the deduction is ¥360,000;
• ¥1.65m-¥1.70m, ¥310,000;
• ¥1.70m-¥1.75m, ¥260,000;
• ¥1.75m-¥1.80m, ¥210,000;
• it then tapers and disappears above approximately ¥2.016m.

This is a reduction in taxable income, not a cash payment of the deduction amount. It is useful but too small and too temporary to be a sound romantic reason for marriage. As Isha's earnings grow through expertise, the benefit naturally reduces.

Do not include this tax effect in the gross-income tables.

9. Marriage/proposal canon-feed

Trigger versus reason

The administration research repeatedly presents Thomas with the category spouse:

• spouse tax treatment;
• statutory heir;
• survivor pension and benefit forms;
• residence fallback;
• hospital/emergency contact language;
• beneficiary forms;
• wills being more urgent because they are not married.

At first he treats each appearance as an irrelevant branch:

not applicable; next question.

The repeated category eventually stops feeling irrelevant. The forms do not persuade him that marriage is efficient. They force him to notice that he wants the word to apply.

The central private test for Thomas is:

If marriage changed no tax, residence, inheritance or administrative rule, would he still want to marry Isha?

The intended answer is yes.

Why this is specifically Thomas's movement

• Thomas has a history of allowing useful systems and obligations to define what he ought to do.
• He therefore needs a short period in which he separates administrative usefulness from chosen desire.
• He already knows that commitment exists without legal recognition; the living bough proved that.
• What he discovers is a desire to make another deliberate public promise in this life and this society: he wants to be her husband and wants to ask whether she wants to be his wife.

Isha's side

• Isha knows the words marriage, husband and wife by 2027; she is not linguistically ignorant of the concept.
• She does not initially share Thomas's detailed model of what Japanese legal marriage changes.
• She may regard the administrative boundary as arbitrary: they already share home, body, money, danger, grief and future.
• The proposal matters because Thomas is not asking whether their existing love is real. He is asking whether she wants this additional Earth form of public/legal family with him.
• The living-bough intention should be remembered as continuity, not superseded as an incomplete rehearsal.

Proposal constraints

• Do not propose during an immigration appointment, tax discussion, will consultation or medical emergency.
• Do not make the proposal necessary to prevent Isha's removal from Japan.
• Ensure both independent renewal routes are credible and underway first.
• Give Thomas approximately one to two weeks of elapsed time, or an equivalent amount of interleaved story time, to test his motive.
• The exact setting, ring, wording, public/private nature and Isha's answer remain unwritten.
• Expected emotional direction: acceptance is plausible and likely; the scene's uncertainty concerns the meaning and shape of the request, not whether they love one another.
• Avoid making Thomas's reasons a list of benefits. By the time he asks, tax, pensions and residence should have fallen out of his spoken reason.
• Do not displace Kanno's 17 April birthday. A proposal may occur clearly before it, or after her birthday chapter, but should not turn her day into proposal aftermath.

Possible understated closing image for the administration chapter

Use only if it suits the actual chapter architecture:

• Thomas closes almost every research tab but leaves one marriage-related page open;
• he files the will notes and returns later to the line marked “spouse”;
• Isha moves on to another practical question while Thomas does not;
• he notices that he has begun translating “spouse” as a person rather than a category.

Do not explain the image after it has landed.

10. Flexible chapter-flow sketch

This is a sequence of available movements, not a required set of consecutive chapters.

Movement A: opportunities are seeded

Possible timing: late February to early March, after or around the expected passage.

• Endo or Mori tells Thomas that the employee he has been replacing will not return and that a continuing post will be filled.
• They say plainly that the university wants him to apply, while preserving the reality of selection.
• Ishikawa separately asks whether Isha would consider a short-hours regular position if the operator approves the terms.
• Both begin considering offers without yet receiving outcomes.

This can be a secondary thread inside another work, passage or ordinary-life chapter.

Movement B: the same Friday

Preferred date: Friday, 19 March 2027.

• Thomas learns that he passed regular-staff selection.
• Isha receives approval for the short-hours regular contract and qualification support.
• Each has to finish the workday after receiving the news.
• They celebrate at a restaurant, then at home.
• Isha understands the central emotional fact—that both employers want them to stay—but asks Thomas to explain the longer-term consequences when they are rested.

The chapter can end in pleasure rather than administration.

Movement C: the cards still expire

Possible timing: the following weekend or week.

• Isha attends kyūdō, MMA, climbing or another established practice.
• Thomas researches contracts, pension, residence cards, tax and training.
• His background residence worry becomes specific and manageable.
• Marriage appears as one recurring branch in the research.
• He does not yet decide to propose.

Movement D: explanation and shared priorities

• Thomas explains permanent employment versus permanent residence.
• Isha consciously asks him to lead the explanation while retaining her decisions.
• They prioritise residence renewal and employer documents.
• Thomas proposes Red Cross BLS/First Aid and Coach 1 as options for Isha.
• Isha asks what each qualification changes in work, pay and responsibility before choosing.
• They set a near-term order: renewals, emergency reserve, pension records, wills/beneficiaries.
• Thomas says, perhaps too neutrally, that wills matter more because they are not married.
• Isha moves to the next item; Thomas does not.

Movement E: long money

This may be part of Movement D or a later chapter.

• Thomas explains pension, inflation, interest and risk through their actual payslips/accounts rather than a lecture.
• They make a limited decision, such as checking pension records or defining an emergency-fund target.
• Do not require them to solve investing, home ownership, children and retirement in one sitting.

Movement F: proposal

• Allow one to two weeks or interleaved chapters.
• Thomas tests whether the desire remains after the administrative urgency recedes.
• He chooses to ask because he wants the relationship named in this Earth form.
• The proposal is relational, not a solution to a form.

Interleaving options

Any of the following can sit between these movements:

• the late-February passage;
• Isha's mid-March thyroid check as quiet closure rather than renewed medical plot;
• Kanno's booklet/print-run work;
• Thomas's archery;
• kyūdō, technical MMA or climbing-centre scenes;
• a university case showing the winter guide functioning through Sugiyama;
• Matsuda contact;
• building/neighbourhood life;
• ordinary shared Wednesdays.

11. Character and tone guardrails

Thomas

• His residence worry is background vigilance, not panic.
• Research suits him, but he must not convert information into unilateral household authority.
• He can enjoy being relied upon without making usefulness the price of love.
• His regular-staff success should feel earned and welcome while carrying a faint Daniel-era awareness of institutional careers.
• The proposal must be a choice he permits himself to want, not another duty performed correctly.

Isha

• She is intelligent and financially functional; the knowledge gap is long-horizon modern administration.
• Her deference is explicit delegation on Thomas's ground, not loss of confidence or renewed household hierarchy.
• She may sit closer, ask him to choose the order, hand him documents or accept his recommendation while still questioning consequences.
• Her decades of remembered experience accelerate embodied judgement, casualty composure, coaching observation and movement analysis. They do not provide recognised Earth qualifications or immigration evidence.
• Qualifications should increase expertise and pay without turning all of her practices into work.

Couple

• Their love is not under examination.
• Employment permanence can make the future more imaginable without requiring an immediate children/home decision.
• Both can receive good news without narratively balancing every benefit or sacrifice.
• Private dominance remains available but should appear because it belongs to the celebration or relationship, not as a mandatory warm coda.
• Do not use the proposal to erase the living-bough intention or imply their unmarried relationship was incomplete.

Supporting cast

• Endo/Mori can recognise Thomas's value but cannot promise to bypass procedure.
• Sugiyama remains a colleague, not evidence Thomas is being replaced.
• Ishikawa can sponsor or recommend Isha's development but should not dictate a competitive career.
• Kanno is not required as proposal consultant, ring shopper, witness or administrative monitor. She may become involved only if a later scene gives her an independent reason.

12. Retcon and maintenance requirements

Completed canon-file corrections

1. characters.md: Isha nationality

   • The file now records Isha's supplied dual British/Icelandic identity, Reykjavík birthplace and England-raised history, as established directly in Ch.247.
   • Her parents' names, their exact nationalities and whether both used Vaeloren may remain open.

2. knowledge_boundaries.md: Isha public age

   • The file now records that her public age follows her Earth records and that she turned twenty-five on 8 November 2026 (Ch.307).
   • Both corrections repair facts within the files' existing Ch.326 coverage; neither advances their metadata.

Canon constraint requiring resolution

3. Isha's documentary history and residence category
   • Do not invent three years of sports-instruction work or study: Ch.215, Ch.218 and Ch.219 establish a materially thinner supplied record.
   • Skilled Labor remains a candidate, not an established current status, until a route compatible with that record is professionally verified or a separate prose retcon is approved.
   • The default plan leaves the category unnamed while preserving independent employment and renewal as the intended outcome.

Prospective specifications, not retcons

4. Thomas's fixed-term basis

   • Establish prospectively that his role was childcare-leave replacement or a closely analogous fixed-term vacancy.
   • The returning employee's later resignation/non-return creates the continuing vacancy.
   • This is a compatible planning choice, not a current canon fact or required chapter retcon.

5. Climbing-centre operator scale

   • Prefer a regional or multi-site operator large enough for ordinary employee social-insurance coverage and a formal short-hours regular category.
   • Establish the scale in future prose before adding it to earth.md. The public-facing centre can remain locally ordinary; no chain name is required.

6. Current-card details

   • Thomas's intended status is Engineer/Specialist in Humanities/International Services.
   • Isha's status remains open pending the constraint above.
   • The intended expiry date for both cards is 30 June 2027.
   • The recommended nationality field for Isha is United Kingdom; Iceland remains available.
   • These are planned later revelations of presently open facts. Do not add them to active canon before prose establishes them.

7. Post-prose ownership

   • Once established, Thomas's fixed-term basis and both characters' work/status changes belong in characters.md.
   • The climbing-centre operator scale belongs in earth.md.
   • Card nationality or status should enter knowledge_boundaries.md only if it affects public cover, disclosure or witness scope.

No retcon required

• Their current legal unmarried status.
• The living-bough intention.
• Thomas's fixed-term employment generally.
• Isha's three regular shifts.
• Existing passports/residence cards.
• Their sparse/deceased supplied families.
• Their current independent competence and repaired relationship.

13. Facts not to drift in future generation

• Current baseline date: 17 February 2027.
• Good-news date: Friday, 19 March 2027.
• New contracts effective: 1 April 2027.
• Residence-card expiry planning date: 30 June 2027.
• Pre-arc household gross central estimate: ¥5.05m.
• Post-conversion full-year household gross central run rate: ¥6.20m.
• Calendar-2027 household gross central estimate: ¥5.85m.
• 2028 household gross central estimate: ¥6.60m.
• Spring-2029 household gross central run rate: ¥6.80m.
• Thomas's path: childcare-leave FTC -> competitive/internal selection -> regular university staff.
• Isha's path: structured part-time -> short-hours, role/site-limited regular employee, 24 guaranteed hours.
• Isha's first development route: Red Cross BLS -> Red Cross First Aid Provider -> Coach 1.
• Route setting is optional and later; it is not needed for the two-year income model.
• Thomas and Isha retain independent work statuses after marriage.
• Marriage is not required for either renewal.
• Permanent employment is not permanent residence.
• The paperwork triggers Thomas's thought; it is not the reason he proposes.
• The proposal does not validate or replace the living-bough commitment.
• Kanno's birthday is 17 April and must retain its own space.

14. What remains deliberately open

• Exact university identity; Tohoku University is a realism analogue, not necessarily the canon employer.
• Exact climbing-centre/operator name and site count.
• Exact current FTC benefits and whether Thomas already receives a bonus.
• Exact current hourly rate and social-insurance history for Isha.
• Exact degree subjects and arrival dates in Japan.
• Which nationality appears on Isha's residence card.
• Exact renewal period granted in 2027.
• Exact emergency-fund balance and household expenses.
• Investment products, NISA use, home purchase and mortgage plans.
• Marriage-registration procedure for their particular nationalities.
• Surname choices and how UK/Icelandic records are updated.
• Proposal setting, ring, wording and response.
• Wedding/registration date, ceremony, witnesses and whether they mark the living-bough intention separately.
• Children timetable.

Do not resolve these merely because this planning document raises them.

15. Research basis and re-verification notes

The following official materials were checked on 8 August 2026. They support realism; they are not canon institutions unless prose establishes them.

University employment analogue

• Tohoku University: treatment and benefits for regular administrative/technical staff
  • 2026 planned Sendai graduate starting salary ¥250,560/month; prior work history may alter placement; bonuses twice yearly totalling 4.52 months; annual increment; allowances and Mutual Aid welfare.
• Tohoku University: administrative career fields
  • general administration, international affairs, research support, finance, student affairs, information and hospital administration; staff are expected to gain experience across departments.
• Tohoku University: recruitment and internal staff-conversion examination
  • an internal examination exists for eligible current non-regular staff to become regular administrative/library staff.

Short-hours regular employment and social insurance

• MHLW: short-hours regular employee definition
  • indefinite contract, shorter prescribed hours, comparable hourly basic-pay and bonus/retirement calculation methods, social-insurance coverage.
• MHLW: employee social-insurance thresholds
  • employer-size thresholds and 20-hour test are time-sensitive; recheck before exact prose.

Isha's qualifications

• Japanese Red Cross: Emergency First Aid courses
  • four-hour basic course; ten-hour First Aid Provider course after the basic course; content includes CPR/AED, acute illness, bleeding, bandaging, immobilisation, carrying and rescue.
• JMSCA: 2026 Sport Climbing Coach courses
  • Coach 1 uses a 45-hour JSPO online common component plus specialist instruction. The 2027 schedule is not yet known and must not be copied uncritically.

Residence

• Immigration Services Agency: Engineer/Specialist in Humanities/International Services
• Immigration Services Agency: Skilled Labor activities including sports instructors
• Immigration Services Agency: renewal application period
  • for periods of six months or more, applications are normally accepted from roughly three months before expiry.
• Immigration Services Agency: Family Stay work permission
  • generally up to 28 hours per week with the required permission.
• Immigration Services Agency: Permanent Residence guidelines, revised 24 February 2026
  • ordinary route generally ten continuous years, including five under qualifying work/residence status, subject to the full guideline.

Marriage, tax, succession and pension proof

• National Tax Agency: de-facto partners do not qualify for the spouse deduction
• National Tax Agency: spouse/special-spouse deduction income table
• National Tax Agency: spouse inheritance-tax relief
• Houterasu: de-facto spouses and inheritance
• Houterasu: statutory heirs
• Japan Pension Service: proving common livelihood/de-facto marriage

Re-verification rule

The story is set in 2027, later than the research date. Recheck any law, threshold, fee, immigration form, salary schedule, training course or tax table immediately before a chapter depends on an exact current value. Preserve the narrative structure if a number changes; update the number rather than forcing reality to match this file.