Sure enough, my intuition proved to be on point. Right at the top of the stairs to the second floor, I found what appeared to have once been a child’s bedroom. There were bookshelves filled with shojo manga and various paperback novels, with several framed achievement awards hanging on the walls. It was a bit dim due to the lack of natural light, but it seemed the old woman had kept the room looking spick-and-span. I opened the built-in closet and found a futon and blanket, which I immediately set out on the floor to make a bed for Akira. Perfect, this should do just fine.
When I walked back downstairs to the entryway, I found that Akira had already woken up. She had curled up into a ball and was quivering slightly. When she heard me approach, she looked up at me with torpid, half-lidded eyes.
“Where…are we?” she asked, in a voice almost too fragile to hear.
“Safe,” I said. “I found us a, uh…random old lady’s house.”
“Your arms…”
“Huh?”
“What…happened to your arms?”
Confused, I held out both my forearms—then let out a little gasp of surprise. They were covered in big red hives all the way to the insides of my elbows.
“Oh, dang. I was wondering why I felt so itchy earlier… Yeah, sorry. This just kinda happens when I touch another person for too long,” I explained. “It’ll go away pretty quickly, don’t worry. Not your fault. How are you feeling, though? Think you can stand up? I’ve got a futon laid out for you upstairs. You should go lie down and warm up.”
Apparently too weak to even muster a response, Akira rose to her feet without a word, leaning her back against the wall for support. I grabbed our backpacks and took the lead to show her the way, and she hobbled after me with slow, unsteady footsteps—her dripping clothes leaving a trail of puddles along the floor. When we made it up to the bedroom at the top of the stairs, I showed her inside, set our backpacks down on the floor, and turned to face her from the doorway.
“You should definitely change into something dry first,” I said. “Wipe yourself down, then curl up in bed and take it easy. If you don’t have any clean towels, feel free to take one out of my backpack.”
Akira just stood there looking dazed for a moment, then nodded.
“I’m gonna go try to find us some food,” I said. “Be right back.”
I stepped out of the bedroom, then shut the door behind me. Instantly, all of the fight-or-flight tension that had been keeping me high-strung and alert went slack, and the strength drained from my limbs as I collapsed right there on the spot.
Ugh… I’m so tired…
Unable to even muster the strength to sit up against the wall, I laid myself out flat on the floor of the hallway. I was so drained and despondent that it was a Herculean effort just to remember to breathe. I honestly felt as though these past couple ofe hours had taken a solid five years off my life span. As much as I wished I could just pass out right here on the floor, I knew I should probably wipe myself down too, lest I catch a cold.
I wrung the strength from my weary bones and pushed myself upright. I needed a towel… But wait. Crap, I left all my stuff in the bedroom. And I couldn’t go in there, since Akira was probably still changing. Left with no other choice, I slowly made my way downstairs to borrow one of the bath towels from the linen closet I’d seen earlier. After wiping my face off, I headed out into the living area, then over to the kitchen, where I caught a whiff of a tantalizing aroma. Peeking over the counter, I saw that there was a pot of pork miso soup sitting on the stovetop. A cloud of steam hung frozen in the air over the simmering liquid, suggesting it was freshly made.
I caught myself salivating and swallowed hard.
No, we can’t just take this poor woman’s home cooking without asking… Then again, I guess we have been through hell and back today. And we can’t afford to get sick, so we need to preserve our strength. Let’s just call it a necessary evil.
“Sorry, miss,” I said. “Hope you don’t mind…”
I grabbed a bowl from a nearby cupboard, then used the ladle that was already sitting in the pot to scoop out some soup, making sure to take as many hunks of meat as possible. Then I grabbed a tray and the first pair of chopsticks I could find and headed back up to the bedroom where Akira was resting. I knocked on the door.
“Come in,” she responded weakly. “I’m decent.”
Wh-whoa… For whatever reason, this uncharacteristic politeness from Akira struck me as more concerning than any of the other symptoms she’d shown thus far. Upon entering the room, I found Akira rolled up like a burrito under the covers, all the way up to her forehead. I knelt down and placed the tray at her bedside.
“Hey, I found some pork miso soup downstairs, so I brought some up for you in case you get hungry,” I said. “Seems like the lady who lives here just happened to be cooking some up for lunch, but yeah…”
“Okay… Thanks,” said Akira—again being surprisingly polite as she slowly slid her head out from beneath the covers. I could now see that she’d changed into her usual black sweatsuit. “…I’ll try to eat some later.”
“Cool. I’ll leave it here, then. It won’t get cold, so you can just have it whenever you feel like it.” I resisted the urge to make an untimely quip about the timefreeze having its perks every once in a while as Akira buried her face under the covers again.