∗∗∗
THEY got into the automobile Munakata had waiting for them outside under the dimly glowing electric streetlights. They drove for around ten minutes before alighting outside an imposing manor house, with an iron gate and a tall hedge all around it. Akari was silent.
“This is the Bookhouse where I live.”
“Hold on, Mr. Yagyou…”
“Oh, you can just call me Tomohito. I am your servant, after all.”
Akari ignored him as he blushed modestly, and decided to speak her mind. She didn’t have the energy left for tact.
“This…is an abandoned ruin. Isn’t it?”
The walls of the house were almost completely overgrown with ivy, and the garden was a jungle of untended vegetation.
In the dim bloom of the streetlamps, it looked haunted.
“Don’t worry. The inside is perfectly functional.”
Tomohito opened the gate, seeming not to even notice Akari’s rising sense of alarm. The gate made a metallic shrieking sound loud enough to wake up the neighbors.
Tramping through the overgrowth, Tomohito led Akari across a set of crumbling paving stones to the front doors, which he flung open.
“And we’re home!”
As he spoke, the room was suddenly illuminated.
Akari was relieved that the place at least seemed to be wired for electricity. She gazed around the interior wordlessly. It was probably a rather large entrance hall, only it was hard to tell because it was crammed and piled high with curious objects and wooden crates. She couldn’t even see the floor.
“It’s got Japanese flooring, but everything’s a mess. You can just keep your shoes on.”
Akari stepped obediently forward, her boots crunching over what felt like several layers of dust and gritty sand. She felt impolite walking indoors in her boots, but she wasn’t about to go walking around this mess in just her socks.
The ceilings housed a thick network of cobwebs, and parts of the walls were peeling off.
To add to the dreary atmosphere, the light bulbs seemed to be reaching the end of their life span and kept flickering in a most disconcerting manner.
“Wait, Tomohito.”
“Yes, Mistress?”
Tomohito turned back from his position deeper in the room and smiled at her, clearly pleased to be addressed by name. Then he noticed her expression and his smile faded.
“How long has it been since people lived here?”
“It was last refurbished three years ago, I think? Since then, no specific Narrator has been in residence. Sometimes Munakata uses it to store stuff, though.”
So no one had lived there for three years. It really was abandoned.
“Is there even a place for me to sleep tonight?”
“Sleep? Oh…” Tomohito mumbled, shoulders slumping. Akari took a deep breath, jaw clenching.
“That low-down, dirty, lazy excuse of a military man! Forgot to mention the lodgings he promised were a junk heap, did he?!”
How dare Munakata manipulate her into living in uninhabitable conditions, simply to save himself some bother? She didn’t expect special treatment for being a woman—just basic human decency!
As Akari tried to suppress a wave of anger, a deep crevasse began to form between her brows. Alarmed, Tomohito bent his head low before her.
“I am so sorry. I completely forgot that humans need to sleep. Just wait here a moment. I think there’s some bedding left somewhere; I’ll go and find it. Just please…don’t say you’re going to quit…”
“I’m not going to quit. You know very well I have nowhere else to go.”
Tomohito looked as if he was about to burst into tears. All of a sudden Akari found herself breaking into a wry smile.
He was just like a little abandoned puppy who, after being adopted at last, was terrified of being left alone again.
Akari had no idea why this Kotogami seemed so attached to her. After all, they’d only met earlier that same day.
Surely he wasn’t letting her stay here just to do her a kindness. She’d seen too much of the world to believe that. But Akari had always relied on her own intuition. Anyway, she was set to benefit from this situation.
Besides, she had the feeling it was better not to look a gift horse in the mouth.
“Just show me to the least disastrous room, will you? I’m very tired and I want to rest.”
After a full day of work, she’d had to contend with a fire at her lodgings, a Raiju attack, a clingy Kotogami, and a battle of minds with the military. No wonder she was exhausted.
Nothing really made sense, but it was too late for any more thinking. Tomorrow was also bound to be busy.
Tomohito looked relieved as he led Akari down a narrow corridor, deeper and deeper into the cluttered recesses of the dark and dingy Bookhouse.