“I’m leaving.”
“No!” Naja caught Washu and smiled, whispering into her ear. “This time, you won’t get away. ♥”
A few weeks passed. The curriculum was a lot more relaxed than Washu had imagined… Or, rather, there were no compulsory elements. Paradoxically, that made things extremely difficult. Lazy procrastinators never managed to advance and were expelled once they exceeded the number of years they were allowed to spend on their degree.
Nobody forced anyone to do anything, but nobody helped, either. Washu was grateful to have so much time to adjust to all the changes. She also had time to think about her mother and the fishies back home.
“Going out today, ma’am?” The butler addressed Washu as she prepared breakfast and a box lunch in the kitchen. It was a little after 4:00 AM and still dark outside.
“I told you, you didn’t need to get up.”
“Washu-sama, I’ve said many times that we…”
“I know. You were hired for this, right?”
“If the meals prepared by the maids are not to your liking, I will switch the staff.” The butler seemed genuinely puzzled, peering at the food she was packing.
“I love the meals they make. I do. But let me cook for myself sometimes. I like rummaging about in the dark kitchen, dimly lit by the lights in the pantry.”
“Is that so?”
“It’s no problem at all. It was my mother’s policy to have the children see that someone had to make meals for them three times a day. She wanted them to know the effort it takes to make a meal and how disrespectful it is to waste it. Of course, we were all taught from a young age to cook for ourselves.” Washu remembered the kind director of the orphanage and smiled.
“She sounds like a wonderful lady.”
“And my mother always used to say, ‘If you can make yourself a good meal, you can manage to live anywhere.’”
“Food is the foundation of all creatures, great and small.”
“And it would make her invincible if she were good in bed,” Naja suddenly piped up from behind her.
“Naja-san! I thought you went home last night…”
“Mei-chan found me on the way out. We were remodeling the slide in the hot springs pool. I tried it myself on the second run and got too much momentum and flew into the shrubbery. I knocked myself out until just now. Ha ha ha!”
The butler sighed. Currently, Washu’s hot springs pool…or rather, the bathhouse…was expanding underground and had transformed into an amusement park many times larger than the previous incarnation. It was all Naja’s fault. “Please don’t remodel the house as you please.”
“Now, now, everyone’s benefiting from it.” Naja was quite indifferent to the butler’s protests. She felt not one iota of guilt.
“You mean Mei and the neighborhood kids,” pointed out Washu.
“Aren’t you used to dealing with children? There were some cute kids who insisted they were going to marry you when they grow up.”
“You deal with them on a whole different level. There aren’t many people who can play with children as equals.”
Indeed, Naja even played airsoft games with the children in the bathroom. Most of the battles took the form of Naja versus the children, but sometimes, the children were split into two groups, with Naja and Washu leading the teams.
“You seem to have a lot of fun yourself,” Naja retorted.
“What about Mei?” Washu asked, sighing. She was almost done, and she decided to cut off the pointless conversation by asking about the most pressing issue.
“What? Well…you know…” Naja stammered as the topic swung to Mei.
“You said you tried it yourself on the second run.”
“I let her noble sacrifice go to waste.”
“You made her your guinea pig?!” Washu glared at Naja.
“But, but…! She said, ‘Oh, Naja-sama, you finished it!’ She didn’t even give me a chance to stop her… And it was quite an epic fail. I put her back in her room.”
“Good grief. You have to make sure it’s not dangerous for the kiddos.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll do that now.” Naja watched as Washu slung her bag over her shoulder. “Are you going somewhere?”
“Yes, for a bit of a hike.”
“I know a good place…”
“Please just make the bathroom safe for the kids.” Washu prevented Naja from following her.
“Just trying to let you know…”
“Next time. See you later.” Without telling them her destination, Washu bolted from the kitchen and through the mist-covered yard. A wisp of wind, the last trace of winter, nipped at her cheeks.
In the past few weeks, Naja had introduced Washu to a variety of people in different places, but most of them occupied special niches. In any society, there were two sides, the light and the dark… The Academy was no exception. Philosophers had special status. They often needed access to things beyond Academy law. Naja was introducing her to people who would help her avoid the problems latent in venturing into the underbelly of society, or help her along the way, which would be necessary in her life here.
“Why are all her friends such intense people?” Washu wondered, exhausted. A diet full of rich foods became tiresome no matter how good those foods were, and it was human nature to crave something lighter. She’d decided to go out by herself to search for normal places. Also, there was one place she was curious about. She had seen it from the bus as Naja showed her around.
“There it is!”
Further out in the suburbs from the residential area where Washu lived was an abandoned farm, with an old observatory on top of the hill. It was the object of Washu’s fascination. Now that interstellar space travel was commonplace, practically nobody was in the habit of making celestial observations from a planet’s surface. If anyone did, they were not academics but hobbyists. Or perhaps someone studying ancient techniques in the pursuit of archaeology or historical anthropology.
“Or maybe someone who’s an antique collector,” Washu mused, as she circled the building with curiosity. The outer wall was old and decrepit.
“Excuse me, may I help you?” An elderly woman timidly called out to her.