Mokou didn't take long to get ready. She let us wait in her house while she packed, and the process made it clear just how little she owned. She laid a sack on her table, and into it went whatever she thought would be necessary for a few weeks spent outside of Gensokyo. A stack of papers. A pot of ink. A knife. A kiseru, with a small bag that I guessed was for tobacco. A pouch of coins. Half a dozen changes of clothes, heaped into two stacks. A few assorted smaller jars and bags. I didn't know what half of this was for, but I stayed quiet and let her be the judge of what would be useful. She was the thirteen hundred year old youkai hunter here. I figured that she knew her business.

When she was packed, she made one last lap around her house to check it for anything that couldn't last for a few weeks without her. With that, we helped her pull the storm shutters into place, and with her house now sealed up tight, we headed back toward the barrier.

Mokou told us that she knew a path out, a naturally-occurring weakness in the barrier. So, we let her lead, down the narrow path back to the main road. Kaguya was no longer waiting there. I guessed that she'd decided we were safe and gone home. Taken in a straight line, without any looping back on ourselves, it took about an hour and a half to get back to the boundary. An hour and a half. If it had been so painless the day before, we could have collected Mokou and left before sunset.

Mokou looked anxiously back over her shoulder a few times as we walked. Once or twice, she held up her hand to signal us to stop and just waited, listening to the wind. This didn't help my nerves, let me tell you.

This time, going out through Mokou's 'natural' exit, there was no sharp transition, like with Maribel's portals. Maribel pointed out the boundary as we approached it, but she described it as hazy in this area. Not so much a line as a smooth transition. We walked through the bamboo forest, and the outside world just sort of crept back in. I didn't even realize it had happened until I heard the sound of a car on the road below. With that trigger, everything else rushed in. The same mundane scenery—wind farm in the distance, houses below, trash peppering the forest floor—returned.

"We're out now, aren't we?"

"We've been out for a few minutes," Mokou said. She stepped forward to look out over the scene, with her hands stuffed in her pockets. "Tch. This end of the barrier is a dump. At least there's a city closer to the shrine."

"You've been out before...?"

"A few times. Once or twice with Sumi. Not enough to learn how things out here work anymore."

"Hmm." Maribel moved to stand next to her, and gave the landscape an approving nod. "We really did just walk out, didn't we? Is that even safe?"

"They made it like that on purpose. Think of it like a bug trap. You've got little holes, and the bugs fly in, right? Then they can't get out, because the hole's too tiny to find again unless you know where it's at."

"Er, right..."

"That's Gensokyo. Humans're the flies."

"... oh."

I was suddenly very glad that we'd found the two of them before those youkai we'd heard had found us.

We stood there, looking out at the scenery for a few minutes. Personally, after the weird sights of the bamboo forest, such a sharp transition was surreal. Seconds earlier, I'd been in a world where hunting packs of youkai roamed the landscape, with a hidden mansion where a moon princess lived. Yet, here I was, once again standing two meters from a half-buried McDonald's wrapper, looking out at prefab suburbs.

Before I could voice my thoughts—and trust me, they would have been really profound—a loud snap came from the forest behind us, just over the swell of the hill. All of us heard it. I tensed up. Maribel jerked to attention, and Mokou turned toward it, pulling one hand from her pocket and clenching her fingers like she was trying to limber them up.

"Do you think something followed us...?" Maribel said.

"Probably just a deer or something," Mokou said. She didn't sound convinced.

The sound stopped. I held my breath and waited.

"... I'm going to check it out," Mokou said.

She crept toward the source of the noise. Maribel and I took a few steps back. I reached into my bag, and my fingers worried at the pistol's grip. Another twig-snapping sound came from over the hillside. Mokou clenched her hand into a fist, and fire wreathed it. It was now obvious that the sounds were coming from the other side of one of the few large trees around. Mokou approached it...

And Kaguya stepped out from behind it. "If I'm 'probably just a deer,' don't you think you're overreacting?"

"What in the hell are you doing here?!" Mokou exploded. I don't mean that figuratively. I mean that her body burst into flames as she stepped closer.

Kaguya didn't look intimidated in the slightest. "I was just looking out for these two," she said, and gave us a friendly wave past the flaming Mokou. "I wanted to make sure you got them outside safely."

"I think I know how to escort two teenagers on a daytime hike, princess."

"I'm sure you can," Kaguya said, in a voice that was too genuine to describe as sarcastic. Somehow, that only made the sarcasm even more cutting. "But I have my own obligation to their safety."

"Well, they're safe. Good job. Now get the hell out of here."

Kaguya, though, wasn't listening. She stepped past Mokou and looked down over the houses below. "Oh, we really are in the outside world, aren't we?"

"Yeah, we are. Guess you didn't eavesdrop on that part, huh?"

"I hadn't known that there was a hole nearb—"

Kaguya was cut off, as Mokou grabbed the back of her robe. In a single motion, she yanked Kaguya backward and gave her a shove toward the direction we'd come from. "Well, there is! Why don't you go wander back through it? Or get eaten by a bear, whichever."

I didn't bother to tell her that bears hadn't been endemic to this area for decades. I did step closer, though. "It isn't a problem, we have some time to walk her back."

"Right...!" Maribel hurried up alongside me. "It isn't a problem, so please don't hurt her. The boundary's right here, I could open a hole in it..."

"Don't apologize for her!" Mokou said. "This is what she's like! Just drifting around, doing whatever she wants, causing problems for everyone else and never taking responsibility for it!"

Kaguya maintained that same placid expression. "You said that you needed Mokou's help with fighting monsters, right?" She was addressing us, not Mokou. Or rather, she was addressing Maribel.

"Oh, um." Maribel glanced anxiously between the two. "Well, I did, yes."

"Then after some consideration, I'd like to offer my services too."

Mokou leaned in, shouting at Kaguya from centimeters away. "You can't just barge in here...!"

"I'm not 'barging'..."

"... and invite yourself along!"

"... I'm offering."

"Whatever it is! I can handle this, you'd just get in my way!"

"Why don't you let them decide?"

They both looked to me.

I would have rather tried to defuse a bomb. "A-ah, well," I stammered. "More help would, of course, be welcome, but, uh, I wouldn't want to make things difficult for—"

"We'd be honored, Miss Houraisan," Maribel said, easing into the conversation in my stead. Thankfully. "But we really wouldn't want to impose..."

"It's not a problem at all," Kaguya said. "This Earth is my home now. It's about time that I saw more of it."

"But won't Eirin worry if you're gone for too long?"

"Eirin knows better than anybody that I'm immortal. She's very smart. She'll figure out where I went."

Mokou snorted. "You're actually thinking of bringing her, aren't you?"

"Ah, well," I said, in my most diplomatic voice. Which isn't very diplomatic. "We really could use all the help we can get."

"And judging by your performance in last night's fight, you might need the help, too," Kaguya said, with a sly glance to Mokou.

Mokou fumed and glanced between us, Kaguya, and the forest behind us, clearly weighing her options. I thought that she was about to tackle Kaguya then and there, really. She scowled. She crossed her arms.

We all stood in silence and waited for her verdict.

"How many of those monsters did you say there are?"

It wasn't the topic I was expecting, and the mental change of gears took a moment. "A few dozen. Two prominent ones."

Mokou gave a curt nod. "Then... then it's a competition. Whoever kills more wins."

"Oh?" Kaguya smiled at this, but raised one sleeve to obscure her lower face, peeking at Mokou over this. "And what does the winner get?"

"When I win, you've got to do five requests for me." Mokou's face spread in a vicious grin as she spoke. "Impossible ones sound good."

"My, such high stakes."

"Yeah, it'd take a real asshole to ask for something like that, wouldn't it?"

"Then if I win, I'd like five requests from you, too. Reasonable ones, of course."

"Yeah, whatever." Mokou turned back to us. "If she comes, I'm not responsible for anything that happens."

"Duly noted," I said. I still, correctly, thought that this looked like a volatile and undesirable situation. Like juggling molotov cocktails. And yet, it was still better than the alternatives. "Um. Should we get moving, then?"

"Yes, please," Kaguya said. "I'm looking forward to my first look at the outside world."

Piled into the car, we looked like a strange group indeed: Kaguya and Mokou looked like weird cosplayers, and after trudging through the forest for the better part of a day with no shower, Maribel and I were in pretty sorry hygienic condition. I was glad that we'd be getting home around dark. Less likely to attract attention from my neighbors that way.

Putting Kaguya and Mokou in the back seat together seemed like a disaster, so we sat in a criss-cross pattern, with me in the driver's seat, Maribel in the rear passenger's seat, and the other two as far apart as the car's interior would let them be. It turned out to be unnecessary anyway. Kaguya's enthusiasm soon ebbed, as we discovered that she got carsick easily.

Like everything else she did, Kaguya got nauseous elegantly. She just sort of folded her hands in her lap and closed her eyes. If you weren't paying attention, you could even miss the way that she was occasionally swallowing to keep her bile down. It kept her quiet throughout the trip, and thankfully, she and Mokou seemed to be equally intent on ignoring each other's presence. Mokou curled her feet under her on the seat, sitting in a way that the seat belt designer would doubtlessly have not approved of, and stared out the window in disinterest.

Maribel and I were pretty exhausted by this point. So, the only real conversation was Mokou's occasional commentary on the situation, and my attempts to answer it.

"How fast does this thing go, anyway?"

"Up to two hundred and fifty kilometers per hour."

"Huh."

Later: "Why doesn't that one over there have anybody in it?"

I glanced out the window. "It's a long-distance freight truck. Its computer talks to satellites to find out where to go."

"Huh. A computer's like a phone, right? A box that thinks?"

"More or less, yes."

Later: "Too many foreign languages out here. I can't read half of this stuff."

Later: "What the hell is a 7-Eleven?"

"It's a store. They sell cheap food to travelers."

Later: "Is it supposed to be doing that?"

I looked down. In the center of the car's dash was a screen for the user interface. While the car was in motion, it was supposed to display an idling animation. Instead, it was filled with blackness, and eyes stared out from the within.

"Crap." I sunk back into my seat, away from the thing.

"What is...?" Behind me, Maribel leaned forward to peek between the seats, and gasped as she spotted it.

Soon, we were all looking at the thing. It had enough eyes to match us all, at least.

Now, seeing it closer, and more familiar with it, it was even more unsettling.

Imagine it this way:

A few years ago, there was a video going around, of a deep sea biology sub that spotted a surviving sperm whale. The whale was majestic, of course. A creature the size of a house, it filled most of the camera even at a distance.

Watching it, though, I was struck by something else. The whale was illuminated by the sub's lights. And past it: Nothing. The whale had been spotted two thousand meters below the sea. Beyond it was a darkness the human mind could barely comprehend. Four kilometers of water stretched below, an inky void that threatened to eternally swallow anything that entered. It made me feel small and insignificant in a way that no picture of a distant galaxy ever could. I understood then why humanity had always feared the sea.

Looking into that eye-filled void, I saw the same darkness. The darkness in that thing had depth.

"So what the hell is it?!" Mokou demanded.

"I think that's just a hole, but it's made by one of those things. We think." Maribel said.

"So there's a monster in there?"

"We've started calling it the Watcher. Something, um... came out of it the last time we saw it."

"Good, I can kill it now and—"

Mokou flicked her fingers, and a small flame burst into existence between them.

"No, don't!" I shouted.

"Open flame detected," the car announced, in a pleasantly neutral feminine voice. "Be advised that smoking in an enclosed vehicle is prohibited by—"

"Why the hell not?!" Mokou said.

"You'll break the car!"

"—of up to twelve thousand yen. Open flame detected, be—"

"If it keeps yelling at me, I'm okay with that!"

"It's a rental! I... really can't afford to pay for it. Please."

"—regulation, and punishable by a fine of up to—"

"Then how do you shut this thing up?!"

"Perhaps by getting rid of the fire," Kaguya said, from the back seat.

"... oh, right." With a flick of her wrist, Mokou dismissed the flame.

The eye-filled gap hadn't budged during this commotion.

"Anyway, if this thing's here, we might as well try doing something about it," Mokou said.

"It looks a little familiar," Kaguya said.

Mokou ignored her. "Give me a stick or something."

"A stick?"

Maribel dug in her purse for a second, then offered a pencil forward. "Will this work?"

"Yeah, sure." Mokou took the pencil in hand, and pinching it between two fingers, poked it at the screen.

The tip of the pencil pushed down... and past the point where the screen should be. At the spot where it intersected the surface of the gap, it was engulfed by darkness. It was like the pencil simply ended. "Huh."

The eyes in the void still stared straight forward, ignoring the pencil in their midst. I liked to think that meant that they couldn't actually see us, no matter what might be lurking on the other side.

"It isn't doing much," Mokou said. "Are you sure it's not just some spirit or something?"

"Whatever it is, isn't it a little concerning that it's following us around?" I said.

"If you can put things in it, though, it would be kind of convenient," Maribel said. "Like a second glove box."

"It's a pretty weird one, though. It would probably scare little kids."

"True. Maybe we could buy a few pairs of sunglasses for—"

Mokou's free hand had been fishing in the pocket of her pants. Now, she pulled out an ofuda and slammed it on the side of the screen.

With a loud sizzle, smoke burst out from the screen. The car started chastising us again. The gap evaporated in the blink of an eye, and the usual GPS readout and menu options appeared in its place. The pencil shattered with a crunch of splintering wood, with one half disappearing with the anomaly and the other staying in Mokou's hand.

"What was that?" I said, waving aside the acrid smoke. A glance at the screen reassured me that she hadn't broken it.

"Youkai warding charm."

Maribel eyed the console. "Did you kill it?"

"You said that one wasn't the monster itself, right? I just stopped it from using its powers on the..." Mokou waved a finger vaguely toward the screen. "Whatever that thing is."

"Huh..." I grabbed the shattered half-pencil and poked at the tip with my finger.

Maribel put two and two together faster than I did. "So does that mean it's a youkai?"

"Huh?" Mokou looked back at her, then to the charm on the dash. Around this time, the car finally shut up about the smoke. "Oh. Yeah, I guess it is."

The anti-youkai charm clung to the dash, and stayed there for the rest of the ride.

Once we were back in the Kyoto area, I remembered a small hitch: I had no food. With everything else that was going on, it hadn't really been my top priority. What little I had in my apartment wasn't going to make much of a meal for four people. It was pretty late in the afternoon, too, so Maribel, Kaguya, and I were all pretty hungry. Mokou insisted that what she'd eaten of the hare earlier had been more than she'd eat most days, but reluctantly agreed to come along once it was clear that we were stopping for food anyway.

So, there we were, in a cafe a few kilometers from my apartment. The place isn't exactly glamorous. It's less of a date spot and more of a place for broke students to eat and study. I thought it would be a good choice in this case, for the following scientific reasons:

* I thought the clientele of a place like that would be a bit less likely to raise a fuss about the fact that Maribel and I hadn't showered in a day, and we were traveling with two people who were dressed as, roughly, a Heian-era noblewoman and a firefighter. Well, okay, this being Kyoto, Kaguya's outfit might not have stood out as much. Mokou, though, was right out.

* We were going to talk over dinner, and it was bound to be a very strange conversation. In a restaurant mostly full of college students, anybody who overheard us would assume we were talking about a video game or something.

* I thought that giving Mokou and Kaguya fast food as their first dining experience in the outside world might be sort of like introducing them to modern cinema by showing them late-night anime. Jumping in on the very deep end.

* And most importantly—it didn't cost much.

Money, I reflected, was going to be a problem.

Fortunately, I had plenty of time to think about it, since Mokou and Kaguya weren't familiar with 90% of the menu options.

"I'm afraid I don't understand this word," Kaguya said, tracing her finger across the menu.

Maribel leaned in and glanced at it. "Ah, um. That's 'hydrolyzed.'"

"I see. And this one?"

"That's 'protein.'"

"Food's food. Being picky about it just makes you look ungrateful," Mokou grumbled. Not that she was any quicker. She'd been scowling at the menu since we arrived, like she hoped to intimidate it into giving up its secrets.

Kaguya ignored her. "'Hydrolyzed soy protein'," she read. "Er, and what is that?"

Maribel looked to me for help.

I glanced down at the menu and searched for the item in question. Soy-Lemon Seafood Fillets, the menu read. Artisanal simulation seafood fillets (hydrolyzed soy protein concentrate), grilled and served with a sweet soy-lemon sauce. Garnished with ginger.

And I had to explain this to a girl who had just left, roughly, the Meiji era.

Right.

"Well," I said, as I gathered my thoughts. "A long time ago, people realized that they had caught so many fish that they were starting to wipe out some species." I watched Kaguya to make sure that she seemed to be following this. "And then, to make things worse, a lot of, um, chemicals and trash got into the ocean, and that killed a lot of them too."

She nodded along with this, thoughtfully.

"So a lot of fish aren't safe to eat, and a lot more are illegal to eat, because we want to let their populations recover. So, instead, people make artificial fish meat out of other things."

"Like soy?"

"Like soy."

"Then why is it called 'Seafood Fillets'?"

"I don't think 'Soy-Lemon Hydrolyzed Soy Protein Fillets' would sell very well..." Maribel said.

"They can't actually call it fish, for legal purposes," I said. "But 'seafood' is generic enough to be safe."

Kaguya nodded thoughtfully along with this, folding her hands in her lap. "I suppose you could say it is... arti-fish-ial?" She somehow managed to maintain a perfectly level tone as she spoke, but still gave a self-satisfied smile at the delivery.

Maribel giggled. Mokou grumbled. It only spurred her on.

"What's wrong, Mokou? Sardine-ly you can appreciate a joke?"

More grumbling.

"You can't blame me for taking the oppor-tuna-ty to—"

"If she doesn't shut up, I'll kill her here and now," Mokou announced to nobody in particular. A few heads turned our way.

"Miss Houraisan," Maribel said, with a very affected gravitas. "I think it might be best if you clam up."

She barely made it to the end of the sentence before she snorted and broke down in laughter. Kaguya joined her, shielding her face behind her sleeve as she tittered in amusement. Mokou growled and sunk down behind her menu.

Before long, thankfully, they made their choices and we ordered. While we were waiting, I remembered that I'd switched my phone off before we stepped into Gensokyo. Turning it on, I was instantly bombarded with notifications. For five minutes, I dug through automated ads, e-mails, system updates, notices from my school, and a repeated message of my fridge warning me that I was low on eggs. Finally, once the cruft was sorted away, I was able to look at the few messages I'd hanged on to. One was a statement from my bank. I stared at it and memorized my current balance. I felt like it was going to be a limiting factor in our activities to come.

The next message was a false positive, a spam message that managed to briefly convince me that it was a message from my mom. I trashed it, but reminded myself to call my parents within the next day or so. I was probably going to need to ask them for money soon. It wouldn't hurt to look like a dutiful daughter.

The third message was from a news filter I'd set up, informing me of a few articles that had been posted while we were in Gensokyo. There were quite a few in there, since I'd set it to look for injuries resulting from violence or unexplained causes. There was a rash of domestic violence stories, which I discarded. (In retrospect, I'm not sure they were actually unrelated.) A few stabbings and robberies gone wrong. I ignored these.

Two people in Kyoto had been hospitalized with injuries that looked like they'd been inflicted by animals. Both of them lived within three kilometers of the Kyoto University campus, and neither had seen their aggressors. The police were reporting this as 'wild dog attacks.' It seemed likely to be the work of chimeras, so I filed this away for future consideration.

And: A few photos that had been making the social media rounds. One was of a reptile the size of a man, with bird-like wings and horns like a ram, as it disappeared around the corner of a building. One was a blur of motion, but which clearly had meters-long segmented insect legs. One was a creature that looked almost like a normal lion, except for the patches of scales along its side. People had already settled on calling them 'Kyoto goblins,' and treated them like very elaborate hoaxes. There were already pages-long analyses detailing how the images had obviously been manipulated.

In a way, I was a little amused to see the birth of a new cryptid legend. I knew, though, what this actually meant—the chimeras were still out there, and they were on the move.

Finally, there was a series of messages from Yuuta. They started with him sounding hysterical over eyes in his television. The Watcher, I supposed. He swore that he'd seen something following him home one night. In the later messages, he sounded more and more paranoid.

It was worrying, but he lived entirely too far away for me to do anything about it tonight. I tossed off a quick message asking him to give me a call at his convenience and turned back to the others.

"So, I've been thinking. Merry and I both have class tomorrow."

"Mmhm, that's true," Maribel said. "I guess we can't go on playing adventurers forever..."

"The main time we got attacked was just walking home, though. The evidence we have so far suggests that the creatures are targeting us. For all we know, we could be attacked anytime."

"So, what," Mokou said. "You want us to play bodyguards?"

"I think it would be an interesting chance to see how outside world humans live, don't you?" Kaguya said.

"And I think you're just looking for an excuse to stick your nose in other people's—"

Mokou went quiet, as the waitress approached and delivered the drinks: A coffee for me, tea for Kaguya, iced coffee for Maribel, and a glass of water for Mokou.

And, with them, the two sweets that had been ordered. Kaguya had gotten some kind of apple pastry that I'm pretty sure was only on the breakfast menu.

Maribel had gotten a massive sundae. I stared at it. "You're having that with dinner?"

"For dinner," she corrected me, as she popped a scoop of it into her mouth.

"Doesn't that seem a little childish?"

"Being this sweet requires me to maintain a strict diet."

"You're an inspiration to us all."

"Thank you." Maribel hummed to herself as she swiped the cherry from the top and ate it, then turned the conversation back to its prior topic. "So, bodyguards?"

"Oh, right. If we look at it like that, it's pretty convenient that Kaguya came along. With two of you and two of us, we can each have an escort in case we get attacked."

"And then you wouldn't have both of them living at your place..."

I'm glad Maribel said it, not me. My finances would look a lot less shaky if I was only supporting one extra person, instead of two.

"It'd keep us apart most of the time, right? I'm game." Mokou took a sip of her water, in a surprisingly refined fashion. "Any excuse to see as little of her as possible."

"Oh, you'll miss me when I'm gone," Kaguya said.

"Gone? You just keep popping back up no matter how many times I kill you. That's the problem."

"Well, Merry and I spend a lot of time together. Plus, if we need to track down the monsters, we'll have to spend a lot of time on that. The faster we kill them all, the sooner you can go home."

"I'm in no rush," Kaguya said. "I have an eternity, after all."

"If they're going to be our bodyguards, though..." Maribel turned to look over the two with a thoughtful frown. "They'll need to come to follow us around town, right? They might need to, um, fit in, won't they?"

It took a moment for me to realize what she was talking about. Their clothes. Coming to a cafe at off-hours was one thing, but I could just imagine the mess that would result if we'd taken Kaguya into a lecture hall dressed like that. "... right," I said. "Maybe we should make one more stop."

The stop, of course, was a clothing store. A used clothing store, because neither Maribel or I could afford to buy a new wardrobe today. Used clothing stores are still considered a bit gauche in Kyoto, so we had to go into a pretty bad neighborhood to find one. Surveillance cameras grew like parasites on the corners of buildings, and police drones glided overhead. I guess it was a nice test of our trust in Kaguya and Mokou. If they couldn't even handle a mugger or something, there was no way they were going to take out a chimera.

Regardless, if they realized that it was a bad neighborhood, they didn't show it. I think they were mostly just fascinated by the drones.

Thankfully, low property prices and college students go hand in hand, so the store had a pretty nice selection. Kaguya seemed excited about the possibilities that outside world fashion offered. Mokou... was less so.

The end result:

Kaguya was dressed in a black skirt, with a matching vest over a white blouse. On most people, I like to think that the outfit would have looked classy. On her, they just looked... wrong. Like when you see a celebrity in the tabloids, wearing frumpy clothes in an attempt to lay low from the paparazzi. Used clothes stores were simply not equipped to handle the majesty that was Kaguya Houraisan.

Mokou was even harder to dress, if only because nothing really seemed to combine stylishly with white hair. If she was going to be fighting, she also insisted on an outfit that was easy to move in. So, she got jeans and a faux-distressed t-shirt with the English text 'CRUSH DRAGON FRESH' on the front. This bewildered me enough that I had to look it up afterward: Apparently it's a micropunk folk band from Shizuoka. I just saved you from having to listen to the song that plays on their homepage. You're welcome.

Altogether, we got about four outfits apiece for them. It wasn't going to last long, but it seemed like a waste to spend too much money on clothes when they'd hopefully be going back to Gensokyo soon.

We'd never decided which of the two would be guarding which of us, but it seemed like an easy enough choice: Mokou should come with me, since the whole reason she was here was her debt to my grandma. Besides, Maribel and Kaguya seemed to be hitting it off. I was a little jealous, actually. Maribel had never really had any other friends in the entire time that I'd known her. Sharing her attention with somebody else didn't come naturally.

After dropping Kaguya and Maribel off at Maribel's apartment, Mokou and I proceeded to mine. First finding: it was in exactly as bad of a condition as I'd left it. Somebody had nailed a piece of plywood over the shredded area of my door, and left a note on the table from the landlady informing me that a replacement door wouldn't be available until the end of the week. Our barricade against the Dark Thing had made a giant mess of the place, and our rush to pack afterward hadn't helped much. If anything, the inside looked even worse than the door.

I normally would have been embarrassed about having company over with my apartment in such a condition. Under the circumstances, I just shoved the pile of supplies on my table aside so that we had somewhere to sit our drinks. Cleaning could wait until later.

As soon as we were inside and I was certain that Mokou wasn't going to pick a fight with my apartment's computer (she was very suspicious when it greeted us), I took a shower. My first shower since Friday. It was glorious. I invite anybody who pines for the simpler days of humanity to spend a weekend without modern conveniences. Our ancestors created indoor plumbing for a good reason. Please respect their wishes.

When I left the bathroom, I was feeling about a thousand times better. Dressed in clean clothes for the first time in days, I stepped into my room, blow-drying my hair, and fumbled a gesture until the apartment finally picked up on it and turned on the lights. My room, thankfully, was pretty much the only part of the apartment that hadn't been affected by the disaster. It was nice, being back in familiar surroundings that didn't show any sign of the trouble we'd gotten ourselves into. It made me feel safe.

I had almost convinced myself that our lives were no longer in danger. I was wrong.