Chapter Fifteen: Quite an Education

Naru rose early that morning to prepare for the day. There was the morning sickness, but thankfully that was diminishing. Afterwards, she cleaned up and changed into her outfits—knee high skirt, blouse, jacket, her glasses. Then brushing dog fur off of everything. "I need to start wearing colors that match you," she said to Hachi.

Hachi gave her a look that said he was happy to share his fur.

Getting dressed was less painful now that she had a sports bra instead of the lacy ones Keitaro liked to see her wear. She checked herself in the mirror, bowing forward to make sure she wasn't revealing cleavage or her collarbones just in case any of the boys at Juban Public Middle School were dirty minded little perverts.

If Keitaro was here, he could have told her that "middle school boys" and "dirty minded little perverts" were synonymous. But he wasn't, and the two hour time difference meant that they weren't always available to talk at the same time. Too bad satellite antennas for cars are so expensive. We could have talked while he was traveling to the site. No way Todai or the Institute would budget for that. But at least they were scheduled to talk this evening.

She threw the important things into her bag. Her preliminary lesson plan to be reviewed by her mentor, her purse, her anti-nausea medicine.

Coming downstairs, it was chaos. The first day of a new school term, everybody was scrambling to get ready. She was going to Juban Public Middle School; Mutsumi, Motoko, Shinobu, Su, and Kanako we're going to Todai; Sara and Ema were going to their respective high schools. That left Haruka to help and Kitsune to "help" get things ready.

"Auuu," Shinobu groaned, juggling between preparing tea and miso for breakfast and bento for the day. "I should have started preparing last night."

"Yeah, but the party was fun," Kitsune smirked.

Shinobu glared, but had nobody to blame but herself for joining in.

"I'll help, Shinobu," Naru said, working her way through the commotion.

"Nonsense!" Kanako said. "Don't over exert yourself. We'll help her."

Don't I have to exert in the first place before I can over exert? Naru thought. The others were doing their best not to treat her like a child, but they still were reluctant to let her do things. I hope they don't follow me to school.

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Watching the girls depart, Haruka and Kitsune looked at each other, getting used to the stillness again. Haruka looked at her watch. "I figure we won't see Sara and Ema before four o'clock."

Kitsune shrugged. "They might end up joining a club."

Haruka rolled her eyes. "Let me rephrase that. 'I figure we won't see Sara until four.' The others, probably not until five or six."

"More trouble?" Kitsune noticed Haruka's glower.

"Yeah," Haruka growled. "Last night she was complaining about having to go to high school since it's not mandatory. I wish Seta would hurry up and get back from Molmol. She might listen to him without arguing."

"I remember thinking like that. If it wasn't for Grandma Hina pushing me, I probably would have dropped out."

"I wish she was here," Haruka remarked. "Maybe she'd have that kind of talk with Sara." However, she was with Keitaro's parents now, convalescing. The doctor had absolutely rejected a stay at Hinata House based on stairs and the 'reports of an undisciplined environment.'

She yawned and stretched. "So, Kitsune, what are your plans?"

"Well, the second thing on my list is to walk that mutt and then get ready to open the tea room and the bath for customers."

"And the first thing?" Haruka asked, with a knowing smile.

Kitsune pulled out a pack of cigarettes. "When Mutsumi's away, the mice will play."

"To the roof," Haruka said, pulling out her own pack.

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While they would be parting ways eventually, they all had to get on board the local streetcar together. So the other passengers were hit with a tsunami of women jamming on board. Motoko evicted a male passenger—who had ignored Naru's maternity mark—from his seat and glared at anyone who might crowd in and endanger mother and child.

Naru was a bit mortified, but given that her feet would eventually start aching regardless of her sensible shoes, she was grateful to delay the onset. She was also worried, belatedly, about how she would adapt to the stresses of teaching. The Sertraline helped me deal with things so far, but how will I do teaching math to so many students? She wondered if she made a mistake in accepting the position.

She looked up to see Mutsumi smiling reassuringly at her.

"Ara, Ara, Nacchan. You taught well before. You should do well now too. Remember, you're not going in with anything less than you had before."

Naru smiled back, feeling a little less worried.

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Their camp fully set up, and the vehicles unloaded, they set about following Artyom's information. That was a bit awkward because Keitaro was their digger par excellence and Makie was their best surveyor.

"So, assuming that the song is accurately translated," Makie said tonelessly, "you're probably right that the rock over there is the seventh turtle rock. Standing in a point that is two anana and a muku to the left-"

"Nine ha'alima then," Keitaro interrupted, in a hurry to get the archive found so he could return home.

"I prefer to work with the text, Urashima," she said coldly. Given that we don't know the size of the person who did it originally, that gives us a distance of anywhere from 4.25 meters to six meters. If we went with nine ha'alima, we'd have a range of 3.84 to 5.46 meters. I think that's why we missed it last time."

Since it had been Keitaro's misreading last time, he said nothing.

"So the angle of the weave chart Artyom found will…" She pulled out a scientific calculator and began working. "Considering a margin of error of four degrees, let's try a range of 18 to 22 degrees at the minimum and maximum distances and depths that should give us an approximate range to look for the next monument."

That meant it was time for a break. Makie had to set up a temporary point, erect the tripod, set up the tribrach and coarse level, level it, set up the instruments, connect the power, turn it on, fine level the instrument. Then send others out to hold the other end at the minimum and maximum ends of the possible angles at the minimum and maximum possible distance.

After that, it was a matter of tearing it down and moving it over 1.75 meters to the left and doing it all over again.

It did no good to ask why they couldn't pick it up and move it to save time. Apparently the small differences in the ground and equipment being shaken meant either risking an inaccurate reading or having to recalibrate it anyway. Or, as Makie had once curtly told Artyom, 'We could guess too. It would probably be just as accurate.' Whatever her moral problems, Makie was meticulous about her work.

That generally meant the digging crews—who stayed out of the sun when they weren't digging—napped or broke out the crossword puzzles, cards, or dominos. Western versions, of course. Keitaro and Nyamo ended up doing the dominos.

"So, what's going on with you and Makie?" Nyamo asked, laying down a double five.

"Nothing is going on between us," he replied, looking at the tiles and then at the score sheet. He couldn't see anything that could make a multiple of five. "She crossed a line, and I had to make it clear she wasn't welcome." He put down a two-three tile.

"I get that's what it looked like to you, and I'm glad you're staying with Naru. But a lot of us thought that wasn't going to happen when you went back to Japan." She put down a three-four.

"Well, Naru and I both misread each other and we both thought the other wanted divorce. It took a crisis to get us to sit down and talk." He laid down a double four. "But now that we are back together, I don't want anything to endanger it. So, if Makie wants to try to seduce me, I have to put up barriers."

"I agree. You should have put them up earlier. But it's good you did put them up. There's one thing that you should know."

"What's that?"

"Makie's not angry at you for not sleeping with her. She's angry at you for your accusing her of trying to sleep with you." She laid down a one-five on the open one. "Thirty five points."

Keitaro looked at the open tiles, feeling ambushed by the play and the revelations. "What do you mean she didn't…? Did you miss all of her stunts before I left?" Nyamo sure is naive. He laid down a five-blank, allowing him to make up most of the points he conceded to Nyamo.

"If she's telling the truth—and I think she is—then what she intended was to confess her feelings to you. She thought you were getting a divorce and was hoping to be the next Mrs. Urashima." She dropped a double blank, ending the game.

Keitaro pondered that as he gathered and shuffled the dominos. That was what Shinobu and Motoko were doing. He pondered that, remembering that terrible evening when Naru had felt utterly betrayed…

"I thought we were friends! What the hell were you doing making those advances on my husband, earlier?" She turned on Keitaro. "And you! You're married! I'm your wife! What the hell were you doing, not shutting them down? This is just like Saito!"

He winced, remembering the little things Makie had done, realizing fully now how it must have looked to Naru. And I was frigging clueless! he thought, angry at himself.

"You awake there?" Nyamo asked, waving her hand in front of him.

"I'm thinking about what might have happened. If Grandma hadn't had a heart attack, we probably wouldn't have gone back to Japan. When the Measles outbreak happened, she would have gotten immunized, probably had a miscarriage. It probably would have been the death blow for our marriage." He began pulling his dominos out of the bone pile. "If we had given up then, would I have…?" He shrugged. "In all honesty, I don't know. I'm glad it never got that far."

"I am too," Nyamo said, drawing hers. "I remember how hurt Naru was when she came over to my place. She would have been devastated. But like I said, I wasn't sure that you were going to stay with her. And if I thought that way…" She made a gesture.

"Yeah," Keitaro said finishing, "if you who knew me better than the rest of the crew thought that way, how would the rest of the crew think of it?" He sighed. "I'm an idiot."

"No comment."

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Although Naru had taught for two years—one in Japan, one on Pararakelse—she was new at Juban Public Middle School. That meant she would have a senior teacher shadowing her as a mentor. Miss Sakurada Haruna, a woman who seemed to be in her mid to late thirties and had been teaching since the 1990s, looked up from evaluating Naru's sample lesson plan.

"I think you'll do well here, Mrs. Urashima. Your lesson plan and your records show you'll meet our needs for a math teacher. Do you have any questions?"

"How are the students? In terms of behavior and attentiveness I mean?"

"Well, I think we're not much different from other schools. You'll encounter the extremes of both the achievers and the slackers. But it's better than it was when I first started teaching. There was this one girl, long hair in odango, she drove me crazy." Idly, Miss Haruna wondered what happened to her after she got into Juban High School. She checked her watch. "Well, it's about time to meet your first class."

As they walked along, Naru remarked, "This looks like a quiet neighborhood."

"It really has quieted down," Haruna agreed. "It's not like some of those other schools. I heard that recently a deer attacked the principal at Tokisadame High School."

"Ordinary life sounds more and more like manga, nowadays."

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Makie had a topographical map spread out on one of the tables. "Right, so the three concentric circles represent the best, middle, and worst cases for the ancient measurements. In the best case, we need to search an area of four hundred meters squared. In the worst case, about a thousand."

"And we have to dig down under sand layer to find landmark, da?" Artyom asked, looking at the rocky desert.

"Unless we get lucky," Makie replied.

"All right," Keitaro said, "everyone out there digging, make sure you're wearing long pants, long sleeves, and boots. Let's make sure there's one person on each team with a shotgun. We're about a hundred sixty klicks—a hundred miles—from Port Oxley. If someone gets bit by a cobra or gets a disease from a leech, that's going to be a problem. Hopefully we won't have any turtle stampedes."

He wondered if the term turtle stampede was used anywhere outside of Pararakelse.

"Good work, Makieva," Artyom said, adding a Russian feminine to her name. "Isn't it, Keitaro?"

Makie and Keitaro looked at each other uncomfortably, and then turned sharply away from each other.

Artyom sighed. I hope I don't have to send one of them home. He really couldn't spare the vehicles, or either one of them.

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As a new teacher at the school, Naru had to endure the questioning students had. The girls wanted to know more about the baby implied by her maternity mark.

"Have you sent out the Anteiki yet?"

"No, this is only my third month."

The boys wanted to ask the typical harassment questions that puberty inevitably brought out.

Thankfully, Haruna was playing bad cop, so questions about the "three sizes" were smacked down—literally, as she was at least as skilled as Haruka was with the harisen. But there were still questions like "Do you have a boyfriend?"

"I'm married," Naru said coolly, wondering how they could have asked that with her maternity mark featured prominently.

"What does he do?" another male student asked, as if he had a chance of wooing her away from Keitaro.

"He's an archaeologist, he's doing a dig on the island of Pararakelse right now."

"Pararakelse?"one of the students—a military otaku apparently—asked. "Where the war they just had happened? Were you there? Did you see a lot of fighting?"

Naru sweatdropped. "No, there was a few days of fighting when we were visiting Japan, but everything is under control now."

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"Looks like three, maybe four 6x6 heading east, sir," the sergeant said to Emori. "Anything smaller along for the ride probably had the tracks obscured."

"Those will probably be the missing Ural-4320s," Emori nodded. "They each have a carrying capacity of 27 passengers and the crew. Minus whatever gear they're hauling. So if they're fully loaded with soldiers and no equipment or smaller vehicles, we'd be looking at a hundred twenty rebels." He checked his rifle. "Better to assume more, then to walk into an ambush. No telling whether they're packed like sardines or spread out."

"What do you think they're doing out here?" his young subordinate, Lieutenant Harry Kidd, asked.

"Well, with those numbers, they're not going to march on the capital. I'm going to guess they're either heading for the coast, or they're going to raid small towns for supplies. That will mean civilian casualties, so I pray to God I'm wrong there," Emori said grimly. Thank God they're not moving inland to Nyam's dig site. "All right, Kidd, get on the horn and ask for a chopper to fly out east of our position and see if we can spot them before we wind up in an ambush.

The older NCOs chuckled at the young lieutenant while he wished his last name had been something else.

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It turned out that the marker was found twenty meters from the center of Makie's best case estimate.

"That's good surveying," Artyom said, lighting a Winston Red—thankfully, he had run out of Belomorkanals, and was reduced to using a less obnoxious brand. "Her methods work well."

"Yeah," Keitaro said reluctantly. Given the margin of error based on subjective measurements she had to work with, this was virtually dead center, but he was wary about offering Makie any praise for fear that it might give the wrong impression… that and it irritated him that he might have to admit that he rebuked her for something he had been gentle about with Motoko and Shinobu.

Artyom noticed that. Better to ride slower and go further. "I thank you for not making scene," he said. "It can't be easy to work under this circumstance."

"Yeah," Keitaro said, ruefully. "I guess I was living in denial before. But now that I know, I have to try find the right level."

Try harder. Aloud, Artyom said, "just remember, we get best work when you work together, I will say the same to her."

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It happened in the final class of the day, when she was teaching a class of third year students. Naru was walking around while lecturing on a theory of algebra, when she happened to look down at the student next to her. The girl had short grey-brown hair, which was unusual. But what caught her eye was on her left hand. It was a gold band with a precious stone set in it. That's an engagement ring! Quietly, she looked at the seating chart. The student was a Rika Sasaki.

Okay, what's going on here? Are her parents okay with this? Is she sexually active? She only looks 14 or 15! How could a boyfriend her age afford something like that?

She resolved to ask Motoko about the laws, before overreacting… she hoped she was overreacting.

The bell toned signaling the end of class. The students hurried off to their next class. Naru, however, was finished teaching. Being a new teacher, the school system gave her fewer classes to allow time for her to do mentoring with Haruna.

"You seemed a little off stride at the very end, Naru," Haruna said gently as they walked towards the teachers' lounge. "Was it the baby?"

"Hmm?" Naru looked up from her thoughts. "No, there was a student with what looked like an engagement ring. That seemed… odd."

"Oh, you mean Rika Sasaki? She likes to pretend she's engaged, but personally I think she must have borrowed it from her mother's jewelry box."

"I see," Naru said, hoping Haruna was right, but having a sick sense she wasn't. Or was it a sense? Just to be safe, she took a Benatura tablet in case it was nausea.

"So," Haruna said, as they sat at the desk. "You seem to know teaching well, so I'm not sure if there's much I can do there. Perhaps we should work on how other parts of the school work."

"That sounds like a good idea," Naru said, keeping her voice casual. "Since I had been concerned with a student, this Rika, wasn't it, perhaps this is a good opportunity to go over procedures I would follow if it had been a legitimate concern."

"All right," Haruna said, agreeably. "One could start by checking up on her by her relationship with friends, in clubs, schoolwork, and the like."

"And if I found something, I would go on to a home visit?"

"I suppose so," Haruna mused. "Usually we do those from April to June, and usually only for first years to get a sense of home life or to discuss academic issues. After January, we might do them if a third year student doesn't seem to have a plan for high school."

"But it could be done?"

"As long as you let us know you had it planned and properly filed your report. The principal doesn't like surprises. So if a parent came by with a question about why they were visited, he'd want to know about the visit before it happened."

"That makes sense. So what do I do at the school if I decide something is wrong?" Naru hoped she wasn't being obvious here.

If she was, Haruna was clueless. "Well, I'm your senior teacher, so you'd talk to me first. I'd tell you what I thought about whether you should go forward in reporting it to the principal or the school board. It's still your decision to make. But if you bypass the principal, he'd be unhappy about being blindsided."

"I wouldn't go to the police?" Naru asked, perplexed.

"Why should you want to?" Haruna asked. "What kind of laws do you expect to be broken here?"

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Makie was adjusting the surveying equipment when Nyamo walked over. Artyom and Keitaro were evaluating the cuneiform on the recently discovered marker, so they weren't likely to overhear.

Good, Nyamo thought. "So, how are you holding out?" she asked, replacing Makie's water bottle.

"I'm doing okay, except it's hotter than blazes out here," Makie replied, gratefully accepting the bottle.

"Well, that's good. Except I was wondering how you were handling this situation."

Makie grimaced. "Right now, I can only say, You have tomorrow if you keep on living. Am I sad that he doesn't feel the same way about me that I do? Yes. Am I hurt by how he views me? Yes. Dammit, I wish we could have stayed friends."

Nyamo sighed internally, feeling like she was wandering blindfolded through a minefield. She wanted them to stay friends too, partiality because they were both her friends, and partially because she was caught in the middle. "I think what you have to remember here is Naru."

"Naru? What about her?" Her tone was one of puzzlement.

Nyamo sweatdropped. Is she that clueless? "Whatever Keitaro does, he has to do with her in mind. She doesn't, well… she doesn't have a positive view of you." That's putting it mildly. "The night before the last dig we all did together, they fought. Naru came by my apartment."

"Ah," Makie said shortly, sensing where this was going. She checked her watch, 5:30pm. They'd be losing light soon. No sense in risking a bad reading. "Okay," she called to her crew, "mark what we have and we'll start up again tomorrow." She turned back to Nyamo. "And?"

"There's no real way to sugar coat it. She felt betrayed by Keitaro and was afraid that you would steal her away. I guess he resented that because he had no intention of leaving her and thought she would leave him."

"Well," Makie said, hesitating. "I wish he had made his intentions clear before. I only went after him because I thought he was interested in me."

"I wish he had too, but he's making them clear now, in a way that is probably meant to keep her from worrying," Nyamo said, patiently. "Just give him space. Either it will get better or it won't. Don't try to push him." And stop chasing married men!

"I hear you, Nyamo. I won't push. I just hope he doesn't lose his balance." She rolled her eyes. "The first time we met, he tripped over something and faceplanted into my cleavage."

Nyamo sweatdropped, remembering her first encounters with Keitaro. "Yeah, Keitaro can be a clueless idiot sometimes. I was maybe fourteen when he first did that to me."

"Fourteen!?" Makie asked, shocked. "The first time he did that, I thought he was just being forward." Either I got him wrong from the beginning, or he's a real pervert! "That must have been traumatic," she said gently. How do I ask if he tried to…

"It was embarrassing, sure. But Naru always chased him off." She smiled. "At first, I was scared of her. I didn't know any Japanese, and she only knew the English she learned in high school and preparing for college tests. But now I knew she was trying to make sure that his accidents didn't turn out to be 'accidents.'" She made air quotes with her fingers.

"Fourteen…" Makie mused. "You knew them back then?" Nyamo was twenty now.

"Yes, apparently Keitaro thought he failed his entrance exams again. He jumped a ship here. Naru came here to bring him home." Nyamo smiled. "That was my first encounter with the asylum known as Hinata House."

The teardown finished, Makie said, "well, let's get this sheltered." She picked up the surveying scope, and headed for the trucks. Naru came all the way out here? It was one thing to say you were willing to follow somebody to the ends of the earth. But apparently Naru had damn near done it literally. Would I have done that?

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The trip from Todaime station to the Azuma-Juban station was only a ten minute ride. Since it was a five minute walk from the school to her station, Naru only had to wait five minutes at the station from the time she got Shinobu's text until the train arrived.

Su leaned out of the train and waved, while the other girls pretended not to know her. After the exchange of "how was your day?" they settled in for the 90 minutes of trains and transfers to get home. The train was getting crowded enough that Naru couldn't get embarrassed by Motoko's evicting a man from his seat for her.

"With such a low birth rate in this country, aren't you ashamed of making this woman stand?" she said in a loud angry voice.

Naru sweatdropped. …then again…

Once home again, after Sara and Naru walked the dog, they gathered at Kitsune's tea room to unwind. Hachi fell asleep, using Tama for a chin rest. Shippu slept on Hachi's back, and Leon slept between his feet. Kuro dug her claws into Kanako's thigh and hissed, giving Hachi an I will murder you glare.

Naru took her green tea over to where Motoko was looking over a law book while sipping from a cup of sake. "Hey, Motoko. Can we talk for a minute?"

Urk! Motoko thought. Has she come to chew me out for spying on her the other day? "Ah, sure. What's on your mind?" she asked uneasily.

Dammit, am I going to be viewed as the dictator from now on? "It's not anything about you," she replied gently. "It's something that you might know from your studies."

"Okay," Motoko gave a relieved smile. "I can try. Is there a problem at school?"

"Maybe." Now it was Naru's turn to feel uneasy. "I want to know more about the law before I go in, fists swinging. It's about age of consent laws."

"Oho!" Kitsune leered. "Does Keitaro have a rival in one of the boy students?"

"So, talk outside?" Naru asked, rubbing her knuckles.

"Sure," Motoko said, putting her shinai away.

"If you say, 'it was worth it,' Kitsune, I'll hit you myself!" Mutsumi growled, getting out the first aid kit for the two lumps on Kitsune's head.

"So, age of consent laws?" Motoko asked, after they were seated outside.

"Yes, in one of by classes, a girl was wearing an engagement ring."

"An engagement ring? I thought you were teaching middle school."

"I am. It doesn't look like a fake, and I don't think it's her mother's. It fits too well." Naru sighed. "I'm hoping it will turn out to be nothing."

Motoko rubbed her chin and thought for a moment. "We've studied this a bit. The problem is, the laws of Japan are a bit conflicting. The laws on child pornography are weak because of this."

Naru winced.

"So," Motoko continued, "First, we have the penal laws. Article 177 forbids any sexual activity with a minor under 13, consensual or not. Second, the Child Welfare Act defines a child as anyone below the age of 18 years. Article 34 of the Act forbids any person from causing a child to commit obscene acts. The same law restricts the minimum age of marriage for girls to 16."

Hmm, that was close to when Shinobu was chasing after Keitaro, Naru thought. "I don't think this girl could be older than fifteen."

"Well, it gets more confusing. Most of the prefectures have obscenity statutes or laws against 'corruption of minors.' It's illegal to engage in sexual activities with partners who are below this age unless a parent or guardian approves of the romantic relationship."

"What kind of guardian would want to give consent to that?"

"Probably one wanting to get the girl married off," Motoko replied, remembering back when Tsuruko had disowned her and then tried to force her into a marriage with Keitaro. "Anyway, if this girl is from Tokyo, she'd have to be 18. In a few provinces at 16, and on a couple of outlying islands a girl can get married at 13."

"I had no idea it was so…anarchical here," Naru sweatdropped.

"There are definitely problems here," Motoko confirmed, "and people do take advantage of them. Child pornography for example, but that doesn't apply here… I hope."

"So, there's nothing I can do?"

"I'd start by making sure it really is an engagement ring," Motoko said. "Then find out if her parents gave their consent. If they didn't, then they're the ones who can press charges."

"Thank you, Motoko," Naru replied. "This was quite an education. I was hoping that I'd be just overreacting over nothing. But at least now I know how to make a plan for this. I just hope I don't overreact."

Motoko smiled. "I remember how you defended us from Keitaro's mishaps when we were minors. If he had been a predator, I think we would have been in good hands with you looking out for us, and I think this girl is in good hands with you looking out for her."

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Author notes

The measurements Keitaro and Makie are using are ancient Polynesian. Ha'alima is the length of hand + forearm. A muku is the length between the extended fist of one arm to the other elbow if you were aiming a bow. A anana is the width of both arms outstretched. Since these depend on the size of the individual making the original measurements, there will be problems in getting precise measurements.

"then get ready to open the tea room and the bath for customers." While it's never actually a plot point, there are signs in the manga that the hot springs are open to the public during the daytime hours for ¥400.

"Anteiki" (安定期). When the baby is considered stable and not likely to miscarry. Birth announcements are sent at this time (about 16 weeks)

"This is only my third month." No, we didn't skip a month. Only a month has passed since the end of Forever and a Day. In past chapters, I had Naru saying she was one month along or two months along. But I recently discovered that in Japan, the first month starts on the date of conception, and pregnancy is considered to be ten months. I should have had Naru saying "this is my second month" when she discovered she was pregnant at the end of FAAD.

"Nyam's" That's not a typo. That's his pet name for Nyamo.

"Rika Sasaki." A character from Cardcaptor Sakura. This upcoming subplot was inspired by the WTF? moment I had reading the manga involving her and her teacher.

"What kind of laws do you expect to be broken here?" Unfortunately, prior to 2018, Haruna's attitude was common. For example, between 2008-2018, annual sexual abuse cases in schools jumped from 40,000/year to 240,000/year.

"Child pornography for example" Researching, I learned that attempts to pass laws banning it didn't begin until 2008 (this story takes place in 2006). Possession of child pornography was not criminalized until 2014. (Producing or selling it was made illegal in 1999).