The car ride was nothing if not awkward. Daisuke made numerous attempts to initiate some form of conversation, but each was either ignored or given only a simple grunt as a response. Well, this is going about as well as I thought it would, Daisuke thought to himself, glancing at this girl who already seemed to harbour a dislike for him.

Who the hell was that guy?. Noriko suppressed a shudder at the memory of the encounter outside the toilet. Shit, what was he?.

Eventually, after about an hour that felt several times longer, the car pulled into a short gravel drive in front of a cosy little wood house. A collection of grass and weeds roughly contained by the fence and gravel drive could be described as a garden, if one was feeling generous. The walls of the house stood unpainted, but were darkened to a deep, reflective brown by varnish. As Noriko approached the doorway, leaving Daisuke to wrestle the awkward suitcase alone, she was surprised to find the door, a traditional sliding one, was unlocked.

"Do you not get any thieves out here in the sticks or something," she quipped, turning to see Daisuke had managed to manoeuvre the suitcase in a relatively straight line through the gravel.

"Oh, whoops. Did I leave it unlocked again," he replied. "You know, I'd likely forget my head if it wasn't attached. Could you help getting this through the door please."

Maybe I amn't the one who needs looking after. As she helped pull the suitcase through the door, and after a brief nerve-wracking moment when its zip caught in the doorway and threatened to spill its contents across the drive, Noriko looked around at the interior of the building. The inside of the house was as quiet and cosy as the outside made it seem. In the hall, an end-table tucked in the gap under the stairs had a collection of porcelain Buddhas surrounding a landline phone. Opening the door to the left as Noriko entered revealed a small toilet. "The front room is just through the door on the right there," Daisuke called over the case. "And the door straight ahead is the kitchen. Your room is just upstairs. It's all ready with sheets and such, I'm sure you want to get to bed as soon as you can."

"Thanks. I can take it from here," was all Noriko provided as a response, before dragging her exhausted legs and her hefty bag up the stairs to the landing. "It's the first door you come to," Daisuke called after her before, after hearing a door slide open and shut, making his way into the kitchen. Moving over to the counter on the far wall, he filled a kettle from the sink and set it to boil and chuckling in a soft, sad way. "I don't think she likes you," he muttered, eyeing his reflection in the window. "Ah, well. I'm sure tomorrow will be better, once she's had a night's sleep."

Upstairs, Noriko was looking around at the room she would be staying in for the year. It was… nice. The soft orange paint on the walls was a bit faded, but still retained some fundamental vibrancy, like a person showing their age on the outside, but was clearly still brimming with mischievous energy from their youth. The bed was simple, with blue sheets and a pair of mismatched pillows, one a matching blue, the other an unusual bright pink.

"Who the hell could sleep with this thing near them," she muttered, holding up the lightish-red offender. Turning toward her suitcase as she tossed the pillow aside, she slowly and carefully undid the zip. Once she got halfway, the sheer force of her belongings pushing out pulled the zip from her hands and around with a sound not unlike a small motor revving.

"Ah!" she exclaimed, clutching her finger. "Bloody thing. Ow ow ow ow." Slowing releasing her finger, Noriko watched as a single drop of crimson blood fell from a small nick the zip gave her as it escaped her grip.

As it fell, time seemed to slow. The drop almost appeared suspended in the air, as though it was held by an invisible piece of string. She watched as it slowly shifted from a drop to a sphere in the air. And then it hit her trousers and she saw it slowly spread out into a rough circle with small protrusions, tiny, near impossible to see drops rising and falling from the point of impact… impact… crash.

She didn't know when she had started crying. When she had come to, she was curled up in bed, desperately clutching the pink pillow she had previously thrown away, like it was a piece of flotsam and she was adrift in the middle of an ocean that stretched across the whole world.

"Calm down," she whispered to herself, trying to regain control of her breathing. "Just calm down. It's only blood. Blood can't hurt you. It has nothing to do with what happened. You're okay."

Noriko slowly lowered her head onto the pillow, feeling each individual muscle slowly release their tension one at a time and, utterly exhausted, she slipped into a deep and much needed sleep.

Just a quick update to let people know that this fic isn't dead just yet. Honestly, half the delay is because I've mostly been too terrified to actually work on this for fear of disappointing the internet, my one true love, and it doesn't help that each time people have sent me characters I've suffered minor heart attacks at how good they are compared to how my OCs end up. I am fully working on this, I have Discord friends working on some empty Arcana, and I would truly appreciate if anyone would consider submitting. I'm going to start locking in characters tomorrow at around 1pm GMT, so if your character is competing for a spot, you need to send it before then.

Anyway, to let me know how many people have lost interest due to my hiatus, here's a question for you to answer in the reviews. Anyone have any theories as to why Noriko is spending the year with her grandfather?