Chapter 4: Adaptation

The Korean memo had grown to five lines.

Odette. Watches hands.

Beneath that, in small charcoal letters, I had written that the city was a two-hour walk away, roughly how much Mora a bottle of salt cost, that Vodianitsa did not speak of the queen, and that troupe rehearsals would begin next week. Every morning, I took out that paper, read it once, and folded it back up.

It was the same habit I had had with the work planner I used at the office. Back then, I wrote down meeting dates and client names; now, I wrote down Mora prices and people’s silences. But writing things down still made my head feel a little lighter, no matter what world I was in.

There was one more difference. Anyone could have looked at the planner from back then, while no one could read this paper now. The fact that no one could read it was the paper’s usefulness—and, at the same time, its loneliness.

I could read an entire line of Teyvat script now.

Haltingly, and I still occasionally mixed up two similar letters. But I could sound out the first line of Vodianitsa’s song lyrics without her pointing it out, and every time I did, Vodianitsa clapped as if it were her own accomplishment.

I was starting to understand the lyrics, too. They were about waves rolling in and receding, and about what remained in the place they left behind. Vodianitsa did not explain their meaning, and I did not ask. Instead, I was content to read along with the sounds.

"See? It hasn’t even been ten days. You didn’t fail to learn letters because you were stupid—you just never learned them because you came from the countryside."

"...Is that supposed to be a compliment?"

"Of course it is."

My feet could now handle several laps around the house without issue. In the mornings, I walked from the window to the stove without using the wall for support. I took over stacking the firewood and boiling water. Vodianitsa tried to stop me at first, but after seeing me stack the wood for a second time, she said nothing more.

Recovery was something you could not see—until one morning, suddenly, you could. You only noticed after arriving at the stove that today you had not touched the wall you had leaned on until yesterday. After experiencing a few mornings like that, I felt my body slowly becoming mine again.

"But don’t lift anything heavy. You’ll hurt your foot again."

"The firewood is the heaviest thing here."

"Then don’t lift the firewood either."

"...Yes."

I stacked firewood again that evening, and Vodianitsa pretended not to notice even as she watched. I did not dislike how the number of things we mutually pretended not to notice was growing in this house.

While I stacked the wood, Vodianitsa revised her song lyrics at the table. I did not know what she was changing, but I could hear the charcoal scratch against the paper, stop, then scratch again. That evening, with that sound and the clack of firewood alternating, was the first silence of its kind I had heard since coming to this house.

Two evenings before rehearsals began, Vodianitsa set a bundle down in front of me.

"Try them on."

Inside were a pair of boots and a thick coat. Neither was new. The heels of the boots were worn down, and the coat’s cuffs were a little frayed, but they fit me.

The coat smelled faintly of powder beneath the dust. It smelled like clothes that had hung backstage for a long time. As I breathed it in, I briefly wondered why whoever had worn this coat had quit, then stopped myself.

"They were leftover in the troupe’s storeroom. Someone who quit last year left them behind. Nobody took them, so I asked the theater director and brought them home."

"...Why are you giving these to me?"

"You were out in the snow wearing nothing but socks. And since you came here, you haven’t stepped outside even once. How are you supposed to walk outdoors looking like that?"

I looked at Vodianitsa while holding the boots.

"Starting the day after tomorrow, I have to go to the theater. I’ll leave at dawn and come back in the evening. You’d have to stay here alone for twelve hours, and I don’t like that. So come with me. You can walk now, and you’ve never even seen the city."

The city.

At that word, something in my chest tightened. Inside this house, I had managed well enough. But outside the door was another matter. There would be signs written in letters I did not know, laws I did not know, and people I did not know. And among those people, there would be more people with eyes like Odette’s.

"I... have no identification."

"I know."

"I can’t even read all the letters yet."

"I know that too. That’s why you should go and try reading them. Signs are short, so they’re easier than song lyrics."

"...What if someone asks?"

"Asks what? Who do you think you are? There are so many people in the city. Do you think anyone will notice just because one person walks past?"

I could not answer that. Vodianitsa was probably right, but even so, the tightness in my chest would not ease. It was less a fear of this country than an old fear of the outside itself.

"Don’t want to go?"

"...No."

"Then we’re going. I’ll wake you at dawn the day after tomorrow, so go to bed early."

Having decided that, Vodianitsa turned back toward the stove. I set the boots neatly beside the bed.

I pretended not to notice that the hands arranging those boots were a little excited. I felt as though, at thirty-one, I was only now learning that fear and anticipation could come from the same place.

That night, another line was added to my Korean memo.

City the day after tomorrow. Received boots.

After writing the two syllables for received, I paused with the charcoal. I considered counting how many times I had written received on this paper, then decided not to.

Dawn was still pitch-black.

Vodianitsa lit the stove and brewed tea, wrapping the cloth around her head more tightly than usual and pulling a fur hat down over it. I watched all of it while tying my bootlaces.

Even tying bootlaces was something I had not done in a long time. When I worked at the company, I put on dress shoes every morning, and the day began the moment I slipped them on. It was strange that pulling tight these bootlaces brought up a similar feeling at my fingertips.

"Let’s go. We need to get through the forest before sunrise."

The door opened, and cold air struck my face.

It was the first time I had stepped outside since coming to this house. The instant my first foot sank deep into the snow, that night’s snowfield came alive somewhere inside my body, and I grabbed the doorframe.

"Are you okay?"

"...Yes. Just a moment."

A moment was all I needed. Unlike then, I had boots on my feet, a coat on my body, and someone beside me. I stood holding the frame until my body understood that those three things separated tonight from that night.

"Go slowly. I’ll break the trail ahead of you."

Vodianitsa went first, crunching through the snow, and I stepped into her footprints.

The forest was long. If I put my feet into the tracks Vodianitsa made, the snow did not rise to my knees, but every step made my legs heavier, and I quickly became short of breath. After about half an hour of walking, my feet began to feel numb, and I kept wiggling my toes as I walked.

There was less wind inside the forest. The trees blocked it, but they also blocked out sound, leaving only the footsteps and breathing of two people—and mine was much louder of the two.

Vodianitsa kept talking all the while. She told me that these trees bloomed in spring, that going left here was a shortcut down to the lake, and that wolves sometimes came down in winter, so I should not go around alone. Without those words, the forest would have felt much longer.

"Wolves?"

"Yeah. When they’re hungry in winter, they come down as far as the lake. So don’t even think about going out alone at night. If you’d stayed there any longer that night, the wolves might have gotten to you before the cold did."

As I listened, I pictured that night’s snowfield again and realized there had been one more thing in it that I had not known about.

The sun rose as we neared the end of the forest.

Light filtered through the trees, and the snow all gleamed white at once. Beyond that light stood a low hill, with rooftops gathered atop it.

Stone houses climbed the slope in tiers, their roofs thickly blanketed in snow. Smoke spread in dozens of trails across the morning sky from their chimneys. Amid them, one rounded roof, far larger than the others, shone white in the sunlight.

Narrow roads wound up through the houses along the slope. People already moved across them like dots, and something like a morning bell rang once in the distance before fading away.

"See that round roof over there? That’s the theater."

Vodianitsa held out her hand.

"It’s the Korolyovsky Troupe. The biggest theater in this country, and I sing in the back row there."

Vodianitsa’s voice lifted just slightly when she said back row. I could not tell whether it was pride or something else as I looked at the roof.

I had never seen the Snezhnaya from the game. To someone who had only played as far as Liyue, that country had been nothing more than a name, snow, and the Fatui. Yet now, a city of that country stood before me. It was not made of a game screen, but of the smell of smoke, the crunch of snow underfoot, and breath spreading white whenever I panted.

It was a world I knew, and a world I did not know.

The thought did not last long. It scattered as I watched my footing down the slope, and I simply followed Vodianitsa’s tracks.

The city streets were stone.

People came and went over the cleared stone roads. They all wore thick clothes and hats, and no one looked at me. Vodianitsa had been right. There were so many people in the city, and I was just one of them. I had not known being one among many could be such a relief.

But once, my breath stopped. Several people wearing masks passed on the other side of the road. I had seen those masks in the game, and if Vodianitsa had not grabbed my sleeve and pulled me the other way, I might have stood there watching them.

"Don’t stare. You don’t stare at the Fatui."

"...Yes."

"Just let them pass. They don’t look at people like us."

It sounded strange to hear people like us include both Vodianitsa and me, but I accepted the words as they were.

"Try reading the signs."

Vodianitsa pointed with her chin at a shop by the road. Two letters were carved into its wooden sign, and I knew them both.

"Bread."

"Right. What about there?"

"...Fish."

"Right. See? Signs are easy, aren’t they?"

They were. They were shorter than song lyrics, and many had pictures beside the letters. As we walked, I sounded out the signs one by one. It was not something a thirty-one-year-old man should be doing, but I liked hearing Vodianitsa tell me I was right each time, so I did not stop.

There was something I did not know while reading those signs. They all sold things to people, but they did not say who counted as people and who did not. I learned that a little later at the market.

Some signs I could not read. When the words were long or contained shapes I had not learned, I closed my mouth. Vodianitsa passed by those signs without asking me anything. I realized by the third such sign that this was consideration.

When we turned the corner, there were more people.

Tents and stalls lined both sides of the street. People moved between them, shoulders bumping, and the scents of fish, bread, and something burning all mixed together. That was when I learned that markets looked much the same in every world.

Among the crowd, Vodianitsa pressed her hat down once more. I had known since that night why someone who wore only a headcloth at home also wore a hat over it outside, and because I knew, I turned my eyes away whenever I saw that gesture.

"We need to buy some groceries before rehearsal. There’s nothing to eat at home. You eat twice as much because of you."

"...I’m sorry."

"I’m joking. Though half of it is true."

Laughing, Vodianitsa took a small pouch from inside her coat.

"Hold this. You try buying things. It’s reading practice—ask the price, pay the money, take the goods. You can do that, right?"

There were several coins in the pouch, and I recognized the design stamped on them. I had seen that design countless times in the game. In my palm, the coins were far smaller and lighter than the numbers on a screen.

As I counted them, I suddenly wondered where this money had come from. I did not know how much a person singing in a troupe’s back row earned in a month. I only knew that salary paid for salt, fish, and my portion of soup.

"Mora."

"That’s right, Mora. You know that too? I guess even the countryside has Mora."

"...It does."

At the first stall, I bought bread. I asked the price, understood the number the merchant named, counted out the coins, handed them over, and took the bread. By the time that short transaction ended, my palms were sweaty.

"Good job. Next one."

The second stall sold fish. Dried fish hung strung up on lines. Vodianitsa pointed at one and asked the merchant for the price.

The merchant was a middle-aged man, and at first he answered normally. He named a number, Vodianitsa nodded, and I lowered my head to take coins from the pouch. Then the wind blew.

A gust entering the market alley pushed up Vodianitsa’s fur hat. The cloth beneath it shifted as well, and for a very brief instant, the ear beneath the cloth was exposed before Vodianitsa raised her hand and covered it again.

It was brief. Maybe two blinks. I saw the ear, and so did the merchant.

The merchant’s face changed. There was no better way to put it. The face that had just stated a price froze in place, then became another face. That face was not looking at Vodianitsa. It was looking at the spot where Vodianitsa stood.

I knew that expression. Because I knew it, I wanted even less to recognize it. It resembled the look clients made when they heard the name of our company, the expression that always made us pay more.

"Not that price."

"What?"

"I can’t sell it to a fairy for that price. Double."

Vodianitsa’s face stopped for the briefest moment, then smiled.

"Sir, you sold it to me normally last week."

"I didn’t know last week."

"What changes now that you do? The fish is the same."

"It changes. I don’t take money touched by fairies. If you want it, pay double. If you don’t, leave."

Vodianitsa was smiling. Her mouth was smiling, and her voice was its usual bright voice, but I had seen that smile before. It came from the same place as the expression she wore by the brazier that night, when she asked, Was it pretty?

"Forget it. I’ll buy it somewhere else."

Vodianitsa grabbed my sleeve and pulled me away.

"Let’s go. That man’s always like that. We can go somewhere else."

I let myself be pulled.

As I was pulled away, I looked back. The merchant was already looking at another customer, and his face had returned to the face that had named a price before. That was stranger still. To him, it had been nothing. And the person who went through something that was nothing every week was now walking ahead, holding my sleeve.

The words I didn’t know last week remained in my head. Last week’s Vodianitsa and today’s Vodianitsa were the same person, standing before the same fish. Yet one shifted hat had doubled the price, and what created that difference was neither fish nor money, but one ear.

"There’s another fish seller over there. That lady is okay. A little more expensive, though."

Vodianitsa did not stop talking. She spoke faster than usual, more than usual, with less space between breaths. I followed along among those words without saying anything.

I should have done something.

I should have said something there. But I did not know how to fight, and I was not good with words. I did not know what would happen if a man with no identification made a scene in the middle of the market, so I had stood still until she took my sleeve and led me away.

I had been the same at work. When the department head chewed someone out, I always stared at my monitor. I knew it was cowardly, but I did not know what else to do, and that not knowing had followed me here into this market alley.

The difference was that the person the department head berated would come back to work the next day, while Vodianitsa would have to return to this market again next week.

While Vodianitsa asked the price at the next stall, I stood behind her.

I still had the pouch in my hand. The coins the first merchant had said he would not accept were still inside it. Gripping the pouch, I looked at Vodianitsa’s back, then toward the stall from before.

It was the same fish. The fish at this stall was smaller and cost more. Though I knew nothing about fish, I could tell the one hanging back there had been better.

"Wait a moment."

"Hm?"

"Please stay here a moment."

I turned and walked back the way we had come.

It was only about twenty steps. I did not think as I walked. I felt like if I thought, I would stop, and if I stopped, I would not be able to go back. So I just walked, stood before the earlier stall, and pointed to the same fish.

"How much is this?"

The merchant looked at me. I was an ordinary man in a hat. There was nothing different for him to see, and he gave me the price he had initially told Vodianitsa.

It was strange that my hands were not shaking. My hands had sweated when I bought bread earlier, but now they counted the coins precisely, one by one. I looked down at them as though they belonged to someone else.

I counted the coins and handed them over.

They were the coins Vodianitsa had put in my hand. The merchant accepted them and dropped them into his container, then wrapped the fish in paper and held it out. His hand was a hand that knew nothing.

"Thank you."

I took the fish and turned around.

Vodianitsa stood where I had left her. She had stopped talking to the merchant at the next stall and was looking this way. As I walked toward her carrying the fish, the words vanished from her face. I stopped before her and held out the paper-wrapped fish.

"I bought it."

"...What?"

"The fish from that shop. It was bigger and cheaper."

Vodianitsa did not take the fish.

She just looked at me. I could not read what those eyes were saying, and unable to read them, I extended the hand holding the fish a little farther.

"...I used the money you gave me. The rest is here."

I held out the pouch. Only then did Vodianitsa take both the fish and the pouch.

"You."

"Yes."

"...Never mind."

Vodianitsa put the fish in her bundle and the pouch inside her coat, then turned back toward the next stall. She said nothing as she turned, and for a long while afterward, she said nothing either. I knew how rare that was for her.

Not knowing how to read that silence, I looked only at the potatoes.

The potatoes took a long time. Vodianitsa picked them up one by one and set them down again. Her hands were slower than usual, but by the time she had chosen them all and paid, her voice had returned to normal.

In the meantime, trying not to look at Vodianitsa’s profile, I counted the potatoes on the stall. There were more than thirty, and even after I had counted them all, Vodianitsa’s hands had not finished.

The last stall sold candy. Amber-colored pieces sat in glass jars. Vodianitsa slowed down before them, then checked the price and simply walked past, though her eyes did not leave the jars as she did.

"Aren’t you buying any?"

"Too expensive. I’ll get some next time."

I looked at the jars once more. They were the same color as the ones she had left beneath my pillow for two days. I knew how many were left in the old pouch on the shelf, and now I could read their price, too.

"Let’s go. We’ll be late."

"Yes."

As we left the market, I did not look back at that stall again.

All I had done was buy one fish at its proper price. I had not said anything to the merchant or fought for Vodianitsa. I had stood there silently after seeing the man’s face change, then gone back later to buy something. That was all. I did not know whether it amounted to anything.

If this were a story about becoming a hero, I should have said something to the merchant. The man in the novel I had written probably would have. That man was good with words and knew how to fight. But the person who wrote him could do nothing more than return carrying one fish.

It was probably nothing. We had needed fish anyway, and there had been a better one at a lower price, so buying it was sound arithmetic. Thinking that I had merely done what added up made me feel a little better.

Still, I did not know why Vodianitsa had looked at that fish for so long, and the question did not leave my mind until we reached the theater.

Up close, the theater was even bigger.

Stone columns stood beneath its round roof. Above the main entrance was a long inscription I could not fully read, but Vodianitsa passed the front doors, went around the side of the building, and led me to a small back entrance.

"The front entrance is for customers. We use this side."

The inside of the back entrance was dark, the corridor narrow, and somewhere, piano notes sounded intermittently. Vodianitsa made several turns through the corridor, then left me in front of a room that looked like a storeroom.

"Stay here. It’s next to the props storage, so people rarely come by. I’ll come at lunch. Rehearsal goes until evening."

"...Yes."

"If you get bored, read the words in there. Every box has a label on it."

With that, Vodianitsa disappeared down the corridor. I sat on an old bench beside the storeroom door.

The storeroom was full of boxes. Wooden crates, cloth-covered objects, and upright painted flats were piled in the dark. Every box had a paper label attached, and sitting on the bench, I read the letters on those papers one by one.

The back of the theater was different from the stage. I had only seen stages on a screen. I had never known that behind them were dusty boxes, old benches, and creaking corridors like these.

Some words I could read, and some I could not. I read the word for candlestick, and only half of the longer word beside it. Before that half-read word, I noticed I was mixing up the same two letters I had learned yesterday, and quietly corrected myself.

People passed through the corridor.

People carrying instruments, armfuls of clothes, and stacks of paper went by. Each glanced at me on the bench, but their eyes were unlike Odette’s. They were curious eyes that returned to their own business after their curiosity was satisfied. Beneath those eyes, I gradually found I could breathe more easily.

All their ears were human ears. I hated myself for checking, but I could not help it. Once I did, Vodianitsa’s place in this large theater became a little clearer.

Only one person stopped.

He was an old man with a bent back, holding a large painted flat in both arms. The flat was wider than the corridor, so he had turned it upright to drag it along.

"New here?"

"No. I’m... waiting."

"Waiting or not, if your hands are free, grab the other side of this."

I got up and took the other side of the flat. It was heavy. The old man was much more practiced at turning corners in the corridor, and he did not speak until we had propped it up inside the storage room. Then he straightened his back.

"Thanks. Until last year, this was a two-person job."

That was all the old man said before disappearing down the corridor. I sat back on the bench, the rough feel of the flat’s wood lingering in my palms.

Even after I sat down, the words until last year, this was a two-person job remained in my ears. The former owner of my coat must have been one of those two people. No one had told me why that person quit, and now I was wearing their coat and carrying the flat they used to carry.

At lunch, Vodianitsa came with the bread. It was the bread we had bought that morning. She sat down on the floor beside the bench, tore it in half, and handed me one piece.

"What did you do?"

"...I read words like candlestick. And I helped an old man carry a painted flat."

"Ah, that old man? He handles the props. The person who worked with him quit last year, so he does everything alone. At his age."

Vodianitsa said that as she chewed her bread. Listening, I remembered the flat’s weight again.

"What kind of person is the theater director?"

"He’s decent. He even greets new people first. But he’s been a little off lately. I guess someone higher up is giving him trouble, because he keeps looking at paperwork."

I did not ask what higher up meant.

"How was rehearsal?"

"Back row. Same as always."

Vodianitsa smiled, and I did not ask further.

In the afternoon, singing came from the end of the corridor.

It was a song sung by many voices, and among them, one rose high. It was the voice I had heard in the snowfield. The corridor windows trembled almost imperceptibly with it.

If a back-row voice sounded like that, I wondered what the front row sounded like. But what came from the end of the corridor was always the whole, and perhaps my ears picked out only one voice within it because it was the only voice I knew.

An icicle fell from the eaves outside the window.

I thought it had melted in the sunlight and fallen. I was probably right, and the song continued for a long while afterward.

Once, a door at the opposite end of the hall opened.

Inside was a wide room with a wooden floor, where people stood on the tips of their toes. One small person among them wore pale beige shoes decorated with ribbons and what looked like pearls. That person spun, stopped, and looked this way.

It was Odette.

Odette dipped her head very slightly when she saw me. That was all. The door closed again. I let out a breath on the bench, my palms sweaty again from that one brief meeting of eyes.

The eyes that had watched my hands and my gait were inside the theater now. Until a moment ago, I had not considered that I might be under the same roof as those eyes every day.

By the time Vodianitsa came out in the evening, the sky was already darkening.

"Let’s go. We need to pass through the forest before it gets dark, but we’re late. Let’s walk fast."

The way back felt shorter than it had that morning. I did not know whether it was because my feet remembered the path, or because Vodianitsa talked more than she had in the morning. About halfway through the forest, she slowed down and brought up the market in an unaffected tone.

"Don’t worry about what happened earlier. It happens all the time."

"...Yes."

"Really. It happens at least once a week. That man isn’t especially bad, either."

I had never met someone who could say it happens all the time so lightly. I began to think about where that lightness came from, then stopped—not because I did not know the answer, but because I thought I did.

"About that old man’s position."

"Yes."

"The position of the person who quit last year is still empty. Hauling props, clearing the stage, cleaning. The pay is low, so nobody comes for it."

I walked while looking at Vodianitsa’s back.

"Should I talk to the theater director? What do you think?"

My feet stopped.

Vodianitsa looked back. I stood in the snow and looked at her face. It was not a joking face.

"...I have no identification."

"You said that this morning."

"I cannot read all the letters, either. I don’t know anything about theater work."

"You carried that painted flat. You said the old man thanked you."

"And what if taking in someone without identification causes trouble for the theater?"

"That’s for the theater director to worry about, not you."

"...What if it causes trouble for you?"

Vodianitsa looked at me for a moment.

"The trouble that can happen to me was there before you came."

"...Why me?"

The words came out.

They were words I had wanted to ask since the day I woke in that house, words I had swallowed when I was given candy and again when I was given boots. They finally came out in the middle of the snow-covered forest, and Vodianitsa said nothing for a moment after hearing them.

"Because you have nowhere to go."

I waited for the next words.

"And I’m tired of walking two hours alone, and I hate seeing that old man drag painted flats by himself at his age. There are lots of reasons. What reason do you want?"

I could not answer.

There was only one reason I wanted: what this person was trying to take from me. I needed to know that to remain standing where I was. But none of the reasons Vodianitsa gave contained anything like that, and the fact that they did not made me anxious again.

Care with no price had been followed by candy with no price, then boots with no price, and now a job with no price was coming.

Those things without a price seemed to stand in a line, looking at me. I could not see what lay at the end of that line. Before what I could not see, my feet stopped, just as they had in the snowfield and in the forest.

At the company, by this point I would have looked at the back page of the contract. I would have searched for the clause written there in fine print, and there would certainly have been one. But this person had no back page. I did not know how to read someone with no back page.

"If you don’t want it, then forget it."

Vodianitsa began walking again.

"I won’t force you. I just thought it might be better than you staying alone at home."

I stood looking at her back, then took a step.

It was not that I did not want it. I was afraid. I was afraid because accepting this would add one more thing I needed to repay. But there, for the first time, I tried calculating it backward.

If having more to repay frightened me, then I needed a way to repay it. The current me had no way at all. Receiving things with no way to repay them was far more frightening than receiving things when a way existed. A job was that way.

"...I’ll try."

Vodianitsa stopped walking.

"Really?"

"I don’t know whether the theater director will take me. But if he does, I’ll do it."

"He’ll take you. I’ll make a good case."

Vodianitsa said that and began walking again. Her pace grew quicker than before, and she started talking more again. I followed her through the darkening forest.

"What if he doesn’t take me?"

"Then it can’t be helped. But you’ll still come to the theater with me every day. Sit on the bench and read letters. That’s work too."

"...That isn’t work."

"If I say it’s work, it’s work."

The theater director gave his answer three days later.

For those three days, I followed Vodianitsa to the theater every day, sat on the bench beside the storage room and read letters, and stood up to take the other side whenever the old man passed. On the second day, he asked my name. On the third, he did not ask anything, only saying, Grab this side. That was the first place I received in this theater.

The people in the corridor gradually changed too. On the first day, they had looked at the unfamiliar man on the bench. By the third, they simply passed by it. One person nodded with their chin as they went past, and I returned the greeting with mine.

On the third evening, Vodianitsa came running down the corridor.

"It worked!"

Her voice echoed through the hall, and people passing by turned to look. Vodianitsa did not seem to notice as she ran up to me, breathing hard.

"It worked. The theater director said yes. At first, he hesitated and went on about your identification, but then he called me in suddenly today. He said you can start tomorrow. I guess I made a good case."

"...Really?"

"Really. I went and begged him every day for three days. He must be sick of me by now."

Vodianitsa was smiling, and unlike at the market, there was nothing being covered up by that smile. Looking at it, I thought I was lucky.

A theater director willing to take in a man without identification was luck. Having someone willing to pester that director for three days was luck too. If those two pieces of luck had not overlapped, I would still be sitting on the bench tomorrow, reading words like candlestick. Two overlapping strokes of luck felt vaguely unsettling, but Vodianitsa was too happy for me to dig all the way into it.

Stars had appeared on the forest path home.

Vodianitsa listed what I would have to do starting tomorrow. What time to arrive, whom to greet, and what to ask the old man—it went on all the way through the forest. As the house came into sight, I interrupted amid those words.

There were too many stars in the sky. It was the same sky I had looked up at from the snowfield that night. Back then, I had been afraid because those stars connected to nothing I knew. Now, beneath them, I was being told what I would do tomorrow.

"Um."

"Yeah?"

"I owe you."

Vodianitsa stopped walking and looked back.

"For what?"

"Everything. From the snowfield to today. I thought I should say it now."

"...You don’t owe me."

"Maybe not from your side, but from mine, it is a debt. It has to be, for me to be here."

Vodianitsa looked at me for a long time. Her face was hard to see beneath the starlight, but I could hear her breath lengthen a little. The words at the end of that breath came in her usual bright voice.

"All right. Then I’ll charge you dearly."

"...Yes."

"I’ll add interest too. Brace yourself."

"Yes."

Vodianitsa smiled and started walking again, and I followed behind her.

Strangely, saying debt aloud made my chest feel lighter. Having something to repay meant there was someone to repay, and having someone to repay meant I had one tie in this world. I had not known gaining a tie could feel so light.

I had never thought of the salary I received at the company as a debt. I was paid for the work I did, and I worked for what I was paid. So long as that calculation balanced, I was tied to no one. Thirty-one years of believing that being untied was light had been proven a little wrong today.

I had not lost the habit of searching for the back page. Things without a price still had no price, and I still could not believe in such things. But from today onward, even as I searched for the back page, I could read the words on the front.

When we reached the house, Vodianitsa opened the door and said,

"Dawn tomorrow. Sleep in, and I’m leaving you behind."

"I won’t sleep in."

I took off my boots and placed them neatly beside the bed, then hung tomorrow’s coat beside them. It was the exact same routine I had gone through every night when I worked at the company.

=========

The theater director’s office was small, and papers were piled on his desk like a mountain.

"What brings you here at this hour, Miss Odette?"

"This will only take a moment."

Odette closed the door and stood before the desk. He did not tell her to sit, and she had no intention of sitting. The theater director looked up at her straight posture through his glasses.

"It’s about the man Vodianitsa brought with her."

"Ah, him."

The theater director sighed.

"She’s been coming for three days, begging me to put him in the props position. It’s true that we’re short on people, but how can I take in someone whose identity and origins are unknown at a time like this?"

"That’s why I came."

Odette took a folded sheet of paper from inside her coat and placed it on the desk.

The theater director unfolded the paper. Upon seeing the mark stamped at the bottom, his hand stopped. Then he folded the paper again, put it in his desk drawer, and closed it.

"...Where did you get something like this?"

"It would be better if you did not ask."

"Miss Odette."

"That will settle his identification. If anyone asks, show them that paper. No one will ask."

The theater director rested his hand on the drawer and looked at Odette for a long time. His were the eyes of someone who had kept a theater running in this country for a long while. Those eyes had many things they wanted to ask, but they also knew how not to ask.

"Why go this far? You do not even know that man."

"Because Vodianitsa asked."

"Vodianitsa asked me, the theater director, not you, Miss Odette."

"That is why I came in her place."

Odette did not explain further.

There was one more reason she did not explain. A reason that had nothing to do with Vodianitsa or the paper.

A man with no calluses on his hands who could not read had not told her anything yet about where he came from. And someone who would not tell her needed to be kept close and watched. There was no place in the theater closer than the bench beside the storage room.

"You may say it is for Vodianitsa’s sake, not his."

"...I will say that, then."

The theater director took off his glasses and pressed at the corners of his eyes.

"I will tell him to start tomorrow. I will speak to Vodianitsa this evening."

"Please leave out that I came here."

"And why is that?"

"Vodianitsa should think that her request got through. It will make her happy."

For the first time, the theater director gave a small laugh.

"Miss Odette, you are kind in the strangest places."

Odette did not answer. She dipped her head. Before opening the door to leave, she glanced once toward the end of the corridor. There, the man sat on the bench beside the storeroom, silently mouthing the letters on a box. She watched the shape of his mouth for a moment, then headed toward the rehearsal room on the opposite side.

The rehearsal-room door closed, leaving only the theater director in his office.

He did not open the drawer again. Seeing once what was stamped on the paper inside was enough. Looking twice was not something a person who had lived long in this country did. Instead, he pulled over the top document from the pile of papers and wrote down one new name.

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