Chapter 1 - Arrival at Mecchen House (cont.)

She cracked her knuckles. “I’m gonna go watch TV. But I will also be watching each of you with predatory instinct. I’ll be tracing your every movement. There is no hiding from me. One toe out of line, and you’ll be wearing dresses for the rest of your days!” Her hair moved to punctuate her speech.

She seemed a little melodramatic. Nathan was trembling though. “I… am… so, so sorry. I deeply and humbly apologize for our intrusion. I am not worthy to exist in such a sanctuary. I promise it won’t happen again.” Nathan carefully got up from the chair, bowing his head to Katsumi.

I’d rarely seen Nathan like this. He usually seemed so confident and in control. Ever since the path, it was like that had all been deflated. He was moving towards the door. She moved to block him.

Her eyes narrowed and his lowered. She chewed on her lower lip a little before saying, “Well. So are you making fun of me or what?”

Nathan blanched, “I wouldn’t, madam. I am so deeply sorry for intruding. Sincerely sorry.”

Katsumi clutched her chin and posed. “Truly?” Nathan nodded vigorously.

“Interesting…” A smile grew on her face. Ms. Ishida coughed once. “The meals are ready.” She offered one to Katsumi, who bolted over like a flash of reddish-purple.

“Thank you so much, Ms. Ishida!” She smiled brightly, clutching her plate tightly. “I’m gonna go eat in front of the TV. Make sure these two don’t interrupt me! But you… come with me…” With Godzilla-like stomps, she dragged Nathan with her. The image of a slight anime girl dragging such a muscular figure of a man forced me to suppress a snicker. Nathan looked back with fear in his eyes. I bowed my head to him in apology.

Aneko set two dishes in front of us. Steam, like white columns, curled up from them. “Would you two please take these to the second and third floors? One goes to Nana, and the other to Ami. Nana is the room on the end with the gray door on the third floor, and Ami is the pink door, last on the left.” Jamie let out a deep, long breath and looked over at me, expectantly. I pushed one of them closer to him. He held firm and pushed it back towards me.

I settled it with, “I want to thank you so much for listening to us, Ms. Ishida. Furthermore, I want to thank you deeply for your hospitality and support of us despite our many peculiarities. We mean you no harm.”

Aneko chuckled. “Oh my, I never had any worry about you. After all, while I may look unassuming, I’m actually the second-best fighter in the house. And Katsumi has the ability to disable people, if she has to or wants to, without much difficulty. By the way, I must apologize for her. She has her quirks, but is actually really sweet. She’s cute with tea ceremonies too.”

I got a mental image of an oni rising over the edge of the table, howling and brandishing a giant, iron club with cups of tea on it. Again, I was utterly mystified that I could have anything in common with such a person. I just hoped Nathan was okay. Why on Earth did she grab him, when Jamie was the one who’d be much more useful to boot around? Jamie let out a wide yawn. “What will you make us to eat?”

“Well. I have some udon I can warm up if you’re okay with that. But first… Could you both please take those dishes upstairs? I promise it’ll be done when you get back.”

The promise of food seemed to be enough to stir Jamie from his seat, although in a languid manner. He swished around calmly and grabbed the plate. “No problem.”

I clasped the other plate and smiled at Ms. Ishida. She bowed her head. We walked past Katsumi showing a white boat of teeth in her mouth. It had a small, gray crack in one side which distinguished her upper and lower… well, ‘fangs’ was probably the right word. Her eyes were in black arches and her eyebrows were like mirrored checkmarks. She was seated on the couch with Nathan right next to her. She had him bowing his head. Nathan looked antsy. The curry rice was on the footstool.

She was braiding Nathan’s hair as best she could. She had a pile of pink bows. “This is merely the first stage of your punishment! Soon, no one will ever think you were a boy!”

If that was her goal, then she sure had her work cut out for her. Nathan, without a doubt, had the full body of a man, but not always. I’d known him for twenty years. We met in preschool.

It was such a windy day. The welcome sign fell down each time they tried to put it up. At the time, I thought it was the funniest thing I’d ever seen. I couldn’t help but giggle and wait for it to fall down again. But then again, it’s easy to please a three-year-old. I was seated next to Nathan on the first day.

We exchanged ‘hi’s but didn’t talk much at first. But once we started talking, it was the perfect connection. We’d re-enact scenes from movies on the playground. Or we’d work together on some imaginary Cause. Video games as well. Nathan wanted to be the white mage. I could never decide on a part, so I’d wind up playing a variety of roles.

As we grew up, the media changed but we’d always wind up role-playing. I only remembered a few of our role-plays but one thing that always struck me was Nathan didn’t seem bothered by playing any role: Male, female, non-human...no problem. The last RP we did was him as Dr. Arroway from Contact, and me as some other person from the movie.

Nathan got so deep into the performance that I didn’t hear his voice anymore. I felt the same feeling I got from watching the movie. I saw him tear up. I told him he should be an “actress.”

It was an honest slip of the tongue, but it embarrassed him. We didn’t talk again for a while. He began to take much more of an interest in his father’s gym. Nathan, once the slim figure of a teenager, spread out into an absolutely-ripped man in college. Still, he didn’t show off. He didn’t toss his body around. Far from it. He seemed to use more care with his body now than when he was thin. I always figured it was his own way of being proud of his work.

Looking down at Nathan crouched there, I couldn’t help but wonder how he felt. He looked over at me. His eyes swam in a spiraling hurricane of trepidation, but as I looked at the center, I felt a sense of peace. I didn’t have much time to muse on this look because Jamie tugged me along. “Come on. I want food.”

Katsumi seemed wholly wrapped-up in her braiding work and didn’t even bother to look at us. I had to admire how well she’d been able to braid with his hair; it was shorter than mine. I hustled out of the area before those ponderings made me an appealing target for braiding as well.

After a Jamie-huff, we walked up the flight of stairs to the second floor. It didn’t take me by surprise that Jamie was gonna deal with the meal on this floor and I would have to head to the next one. The trip was nice though, because I was again enveloped in the fragrance of chestnuts.

I could see the gray door at the end of the hall. It was a mottled gob of ink. I padded across the floor, and I knocked carefully on the door. After all, I didn’t want to become yet another cliché of the geeky boy who barges into a girl’s room while she’s changing and runs into the obligatory panty shot. Then yelling and much beating. No fun.

I received no reply, so I called into the room, “I’m bringing food in! If anyone is indecent, please tell me! I’ll give whatever time you need to get dressed!”

Of course, it could be this Nana person was either deaf or mute. But then that was the kind of thing which I suspected Aneko would’ve told me before I left. Gulping a bit, I decided I just had to enter the room. I slid open the door.

Towering behemoths of technology rose like Monoliths set against one another. I wondered if it was some giant’s misplaced domino set. Buried at the center, I found a single table but no one waiting for me.

The room hummed with the activity of motorized fans. I worked my way around. Such a series of tall computers I would’ve expected in some major scientific institute in the '70s or '80s, not in an anime-styled room with too little space to support such an arrangement. If everyone stood up, there would be enough room for three to four people, if they didn’t mind being stiffly cuddled by electronics. Thick, snake-like cords wormed their way across the floor so that it was hard to see what was underneath. A diffuse, dim light leaked into the room from behind a computer system. Pushing aside a bundle of cords, I set the food on the table.

Looking around for some human inhabitant past the dense forest of technology, I called again. “I brought food! It’s on the table.” I fully expected my words to be swallowed up by the artificial hum.

I listened for a moment and heard a soft rapping on the far closet. I slunk between the computers. Someone was definitely hitting on the door. I carefully slid it open.

I nearly leapt out of my skin. A girl with deep, blue eyes looked back at me. She was wedged into a tiny space, surrounded by a series of electronic systems. A gap that seemed barely big enough for her existed between a keyboard console and a cooling unit. A bundle of colored-straw cords hung like a crown above her head. She edged her way out of the gap and stood before me. She was small; about four inches below Katsumi’s height, but with more of a chest to her.

Her hair was about the same length as Katsumi's, but whereas Katsumi’s hair flowed like a river through the shoals, this girl’s hair was like a cloak of gray feathers stretched past her hips. They gave the impression of her being even smaller than standing beside her felt. She had long side-burns too, with arching front locks on her head.

At least whoever rendered the art in this world seemed to be consistent with their quality and character designs. Although while Aneko and Katsumi had a clear black mark at the top of their eyes, this girl’s eyes were surrounded on three sides by such a mark. I idly wondered if it was because she was wearing some sort of eyeliner or if she just had tired eyes. If they were tired eyes, then they were about the prettiest tired eyes I’d ever seen.

She wore a glossy purple outfit with a matching, pleated skirt that ended mid-thigh. She also had on a pair of purple socks. She sure seemed to like the color, but I had to admit it went well with her hair.

I bowed my head to her. “Excuse me, but are you Nana?”

She nodded once, quite subtly.

Okay, then she was Nana. Good to know. “I brought you food.”

I gestured to the table. She looked at it, and then back at me. Then she said her first words to me. “Interesting.” Well, word, if you want to be exact, but she also said, a moment later, “Aneko made?”

I nodded back to her. “Yup, it’s for you. I’m Kelly, by the way. I’m just a guest, but I’m helping Aneko a little bit. I’m with two friends, Nathan and Jamie.”

Nana listened to me intently. At least, I think it was intently. Her face was so very still that it was entirely possible she was bored instead.

“You offer up resources.” That was definitely one way of putting it.

“Well, she needed some help. She has been quite kind to us and is going to cook something for us before we leave.”

“Shouldn’t instantly split, take essential reaction…” She sighed a little. I was quite sincerely perplexed. Had she just grabbed a bunch of words out of the dictionary for conversation?

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about…”

“Home is this, only molded into.” Was she trying to be obtuse? I think I got the gist of what she was saying though.

“But this isn’t our home. We live somewhere else…”

She moved closer to me. “The home is shelter.” She had a point there. This place was someplace where we could stay sheltered till we figured this out.

“Isn’t so?” She blinked quickly. No, she was right there. And it was a lovely shelter at that.

“Alternatives less lovely.” Wait a sec… She hadn’t been reading my mind, had she? I wasn’t sure what to make of all this. And also considering what Aneko had said on the nature of reality, I was beginning to wonder about this world.

“Find out reality.” Okay, that was just weird. I tried thinking about pole-vaulting, happy, giggling demons hoarding push-pins.

“Yet our unity resides.” I had a feeling that had nothing to do with what I was thinking, so my worry this girl could read my mind lessened a little.

Then I asked quite simply, “So, what do we do?”

“Stay, and knowledge enlarges.” She sure had an odd way of phrasing things. It either just had to be her way of talking, or some quirk in the Japanese-to-English translation which seemed to have occurred perfectly in my head up till now.  

She let out a long breath. “I will eat now.” That seemed to make much more sense. I bowed to her and turned to leave.

I heard her whisper, “Blue emerald. Crimson azure. Amber chestnut.” My eyes scrunched up and I rubbed them. I think I’d rather deal with Katsumi now.

Despite my confusion and general chagrin, I looked back at Nana as she sat before her meal. She was sure a weird one, but she fit her anime archetype well: the strange, quiet girl. I’d seen them many times before. Still, I felt a familiarity looking at Nana that didn’t stem from my knowledge of the cliché she seemed to represent.

I shut the door behind me and walked back down the chestnut-scented steps. I thought about the cliché of the quiet, weird girl in anime. They always have a secret that is eventually revealed. Did that mean Nana had a secret too? What could it be? Some deep trauma in her past? A special power? But if she followed that cliché, then what to make of the other girls?

Was Katsumi the bitchy girl who is actually soft on the inside? Or the girl who is mean to the hero or heroes because she secretly likes them and wants to get their attention? Clearly, Aneko seemed to fit the balanced, motherly older character who always smiles and takes care of everything with effortless ease.

I shook my head. All this wasn’t really an anime…

Was it?...