Chapter 6:
My first life was a bore, so now I got another 7?!
Unable to refuse Miwakos offer, I was bound to this house for one more night by the power of my own words. Looking back, I realized that my inability to refuse other people’s wishes had more than once gotten me into situations which I would have preferred not to get drawn into. This, let’s call it a habit, way of pleasing people, didn’t disappear and during my time at the company it ultimately guided my whole existence.
More work, even if I have only five minutes left on the clock? Due until tomorrow? Of course, Boss! Leave it to me!
To hell with that.
And yet I did exactly the same at this exact moment. Staying at this house was the single most thing I didn’t want to do at the moment, but still I agreed to do so.
Miwakos face lightened up as she heard my answer. Her body shifting yet a little closer.
Again my body seemed to revolt against her approach. It felt like a basic instinct taking over and using all the sirens it had, to warn the conscious part of my brain, that something was horribly wrong.
The space on the sofa I had left to evade her approaches had almost come to an end and by now I doubted that she hadn’t yet noticed my attempts to escape her but that didn’t seem to slow her down the slightest.
“How late is it?”, I asked while faking a yawn.
“Sometimes time passes faster than you can imagine and other times it just doesn’t.”, she responded under her breath.
“Somebody should put some more wood into the fire.”
She ignored my latest try. Her hand brushed mine. It was strangely cold and made me want to evade her approach even more.
I suddenly pressed myself against the armrest of the sofa. Now I had to stand up if I wanted to retreat further.
Trying to keep the balance between not wanting to be close to her and not wanting to be impolite made the situation only more complicated.
Her gaze had something primal in it. Like a predator that had locked eyes with its prey. At this moment I started to get a feeling of why a deer that looks into the headlights of an approaching truck doesn’t run away. The possibilities of escaping were numerous but my time was running out. With every passing second she got closer and closer.
Her lips were cold as ice and void of any softness or maybe even transferred emotion one might expect. My eyes were wide open in shock and I felt the cold of her body taking over mine. Besides the shock and disgust I felt a strange feeling inside of me. One of the kind I never experienced so far and one can’t describe but by saying that it was a feeling I wished to never experience ever again. It felt like my body was contracting in ways that weren’t intended to be possible by nature, like my intestines were trying to hide behind each other only to get away from this woman. I started to get a strong feeling of sickness and by the time the cold had reached my hands I was covered in icy cold sweat.
She finally let go of me.
“Oh my! You look awful. Is everything alright?”
Those were her words but I could have sworn that I saw mischief in her eyes. She was toying with me and I, devoid of any forces, could do nothing but play along.
“It seems that my journey exhausted me more than I thought.”, I declared while forcing a weak smile. We both knew that I lied. But I didn’t want to admit that she was the cause of my state and somehow I felt that she was fully aware about what was going on with me.
My body was still shaking as she led me upstairs towards a door at the end of the hallway which she called the guest room. The room had a bed, which qualified it at least as a bedroom but besides was filled with all sorts of strange memorabilia of the kind you usually wouldn’t let your guests alone with. Pictures and paintings of long gone ancestors, their similarity clear by having a look at their faces, items collected by said ancestors and different knick-knacks that felt out of place. Like they were supposed to make the whole room look more friendly.
Miwako offered me some pajamas for the night, but I refused. I was too exhausted to change. She nodded understandingly and left the room. The exhaustion overwhelmed me. I sank onto the bed and basically immediately drifted off into a dreamless sleep that didn’t want to refresh my body but rather suck the remaining energy out of it as well.
It was still dark when I woke up again. Something made my hair stand up from head to feet. It could have been the temperature. I hadn’t bothered to work myself under the blanket before I fell asleep and the rooms temperature was definitely lower than when I entered it.
I slipped out of the bed and tried to walk towards the door without making the wooden floor of the second floor crack too much under my weight.
Somebody was looking at me. That was what my instincts told me. They could have been wrong, since I never needed to use, train or sharpen them, but they had warned me back in the living room so I tended to trusting them more than I usually would.
This house definitely didn’t like my presence. If I could only manage to reach the front door. Especially I needed to get as much distance between me and this horrible woman before the break of dawn. But first I needed to find a candle or something. The hall was well lit while people were awake but now at night time it should be as dark as night itself.
I navigated the scarcely moonlit room carefully. There were two old looking, but unused, candles on a table that looked more like a shrine to the last generations of the family. Men and women from centuries past looked at me with disapproving gazes. If Miwako belonged to the third generation that lives in this house, how far had this awful family spread already?
I looked around. The feeling still wasn’t gone. Ignoring the feeling for now, I took the candles and their stands and put them into the pockets inside of the kimono’s sleeves. Matches. Where there are candles there are hopefully matches. But I could be wrong. I searched the small drawers of the said table and found a small pack of old looking matches.
“Let’s hope this works.”, I said to myself hoping that the matches would do their job.
Then I took one of the candles out of my sleeve and placed it on the table. The small silvery stand, that was just large enough to use it as a handle, kept it in an upright position while I took one of the matches out of the box. I managed to ignite it during the first try. The candle started to burn only with lots of hesitation, as if it had already felt like the time to burn was over and that it should be left to the younger candles. The flame was small, but it managed to light up the room at least a little.
I put the matches up into my sleeve and also took the burned match. I didn’t want to leave any traces behind.
The room was now a little friendlier thanks to the light of the candle. Strangely also the feeling of being watched had vanished, like the cause of it was lurking inside the shadows around my feet.
Now, being able to see, I sneaked to the door and tried to peak through the lock. It was completely dark outside. Feeling like this might be the only chance to escape, I opened the door and carefully left the room, trying not to leave any sign of me leaving or make any sounds.
So far everything went well. It also went well, when I was walking down the stairs.
Upon reaching the entry hall I walked close to the wall, opposite to the side of Kenzo’s room. Also I hoped to avoid people seeing me from the walkway upstairs, which led to the rooms and had a clear view over the entry hall, likely to make the latter look more enormous.
When I just passed the door to the basement, the living room door swing open.
In a moment of panic I tried to hide the flame while slipping into the basement and closing the door. During the last moment I saw that Miwako had left the living room and I was sure she had seen me.
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