A Sense of Normalcy

“Here is the souvenir you asked me to get for you,” Ryouma said, handing Midoriko a paper bag.

Since they were evidently in Gunma Prefecture, she had asked him to purchase a local souvenir to bring back to her colleagues at the museum. Unsure of what to get them, she let him pick it out.

Midoriko looked inside the bag, curious as to what he’d bought.

“Onsen manju?! This just makes it look like I was on vacation!”

“Well…Weren’t you?” With a smirk, he shrugged. “You visited England, too. Maybe I should have also found a souvenir from that place.”

“It’s fine…” Midoriko sighed.

With the pitter-patter of little feet, Good Girl came running up with the ugly porcelain doll tucked under one arm and the teddy tucked under the other. Xiǎomíng followed behind her with a bag.

“I packed up all of her new clothes and a couple of old shirts she insisted on bringing. She tried to pack some rocks as well, but I stopped her,” he said, handing Midoriko the bag.

“Th-thanks for that,” she said, slinging it over her shoulder.

“Good Girl, did you remember to wear it?” Ryouma asked, crouching down to the child’s level.

“Yes, Papa!” Good Girl held up a jade magatama, which was fastened around her neck on a string.

“Excellent! I have mine too,” he said, holding out a matching one hanging from his own neck. Ryouma beckoned her closer. “Come here, I have to tell you something important.”

Good Girl moved closer to him. Without touching her, Ryouma leaned in to whisper something in her ear. Midoriko watched as the child’s brows furrowed while she listened intently to what he was telling her.

Midoriko strained her ears to get in on the secret too, but could only make out the word ‘protect.’ When he finished speaking, Good Girl nodded in understanding.

“I’m counting on you.” Ryouma smiled brightly, and the child’s serious expression softened in turn.

He stood up and raised his hand, ready to knock on the front door to open a portal. He’d insisted it was too dangerous to take Good Girl on something like the shinkansen—plus, it was faster this way.

Ryouma’s knuckles stopped in the air, hovering over the door.

“...”

“What’s the problem?” Midoriko asked, swallowing hard. She was half expecting him to renege on their agreement.

“...I don’t know where you live…” he said, sheepishly.

“I thought you looked at my ID! It had my address on it!” Midoriko shot back.

“Well, it’s not like I committed it to memory!” Ryouma crossed his arms and pouted in an over-dramatic fashion.

Midoriko sighed and recited her address for him. Clearing his throat, he once again readied his knock but stopped.

“Stop messing around!” Midoriko shouted. She kicked at his shin, but Ryouma easily dodged it.

“I’m not! The problem is that I don’t know what it looks like! I have to be able to visualize it to make this work!” he explained, dodging her repeated kicks.

Xiǎomíng sighed and held out his phone. He’d pulled up a map street view of the exterior of Midoriko’s building. Ryouma took the phone, moved the camera around a bit, then handed it back to Xiǎomíng.

Midoriko rolled her eyes as he once more raised his hand to knock on the door, expecting more nonsense. But this time, Ryouma knocked twice and opened the door to an alley near her apartment building.

“Hey! Wait!” Midoriko called out as Good Girl rushed through excitedly.

The girl had been eager to go along as soon as the adults explained the plan. She went to chase after the child, who was now waving to her from the other side, but Ryouma grabbed her by the arm.

With that effervescent smirk, he leaned in close and whispered in her ear. “Don’t forget our arrangement…”

Midoriko’s cheek flushed pink. Was there a reason he had to put it like that?! But before she could react, he pushed her through and closed the door.

Shortly after, her phone pinged with a notification. It was a message from Enishi Ryouma: The Russians have gone quiet, but I don’t think they’ve given up. Please contact me if anything happens. I’ll come running. ( ò . ó )>

"Pfft...What the hell?" Midoriko laughed. "He texts with emojis?"

***

Underneath a potted plant outside of her door, Midoriko pulled out a spare key to her apartment. Her keys–which were in her old purse–had also been a casualty of the fire in England.

Midoriko let out an exhausted sigh when she opened her apartment door–she was finally home. In two short weeks, her life had changed so much. But here was her small, two-room apartment just as she’d left it.

Good Girl hastily removed her shoes in the entryway before racing into the apartment. She zipped across the kitchen and threw open the sliding door separating it from the main room.

“Hey! No running inside! People live underneath us!” Midoriko scolded as she removed her own shoes.

She heard the energetic child open and close a closet door in the main room before opening the door to the small veranda meant only for drying laundry. Good Girl stepped onto the veranda, looked around for a moment, then raced back into the kitchen. Midoriko watched as she opened the door to the unit bath, looked inside, then closed it slowly.

“...Where are the other rooms?” asked Good Girl, her voice tinged with confusion.

“This is it…” Midoriko’s eyebrow twitched. It had only just occurred to her that this little girl had become spoiled by the enormous mansion she’d been living in for the past two years.

“Where will I sleep then?” pressed the little girl as Midoriko made her way into the main room to close the door to the veranda.

“We’ll share my bed,” Midoriko said, pointing to her small, single bed tucked into a corner.

Good Girl climbed onto the bed and flopped over. After a moment, she rolled around. “Okay! It’s comfy!”

Before stepping out for groceries, Midoriko set some rules for Good Girl to adhere to while home alone. Most were basic safety and etiquette rules for a child, like not touching the stove or making excessive noise, but it was necessary to establish two very specific rules for the sake of keeping Good Girl out of danger as she’d promised.

Midoriko made Good Girl promise not to go outside unless it was a serious emergency like an earthquake or fire, and to never answer the door if anyone knocked. Even if they looked like Papa, Xiǎomíng, or Midoriko. The glamour magic used by sorcerers meant they could pretend to be anyone.

Ryouma’s text message left a looming cloud of anxiety hovering over Midoriko’s head. But for now, she and Good Girl could be happy and safe together.

When Midoriko returned to the museum the next day, they welcomed her back with open arms. Her colleagues, professors, and even her classmates all expressed condolences towards her loss. It wasn’t just the funeral that earned their sympathy, though.

The night Midoriko had to leave the drinking party in a rush for this family emergency, the kīla was stolen right out of her own curated exhibit! The timing was so terrible that everyone felt it best to wait for her to return to deliver the bad news.

“And worst of all, the cameras had completely malfunctioned that night!” lamented Dr. Tanaka as she showed Midoriko the empty display case. A sign had been hastily erected stating that the dagger had been removed from display.

“D-do they have a suspect though?” Midoriko asked cautiously. With everything falling into place neatly, she just had to be sure it wasn’t her.

“Well, this is a little hush-hush...” Dr. Tanaka lowered her voice, looking around for any potential eavesdroppers before continuing. “But there was a security guard on duty that night. Only there was no record of him having worked here…”

The phantom thief of many aliases, known to a select few as Enishi Ryouma, had struck again.

The museum director had made the conscious decision to publicly downplay the theft, so as not to erode trust in the institution. There were many things on loan in just that exhibit alone that, if the lenders caught wind of the theft, might have been inclined to request everything back.

“I guess it was cursed after all,” Dr. Tanaka mused.

Midoriko could only answer that with a smile and a shrug. She knew the truth after all—that it had some manner of energy surrounding it, the identity of the thief, and even the location of the stolen artifact.

In Midoriko’s two-room apartment was a small desk used for her studies. In that unassuming desk, nestled inside a drawer, was that very stolen kīla.

***

Midoriko sat at her desk, staring off into space. She had taken the kīla without telling Ryouma, knowing that he would have said no if she asked.

It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him to keep it safe—she just had an unending curiosity about it. She wanted to study it, and to do that, she needed it with her.

Did he even notice it was gone? He hadn’t contacted her about it. In fact, he hadn’t contacted her once since she got back. Was he just messing with her when he said all that stuff about her neutralizing effects of his curse? She wouldn’t put that past him.

Either way, she had no time to worry about Enishi Ryouma’s eccentricities. She had to catch up on two weeks of missed school and work.

The end of her semester was quickly approaching, and the one after it would be her last. Then after that? Properly entering the workforce seemed like the logical next step.

She had been going to school nonstop since kindergarten. Most of her fellows in the doctoral program had taken breaks during their undergraduate years or in between obtaining their bachelor’s and advanced degrees. But since the death of her mother right before she entered university, Midoriko had thrown herself into her studies.

Her academic pursuits kept her going for the past eight years. Grief, loneliness, and despair didn’t matter when there was a goal to work towards. The goal was all she had. But now?

Bare walls were now plastered with crayon drawings, and the once depressingly quiet apartment was filled every day with Good Girl’s humming and laughter. Midoriko looked at Good Girl, who was sitting quietly watching TV, and smiled.

She needs a proper name…