Hyraj returned in the evening. Like for lunch, I was watching over the little ones while Mrs Frinchen and Fesa cooked, so I was there to greet her right away. She looked the same as always, standing in the doorway. She looked so different. The same her, but with a tiredness I hadn’t seen, like her face was tense.

“Klin’graht,” I said with a small smile.

She looked past Mrs Frinchen to me, a moment passing before her mouth quirked into the smallest smile. “Klin’graht.”

I felt the urge to step forwards, like I wanted to be close to her, countless questions about her day bubbling up in my head. But I was practising doing the opposite of what my subconscious told me to do, so I stayed where I was.

She excused herself to the room. I wanted to go with her. I didn’t. Couldn’t. I was watching the little ones, after all. I had my own “job”.

Telling myself that, tricking myself, anything to distract from the distress I felt swell inside me. Every other thought was inevitably about her, reminding me she was just on the other side of the door. How I could just go ask her if she wanted a drink, tell her it wouldn’t be long until dinner—surely something reasonable like that would be fine?

I didn’t.

Even with an afternoon nap, Yinnie was tired, curled up next to her sister as Lallie still fiddled with the yarn. It looked suspiciously like a tangled mess, not that I was one to talk. An adult who couldn’t do it at all critiquing a child’s practice.

Herf, who didn’t nap, had a familiarly scary appearance, sitting unnaturally still with his eyes forced wide. Children had their stages of tiredness and he was well and truly beyond exhausted. Still, I admired his determination. The little ones I looked after would start to sway or sink forwards, only to shoot back up once they caught themselves nodding off, followed by a very firm declaration that they weren’t sleepy.

The more time I spent just in the same room as them, the more curious I grew. About the family. I wondered where Mr Lurchen was, what Chroj was up to, why they needed to rent out a room while no one else apparently did.

It hadn’t really hit me before that this was a real world, full of real people with real problems. The same kinds of problems I knew because, regardless of when or where, there were some problems that always existed. Well, almost anywhere and any time. Not sure ancient cave people had issues with mortgages.

Lost in thought, I almost jumped when Mrs Frinchen said, “Louise?”

Standing up, I said, “Okay?” noticing this family used that instead of “yes” for these moments.

“Come get for you and your Selyo, sure you know best what to like,” she said.

I resisted the urge to nod, clapping. “Okay.”

The meal was a bit more interesting tonight, maybe because, like for lunch, she had Fesa to help. Whatever the reason, it was that starchy mash again, but accompanied by some fried vegetables. There was maybe the “tamed” carrot-y plant I’d seen in the one field, some other kind of peas, the other things chopped up to the point I couldn’t tell anything about them but their colour.

Well, Hyraj hadn’t fussed over eating forage, so I doubted she would mind actual cooking. The hardest part was trying to get a portion size that wasn’t too small and wasn’t too greedy. How I thought of it, Yinnie and Herf would have half a portion, Chroj would have two portions, and everyone else one. Even if that wasn’t completely accurate, it gave me a good guess on how to split it.

At the least, Mrs Frinchen didn’t give me a funny look on the way out of the kitchen.

Inside our room, Hyraj looked up and forced another smile. “Thank you.”

“I just brought it,” I mumbled, a little guilty over being thanked for walking across a room.

With the desk by the bed, her on the chair, we ate, bite by bite. The mash tasted the same as yesterday, but the fried vegetables, oh, they were delicious! Crispy, some of them sweet, some rich, some kind of smooth? And there was a mild spice, reminding me of the mustard leaves I had used to cook.

I was about to ask Hyraj about it, but I looked up and she looked the same as ever, steadily eating her food. The words died in my mouth, souring the food, but only for that mouthful, the next spoon tasting wonderful again.

There was so much I wanted to say until I realised she would hear me. It reminded me of kids, how they wanted to blabber on and on about their favourite things, but adults and even other children would tell them to stop—that no one cared.

I didn’t know what it was like to have someone care about me, not really. Afraid to presume Hyraj cared and more afraid of asking. I could live with how we were, so there was no need to change it.

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The lie I had always told myself that ended up with me never having any friends. The lie that had haunted my day, anxious and worried.

But things like that weren’t easy to change. Hyraj didn’t ever talk over dinner, so I waited until we were both finished. “It tasted nice, didn’t it?” I asked. An opinion. I wasn’t just asking her what she thought, put myself out there… a little bit.

She took a moment to reply, apparently deep in thought? “Indeed.”

A short answer, but she didn’t call me stupid or anything like that. Not that I had expected her to. I just… needed to reinforce it in my head so that, next time I worried what she’d say, I could tell myself, “She didn’t do that last time, did she?”

Taking our plates through, I thought about how strange memories were. So many days had passed in my life, but there were these particular moments that stuck with me, out of my control.

I’d heard people talk about happy memories while all I could really remember were the bad ones. Times I’d been in trouble, the time an older girl was having a breakdown and I honestly thought she was going to kill herself—I was only like six at the time, she was probably a teen and had just moved in. There was the time I had thought I was going to die, my first swimming lesson at school and I was too scared to tell the teacher I couldn’t swim when everyone else said they could, so I just jumped in and tried my best. Still didn’t know if the teacher or anyone else would have even noticed me drowning.

Those were the kinds of memories that stuck with me. If I tried, I could kind of remember the little ones’ faces, could imagine how it looked when I brushed their hair in the morning, but I couldn’t say it was a real memory, more a blur. All those mornings overlapping together.

So I drilled this moment into my head, repeated it like I always had to when it came to learning. If I couldn’t make it a memory, I could memorise it, ready for when my mind tested me next.

She was tired, the food probably wasn’t as great as the stuff she’d eaten back home, but she still gave me a short, polite answer.

Coming out of my thoughts, Mrs Frinchen was washing up in the kitchen. It was funny. I had the urge to be helpful, but it was a very selfish urge that only came up when I didn’t really mind the chore. The orphanage had a dishwasher; I would offer to fill it up, but never offered to wash up the things that didn’t go in it.

However, I was trying to ignore my brain today. “Can I help?” I asked, rolling up my sleeves.

When I made it back to the room, Hyraj was reading. Just that, even after a couple minutes had passed, she hadn’t turned the page. It took another minute for me to gather up all my courage.

“How was your work?” I asked, unsure exactly how awkward that sounded, but sure it did sound awkward.

Again, she was slow to answer. A few seconds, then her book went down, bookmark slotted in, then another few seconds before she spoke. “That is it. I am on trial”—I guessed that was what the word meant—“for two weeks. After that, they shall allocate me a room.”

I clapped my hand along. But that didn’t answer my question, did it? I felt like I shouldn’t push, that she was ignoring it on purpose, had said what she wanted to say.

And I spoke anyway. “The work, was it okay?” I said, so eager I messed up the order.

“It was fine,” she said. Short and polite, her tone even, pace unhurried.

I breathed in, then said, “That is it, what is the work?”

A pause, then she let out a breath of laughter. “Ah, are you curious?” she said, more to herself than asking me. “Well, I have so far mostly spent my time copying rules as if a naughty child punished by their tutor. In general, I am to work as a checker who shall ensure that the figures the senior accountant calculates are accurate and precise, which means that the correct rules have been applied and that the correct values have been written down in the calculations.”

I wasn’t expecting quite so detailed an answer, but I wasn’t going to complain. It did seem like I was mostly right about her job. “Is… it time for taxes?” I asked, unsure how to phrase it.

She picked up on that. “The taxation period is now,” she said, enunciating the long word that “taxation period” squashed down to. “Taxes are collected after each harvesting season for farmers, and then on other businesses at the start of the year. In-between those periods, I should be assisting with census work, which ensures that the village will receive proper funding for public services, such as covering maintenance on the plumbing.”

Interested as I was, it felt like it was becoming another lesson. “Is this… work you like?” I asked.

Maybe she didn’t expect me to ask that, her face showing nothing as she took a moment to respond. “Like or dislike, it is a suitable job for the time being and I am suitable for the job,” she said.

“I want know things you like and dislike,” I said.

There was nothing strange about saying that, I thought, but the way she looked at me, I felt a… pressure. Like she hadn’t really been looking at me before. “Then,” she said, holding that word in a gentle tone, “I do not like it nor do I dislike it. Although there are tedious parts to it and I am unsure how I feel about the senior accountant at present, it should be satisfying to work with numbers. I have had only my books to keep me sharp for a while now.”

I listened close, trying to pick out the emotions she didn’t show. Not just learning. Or rather, learning how to have a conversation with a friend.

We talked a little more like that. I talked a little more, telling her a little about Yinnie and Herf. Didn’t know if she liked kids; if not, then she wouldn’t want to hear stories about them, would she?

“How fun,” she said with a little smile.

Lots of little and small things. For all books said, people didn’t usually have that big of a reaction. Not much that needed such big reactions.

That was our new evening routine, the same thing playing out every day for the week. A shorter week, only four days of work and two days rest; Hyraj mentioned it was like how we slept for a third of the day, so our week needed a third for rest.

The weekend’s morning, she said, “We should buy what we need when we move out next week.”

My heart thumped in my chest, yet I felt like it wasn’t actually pumping any blood. Hands cold, kind of dizzy, but I kept pushing. I wouldn’t change if I didn’t change myself.

“That is it… I think I’m going to stay here,” I said.

She paused, hand in her backpack. “What do you mean?”

Swallowing the lump in my throat, all the words I had so carefully prepared now escaped me. But I tried.

“I… am very thankful for, for everything you have… done for me. So I cannot just… be a toy that sit around a room. Driddle—Mrs Frinchen—she’s been teaching Lallie to knit, and she said she can teach me too, and then I earn some money for rent if I help out a bit too.”

Oh I’d stumbled at the start, then raced at the end, no clue if I had said anything that made sense.

But I’d said it.