Just as everyone was finished washing up, Vurrie— who Hana thought had disappeared after helping her clean— returned with two picnic baskets in tow. Covered in checkered cloth were small rolls, an assortment of cheeses, fruit, and slices of ham. Dinner.

Aloys found pitchers, wooden cups and bowls from rummaging around underneath the bar counter. Hana rinsed them off outside, and filled the pitchers with water. She helped Vurrie hand out the food to the hungry children waiting patiently at their tables.

It was getting dark, and instead of the candles, Aloys switched on the iron wrought lantern that hung from the ceiling. It might have been fuelled by gas or maybe there was a marvusel in there. It cast a bright, incandescent glow around the inn, giving the space a soft, cozy atmosphere.

Back at the daycare, when the students for late-pick up would stay for dinner, the supervising teachers would sit amongst them to chat. The children found their own spots to eat, and didn’t seem all that interested in conversation with an adult at the moment, so she took up a table .

The moment she sat down, a wave of exhaustion came over Hana, and she realized that she had been standing the whole time. Her stomach growled in protest, despite her feeling queasy, and she helped herself to a roll. She was too hungry to care whether or not the food was nutritional or warm, and the children were of the same sentiment. Food was food. She would have eaten most anything, except the cheese— she was terribly lactose intolerant and didn’t want to be confined to the outhouse for the rest of the evening.

Hana took the opportunity to thank both Aloys and Vurrie again. She really didn’t know what she would have done without them. Vurrie was bashful, and Aloys modestly told her to think nothing of it. He said something about the will of Selav, reassured that she made her gratitude more than well known, and insisted they never bring up the topic again.

He had her explain the particularities of her job, and she was more than happy to. There were morning lessons where they learned katakana and hiragana, practiced reading and writing, they did arts and crafts, music, took walks, there was nap time and recess, meal and snack times. There were some seasonal activities and the occasional field trip, but that was about it. There was some polite nodding, they asked if she was affiliated with a temple of sorts, perhaps that was what third-party childcare was associated with here. The more she talked, the more mundane and monotonous her life seemed.

“What do you do?” Embarrassed and more than ready to stop talking about herself, Hana turned to Aloys. “You're a mage, right?”

“I am. I work as an artificer. Devices that run using an external source of mana.”

There were many different career paths in the field of magic, and though Aloys was particularly good at casting spells and the like, his interests lay more on the inventing side. Vurrie said something jokingly that he chose not to translate again.

“I’m just taking a break, that’s all.”

Aloys said he was in the midst of a rut concerning his design work. Every time he would spend hours staring at a blank sheet of paper without a single idea in mind. He was spending most of his time fixing old devices around the town rather than trying to come up with anything new.

Vurrie said she ran the bakery on the corner of Estau Street, having recently taken over the family business after her grandmother. The job wasn’t a choice she would have made for herself, but it paid and she had the skills for it.

Despite the language and cultural barriers, it was easy to relate to them. They were similar in age to Hana, only a year or two younger, and their thoughts of being stuck in life, not quite knowing what to do next or what their ambitions were for the future was likewise felt. She thought she would have had life figured out by twenty-four, but there was really no difference from when she had started working at twenty-two till now. She hadn’t done anything of note in two years, hadn’t really developed any new hobbies or skills, and wondered how ‘proper’ adults found the time for it all.

In some ways, this transmigration of sorts might just be the kind of reset she needed. There was nothing wrong with thinking on the bright side for once. There were upsides to being here now.

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They wrapped up dinner, and the children stacked their bowls and cups on the bar counter. Vurrie excused herself, she had to be up early to fire the oven in the morning, and they saw her off at the door.

Hana announced that it was about time for bed. There had been a lull in the children’s conversations around the room, and when she looked around, a few of them were already droopy-eyed and quiet.

“What about pyjamas?”

“Why can’t we go home?”

“What about brushing our teeth?”

She was met with an avalanche of valid questions that she had no decent answer for. Hana redirected them somewhat successfully by ushering them upstairs, and they were curious enough to comply.

They picked out their own roommates, neatly sorting themselves out as though they already knew who they wanted to partner with. They were all tired after the day they had and there was very little need to convince them to quiet down.

She went through the rooms with a lantern in hand, saying goodnight and offering hugs. The occasional bedtime story was requested, and Hana complied. It worked out well for the first few rooms, but partway through, most of the children were already asleep when she went to check on them.

“Ms. Kano, I want to go home.” Momoka sat on the edge of the bed, kicking her feet. Her roommate Tsugumi was already knocked out on the other bed. She looked small and anxious in the dark, and it impressed upon Hana that no matter what she felt, she needed to be there for the children.

“I know.” Hana crouched down to meet her at eye level. “Me too.”

“When can I go home?”

“I… don’t know yet.” She decided on the more honest approach. It would save everyone a lot of grief in the long run. “I’ll ask around and try to figure out how we got here.”

“You’ll try really hard?”

“I will.”

She wasn’t fully satisfied with the answer, Hana wouldn’t have if she had been told this herself, but Momoka reluctantly nodded. They pinky promised.

“Can I have a hug?”

“Of course.”

Hana tucked her in, and at her request, left the door open a little. She continued going down the hallway, little mental attendance going through her head. The last room was Taiga and Jun’s.

She looked in and they were both asleep.

Taiga had been pelting questions at Aloys about dragons before Hana had to play bad cop and get him to wash up. Dragons, as it turned out, were very much real. She didn’t understand Aloys’ end of the conversation, but it didn’t seem like there would be dragons flying around at night or going around razing villages any time soon. Perhaps they were rare, or better yet, a part of history. Even so, she had never seen him more excited in his life, he was a very enthusiastic and active boy. Even in sleep he was kicking off his blanket and rolling around.

Jun, on the other hand, slept curled up in the corner by the wall, stock still. She had wanted to speak to him earlier, not that she knew what to even say— it would be best if she could articulate her thoughts better before attempting to. He was a good kid, and Hana would never have said otherwise. He was quiet, had good manners, and liked to learn, perhaps he was a bit clumsier than the average child, but that was hardly an irredeemable flaw.

It was certainly no reason to hit him.

She thought her eyes were playing tricks on her earlier. And when she saw the bruises she had been too stunned to speak, too confused and busy and cowardly and sick to her stomach. Angry purple marks mixed with fading green and yellow ones, cigarette burns, cuts scabbed over or scarring. She had hardly looked long enough to take proper inventory of his wounds, but she could notice all that from a single, stomach-dropping glance.

He was so young and so small and so hurt. He was barely more than a baby, really, he barely came up to her elbow. The thought that Jun very well could have lived his whole life up until now knowing nothing but pain and abuse and fear hurt him more than it ever would her. It weighed heavy and piercing on her heart.

The more she thought about it now, the further enraged she got. Even her faltering earlier today made her feel disgustingly complicit. His teachers had never said anything. Did they even notice? How would they, when all the damage had been deliberately done in places that would normally be covered up by clothing? Would they even have done anything? Of course they would, her coworkers were good people, but would anything have come from it? Cases like these were so often swept under the rug or passed over for lack of resources, even if corporal punishment had recently been outlawed.

She didn’t know the circumstances of his home life. Sickeningly, she didn’t even know if intervention on the daycare’s part would have improved his situation. What she did know was that here, he would be safe. That was what she really wanted to tell Jun. It was bringing up any mentions of his trauma that she hesitated on, but there would be no harm in reassuring him that she would do whatever she could to keep him— all of them— safe.

Still, Hana couldn’t give up on the idea of going home just yet. It was in the best interest of most of the children. They were effectively losing their parents, their support system, the peaceful lives that they had always known. Nothing she could do here would ever be enough to replace that, and she knew it. She also knew that if she did discover a way back to Earth, she knew that she could never send Jun back to that.