The next morning, Loren woke up to the sound of the alarm on his phone ringing from under this pillow. He groaned, keeping his eyes closed as he groped for the treacherous slab of electronics. Fumbling as his phone continued to play the theme of an anime he'd liked five years ago, he finally—

He felt something on his mattress move, and then something bounced on the bed and filled his still drowsy mind with dread.

"Time to get up!"

"No…!" he managed to moan as he moved his free hand to cover his ear, even as he desperately groped for his phone to turn it off while he was still not fully awake. He'd always had sympathy for the walking dead in movies, always moaning and being violently cranky. They just wanted to nap, but some stupid Flame mage was forcing them to move around.

Necroturgic Flame or actual Necromancy also didn't work that way, but that was the least offensive break from a sensible reality those kinds of movies made.

"Yes!" Harmony declared with relentless cheer. "Good morning, Sara! Sorry I can't see you right now, but I'm assuming you're there."

The windchimes at the corner of the room rang, making Loren groan as he finally got his phone to stop ringing, then covered his head with his pillow.

"Come on, Lor! It's a workday, and we need to take a detour commuting. Get your ass in gear. You're the only one who can get breakfast ready."

He let out a non-vocal gurgling moan that managed to very thoroughly convey the concept of 'fuck off'.

Harmony sighed. "Sara, how do you get this slug to get up in the morning?"

There was a crack of speakers as the headphones were pulled out of the radio, followed by the cheerful sounds of G-pop music.

"Ah. Yeah, that would work. Hey Lor, I'm going to take a bath, all right? If you're still not up when I'm done, I'm going down for breakfast."

He repositioned the pillow over his head, trying to block out the music. The bed shifted again as Harmony got up, and he heard her padding around the room, presumably to get the towel he'd leant her last night. There came the sound of the bathroom door closing. Loren let out a little sigh of relief as he got comfortable, dozing a little to the sound of the music coming from the radio. "Good mornin', Sara," he muttered belatedly.

The windchimes rang again in acknowledgement. Loren curled up to get a little more rest as the music washed over him and his sense of responsibility slowly mounted until it would be enough to push him out of bed.

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After yesterday's stressful day off, it was actually nice to be back at the building site. The house had a roof now, and gutters and eaves were being mounted on. Loren had been seconded to Harmony, the two of them putting new planes of glass on the windows. Of course, first they had to remove the old glass, since the remaining panels were either cracked or frosted, and the new panes they would be installing were transparent.

That had taken a surprisingly long time, since they couldn't just smash the glass apart and let it fall. They had to carefully remove the now-hardened putty securing the glass in place, then pry out the panes, secure them together, and set them aside for—well, whatever purpose they would have.

Loren figured they'd be reused for something, since the whole panes and the broken ones hadn't been grouped together.

When the windows had been cleared, and they'd managed to pry off any obstructing solidified putty from the frames, they set to work securing the new panes of glass. First they anchored the panes in place with silicone caulk, both since it was quick and to add an additional seal to waterproof the windows. Once they were secured, the two of them applied the putty—which smelled weird—to secure the glass to the frames of the windows.

After Harmony showed him what to do and did a couple of windows with him to show him what the expected quality was, she left him to it while she took care of cutting the glass panes to the necessary size. Probably for the best. Glass was too finicky to cut with Flame—at least with his level of experience—and was liable to explode on him if he tried anyway. Stupid glass.

They did windows for the next two days as the others worked on the roof. After that, they assisted Loni—"Eep!"—in putting the new doorframes into place. Whatever violent exorcism had dealt with the ghosts in the house had also done a number on the doors. All the internal doors and doorframes had been scorched or cut, there'd been holes knocked into the internal cement walls that had needed to be patched, cuts on the walls and floor, and the linoleum tiles on the floor had been burned.

Assisting Loni mainly consisted of carrying the doorframes, setting them in place so the shy payatin could make measurements, ripping out the part of the frame that were still embedded into the cement of the floor—Loren actually did get to use his Flame for that, carefully burning the remaining wood until there was space to get the chisels in to tear them apart—then expanding the holes in the floor where the frames had been removed so the new frames could be slipped into place.

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Loni did most of the work, moving with well-practiced motions and casual precision… until Loren came into her field of view, and then she'd be nervous and awkward all over again.

"Don't worry, she'll get used to you… eventually," Harmony assured him while they were getting the next doorframe from where they were stacked. "It took her months to get used to me, and she jumps like that no matter who suddenly steps in front of her. And relax, she wasn't perving on you. Her head never tilted down to your crotch."

"I wasn't thinking that, but I am now," Loren said as he tried to get a grip on the doorframe without feeling like he would be cutting himself on the edges of the wood. "Why did you have to make it weird?"

"Hey, if I had to think about it, so do you."

"That's a terrible reason!"

Once the doors were in place, Loren was assigned to clearing the remains of the linoleum tiles off the floor. Many had warped, deformed and come loose from what had clearly been a fire, and the tiles had slowly been coming off as they had all walked on them. Loren spent another day removing them, then scraping off the adhesive underneath as best as he could. It was one of those annoying things that always felt unnecessary when his dad had told him to do it during their DIY projects. It still felt unnecessary to him, but hey, if Steve was paying him to do it, that was his choice. Harmony was filling in damaged parts of the floor with cement… which occasionally required she make the damage a little deeper or rougher so that the cement would have something to cling to. Construction could be like that.

After the needless excitement of his unexpected day off, going back to work was actually relaxing… for about the first hour, and then it as back to being work again. Still, it was work he was able to do, and he hadn't made any mistakes that had cost time or money to fix, so yay!

That weekend, he had to leave so he could go home—well, back to his parents—and do his laundry. Fortunately, Harmony had shown up and he'd been able to talk her into keeping Sara company. Though the reason she'd shown up was because she'd brought a bag with her own towel and clothes and was stashing it at his place in case she ever needed to stay over, or just got rained on.

That was actually a first for the two of them. She hadn't needed to stash clothes in his room when they were kids, since she'd lived right next door. When she wanted to stay over for the night to watch movies or game or read one of his books that she didn't have until she fell unconscious, she just did.

They might have been a terrible influence on his sister, who had to learn about 'private property', 'trespassing' and 'personal boundaries' after a few embarrassing incidents at other kids' houses.

As he waited for his laundry to finish, he went online to continue his search for Sara Dalisay. He only had a single good picture of her, one that Harmony had found when she'd been doing research in preparation for negotiating. Loren didn't know where she'd gotten it, but he'd been able to use it to do image searches for more pictures of his roommate. That had lead to a few surprising discoveries, which he'd stared at for a moment, before he'd actually activated the safe search filter for the first time in his life.

He'd found Sara's Tomepic page, but she'd stopped updating eight years ago. Fortunately, it had contained connections to her family members—at least, that's who he assumed the people with the same name as her were—and they had pictures of her. Many of them were group pictures showing Sara and her family.

Then there had been the post announcing her death.

It had been strange to read an obituary post for a woman he technically lived—undeaded?—with. The pictures were of her over the years, from Sara as a toddler, Sara wearing her elementary school uniform, her high school uniform, graduation robes for high school and college, and a picture of her in a dress that was either a prom photo or a debut photo. Loren printed as many as he could on photo paper, and had needed to go on a run to get more while his clothes were in the dryer.

When he'd returned home to his apartment, he was carrying two bags. He'd left with one. Between the bags were his clean laundry, some more new towels, and a few more clothes he could wear to work. The other bag had a bunch of books he'd bought in college that had been pre-owned and in good condition, with the pictures stashed among them to keep them flat. They'd been among his favorites to read back then, and they still were, though he was a bit chagrined to realize he hadn't touched them in years in favor of his Candle tablet. So much for his resolve to support the dead tree book industry. But then, he did get most of his reading material from the AstralCombat forums. There was also a hard-bound book on sewing that he'd brought at a time when he and Harmony had been interested in cosplay, which he'd never really read but knew had pretty good pictures.

He'd also thrown in a mini-chalkboard he'd found stashed somewhere—it was made of plastic instead of wood and was about three by five inches, probably something he'd gotten as a prize at a birthday party when he'd been younger—and some broken pieces of colored chalk that had been moldering in a toy beach bucket under his bed for years.

"Thanks Sara," he said when the door opened as he'd come near. "Did you have fun with Harmony while I was gone?" His TV was on, belting out music that—huh, he'd expected G-pop, but it seemed to be Lasablican pop music. Milady, from the sound of it.

The wind chimes rang in the corner sounded as he put his bags on the bed.

"Hey," Harmony greeted. "What do you want for dinner? I feel like cooking again."

"Lasagna," he said instantly as he opened his bag, then went to grab the storage he put his clothes in so that it was closer. He started laying out his clothes then rolling them up into cylinders before putting them into the bin.

"Look, get an oven. And that's my shirt!"

Loren held up the rolled shirt in question, unrolling—but not unfolding—it so she could see. "No, it's my shirt, we just both have one because it was a gift from my dad." He put it in the bin.

"Oh, right. I wonder what happened to mine?"

"Last time I saw it was that time we went camping in high school."

"Ugh, no wonder I don't remember. I blocked it out."

"…what happened…?"

They both paused at the reedy voice, then Loren winced and held up a hand, flicking his thumb up theatrically and producing a ghostlight Flame. Sara popped into view, looking curious. "Sorry, Sara. To answer your question, she fell into—"

"No no no, you're not telling her! No one will know my humiliation!"

Loren rolled his eyes. "I'll tell you later," he muttered, and Sara nodded.

"Oh, no you don't! I saw that nod!"