"But why are the dinosaurs running around? I mean, they didn't just let them loose to cover up their part in the whole 'killing a city' thing?"

"No. But the company never got the chance to fix the weakness in their security that allowed the first one to escape before everything went downhill fast. When the virus entered the city's water supply, 90% of Tokyo was infected after drinking water, bathing, eating vegetables that had been picked that morning after being watered, you get the picture? Most of the remainder of the citizens fell to the walking corpses, a few to the large carnivores, and then there is us. Maybe there are some more holding out somewhere, like you two were. The herbivores seem to be all dead by now. This used to be the triceratops herd's territory. There was not enough greenery for them to eat, so they died off quickly. The carnivores..."

"It's eating the dead. We have seen it." Zaria closed her eyes and leaned her head back. Part of her wanted to laugh out loud. The whole thing sounded like the plot from a made for tv movie. "So this is why you use chamber pots and stuff? Can't risk letting non bottle water get into the house?"

"Exactly. We wash our clothes once a week using jugs of distilled water that nobody wants to drink, and everyone tries to use as little clothing as possible. The same type of water is used once a week to wash hair, and we use the wipes to clean our bodies. The blood doesn't pass the virus via skin contact like the contaminated water does. But if they bite you or cut you somehow, it will go right into the bloodstream, and you are done. We are learning as we go, but we have lost people while learning.The hope is that eventually, the government will send someone to look for survivors." His voice dropped to a whisper, and she perked her ears up to catch his words. "But it has been half a year. I think they wrote us all off. If they were waiting for the big dinosaur to eat all the infected, it wouldn't work since it couldn't get inside the buildings. How many people were locked in their own homes or somewhere like that when the infection hit?"

Yamashita stopped talking. He took a long, slow drink of water and looked around at the faces remaining at the table. Nearly everyone was gone, the dishes picked up and dealt with. Gu Cheng, at some point, had moved closer, and both Saito Rika and the other older woman had stayed behind to listen. The two women whispered to each other but were watching the teenager enough that Zaria could guess they were both able to understand a lot of what he said.

"I don't think they will bomb us." The attractive nurse spoke up. "Why wait so long?"

"There is that," Yamashita agreed. "China didn't wait half this long before dropping their bombs."

The conversation moved to a discussion on whether or not the city had been abandoned by the country. It shifted to Japanese, not intentionally,but for ease of argument. Zaria tried to see what words she recognized from watching anime on the internet. Nobody was swearing, so she didn't recognize much. After a little while, her eyelids began to droop, and she excused herself to go rest. As she left the room, she saw the nurse get up and move next to Gu Cheng, leaning her head in close to talk to him. Rational Zaria brain said that it was so they could continue talking without shouting across the table. Jealous Zaria brain gushed that the two looked really good sitting next to each other.

She walked up the stairs to her new little room, telling Jealous Zaria to shut up. It was better if Gu Cheng considered other women, right? Wasn't that her goal, in the end, to get him back to his world where he could find the woman that was really meant for him? But Saito Rika wasn't from his world. That must be why Zaria was having an issue with the pretty nurse being so familiar with him. He could only be with her if he stayed in this world, and Zaria was going to do everything she could to get Gu Cheng home. He wasn't like her. He had family, and even a few friends like Chiu Leong back there. She had nothing but a job as a night manager at a restaurant in a small town in the middle of the woods. She smiled. No, she probably didn't have that job anymore. It had been a few months since she disappeared. She was definitely fired from there. What was it that she was trying to get back home for, anyway? Her manga collection lining her bedroom wall?

Zaria pulled her phone out of her side pocket, noticing for the first time that there was blood splattered across her pants. Grimacing, she stood up and took the pants off. As she was rummaging in her bag for her other cleaner pair, a knock came from the closed door. "Just a minute!"

The door opened, and Zaria pulled her dirty pants hastily in front of her. She caught a glimpse of a shocked face above a stack of sheets and blanket, and then another hand reached around the doorframe and yanked the door shut. Zaria dropped the dirty pants and shimmied into the clean pair, then ran across to the door.

In the hall, Gu Cheng was guarding her door, facing outward. The air was cold, her breath coming out in misty puffs. A young man's voice was frantically saying something in Japanese, and Gu Cheng said something back in a voice so cold that it made her ears ache.

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Zaria maneuvered around the block of ice and found one of the boys from the gathering group holding onto sheets and blankets as though his life depended on it. When he saw her, his face flushed bright red, and he shoved the items to her before taking off down the hall and disappearing into a room several doors down. She shrugged and turned to go back into her room but was stopped by the towering form that was now blocking the doorway completely.

"Stay in my room."

The demand rankled her. "No. I don't need to be babysat, CEO Gu. Please move so I can make up my bed."

"Then lock the door so that doesn't happen again."

"My door doesn't lock. Did you see how embarrassed he was? He will likely avoid me the rest of his life. It won't happen again." A muscle twitched in his jaw, and she let out her breath in a loud exhale. "I will have Yamashita help make me a sign that says Do Not Disturb, or something. It will be fine. Go and enjoy having a whole room to yourself again! You don't have to listen to my snoring anymore!" Zaria plastered on a fake smile and waved him away. His brows lowered, and he gave her an incomprehensible look before slowly walking away.

Zaria knew the boy hadn't really seen anything. Her shirt went down past her butt, and , at most, there might have been two seconds of her bare legs poking out below the hem. After thinking about his reactions, she lowered her estimate of his age to 15 at the maximum. Just in case he mentioned it to the other older boys, before laying down, she pushed a heavy end table in front of the door. It wouldn't hold up if someone threw their self against the door, but it would wake her up at least. That was good enough, mostly because it was the best that she could do.

Sleeping on the couch turned out to be a bigger problem than she had anticipated. After escaping the Duke's manor, she had only slept on the ground. When she woke up, heart racing from a nightmare that she could not remember, for a moment, the soft surface beneath her made her sluggish mind think that she was back in that bedroom. She jerked, trying to get free of shackles that were no longer there, and immediately fell off of the couch. The pain when her hip hit the hard floor woke her up to realize that she was not there anymore. Zaria crawled back onto the couch, but after tossing and turning for an hour, she folded the blanket and lay on top of it on the floor instead.

In the morning, she folded everything back up and placed it on the end of the couch, then moved the table back away from the door. The bathroom pot that might have grossed her out two months ago had become just another part of life since leaving a world with working plumbing. The wipes were a step sideways from the pot with a washcloth that she was given on the days that she was tethered to the bed, but the smell of the soap on the wipes was much more pleasing and she left her room feeling surprisingly clean.

There was nobody in the dining room. The large grandfather clock against the inside wall showed it was just past 9 in the morning. Zaria compared that to the time on her phone and made a note to pin to her homescreen that told the difference between the two in case she forgot. While she was doing that, Saito Rika stepped into the room from a door Zaria had not been through yet but assumed was the kitchen.

"Good morning," she said with a hesitant smile. Zaria returned hers with a polite one of her own and pushed her phone into her pocket.

"Good morning. Where is everyone?"

The pert nose scrunched up as Saito Rika searched for the words. "The gathering group left already. Getting more water from the store yesterday."

"Oh. Is Gu Cheng upstairs still?"

"He...went with the group. Adachi-Chan stayed behind." The look of discomfort could have been from not knowing the words she wanted, but Zaria suspected it wasn't. The door behind the petite woman opened, and Yamashita poked his head out.

"I thought I heard talking. Good morning, Miss Joseph!"

"Good morning, Yamashita-san," Zaria returned with a smile.

"Oh, try using -kun instead of -san. You are older than me." He backpedaled quickly when she raised an eyebrow. "Not that much older than me!"

Zaria smiled genuinely this time. "Okay. Yamashita-kun."

Saito Rika bowed her head and excused herself to prepare the healthcare room in case there were any injuries when the group came back. Yamashita-kun held the kitchen door open as he asked, "Have you eaten anything yet?"

Zaria shook her head no and entered the kitchen for the first time.

The room was broad and deep. Dark, polished cherry cabinets gleamed along the entire outer wall. The top row was broken only by the two meter wide window, which looked out on a serene garden. The flowers were no longer in bloom, and Zaria wondered if anyone would take the time to maintain it come spring. It would probably be a waste of water since they couldn't use the sprinkler system that poked out here and there.

In the center of the kitchen, a large floating island containing a tarped off sink and the countertop stove with a cabinet oven underneath. The stainless steal appliances gleamed, and the counters had an almost mirror like shine to them in the light.

"This kitchen must have been a dream to cook in," she mused aloud. Yamashita -kun hummed his agreement.

"The first two cabinets are all packaged, ready to eat things that you can pick up for either breakfast or lunch. Once upon a time, we would have worried about creating so much garbage, but now it is worse to dirty up dishes if they aren't needed. We burn the burnable garbage, and whatever isn't safe to burn is bagged and thrown on the other side of the back fence. There is a compost bin in the back corner of the yard. Anything compostable goes there. And dinner we all eat together, so there are dishes at night. You will be on cleaning duty with the other girls."

"You know, that's great that you brought that up." Zaria trapped Yamashita in the kitchen by blocking the door. "I can take care of myself, possibly better than some of the boys on the team, and they know that. So what exactly did CEO Gu say at dinner last night that confined me to the house?"