By the next morning, each of the other residents reached a decision. It was not an easy task. Even surrounded by death, the only world that they knew was the one they were standing in. The bodies of their families were out in the city somewhere. All of their friends as well. Memories of the time before the outbreak were what they clung on to in order to get by each day. Leaving and going to a new world, a possibility they were still struggling to accept, seemed too risky and the same as giving up on all of their previous hopes.
In the end, all but one agreed to go along. Only Sensei abstained. He did not argue with them, listening calmly as they spoke their minds. When they were all done, he explained that he was old, and even in a perfect environment, he did not have many more years in front of him. He had no interest in leaping into the unknown. This world was where his wife rested, and he saw no need to leave it.
The pendant was reconfigured without knowing that someone would actually say no, so it ended up with a little more potential energy than necessary. In the end, it would not add too much time to the overall charge wait, so the guardian did not voice his opinions on the matter aloud to the group. Since agreeing to do it, he had firmly switched his stance to be that anyone who chose not to go was an idiot and refused to speak to the elderly man.
The pendant was once more resting on Gu Cheng's chest, but on top of his shirt now. He no longer felt the need to hide it. If the gatherers decided that another trip or two was needed just to keep them going and make sure Sensei had enough supplies, then he would tuck it inside just to make sure it stayed out of the way. Talk had not progressed far enough to come to a decision about more trips by the time everyone was finished with whatever they had chosen to eat for breakfast. Gu Cheng and the guardian cleaned up their individual messes, small though they were, and went out to the backyard area to begin working on magical control. Zaria tried to follow, but she was told that she was a distraction and sent back in pouting. She wanted to see Gu Cheng being serious and magical.
"It is sad that Sensei does not want to go with us," Saito-san lamented as they sat together in the formal sitting room that morning. The boys were off somewhere else in the house, and Sensei had gone to sleep since he was normally on nighttime gate duty. "I understand why he wants to stay, but it will be hard to say goodbye."
"Has he been with you since the beginning of all this?" Zaria asked, waving her hand vaguely around her. "I always wanted to ask how everyone came to be together, but I didn't want to have to have a translator repeating everything back to me. Not that your English was horrible!"
Saito-san smiled and nodded her head. "Thank you for saying so, but often I struggled to understand you or to come up with the words that I want. I did not start learning english until I was in university. There was a boy..." She blushed prettily and cleared her throat. "I am glad that we can understand each other now. May I see the mark that the magician put on you?"
"Mmm," Zaria agreed with a laugh. "But I wouldn't let him hear you call him that. He would probably think a magician is even further below a mage and look how insulted he was when I called him THAT."
She pulled her button-up shirt down off of her shoulder and rolled up the short sleeve beneath. Saito-san leaned forward and examined the bold black lines that made up the circle and symbols enclosed within. "Fascinating," she exclaimed. "And what if I spoke in another language? Would it work then as well?"
"It would, if it works the same as the pendant does. The first world on my own, everyone spoke Mandarin, and apparently, in the next world, it was French. I didn't notice any difference. Right now, I am speaking in English still, but you are hearing me in Japanese. If I tried to speak something else, then you would still hear it in the language you speak the best. Theoretically."
Saito-san finished looking and moved back to her side of the couch. "You asked if Sensei was with us since the beginning. He was the first, after me, that is. The man who owned this house was a retired professor. He had no children or grandchildren, so he hired me to take care of his health once he grew old enough that he was not able to do so himself. He passed away just before... all of this began. We had become good friends, and he wanted me to stay here after he was gone."
She paused, steadying herself before continuing. "When the news reported that the virus came back and that the water supply was tainted, it was only days before there were no more sounds outside. Not even screams. I was standing out in the front yard, still in shock, when I saw a figure standing out in front of the gate. Sometimes, I saw the dead wander by, but I am a quiet person, and they never noticed me here. But this body stood there and then bowed to me. Sensei had no idea why they did not attack him as he walked down the street. Perhaps it was because of the noises the larger dinosaurs were making as they wandered down the streets. At that time, the plant eaters were still trying to find homes, and they made quite a lot of noise. I do believe that the one with the spikes on its tail had wandered by not long before. Perhaps the dead were still distracted or following it. I wish I had paid more attention at the time..."
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Zaria made attentive noises, encouraging her to continue.
"He was the first person I spoke to in days, and for days after. Eventually, our numbers swelled, we let in whomever we saw running from the dead. At one point, there were almost 20 of us..."
"Is that when you started organizing your gathering parties and doing guard duty? I imagine that a lot more sound was being broadcast from here with so many people."
"Yes," she agreed, her short hair just barely missing her shoulders as she turned her head. "Even some who spent that first week running and knew the dead were attracted to sound thought it would be okay being loud inside the house. The number pressing against the gate worried us, so we organized better to take care of the problem there and then made plans as a group to find more water and food. Most of those we lost were taken from us early on when we all did things wrong because we had not learned yet. The other day was the first time anything had gotten through our gate..."
"I'm sorry," Zaria offered, twisting her fingers on her lap. " I wish I knew what happened exactly so that we could make sure it never happens again."
"No, there is no reason to apologize. None of us thought it was possible, and we have all become less cautious. But now we have a chance that I would never have dreamed of being possible. I have seen magic, and a man turns into a little boy. We are going to leave this world and go to a new one. Yes, things may not be any better there, but we will not know if we don't try. Our families and our friends are already lost to us here. I don't think they would want us to join them so soon. I would like to believe that the afterlife will be connected no matter where we go." Saito-san smiled softly, one finger reaching up to hook her hair behind her left ear.
The room was large, but the plush rugs below their feet kept their voices from bouncing around in echoes. Shelves that looked to be stained bamboo lined the wall on either side of a stretch of wall with a slightly darker rectangular outline. Zaria guessed a television had sat there, once upon a time. The shelves were empty, giving the room the appearance of a construction site full of scaffolding. Only the overstuffed couches and soft rugs gave an idea of what had been there once before.
"Why are all shelves empty?" She asked after starting at them for some time. It was the first time she had been in the room. Socializing was never her strong point, and previously, she had not wanted to be in the room when she might see Gu Cheng and Saito-san together...
"Once, they held memorabilia from the professor's many travels. Faces carved out of wood, vases of hand painted porcelain, things of that nature. After the first week with so many people moving around, I transferred everything into bins and moved them into that little storage room off of the kitchen. I reasoned that it was too much effort dusting it all every week, but really, I couldn't bear the thought of someone breaking something. I still dust the shelves, but it is much quicker now. There was a large television there," she pointed at the darker rectangle. "It would still work with the electricity from the panels, but of course the sound..."
"Yeah, I can see how that would be frowned upon," Zaria replied with a grin. The two women chatted for most of the morning, Zaria asking all the questions she felt uncomfortable asking the much younger Yamashita-kun and Saito-san asking all about the worlds Zaria had seen.
There was a previously unsuspected passion in the nurse, who always behaved so properly and politely. She spoke of dreams she had held on to despite the end of the world. With a large home to live in that needed very little spent on it, she had just decided to go back to school to become a doctor. Perhaps one that specialized in pediatrics. There was a bright and promising office worker who was courting her, and she was beginning to sway to his kind words and actions. Saito-san had a plan to improve herself and was just opening up to the possibility of love when it was all taken away.
Still, during the day when she was not needed, she curled up in the clinic and studied from the textbooks that she purchased while signing up for classes a few days before the dinosaur jail break. Even though the number of patients was limited to what was inside their home, she wanted to learn to become even better than she already was. The shock of the situation may have pushed all of them into more traditional mindsets, but Saito-san was not a shrinking violet. Zaria felt her respect for the woman growing with every word.
"Don't blame the young boys for their manners since you have arrived. I knew young Yamada before everything happened, and he was a good boy, polite. They are all scared, but they have been told that men do not cry. That men are not afraid. They are struggling to fit into their idea of a man's role. It has been so long since this began, and I would bet that all of us have harbored suspicions that we were, at best, abandoned. Their need for normalcy is what drives their behavior, but none of us knows what normal should be anymore."
Saito-san turned sideways on the couch to look out the front window toward the magical red wall. "I understand Sensei's view. I am the next oldest of us all. Approaching 30, so much of my life is already over. But those boys have lost so much more. They haven't had the chance to finish growing up, discover their dreams, and find love for the first time. Being in charge of supplies, or for young Yamashita, setting up a security system for us, it gave them purpose. But they all know that what they are doing now might be the only thing they ever get to do the rest of their lives. I will not argue with Sensei. He feels that he wants to see the end of his life here, in the city he has lived in his entire life. I won't let any of those boys stay behind, though. They deserve something else. Anything would be better than the future that awaits them here."