"You jerk!" Zaria pulled away from Gu Cheng's embrace and scowled at him. "Talk to me! I feel like I am being made to imagine everything you are thinking because you won't talk to me!"

"I talk to you..."

"Yes, telling me that there is only me when some woman is throwing herself is nice and all, but I want you to talk to me about other things too! I thought you wanted to leave me so I could be with someone else!"

"He makes you feel better, and I make you feel worse."

Zaria lowered herself down to perch on the edge of the couch. "Gu Cheng, do you want me to be with him?"

"No."

"I don't want to be with him either! I want to be with you!" She dropped her chin to her chest and slumped over. " Is it too hard to be with me? When I jump at every little thing sometimes and I can't be...as physical as you want?"

The cushion next to her sank, and she felt herself pulled against his chest as he wrapped his arms around her. After a moment, as though he realized he wasn't speaking aloud, he cleared his throat and spoke into the hair on top of her head. "I want to make it better, but I don't know how."

"Just being here for me is good. If I need to be alone, I will tell you. Maybe once we are back home, I can look into therapy. Is that a thing in City C?"

"It is starting to become more popular. I don't know if there are specialists to talk to women about these particular issues, though."

"It's not just women," she said with a chuckle. "These things can happen to men as well. I think I would like to be able to talk to someone who has experience working with this sort of thing. It will probably be worse by the time we get home. Stupid magical black hole keeps pulling in the worst luck from every world."

"What do you mean?"

"Really? In your world, I managed to fall just right to break my wrist on soft sand, and then do you know how many times someone hit me in that arm while it was healing? Then...I don't want to talk about how wrong my good deed went wrong in the next. And if we ignore the existence of dinosaurs and zombies, that dinosaur attacked our BUILDING and destroyed part of it. Do you really think that it would have done that if I had not been there? Why didn't it happen in the six months prior to my arrival, when there were more people being louder and less careful? And then we finally work things out a bit between us, and now we have magical mates turning up! I mean, come on!"

"You did forget something."

Zaria twisted around to look up at his very serious face. "What did I forget?"

"Those bright yellow coats."

The room filled with her startled laughter, and Gu Cheng smiled in response. "See? How could those even exist if it wasn't for me claiming all the bad luck!"

With the doubts and misunderstandings out of the way, the air was lighter, and the buzzing that had been filling her mind retreated. Gu Cheng spoke for some time, trying to explain his thoughts since arriving in the world of sunshine and rainbow colors. Zaria sat and listened, not wanting to interrupt to assure him or ask questions. His soothing voice and familiar scent were calming now that all the worries about the present were being whisked away.

"It's going to be hard, isn't it?" She did not elaborate, just buried her face against his chest.

"We work through the hard. Then we enjoy everything else. Did I mention I ran into that rude woman in the park again?"

When Rika walked in, Zaria was laughing hard enough that her face was turning red. "You managed to do it to just the bottom of her shoes?" She gasped out the question as she tried to breathe. Zaria explained what she was laughing about to a nervously smiling Rika, her eyes centering on the brightly colored scarf that was wrapped around the other woman's neck. "That's a pretty scarf. Did you go and see some shops today, Rika?"

The other woman tucked her hair behind her ear and blushed prettily. "No, I met Adrien for lunch."

Zaria's eyes fluttered as she processed. "Adrien...Vlachos? Speaker Vlachos?" A mischievous smile grew on her face. Rika took one look and excused herself to her bedroom, her feet making quick scuffing noises on the carpet as she stayed just shy of a run the whole way.

"Well," she continued, settling back against Gu Cheng once more. "THAT'S interesting. Speaker Vlachos is buying Rika gifts, and she seems to be very happy about it."

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"People move very quickly here."

"Mm." Zaria closed her eyes and inhaled the fresh mountain scent, wafting off the man next to her. She shook her head to pull it back to the current topic. "I wonder. We haven't met too many people, but even the ones that I have seen or greeted in the big park all seem to be very upbeat and happy. Maybe they don't let their selves worry about waiting when starting new relationships. Yamada and Yuto hit it off right away, and luckily, this world doesn't frown on that like some areas of mine do. Those two are adorable together. If I didn't know better, I would say they have known each other their whole lives. And Rika has been blushing any time someone mentions Speaker Vlachos since the first night. I wonder if it has to do with the Ones Who Have Moved On."

Gu Cheng cleared his throat, his voice somehow shy in a way that tugged at her heart. "And you have me..."

"I do!" Zaria pulled away and patted his knee. "Ah, but you have a proper magical mate! Don't forget about frosty feet! That woman was intense!"

A hearty chuckle followed her into the kitchen, and the two worked together to make lunch. It would be unfair to say that the harmony between them was rare. There were many calm moments where they worked together well. There had been since they met. Something was growing between them, though, as they worked together chopping up vegetables and preparing meat. Zaria could feel it, but she tried not to pay attention to it in case it went away due to being noticed.

The boys came back as they were sitting together at the island counter, large bowls of stir-fried vegetables and chicken in front of them. The three teenagers declined to eat any, having just eaten next door, and after seeing that the two adults were not being so dramatic and serious they sat down on the couches and set up some kind of board game. Gu Cheng and Zaria sat down to watch them after eating and cleaning up. If it wasn't for the dark circles still heavy under Yamada and Hideki's eyes, Zaria could almost believe the boys had always been part of this world. How many people in her world could not only accept meeting someone who drank blood but could become friends with one and maybe even fall in love in such a short amount of time. There were only four years or so between them, but Zaria was in awe at their ability to adapt.

The game group of three became a group of five, and then six when Rika ventured back out of her bedroom not long after. Zaria tried hard to understand the game, which appeared to be something like a cross between civilization and Chutes&Ladders. She won several times and finished well in the others, but she could not explain how she did it. She suspected Gu Cheng was playing interference for her, but she didn't accuse him. He was naturally good at everything he did. There was no doubt in her mind that he would have won every game if he wanted to.

After a game where she somehow came back from the very edges of last place to take second again, she shot him a look with a raised eyebrow. The warm smile that he gave her in return caused her heart to flutter in her chest and the game to come to a screeching halt as everyone else stared at him mesmerized. As soon as he noticed, the smile was gone, casual and aloof face replacing it. But it was too late. Nobody remembered who's turn it was or what happened the previous turns. The good humored laughter that was exchanged as they reset the board had no trace of negativity. Zaria watched the others with a happy smile on her face. What she whispered to Gu Cheng as they played the next game that left him so flustered that he was the first one defeated, she did not share, but her theory that he had been running interference for her received some more weight when she was the next one out.

The sun passed toward the back of the townhouse, where there was only one window in a shared space, at the end of the hall with the bedrooms and the laundry. The room began to get dark early, and they turned on lights to keep playing. Hideki brought out a card game with pictures of cartoonish animals that seemed to be about escaping an animal hospital, and since only four could play that game, they began to rotate out. While Zaria stood in the kitchen , preparing something she hoped would turn out like spaghetti with meatballs, Rika sat in a chair across the counter. She smiled and typed on her phone, her face so calm and happy that she appeared ten years younger. Dinner was nearly ready when she set her phone down with a relaxed sigh and asked if there was anything she could help with.

"I don't have any vegetables to go with this. Maybe you could put together a salad? There is a bottle in the cooling cabinet of some kind of dressing that we can all try." The bottle was hard to miss, the liquid inside almost fluorescent. After only three days, Zaria was already beginning to get used to the bright colors everywhere. "But, more importantly, have you made a new friend, Rika?"

Zaria said it teasingly, and Rika bit her lip and blushed. "Adrien is very kind. I never would have thought that someone could feel so close after so little time. He makes me feel like everything is going to be alright."

"And maybe it will be. Having someone to talk to that makes you happy is a good step in that direction. If it helps, even though I have not talked to him anywhere near as much as you, he seems sincere."

"He does," she agreed in a soft voice. "I would like to keep talking to him while we are here."

She worded it almost like a question, so Zaria reassured her like it was one. "We don't know how long it will be before the pendant is charged again. There is plenty of time to decide if you want to continue on with us."

By the look on her face, the nurse had not considered that she had that option.

"Rika, taking you away from that world was to give you a chance at a proper life and a future. I certainly don't know if that future is going to be following myself and Gu Cheng back to City C, and maybe it is too early for you to make that decision as well. If you want to see what happens with the speaker, why not?"

"We have only been here a couple of days, but you seem more optimistic." Rika moved the bowl of leafy veg to the table, a soft smile on her lips.

"It ended up being a good day." Zaria looked across at Gu Cheng, who happened to glance up at that moment. He seemed to be holding back a smile after his last one threw off an entire game, but she could see it in his eyes.

"I think everyone deserves a chance to be happy. They just have to stop making it hard for their self."