Yuri Worlds
[106] Afterwards
Yuka wound up sleeping till Fiona and Silvia returned from their excursion. She attempted to wake up, sit up, and offer an explanation all at once. Her eyes lightly fluttered, followed by flailing around the seat, and being smothered by a cough. With Carrie's help, her second effort achieved everything she wanted but much slower.
She needed some time in the restroom, and, despite her efforts to deflect blame from breakfast, Fiona just about dropped to her knees in front of the restroom door to apologize for what her cooking did to their guest. Yuka did her best to reassure her that wasn't the cause. She speculated about different microorganisms in the body between different worlds and how there were food travel warnings back in her world about certain countries depending on the local situation. Fiona and Silvia had bought some groceries on the way back in the hopes of making an even better lunch.
They had jumped without authorization. The fact that the only negative consequence so far had been her rumbly tummy was a minor miracle. She rejected the prospect of a medical checkup considering a variety of different factors, but primarily because she wasn't a normal human. As irritating as it felt, she knew, and they knew, that bringing up any health issue would have to go through the company. And it wasn't a health issue; it was just exhaustion and indigestion.
Carrie brought up the fact that she had trouble with food after the festival earlier, so perhaps it was actually that, but with a delayed reaction for Yuka, who latched onto that as the solution to this puzzle. Meanwhile, Carrie wasn't quite so certain of that assessment. She also kept in mind the fact that the company had these invisible air entities that had been around and threatened them, even though Yuka did seem to scare one off. They'd been feasting on their energy and the energy around them, as well as moving it around like invisible, hovering snakes.
It took a little bit longer before Yuka felt she was finished and comfortably snuggled up to Carrie on the couch. As expected, Fiona and Silvia had snippets to share about the world around them. The most remarkable sight at the comic book shop, where Silvia still worked part-time, was the absolute transfiguration of some of the regulars who stopped by with their own fantastic stories and conundrums.
Bruce, now Bridgette, was the proprietor of a nearby, smaller shop and absolutely gushed with girly cosplay ambitions in the place of her once beefy, bulky reality. She had a shy, unexpected partner now in the form of an adorable blonde renamed Luna, nervously wrapped in alternate-universe Gwen Stacy hero garb. And this dynamic duo was just one example of a plethora of cute combos created due to the flood.
These sweet hints of love pushed Yuka closer to her partner. Fiona got the opportunity to check in with her boss, who had ballerina ambitions. Silvia's boss had become a pouty, childish cutie. She noticed the surface scratching along the right side of Fiona's car and had already recommended a detailing place to remedy the worst of it.
Around the time of the third transformed comic book regular mentioned, a firm and precisely regular knock sounded from the front door. It felt especially serious. Once again, Fiona attended to it first. A delivery girl in gray had a small package. As anticipated, it was the contract. The discomfort in Yuka's bowels shut off, as though illness and tiredness were the luxury of relaxed moments.
The delivery girl explained that they had as much time as they wanted to review the contract and all the details. She had a truck nearby where she could wait in perpetuity for the rest of the day. As a merciful bonus, she explained that the company would only be counting the enforcement of the contract from one week at the time of signature. Yuka wasn't even on the clock yet.
The paperwork arrived in a hardened cardboard box with a pull-out tab and a velvet folder within containing glossy but light double-sided pages enumerating all the obligations on both sides if they came to a mutual agreement. A dense forest of legalese sprawled out from the very first page.
Not long after the contract arrived, there was a second knock at the door. Another delivery girl, this time with a very recognizable load. She had their travel bags and possessions logged in with Travel Anywhere. Everything that was dropped off in their room at the Sasaki house after the resort trip also made it into the bundle.
That included all their keys, clothes, books, and miscellaneous possessions. Not included in the delivery were Carrie and Yuka's phones, for the obvious reason that they were likely still hidden under the tree by the shrine. A fortunate yardstick demonstrating that the company didn't know or see everything.
An alluded-to bonus came with this second delivery girl; they gave them one of the tablets that the workers used. It was neither white nor gray, but rather a perfect, glassy, glossy matte black. Fiddling with the device and reading through the included instructions revealed it could directly connect to phones and other sources for communication. The interface already had SOMA NAOKO pinned on the side as a contact. Yuka felt a simultaneously warm and cold shiver rush through her body. Unfortunately, Naoko wasn't available at the moment to connect.
The four of them traced through every line of the contract document. The word 'revocable' popped up more than once, but only about 'violations of good faith agreements'. If Yuka terminated her service to the company, actively sabotaged the efforts of the company to examine her, or committed harm against any representative of the company. It sounded reasonable enough.
All the promised benefits were laid out, with protection pledges delineating everything for friends and family. It was all there, as Yuka expressed. Technical details on the full resources and refurbishment of the location behind the Sasaki house. The exact security clearance gifted to Nishikawa Bianka concerning the national government. Tuition, room and board, and expense coverage.
Carrie found and focused on protections related to herself. She would be wholly and prodigiously protected from all mortal dangers that could befall her. That sounded fine, but it also kind of sounded like they intended to put her in bubble wrap and inject her with Cerberus immortality.
Some live corrections were done to add free book subscriptions where appropriate, mostly for the sake of seeing what the company would allow to be amended. Within minutes, the delivery girl printed out the altered pages with the new changes.
They went over every single inch of the document. Some phrasings and formats bordered on confusing and weird, but nothing stuck out as dangerous or nefarious. Getting to the final signatory page didn't take as long as any of them expected. It still bordered on book size, but a small one. After flipping through for one last check, Yuka waited until the clock announced the new hour. The morning was almost over.
She wrote out both her official birth name and Cerberus with a nervous, slightly shaky hand. It was done. The delivery girl was also a notary and took care of all the documents. She then handed a receipt saying that a representative of the company would be here to 'receive compensation' in exactly seven calendar days.
The exact time locally was recorded on the receipt, along with advice not to flee or do anything that might void the agreement, like attempt to harm or kill a company representative. And it was done. Both of the delivery girls left, and the house and world were quiet again. Naturally, one of the routine emergency vehicle sirens had to swiftly fill that void.
One of the first things they did after the contract was finished was take the rambling, incoherent list of destinations and fun vacation possibilities and organize them into days and objectives. Fiona assured Yuka that her car was readily available for wherever she wanted to go, even if she wanted to run away to the other end of the world, as far as she could drive. The matter of the scratches and repairs was scheduled beyond this week.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
Furthermore, she dug into a special crevice in her bags and retrieved the loaned black handkerchief with puppies that Yuka gave her on the train that very first day. Yuka had forgotten all about it but thanked Fiona with a smile, even though she reassured her that she could probably keep it since so much had changed and she had no idea what possessions she'd have beyond this week. Carrie promised to use her vacation time to retrieve their phones and get Yuka's back.
Related to the phones, Silvia went to work like Bianka, scouring what was returned for any signs of alterations or hostile software retained on the devices. She did some complicated stuff that Carrie didn't quite comprehend, involving a sequestered safe mode load that wouldn't transfer a virus to the rest of her computer while inspecting the files.
Ultimately, the only way to ensure nothing was on the phones was a clean install with the newest files safely preserved externally. The only important things were some text messages and photos taken over there. Chika had actually done more videos than Carrie expected, and the same went for Namiko. Watching the video files on the big screen in Silvia's work area brought a calmly happy and faintly melancholic mood to Yuka.
It wasn't long after that that Carrie and Silvia found their family album in the middle of the bookshelf in the den. Documentation of an anime reality still had a strange and surreal aspect to it for Carrie. Fiona and Silvia professed the same, while Yuka tried to understand the distinction. She had seen each but not long enough with what the three of them considered the normal color swath to describe its nuance.
However, Carrie found that each encounter normalized it for her incrementally. She wasn't quite at the point where looking out at the new world with its texture, tones, and artistic impressions felt genuine yet. But she would have to live with it for the rest of her life.
She felt in a quandary that she couldn't quite work out one way or the other. Why was anime more human? Wasn't the original, depleted version with all its naturalistic tones, gritty nuances, and detailed, lifelike colors supposed to be closer to reality? Why was cel shading the effect of having more human energy? She doubted she would ever know. But looking at her parents, now her and Silvia's moms, in old photos was an absolute trip.
Instead of the gnarled, nearly snarling gray-haired scowl of her mother, there was this light, bright-color-clad lady with trim glasses and a poised figure. She knew from her fragmentary memories orbiting the flower girl of the past that her mother hadn't been transformed into a pious, gentle saint, but there was something less harsh and cruel about her in the reflections she had.
Silvia struggled to unearth what she knew was there. But the oppressive aura of the Horner clan was like trying to squint through a brilliant sun's glow while searching for some cold, distantly orbiting world.
While mom was the bearer of the light brown genetics, never mind that an artistic world probably still didn't work on Disney cartoon inherited characteristics, the pretty lady who used to be dad was the darker brown one. However, Carrie had to admit that reproduction no longer dealt with bodily material but rather spiritual fragments. So maybe it did work in peculiar ways after all. Dad, or other mom, adored button-up plaid, just as Misaki had envisioned, and her figure sure put a stress test on them. More attributes passed along to her daughters.
Silvia gently planted her head against the book. "Your parents always felt more like my parents than my original parents ever did. I just wish I could remember them as they're supposed to be now."
Carrie wished the same and wrapped her arms around her sister. Silvia rocked gently in her embrace.
Yuka endeavored to cheer both of them up, pointing to different photographs and imagining what occurred outside the preserved margins. Carrie's touchtone was the wedding as a flower girl and a general left-turn impression. Fiona came over in the hopes that something connected with her friends might trigger recollections in her as well.
"Volleyball. Volleyball kind of sucked..." The words came without further details, like a lightning strike in Carrie's thoughts. Silvia puffed out a long, thoughtful breath in response, slowly nodding her head but still grappling with an invisible space for something to hang onto that might steady her or provide proper footing.
With quiet uncertainty, Silvia postulated, "We played volleyball together in school." She clearly wanted to express certainty in this statement but came to the end feeling as though she had followed a road without any signs to guide her.
Frustrated, Silvia combed through the pages, looking for something related to school sports that might lead her towards greater certainty. The book was full of a wide variety of photographs, many of them old instant Polaroid-style anime with the colors blasting through but also bleached out.
Only one included the girls in their volleyball uniforms. It was at home, with them wrapping their arms around each other while Silvia cutely flashed her teeth for the camera. Carrie's presence was more subdued, frozen in a moment before she fixed her hair from falling in her face. Silvia's frozen body language, aside from her compensating smile, looked awkward, with her loose gym clothes not doing much to hide her precocious development.
"Slutva. Slutva, Slutva, don't show your buttva. Oh, those bitches..." Silvia fumed but also smiled when she realized she was remembering, even though it was a crappy memory of being tormented by the other girls. That opened up a cascade for Fiona. The girls called her a lot of things, like the Hulk, Shrek, and Lumberbumber.
She managed to laugh them off and turn them around, much to the frustration of her bullies. Not too different from the trajectory of Dwight. It was a small crack in the wall of their memories, hopefully a portentous one, that would help them find even more moments.
Before figuring out lunch, they worked together to clean up the house of all the little nagging bits of clutter and neglected disorganization. The three of them made sure that Yuka didn't shoulder the cleanup responsibilities and was given small tasks and a supervisory role. But she wasn't having any of that. She delighted in opening up the windows, airing the drapes, discovering spots that no one had touched in ages, and organizing the fridge and pantry. If they had all this space, especially compared to back home, then she was going to make sure it was used.
The quiet harmony of rediscovered empty spaces lent beauty and solemn relaxation to the house. Yuka suggested more small plants, a flowing water fixture, and, of course, a family shrine. She advised them firmly not to block the way between the front door and the rest of the house because that would interrupt the energy flow. Maybe put some of the coats away in the closet as well.
Partway through cleaning, the air kicked on and gave off a drowsy puff of relaxation. Before they finished up, Yuka spotted their blank, colorless, unfinished, 3-D printed figurines in the shape of their visiting forms. Carrie thought that they seemed to retain lingering qualities of the world that just departed, appearing more like inserted, basic 3-D models.
The three of them stared at their figures for quite a while with uncertain, spinning thoughts swishing around their heads.