Chapter 9

Master’s apartment was absolutely not meant for three people.  Two was manageable, even if it had been more than a little embarrassing for Sayuri to discover that the walls were thin enough that her camshows were audible to everyone in the adjacent rooms.  Three, though, meant sharing rooms that weren’t large to begin with, bringing privacy to a minimum.  Compounding the issue was that Haruko had brought her twelve Mr. Chargers along with her, though fortunately she’d left the rest of her equipment behind for her successor to use.  Neither Sayuri nor Ayane could deny that the little guys were helpful when it came to taking care of the household chores, but in such a small space, they also had a habit of getting underfoot to a degree that was decidedly unbearable.

“Alright, that’s it.” Ayane groused as she nearly tripped over one of the Mr. Chargers for the third time that day. “We need to move.”

Sayuri groaned.  She’d known it would have to happen eventually: her body didn’t age, and sooner or later the neighbors would notice if she never stopped being in her twenties.  She’d expected it to be at least twenty years before she had to move on, though, not a few months.  Unfortunately, the arrival of an unknown cousin due to a tragic accident, and the subsequent arrival of her best friend now posing as her slightly-younger sister, meant her timetable had moved up quite a ways.

“Where do we go, though?” she asked.

Haruko shrugged from her position lounging on the couch.  “We could just get a bigger apartment.”

“We could…” Ayane hesitated, a rare look of apprehension coming to her face.  “We could move into my house.”

“Are you sure?” Sayuri asked.  Ayane hadn’t been back to her house since the loss of her parents.  Sayuri knew from experience that it would have to be flooded with memories that were going to be immensely painful for her now, just like this apartment had been agony to live in without Master for weeks after his passing.

“It’s paid for.” Ayane replied.  “If we don’t move in, I’d have to sell it or rent it out, so I’d rather move back in than lose it.”

“What about you?” Haruko asked, looking at Sayuri.  “You gonna be okay with moving out of here?”

Sayuri looked around the apartment.  Three rooms and a bathroom.  It had been practically her entire world for years on end, first with Master and then on her own.  But she’d grown, and her world had become tiny and cramped.  Would Master have carried on living here with so many houseguests?  He probably never would have had them in the first place, she thought, but if somehow he were forced to live with other people, he would have found it cramped too.

“Yeah.” she responded after a few moments.  “I think I’m ready.”

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Master and his brother had both come from a well-to-do family.  Where Master had spent his inheritance frugally, living off the interest in a small apartment, Ayane’s father had picked a more upscale residence.  It was a two-story house in a suburban neighborhood, a tall brick fence separating it from the houses on either side.  The yard was overgrown after about a month of neglect, but the house itself seemed in fine condition.  There was a one-car garage on the right side of the house, with the second floor built over it to accommodate the roofdeck on the left.

Haruko whistled as they approached.  “Nice place.”  Sayuri shot her a dirty look, and the Hresvelgr winced in chastisement.  “Sorry.”

Ayane handled the walk to the front door just fine, and the foyer where her father’s coat still hung only gave her pause.  Ultimately, though, it was the sight of the kitchen table that her mother had once cooked upon that made her freeze up.  She felt Sayuri’s arms slip around her from behind, hugging her around her stomach.

“You haven’t cried yet, right?  Go ahead.”

“I’m not,” Ayane insisted through labored, panicked breathing.  “I won’t...”

She did.  Her knees gave out and she sunk to the floor, Sayuri supporting her descent to make it gentle.  A month’s worth of bottled-up grief came flooding out in fits and sobs.  Sayuri simply held her, cradling Ayane in her arms without saying a word.

Haruko kept her distance, unsure of how to console the crying human girl.  Her response when she’d lost her loved one had been the opposite of Sayuri’s.  Where her friend had entrenched herself in her master’s home on his passing, and begun this mad scheme the three were now participating in, Haruko’s instinct when she found her own master gone had been to run away.  She’d never seen home again.  Her last memory of it was the carpet stained with Master’s blood.

Eventually Ayane spent all the tears she had to give, though the experience left her too drained to move on her own.  Sayuri escorted her upstairs, to Ayane’s old bedroom.  It was just down the hall from her parents’ room, next to another room meant for a potential little sibling she’d ultimately never had, and which had become her father’s office when they decided she was to be an only child.  Her own room, at least, didn’t have much in the way of painful memories, and she was able to sleep when Sayuri put her to bed.

“You sure this was a good idea?” Haruko asked quietly as Sayuri came out from Ayane’s room.

“I think so.” Sayuri replied, looking back at the sleeping human girl.  “Facing it helps, eventually.”

Haruko didn’t respond, setting instead to checking out the remainder of the house.  The three beds, bath and master bath made up the entirety of the second floor, with the hallway terminating in a sliding door out onto the roofdeck.  There were some potted plants here, still healthy if a bit overgrown.  The first floor had the necessities: foyer, kitchen, living room, laundry, another bathroom, and the garage.  A pleasant surprise for the robot girls was that the basement was actually quite spacious, and furnished at that, with its main space devoted to a home theater and enough side rooms that it wouldn’t take much to make another apartment out of it if they ever somehow had more guests.  For the night, though, they slept on the couches in the living room, not wanting to use the only other bed.

The next day, the trio started the process of making the house their own.  A truck came bearing the contents of Master’s apartment, the figures all carefully boxed up by Sayuri.  They combined the contents of the two homes, deciding on what they wanted to keep and what they were willing to discard.  Much of what they kept, they rearranged, giving the living room in particular a new look so that it would feel more like a new room to Ayane.  Two display cases added to the room’s corners displayed Sayuri’s personal favorites among Master’s figures, using them as an accent for the space.

Haruko’s contributions, in contrast, were all new, as the Hresvelgr had no possessions to speak of but was quite eager to get some now that she had a home.  She claimed the basement’s utility room as her own, installing new fabricators and tools that turned the space from one to do occasional carpentry projects into as close to a fully functional factory as one could get without going to a manufacturer directly.  The upstairs office she also claimed, turning it into her own bedroom.  The master bedroom they gave to Sayuri, though she traded out the large bed for something more modest in size, moving the large frame into the basement as a guest bed where Ayane wouldn’t have to see it often.  Ayane found herself surprised by Sayuri and Haruko’s casual displays of strength more than once during this process, even though the rational part of her sourly noted that of course they were strong, they were robots.

Haruko’s other contribution was a shrine for the foyer, the nicest she could find.  Sayuri’s master’s ashes were placed inside, next to those of the family he’d been separated from in life.

“That’s enough tears from both of you, alright?” Haruko said as she put her arms around the shoulders of both other women.  “Everyone’s had plenty of sad times by now.”

Ayane grunted as the impromptu hug dragged her up against Sayuri and Haruko’s chests.  The flush of annoyance felt strangely comforting.  Haruko had barged her way into their family, but somehow it felt right to have her there.  It was soothing to have three people in the house again.

Sayuri for her part leaned into the hug.  She looked at the picture of Master within the shrine for a few moments, then closed her eyes as she held her new family.

“Yeah.  I’ll keep going, Master.  Always.”