Chapter 5: Floor Painting

The canvas was not dry until Monday night, so on Monday night they painted it.

Emi's shift had been swapped to Haruka after a lot of whining.

Misaki had gone home to sleep for the first time in a week.

That left the two of them, a six-mat room, and a city of wet blue.

Kokone knelt at the edge of the cloth in one of Emi's old T-shirts and a pair of shorts.

Her hair was in a messy knot with a pencil through it.

She held a brush.

"Don't grip it," Emi said. "It isn't going to run away."

"It might."

"It's a brush."

"Everything I hold gets taken away from me eventually," Kokone said lightly, and then looked as if she wished she hadn't.

Emi decided to let it go.

She crouched behind her, took her wrist and turned it so the bristles faced down.

"Here. Light touch. You're doing the lights of a train line. Short strokes, one after another, like beads."

Kokone made one.

It was too thick.

"Again."

She made another, smaller, and a third.

"There," Emi said. "Now it looks like a train."

"It looks like a caterpillar."

"A caterpillar riding a train."

Kokone giggled.

The sound was low and genuinely surprised, nothing like her livestream voice, and Emi caught herself smiling at the back of her neck.

She let go of the wrist.

They worked for an hour without talking.

The train outside went by every nine minutes, and every time the window hummed.

Emi painted the rivers.

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