Nipochaos
Copyright© 2023 by Old Man with a Pen
Chapter 4
Mioko Fujiwara
I was thrilled ... Sato-sama was taking time off from his duties as a Japanesse Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer to visit me.
I should preface that with the fact... if he wanted to see me.
“Fifteen minutes is 15 minutes?” I was asking ... not that there was anybody to ask, I was kneeling at the doorway ... waiting. Today was day 21 ... three weeks ... earth days.
“No matter how long he’s here,” Eva Caretaker Coordinator said from behind me.
I jumped ... scared me, she did.
Eva was ‘traditional,’ she knelt beside me, “Ceiling-sama?”
“Hai.”
“Lovely home ... very 11th century,” Eva said.
“The research was enormous.”
The structure ... was some three to three and and a half hundred feet long and 100 feet wide. the interior would have been instantly recognized as the domicile of Samurai of some standing. It was ‘walled’. however the ‘walls’ comprised the outside perimeter of the buildings inside the wall.
IF ... if the whole shebang had been built outdoors ... so to speak. Ceiling has done ‘it up brown,’ as the saying goes. The interior was traditional ... the exterior? nobody saw the exterior.
JW and Sato-san saw the change immediately. The white hallway on the Crossroasd side was ‘double wide’ and about 20 feet deep. The door at the end was of very ornately carved dark stained polished teak with a small high up barred sliding panel behind the bars. The panel slid open and shut faster than a ninja could throw a shuriken. The sounds of bars raised and chains rattling ... the door opened.
We stepped through ... JW was gone.
Kneeling were two women with heads to the floor.
“Welcome home, Sato-sama,” greeted the elder. She stood. “I am the nakodo the ‘go-between,’ Please allow me to present Mioko Fujiwara, as a possible prospective house keeper.”
Pure formality ... but traditional.
“Stand up, girl,” Eva said. “He cannot examine you down there.”
Mioko stood, Sato pushed up her face with a finger to her chin.
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