"I saw a door on my way home."
Hisako blinked and set down the nail gun. She squinted behind her safety glasses and pushed them off her sweaty face, onto her dark hair, before turning to look at Kohaku. She peeled off her gloves and wiped the sweat from her palms onto her jumpsuit, then wiped her face with her sleeve.
"A door?" Hisako echoed quietly, stepping closer in two long strides.
Her younger friend and coworker stood up and leaned in. Their youthful face was bright with a wide, mischievous smile–a smile Hisako was all too familiar with. Up close, she could see that their messy hair had been freshly bleached–the dark roots that Hisako had seen the day before were gone.
"A door," they confirmed.
Hisako leaned in even more. She glanced around, making sure nobody else was listening in. "Did you report it?"
Kohaku smiled wider. "No. But I took a picture. Look."
Kohaku took out their phone, hiding it between their bodies lest they get caught loafing around–or talking about a real-life door.
Kohaku unlocked the phone and swiped through photos of their most recent explorations before landing on a picture of a door in an alley.
Hisako vaguely recognized the surroundings, and she knew there wasn't even a doorway there. The little bars and shops backing into the alley were too small to have doorways to the dumpsters–the alley was seamless brick.
She looked closer, zooming in to examine the door. It was simple yet elegant, made of what appeared to be wood and painted glass. In the dark blue wood of the door, the glass offered a view of what should've been the interior it was attached to, but it wasn't. The handle was a brass, ornate, round knob shaped to look like a flower.
"You see why I didn't report it now?" Kohaku whispered excitedly. "I go by that alley every day, and it just appeared two days ago. Nobody could've installed it in that wall so quickly without me noticing."
Hisako squinted. The view on the other side of the window was a warped landscape of a city–buildings sprouting out of each other like trees, and sidewalks becoming walls. It was a twisted world, but maybe the glass distorted the view.
Hisako struggled to believe that any artisanal glass window could produce an image that distorted.
"You should report it," Hisako suggested finally. "That's not right."
Kohaku sighed with a pout and put their phone away. "That's so boring! You need to get out more, girl."
Hisako hurriedly shifted her safety glasses back down. "I'm fine how I am."
Kohaku frowned and got back to work, measuring the wood planks to be cut and set into the frame by Hisako.
"Games aren't real," Kohaku protested stubbornly. "Why adventure online when you can do it IRL?"
Hisako rolled her eyes and got back to nail-gunning. The loud shots filled the air, but Kohaku filled the pauses with more chatter.
"Are games really that satisfying?" Kohaku asked.
"Yeah!" Hisako shouted between shots.
Kohaku crossed their arms and hovered around Hisako. "They're a 'rewarding experience'? Enough to make up for this slop?" They gently kicked a stack of planks over.
The wood clattered, but nobody noticed it over the sound of the air compressor's loud whine.
"Yes, Kohaku. Really. I'm fine with my life," Hisako said, pausing her labor. "I'm not an adrenaline junky like you are."
"You don't have to be an adrenaline junky to want more than this." They gestured widely at the construction site.
Hisako entertained a look around.
They stood in the blooming frame of a simple building. Likely, the ground floor would be a little shop, and the upper floors would be apartments just like everything else in this part of the O-Megumi Shi.
Through the skeletons of the walls, they could see their coworkers milling about, putting up more framing like her, cutting wood, measuring planks like Kohaku, and ensuring and overseeing the accuracy of their work.
Hisako didn't love her job, but she didn't hate it. She was indifferent about it, but she enjoyed spending time with Kohaku and the others. When it rained, they complained together, and it felt like everything was whole. When they smiled, she smiled too, and when they worked together seamlessly like a machine, she felt bigger than just one woman.
What joy she didn't get at work, she got after she went home and gamed with some online friends. It wasn't as uniting as work could get, but it scratched the itch to help her unwind and enjoy the quiet afternoons.
"I'm fine," Hisako finally decided. "This is a good life. I'm comfortable."
"Comfortable," Kohaku echoed, like the word was physically painful to say. "Would you rather be comfortable or happy?"
Hisako rolled her eyes again. "Why can't I have both?"
Kohaku stared at her meaningfully, as if to say, "You're smarter than that." They picked up their stack of planks and walked off to the saw without any nagging from Hisako to keep busy.
Hisako returned to her work. Regrettably, for the rest of their shift, they didn't speak again. Kohaku put their ear protectors on and kept their head down, and Hisako did the same after a few uncomfortably still moments.
Hisako was so cowed by the last few hours that she didn't remember to tell Kohaku they ought to report the door and forget about it.
It was too late, walking home from the site, when she did remember, but she knew better than to text Kohaku about them not reporting a door. She would tell them the next day, she told herself, as she reached the park near her apartment.
She ducked under a tree as her stomach twisted a little.
What if Kohaku went back to the door? They could get caught looking at it and not reporting it, or, knowing Kohaku's penchant for exploration, they could go inside.
She staggered on a root, jerking her mind from her roiling musings.
She hugged her arms, heart thumping from the nervous thoughts and sudden fright.
Kohaku wasn't stupid, she reminded herself.
Just young, another part of her piped up. Too young to be smart enough to let sleeping dogs lie. Kohaku paused at the edge of the park.
Were doors even dangerous? Maybe they weren't dangerous–maybe they were just banned and demonized for being inconvenient.
They were in the way, weren't they? They could get stuck, or trap people in a building–a burning building, even. They were a fire hazard.
Hisako nodded to herself.
Doors weren't threats. They were obsolete and thus replaced. Why have a moving wall blocking off a room when you could just hire a human with eyes to ensure that people were safe?
Hisako pushed through the bushes and reached the road her apartment was on. While neither she nor Kohaku knew doors, she trusted that Kohaku knew urban exploration like she knew games. It was what they did.
She strode down her street in hurried steps. The only light in this part of the city was from the street lamps and a few small bars across the way. Her footsteps were audible against the chatter and night sounds.
The security guard greeted her and let her by, then she ascended to her apartment. Her neighbors were either already asleep or not visible in their doorways, so she greeted only her building's security before getting into her apartment.
She passed through the entry room before closing the entry vestibule's curtain behind her. She slumped into her couch and took a moment to cool off, staring out the window.
She could see the park, quiet and dark.
Peaceful.
Her eyes drifted shut. Kohaku would be okay. She would talk with them in the morning and, if she had to, she'd report the door herself.
She fell asleep convinced everything would be okay–that the world she fell asleep in would be the same world she'd wake in.
She woke up believing it, too.
She woke slowly, feeling the result of sleeping slumped over on the couch immediately. She groaned and rolled to her feet to stretch for a long, needed moment.
She looked at the clock on her wall and sighed. She'd have time to shower and wash up, but she'd have to pick up breakfast on the way to the site.
She went about her morning routine, then was out the door in a fresh uniform earlier than expected, so she took a bit of time to sit down and eat breakfast at a cafe on the way. Before leaving, she got enough coffee for everyone at work and a bag of assorted pastries.
To keep everything fresh and warm, she hurried to work and arrived just as the older veterans did. They were happy to get coffee, and they all grabbed a pastry, too.
The rest filtered in a little ahead of the time to clock in, and Hisako prepared for work as she awaited Kohaku's arrival. They weren't usually late, but occasionally they were just barely on time–they got sidetracked a lot seeing new places to wander about later.
Hisako imagined they were still curious about the door–maybe they'd taken more pictures or looked around for another door, or signs of who put the door up.
Hisako waited. The others finished their breakfasts, and she waited, checking her watch. Clock-in rolled around, and Kohaku wasn't in.
"Is Morimoto-san coming in today?" the forewoman asked.
Hisako hadn't noticed her approach–she'd been too absorbed staring down the street that Kohaku usually came down.
"They didn't call in?" Hisako asked quietly.
The forewoman shook her head. "Morimoto-san can't keep doing this," she warned. "They're already on two strikes this job."
"I–Please just give them a moment. I'm sure they're on their way. They didn't say anything to me."
The forewoman paused. She frowned, then nodded slowly. "Alright. If they didn't say anything to you, I'm sure something important came up."
"Thank you so much," Hisako breathed. "We'll make it up to you."
The forewoman gave a soft, sympathetic smile. Her eyes had a gleam of something more sad, like a woman looking at a runt puppy trying to get adopted. "I know you will, and I know you'll help them figure things out."
Hisako lowered her head and ducked back into the site. She'd do the work for both of them, then she'd drag Kohaku to work the next day by the ear if she had to.
She worked the day with the power of spite and frustration for Kohaku.
The kid had not found a work-life balance. Maybe that's why they climbed buildings and crawled through abandoned tunnels. It was some kind of maladaptive form of decompressing. Gaming was a far saner option.
When the day was done, she clocked out and half-ran to Kohaku's place. On the way, she took the route that would have her pass the door in the alley.
Her heart pounded as she neared it, and her phone burned in her pocket. She would report it the second she saw it. She rounded the corner, and–
She stumbled to a stop.
The door wasn't there. She couldn't mistake the alley, with its rugged bricks and dumpster setup, just as it was in the picture.
The door just wasn't there anymore. Maybe that's what Kohaku had been doing; removing the door themself, or working hard to get it reported.
She continued with a hope she hadn't had moments ago, hurrying in her clunky boots, creating a clatter in the dusky street.
The guard for Kohaku's building recognized her and signed her in, allowing her to blitz right on up the stairs.
Kohaku's privacy curtain was up, but it didn't make Hisako hesitate; she pushed past and into Kohaku's small apartment.
Unlike her home, Kohaku's was a barebones studio with a mattress and a few scrap-wood shelves for things Kohaku found while exploring. The walls would be covered in Kohaku's favorite photos one day, once they learned how to print them for cheap.
Hisako slowed, toeing off her boots and sliding around the wood floors in her socks. The main room was empty, so she went to the bathroom.
She knocked on the doorway, then called out: "Kohaku?"
She knocked again, then slid open the bathroom curtain. They weren't there either. Her heart twisted in her chest.
She raced back down the steps, barely shoving her boots back on.
The guard jumped a bit when she practically jumped down the steps to reach him.
"Did Kohaku leave this morning?"
"No, ma'am." He shifted and fished a clipboard out of his desk, flipping back through the last twenty-four hours. "Morimoto-san didn't come home last night. They're not logged as entering."
Hisako staggered out of the building. Her feet took her home without her mind.
Her head whirled too quickly to form a coherent thought, but her body screamed with adrenaline and fear. She was shaking as she ducked under a branch to enter the park home.
She stumbled against the roots more than usual in the dark and received small scratches from branches scraping at her as she messily pushed through.
Cling. Cling.
Wind chimes.
She paused. She'd never heard that sound here before.
She turned to the noise and saw a door.