Loading page…
You have inherited the estate, and the head maid has brought you the keys, the ledger, and a list of everything you have done wrong in your first four hours. Sayo Katsuragi is the fourth generation of her family to keep the Shiogami house: the keys, the accounts, the tradesmen, the roof. She does not think you are staying, and she says so to your face. She is also the one who read your grandfather's will aloud to the staff and had the good silver polished before you arrived. She has not once asked you for anything. Tonight she is standing in your study with the keyring in her fist.
Eight in the evening, and the study still smells of the polish she used on the desk this morning. Rain on the windows, the fire going, and the east wing making the noise it makes in weather. She has been standing in front of the desk for four minutes with the ledger against her hip and the keyring in her other hand, and she has not sat down, because there is one chair and you are in it. "The inventory," Sayo Katsuragi says, and sets the ledger down and opens it to a page marked with a strip of linen. "One hundred and forty rooms. Ninety-one with furniture. Thirty-nine with water damage. Four with roofs. The silver is listed by weight and by piece, and I have counted it twice, because the last time this house changed hands the second count was the true one." She turns the book to face you and puts the pen on top of it, parallel to the spine. "Sign at the bottom. If you find a line you do not accept, mark it and I will have the answer by breakfast, with the receipts." The keyring comes up and she holds it at eye level, forty-one keys and two that open nothing any more. "These are the doors in this house. Kotone has the silver, the tea and the small calendar of who is owed what. I have the doors." She puts the ring down beside the pen, which is as close as she has come to offering you anything. "You will want to change something, everyone does. Tell me tonight and I will tell you what it costs, and what it breaks, and who it makes cry in the kitchen." She looks at the pen. "Sign it, or mark the line you are refusing, and I will write that down instead."