Chương 4: Chapter 3: A quiet Morning

Whatever had happened to the clocks, whatever had happened to my house, whatever that thing outside had been... None of it was going to be solved by standing in the middle of the kitchen. I rubbed my eyes and let out a slow breath. The adrenaline was finally wearing off, leaving behind nothing but a dull ache in my shoulders and an exhaustion that seemed to seep into every muscle.

"Tea..." Right now, tea sounded like the answer to every problem in the universe. I filled the kettle from the sink, set it on its base, and flicked the switch. The familiar click echoed softly through the kitchen. While the water heated, I wandered over to the pantry and opened the cupboard almost absentmindedly. A box of crackers. Some biscuits. A half-open bag of salted peanuts.

"Good enough." I grabbed the crackers and set them on the counter before reaching for a mug. The kettle clicked. I poured the steaming water over the tea bag and waited for the leaves to stain the water amber. For a few blissfully quiet seconds, I let myself enjoy the warmth rising from the mug. My hands had finally stopped shaking. I took a sip. Then reached for one of the crackers.... Halfway there... I stopped. The cracker remained suspended between the box and my mouth.

A thought, painfully simple, forced its way into my head. I didn't know where I was. That was bad enough. But I also had no idea when—if ever—I would be able to buy food again. Slowly, I lowered the cracker back into the box. My gaze drifted around the kitchen. The refrigerator. The freezer. The cupboards. Then, almost by instinct, toward the cellar door. How much food did I actually have? I frowned. Normally, I never would have been able to answer that question. I knew there was pasta downstairs. Rice.

Canned food. A few things in the freezer. But quantities? Not a clue. Every time I ran low on something, I'd simply add it to my shopping list and pick it up on my next trip. Except... There might not be a next trip. Come to think of it... I'd been trying to avoid grocery shopping for the past couple of weeks. Every time I had considered going, I'd decided there was still enough in the pantry for another day or two. Apparently procrastination had just become a survival strategy. Or a very expensive mistake.

I looked again toward the cellar door.

"I should count everything." The sentence sounded absurd. Just a few hours ago, taking inventory of my pantry would have been one of the most boring ways imaginable to spend a night. Now it felt like one of the most urgent things to do. I picked up my mug and headed back into my office. If I was going to do this properly, I'd need to write everything down. My office was just as it was when I left it. The only change was my lazy monitor that had gone to sleep. A slight nudge of the mouse brought it back to life.

2: 58 AM. I stared.

"You too? Are you kidding?" This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it I looked over my shoulder toward the hallway, where the wall clock quietly continued its journey through the morning without asking anyone's permission. I wasn't in the mood to argue with time anymore. I opened the top drawer of my desk, took out a spiral notebook and a ballpoint pen, and made my way to the cellar. The cellar greeted me with its familiar cool air. Concrete walls. Metal shelving.

Plastic storage boxes. It smelled faintly of dust and cardboard. I set my mug on one of the shelves, opened the notebook to the first blank page, wrote Food Inventory across the top, then got to work.... The process was mind-numbingly monotonous. Count. Write. Move to the next shelf. Rice. Pasta. Flour. Sugar. Salt. Cooking oil. Canned tomatoes. Beans. Corn. Soup. Tuna. Packets of instant noodles. Coffee. Tea... Every cupboard. Every shelf. Every box.

Even the forgotten purchase that had been slowly pushed to the back because I'd bought something newer instead. I opened the freezer compartment above the refrigerator. Frozen vegetables. A few ice cubes. Half a bag of fries. A couple packs of frozen meat. Not much else. The garage wasn't much better. Against the far wall sat the large chest freezer. I lifted the lid. A bag of ice. Some freezer packs. Little else. I'd been meaning to fill it for months. Looking at it now, that laziness felt expensive.

By the time I finished checking the freezer in the garage and returned to the cellar for one last look around, three pages of the notebook were filled with quantities, dates and rough estimates. I leaned against the door frame and looked over the totals. It could have been worse. Much worse. If I rationed carefully... Stretched the rice and pasta, and treated canned food as a necessity rather than convenience... I could probably make everything last close to two months. Two months wasn't comfortable.

It wasn't healthy. But it was survivable. Proper meals, though? Actual variety. The sort of food I'd normally cook... A week, maybe two. I sighed quietly. Not great. I closed the notebook. As I slipped the pen into the spiral binding, I pulled my phone from my pocket out of pure habit. The screen lit up. 2: 59 AM. I frowned. That... No. I'd spent well over an hour counting food. Maybe longer. Without another thought, I hurried to the kitchen two steps at a time. The microwave nonchalantly informed me it was 4: 03.

The thermostat had reached exactly the same conclusion. Meanwhile, my phone stubbornly insisted the world was still enjoying 2: 59 AM. Apparently the house had split into two competing teams of timekeepers. One of them seemed convinced that an hour had passed. The other had barely managed a minute. I wasn't sure which one concerned me more. I drifted toward the window. Outside, the clearing looked almost peaceful. The sun hung high above the forest, bright enough that I had to squint against the light.

Lower on the horizon, a second one was clearing the treetops. It wasn't replacing the first. They would simply share the sky. I'd stopped trying to compare this place to the world I knew several impossible discoveries ago. Even so... Watching two suns illuminate the same world felt very wrong, on a scale my brain refused to put into words. My eyes wandered toward the front door. Daylight usually meant safety. Usually. Then I remembered the creature. I had absolutely no reason to assume it was nocturnal.

For all I knew, it hunted around the clock. Or slept during the day. Or did neither. I'd seen exactly one specimen for less than a minute. That wasn't enough information to base life-or-death decisions on. A soft mrrp broke the silence behind me. I turned just in time to see a black tabby stroll into the kitchen as if nothing particularly unusual had happened today. Yato.

He paused beside my legs, gave them a casual rub with the side of his face, then looked up at me with the patient expression of a cat who had already decided I was taking far too long with breakfast.

"... Right." I crouched and scratched behind his ears. Yato had been with me for as long as I could remember. My mother had adopted him before I was born, joking that we'd grow old together. Somehow, against every expectation, we almost had. He was absurdly old for a house cat, slower than he used to be, a little grumpier, and fond of pretending he couldn't hear me whenever it suited him. Even now, in the middle of a world that made no sense, he remained perfectly calm.

Maybe cats simply refused to acknowledge reality until it interrupted their meal schedule. I grabbed his bag of kibble from the cupboard and filled his bowl. He immediately buried his face in it with the single-minded dedication only a cat could possess. Watching him eat brought a strange sense of relief. Whatever was happening today... Yato was still as he always had been. And as I absentmindedly watched him crunch away, an unpleasant thought crossed my mind. If things ever became desperate enough... No.

I cut the thought short before it had a chance to go any further. Yato wasn't food. He was family. He'd spent my entire life sleeping on my bed, demanding attention at the worst possible moments, and silently keeping me company through more late nights than I could count. If anyone deserved to grow old in peace, it was him. I reached down and gave him another scratch behind the ears.

"Don't worry," I said quietly.

"I'm not letting anything happen to you." Yato answered by rubbing his head against my hand before returning to his breakfast. I couldn't help smiling. It didn't last. I couldn't help but remember... Somewhere out there, a creature large enough to kill me with ease was roaming, looking for something to eat. There was nothing else I could do. Going outside would be reckless. Staring out the window wouldn't produce answers. And I had already spent the better part of an hour counting cans.

My brain needed something familiar. Something simple, that wouldn't require much energy. Almost without thinking, I walked into the office and stopped in front of the bookshelf. My fingers drifted across the worn spines until they came to rest on one in particular. I pulled the book my mother used to read for me when I was a child and settled into the sofa. Yato immediately claimed my lap as if it was obviously his. I opened it to the first page.

Outside, beneath the two suns, an impossible world carried on without me. Inside, the words hadn't changed. They were exactly where I remembered them.