"Kennedy Laurel Norton.  I just mean anyone born on New Year's Day?  An autumn equinox."

"I think the monster must have also messed with your head about that because New Year's is in winter except in China where it's in spring. Or, well, they call it spring festival, I think, but it's still also in winter. I also don't know why you would want that at all but I don't know if that's the monster or just you being weird." He is typing into his phone again.

"I'm one of them and they will know how to handle this without hurting me."

"Is this an astrology thing?" he asks. "Do I need to understand it before I call DDSI?"

"Yes.  What are you?  For your birthday?"

"It is not important when my birthday is unless you want to get me a present. You are allowed to believe in astrology but smart people don't," he tells her. "But some people do even without being teleported by psychic monsters so I guess I don't know if that's new or not. I don't have a good way to find someone who was born on New Year's, and if I did they would have been born in the winter, and also if I did it here, they would speak Japanese, or maybe have learned a little English in school."

"I think I need to retire."

"I mean, you can go lie down on my bed if you want, it just doesn't have sheets on it and I don't know which box they're in because I forget the kanji for sheets," he sighs, pointing at a door.

"Thank you."

In she goes.  Does this room have a closet, actually?

Nope, this Tokyo shoebox apartment bedroom has a bed and a desk and a door and that's it.

....Okay, can she fit under the bed?

Yes, and in fact it will be a little easier than fitting on the bed since the bed has a couple boxes on it.

That's good, at least.

This whole situation is the most confusing thing that has ever happened to her and she needs to figure out how much danger she's in.  There are people, she knows, who would kidnap an autumn equinox, and drug and hurt them out of revenge.  Even though she's not grown up and hasn't done anything that was really bad instead of mischief.  In that case she's supposed to abandon all propriety and let herself cry and do her best to seem like a normal kid.  But...

The monster (which was a real monster, even though monsters aren't real, but the child here thinks they're real...) clearly got several people who she knows weren't her geminis.  So this probably wasn't a very targeted operation.  Unless someone drugged her to make her see that, even though it wasn't real, and it knocked her out, and they moved her, and then they had a way to wake her up very fast while she was standing up.

It's strange, if this was a kidnapping, that they put her with another child.  Maybe it's a test?  It doesn't really make sense as anything other than a test.  Maybe they want to see... she's not sure.  Whether she'll start acting bossy and superior to someone her own age?  Especially since he keeps saying she's wrong about basic facts...

But if the monster was real, then what does that mean.  (She really doesn't feel illucid - except for all of the things happening around her that don't make sense -)

...She got taken away to a place where monsters are real?  Which means that a lot of things could be different...  Like people not understanding astrology, and calling Latin something else.

She needs more information.  She gets out from under the bed, fixes her hair and clothes as best she can without a mirror (which is something she has a lot of practice at), and comes back out of the bedroom.

She's been able to hear her host's half of the conversation with Dungeon Data Science International. He has relayed the facts of the situation (she appeared in his apartment, reported having been attacked by a monster like so, has made the following weird factual errors and the following further questionable but not necessarily erroneous claims, also in case it matters his mother was kidnapped by a dungeon pretty recently herself, he is in Japan and called 119 about it, yes he would really like a report reward, it's not that he's normally in need of money but the recent mother disappearance has left him unsure how he's going to put together dinner tonight because she had her purse on her). They're just about wrapping up how he would like his report reward and how they can get ahold of him again if they find Kennedy's family or anything when she comes out. He waves.

She curtsies.

"I'm gonna take a picture of you," he tells her, "in case that helps them find where you came from and stuff." His camera flashes. He pokes his phone some more. "Do you know if you like Japanese food or do you think Japan is a city on the moon where they eat algae or what."

"People can't live on the moon," she asserts.  "But I haven't heard of it."

"Well at least you're right that people can't live on the moon. It's going to be like, rice and fish and stuff... I can bring you shopping with me. Are you hungry?"

"I was about to have lunch, when...  I was about to have lunch, before."

"...I should tell DDSI that in case it helps them with the time zone or something." Phone pokes.

When he seems done: "What is that?"

"What's what?"

"That object.  The technological one."

"It's my phone."

"........It doesn't look like the phones I know."