The host family begins its morning routine mindful of the alterations a new child requires. Everything between the bedroom and the door is clear. A travel cup of tea gets put out on a warmer in a convenient place along that path. A checklist by the door with a few days worth of snacks. Everything that could be arranged for a child to rush out the door to school is.

They won't bother Yulhissap until she's used up her slack in the morning.  

This turns out to be unnecessary. The child exceeds expectations, up and bed made in plenty of time. "Morning! Did you sleep well?"

- I had an interesting dream, but I forgot it. - Nightmares are interesting too, so it's true. - Can you… introduce me to the kitchen? - She stumbles over the word. - I can make myself some sandwiches, but I'm not very good with hot food.

Food is doable! There's plenty of snacks in the apartment, but that's not really supposed to be a meal. Poor child thinks she needs to cook.

"There's plenty of hot food in the cafeteria here or at school. Would you like to eat with your classmates?"

She just doesn't want to burden anyone! She hasn't yet figured out how she can help around the house, and she feels indebted.

- I'd like to eat here with you, if possible. - She'll explore this school cafeteria first, and then she'll eat there.

Wait, why did she say that? What if she wants cold food? She just didn't know which options were there... Okay, she committed to hot food, so she can go find herself an omelet or something. She's developed an instinct for recognizing how hot her food is, even without visible steam, so she'll be fine.

"That's no problem at all!" They can't read the child's mind, and it's hard to read much from just body language alone. They'll just roll with it and hope she opens up as she feels more comfortable. 


One of the foster parents will take the tea and head out. The other two will accompany Yulhissap through the mudroom, down the elevator, and into the cafeteria. Which is well stocked with all sorts of food and only moderately busy right now. There's a waffle station, an omelette station, a juice station, and a number of hot soups. There's salads, fruits, nuts, oysters and fish and clams and shrimp. There's cereal and pastries and breads and jams and a spread of cheeses.  Everything, really, to eat like a Roman emperor except for meat. Conveniently there's also step stools built in everywhere for short people to access everything.

It's quite convenient! She first wanders down the aisles, noting where everything is, and only on her second pass does she take food. She's set her mind on an omelet and doesn't deviate from that course. Perhaps she'll grab some toast with jam. And a banana. Two. And apple juice.

(nom nom)

The silence is awkward, so she tries to make conversation. "That’s tasty". Pause. "I noticed fish, but no meat? I thought they... felt things the same way? Fish and animals. I mean, we have meat, but… err, isn’t this… symmetrical?" She wasn't particularly interested in theories of animal qualia, but maybe she was like a fish in some way. - "Sorry, I'm getting tongue-tied, I'll warm up soon."

The adults let her go off on her own. They're nominally building their own breakfast, but a keen eye will notice that at least one of them is always in sight. They assemble some sort of porridge with lots of cheese. Cold juice. Hot tea. A platter of mussels still in the shell. Grapes. They slide into a booth with her. 

"We believe that some things are higher and some are lower. This," E'll take a mussel and eat it. " is only a little higher than a plant. Fish are higher, but maybe not as high as a dolphin or an ape."

"We might be biased for cuter animals," the other parent interjects.

She giggles at the last one and decides to finish eating and wait for the others, distracted only by daydreaming. "Thanks for your company!"

She remembers where she was supposed to drop off the leftover food and cleans up after herself, urging herself to quickly but carefully help her host parents. Her drive is hard to resist, as she wants to be useful at least here. It may seem that her movements are strangely constrained, and this is true, for without feeling muscle strain or fatigue, she had to memorize these patterns with her mind.

They head home, where there's still time to brush these teeth and take a bathroom break before getting ready for school. This time, she brings her translator with her, but promises to use it only when absolutely necessary.

"You're welcome." Clearly, the kid wants to go off by herself. They'll let her go do her thing on her own. Independence is important for children that age. 

Once Yulhissap is ready the way to school is through the basement, past the bike garage, and into the subway. The underground is a broad pedestrian path with protected rail. All the buildings in the city proper have an exit to it, that's just fire code.

Very unusual! She knows rail cities with private carriages, but they're above ground. No one has ever built such an underground network! "How did you dig so many tracks to have them under every building?"

She decides against listening to music, thinking it conflicts with her plan to communicate and integrate into the language environment, and who knows, maybe some interesting interactions await her on the way. Upon arrival of the train, she says goodbye to her parents, while being quite huggy.

"We use great big machines to dig out the tunnels where we put the subways an utilities, then cover them up and build the buildings between them."

Foster parents love hugs! They will stay on the platform until the train leaves.

Speaking of which, there's a lot of seats on the train. Some of them are empty. Some of them are next to adults and kids with different color patches. Some people are reading or listening to music or looking out the window. Where is Yulhissap sitting?

First she'll spend a couple of minutes wandering around the train, as she usually does, since walking is more comfortable than standing still. At the same time, she'll assess the patches of everyone sitting down, and eventually sit down next to one of the friendly-looking girls who is reading and has the same patch indicating openness to conversation as she does. She'll repeat her prepared phrase, smiling:

"Hi!" She peers at the badge on the girl's upper right chest, trying to make out her name. She has one too, but the format is a little unfamiliar. "I'm from another world, and today is my first day at a local school. By the way, what are you reading?"

"It's nice to meet you, Isekai!" The girl looks up from her book. "I'm Lucky Day! This is Magic's Promise by Mercy's Lackey. Have you read it?"

The train will start smoothly pulling out of the station.

"I'm Yulhissap, nice to meet you too!" Is her badge fine? Phew, her badge is fine. She wanted to say that Lucky Day was lucky with the name she'd rolled, but was unsure about the word "rolled" and decided that she had heard it many times and Yulhissap couldn't be that original. She was still getting used to dice-rolling names. "I haven't read it! Can you give me a quick summary please? I don't find spoilers spoilery." Is there a flag for that?

There is a flag for that, if you don't mind getting into the weeds for flags. 

"Sure! It's about Little Vanguard who grows up in a religious family that's upset cause they think he likes boys but then he gets sent off to his aunt where he becomes a wizard." Lucky will pull out a book from her bag and hand it over. "Here! That's the first book."

She doesn't grasp the negative connotations of the word “religious” and can't see why anyone would object to a boy liking boys. "A wizard? What kind of wizard, what can he do? Are there detailed rules to the magic?" She has more complicated questions, but, unluckily, not the words for them yet.

Is this... an offer to read on the train? This can't be a gift to a complete stranger. She's unsure of the appropriate level of expression for her thanks. Her "Thank you!" therefore is somewhere between gratitude and politeness. She'll start flipping through the pages (carefully, so as not to cut herself!), maintaining an open posture for further conversation and the possibility of interrupting at any moment.

Okay, pull yourself together. How will you know if this is a gift or an offer to read on the train? Reading on the way would end the conversation, so Lucky probably didn't mean that. But who gives away their books just like that? They're aliens, they can do anything! Aaaah!

She waited too long, and asking now would be awkward. Okay, at the end of the trip, she'll ask if she can keep it. No, it's better to ask to share contacts and then ask to borrow it, so it doesn't look like she's trying to keep the book and there's still the option to return it later. Yes, that's what she'll do. Now go and try to comprehend the first couple of pages.

"He's a wizard cause he got picked by a magic horse who thinks he's a good person. He can set things on fire, and throw lightning around, and see things far away, and change the weather. There's rules to the magic, but the characters in the book don't know them very well."

Lucky is, of course, just giving the book. Why wouldn't she? She's not using it right this very minute, she's reading the next book. If she needs the first book again for some reason she can just get another one. 

Maybe this Yulhissap is from a place without so many books. She did say she's from another world. Do other worlds have books?  Oh, maybe her world has magic? Lucky will ask.

How do we explain this?

"There's no magic in our world, no. And our books are usually electronic." She points to her phone. "Our phones and computers... uh... don't allow copying of books? Paper books are harder to control, so people sometimes copy them and pass them around among those who don't want to work. That's not allowed, but I think nobody really stops it. The same thing with board games, for example. I'm surprised that in your world you can just take things.

Lucky will show off her deck, "I can get any book I want on this. Paper books sometimes you have to wait a whole hour." She says this as if it's obviously a grave injustice.  

"There's some things that we can't just take, because there's only a few of them and then other people wouldn't get any. But not books. There's enough books that no matter how many you take everyone else can have them too." She thinks about what Yulhissap said. "Does that mean you can't share games from your world? That sounds sad, like you're being punished."

"I can't, sorry. My phone barely works outside my home world. If I had as many books and games as I wanted, I'd probably do nothing but read and play. But I can show you our games if you ever come to our world! They're really cool!"

In between Lucky processing that and deciding she needs to load up Yulhissap with every book an game she can the train stops at the station for the school. People quickly start getting off. 

She'll try to get her contacts, as she planned, even though the book turned out to be a gift! Lucky was kind, and she's sorry to lose a good connection. Yulhissap exits the train, and her stomach reminds her that it's time to start worrying about school!

Lucky will share contacts on the way out. Then the crowd will mostly go up the ramp that heads to street level. 

Fortunately, the school is within sight once Yulhissap gets to street level. There's a playground right out in front.