A Guest Arrives at Hayashi Residence

Finally, after walking for a while and changing lanes a few times Miyuki found a two-storey white house with a small lawn and a rusty gate. The Address plate said "Hayashi Residence". It was clear that none came to live here in decades. The grass on the lawn seemed to reach up to Miyuki's waist length. They were all densely populated on that small lawn. But the house itself looked pretty decent. It wasn't that big, nor was it small. The windows were all shut and properly curtain-ed.

The main door was on the very left side of the entire house and a meter or two higher from the ground. So it had few stairs to reach the doorway. Beside the door, there was a cute shelf that had many tob on it, organised properly. However many plants were either dead or got eaten by pests. Miyuki hesitated at first. But then she carefully went up the stairs to reach the door. Then she remembered something very important, "Um- How do I open it? Sara never mentioned anything about keys!"

She waited for a while and remembered the whole incident with Sara. Alas! She never mentioned anything about the key. Being disheartened, Miyuki stepped back and turned behind to leave the house. It was when she met Kiro.

"Kiro? What are you doing here?"

"Meow~"

Kiro was a stray cat Miyuki used to feed whenever she went to school. He was a homeless cat with a blind eye that has turned grey over the years. Kiro purred as soon as Miyuki rubbed its back and neck.

"Sorry, Kiro-chan, I couldn't come to meet you recently."

Kiro only purred and meow-ed in response.

"Let's go, Kiro-chan. Now both of us are homeless. How about we find something to eat first?"

"Meow~"

Kiro's eyes shined when he saw something behind Miyuki. He got ready to jump. Seeing him be like this, Miyuki looked behind also and to her surprise, it was a light green coloured butterfly.

"Wow, how pretty…"

The butterfly flapped its wings and flew here and there. On the other side, Kiro jumped with its full force to catch it.

"Kiro! Don't!"

Kiro jumped and chased behind the butterfly wherever it flew. As a result, he ended up breaking a few tob on the shelf. 

Seeing no other way, Miyuki grabbed him by the collar and scolded, "Look! What have you done!" Kiro meow-ed with sadness. Miyuki sighed and let him down, she now had to clean this mess up before going back to….oh, she had nowhere to go back.

Therefore, Miyuki bend down to pick up the broken pieces of the tob and magically discovered something uncommon in the scattered soil of the tobs.

"A key?"

She found a silver key in the mess. Taking the key, she stood up and went ahead to unlock the door. Her heart beat fast, there was hesitation and fear of disappointment.

"Let's do it."

"Meow"

"Thanks, Kiro-chan."

She inserted the key and twisted it. *Click* 

The door got unlocked.

****

It was early in the morning, the town people were all set to go to their respective fields for work. The sun was happily radiating sun rays all over the town. And there was Miyuki who only found total darkness.

"As expected, it's dark here. I need to remove the curtains first. But where's the light switches?"

Miyuki carefully walked inside the house while searching for the switches on the walls, "Ah found it." She tried to turn on them and fortunately the electricity supply wasn't cut off even after so many years. Miyuki sighed and looked carefully around the house.

It was big and spacious for one person. But it was simple and elegant just like Sara, that's what came to Miyuki's mind at first. The furniture and other things were all dusty and some were even broken. 

"Time to clean this place up!"

"Meow"

"Kiro-chan, we can live here for the time being. You got that?"

Miyuki was really grateful to Sara for letting her live in such a beautiful house. But one thing came to her mind, she's been living here for quite some years, but, no one ever mentioned this house. Why?

"Whatever. I'll just move out when I get the scholarship for a residential school in the neighbouring town."

And with that being settled, she started cleaning the house. She removed all the curtains and put them in a bowl to wash. Then she removed all the covering sheets from the furniture and found a duster from the storeroom to clean everything up. After hours of hard work, the house shined like a silver ring and since Miyuki opened all the windows, the air circulation became much better, and the clogged humidity was all gone and replaced with fresh air.

Miyuki fell on the sofa with a *plop* noise. 

"Ah! So soft and comfortable!"

"Meow!"

"You agree too, Kiro-chan?"

"Meow~"

Kiro snuggled close to Miyuki's feet, on the sofa.

 "We still have the other floor to clean up. Sighs"

Miyuki got up from the sofa and reached the second floor. The ground floor had a spacious kitchen, a small dining space beside the drawing room, a guest room and a washroom attached to the kitchen.

But unlike that floor, this floor had two rooms, facing each other with a good amount of doorway space between them. 

Miyuki found an interesting place. A large window at the end of that small corridor. The window had a cushioned seat. She proceeded to open the curtains and found an incredible thing. Since the house was already located in a high place and on top of that she was on the second floor, she got the top view of most of the town.

"Wow! This seat has an incredible view."

After admiring the view for a while she turned to clean again. She chose the right one from the stairs and opened the door.

"Oh My God"

She discovered something amazing in the room. It had a piano! Overall the room was cosy and 'abandoned' like the rest of the house. She tidied up the things and something gave her the feeling that that room belonged to Sara. 

Next, she went to open the last room.

Miyuki stood before the room with a duster and mop in her hands. She touched the door nob and for the first time felt a chilliness climb down her spine. But clearing her head she twisted the nob and opened the door. As soon as she opened the door, a damp smell came to her. The room was dark and tightly curtain-ed. She went inside and reached to turn on the light. What she never noticed was that as soon as she turned on the lights a silhouette moved behind her and disappeared in thin air. With the last room being cleaned, she felt relieved but extremely tired.

Miyuki was about to leave the room when she found a photo frame lying on a table. As soon as she went ahead to pick it up, from nowhere a cockroach came flying and sat on her apron. Miyuki stared at it for a few moments then caught it with her hand and threw it out of the window like a baseball. 

She took the frame, however, the glass on the frame was broken so she couldn't see the picture clearly.

"I'll clean this up too and replace the glass later. Let's take a rest for now." Suddenly her stomach grumbled loudly and she remembered she hasn't eaten anything in two days except bread during her free lunch at her school.

"I need to buy something to eat too."

With that, Miyuki went downstairs and left the house with Kiro-chan to go to the convenience store.

After she left, a figure appeared on the bed of the last room. It was a male figure. He lay down on the bed with his right leg folded over the left one, he swayed an ID card in his right hand and then propped it parallel-ly with the ceiling.

"Miyuki Nakamura. 'V' High school. 8th standard. Female...Interesting."

***

A.N: I'm not done editing this story and currently writing whenever I feel unmotivated to study. So please let me know if it's boring or needs more ingredients inside it. Mainly I plan to focus on my first story, but I couldn't get over the plot of this one too...twt... Thanks for reading my scribbles ❣ (BTW my first story is a BL, named ¶Notice Me, My Dearest¶ which is available on Wattpad atm)