The (Intermittent) Journal of Natsuki Hashimoto

March 29 2013

So today has been uncharacteristically full of events all with significant ramifications.

It all started a little after 9, when we - my mother and I - were on the upper floor of the inn making up the guest rooms for the influx of visitors later this afternoon. The first indication that something was amis was Choki barking. He has long since ceased doing this for visitors approaching the front of the inn or for any of our neighbours visiting, so this was either some form of delivery - although we weren't expecting anything - or something else. Then he went quiet.

A little in panic I established contact to find that he was following a woman into our kitchen area. There were several things odd about this, apart from the obvious. She was dressed in modern western style clothes - not in itself odd - consisting of what appeared to be jeans, almost knee high boots, and a jacket most likely leather. She also had very long black hair, waist length, and platted into a pony tail.

The inconsistancies

1. she appeared to have a Katana hanging on her left side
2. Choki had let her in without either me or my mother saying so.

By the time I'd severed the contact alerted my mother and we'd gone down stairs she'd gone.. apparently vanished into thin air. There was also an envelope, well folded sheet of very high quality paper, folded so as to form a wrapping and sealed with wax, on the table. In hand written caligraphy on the front, in Japanese, was my name.

My mother at this point had gone white. As I picked the envelope up, allowing her to see the seal she feinted.

Whilst I waited for her to come round, having carried her into our living room, I examined Choki's memory. Who ever the woman was she was oriental or at least of oriental descent. Under her jacket, she was wearing a Tee-Shirt, a very distincive one if you knew anything about Disjunction, the new game Mizzurian had trailed the previous Christmas, and for which there had been absolutely no information since.

She had left the house not by walking out the way she had come, but by taking a retangular plaque with what could be a Phoenix on the back out of her pocket, concentrating on it, and then stepping into some form of portal it/she created.

As my mother came round I asked her if she was alright. Whilst she assured me she was. I asked her what had happened. "Too many ghosts" was her initial response I asked her to explain.

Apparently my father had used envelopes like the one I had received. She asked to examine it. It wasn't my fathers seal though. I told her about the woman who'd delivered it. She feinted again when I started to explain how she left.

Whilst I waited for her to recover, I opened the envelope. It was a personal invite to the Mizzurain Expo and Ball, to stay with Cordelia Chan (CEO Mizzurian) as her personal guest from 29th April to 5th May. I was completely and utterly dumbstruck. Who was I that would warrent a personal invite from such a person I urgently need to know more about both this woman and my father.

I noticed then that my mother had her eyes open and was looking at me.. "Trump.. I think the plaques are called Trumps. Your father had a set.. he took me to the castle once, just for a very quick visit. He used one to do it and then another to return us to the forest." I showed her the ticket.. "Why would Cordelia Chan, assuming it was her that delivered the invite, invite me to go an stay with her?"

"I've no idea.. unless there is some connection with your father.. he did say he'd come back and take us to Arden.. maybe she knows him or what happened and is fulfilling some promise she made to him, or maybe she is his daughter or something" her voice trailed off and she started crying.

I needed to do some serious thinking and some research.

April 2nd 2013

So the weekend guests have gone, and my mother and I have had time to talk things through and examine the seal in more detail. From what my mother can remember the seal are similar. The central motif is similar, although each member of the family has their own symbol. My fathers was a (Hawk?). The crown in the top right apparently marks the Royal House of Amber. The rose in the bottom right is unknown .. maybe some other "family" marker. An internet search has turned up an article in Time magazine written in August 2004 by Juan-Qiangwei Wong. This appears to have been the article which marked a major up turn in her career. From the pictures associated with the article it does appear that the woman who delivered the invite was probably Cordelia Chan, who despite the obvious time difference doesn't appear to have aged at all. This alone initiates a whole series of questions about who she really is especially in light of any potential relationship to my father.

Then there is the question of the invite itself. Given how it was delivered it cannot be anything but genuine. In purely financial terms, the ticket assuming I could even sell it would be worth over Y2,000,000. The "assuming I could sell it" purely relates to the fact that as she hand delivered the ticket she must know who I am and as the invite is personal, the buyer would in all probability be unable to use the ticket. The other question is do I go? The timing is particularly bad occurring shortly before my end of year exams at a time when I should be revising. But if I chose not to go, assuming that I am given a choice in the matter - I have to assume that Miss Chan has some means of controlling Choki and therefore he would not prevent her from forcibly abducting me, then will I regret either not meeting my father or finding out what happened to him and finding out who Miss Chan really is.

April 16th 2013

Choki has been behaving most strangely today, following another female student about the campus, for reasons I do not understand. I have seen her a few times myself including in the refectory this evening, and see nothing about her to warrent this behaviour, In fact I would go so far as to say she appeared so distracted and vacent that she looked like she was on some form of halucinagenic drug.

On the matter as to whether I shall accept Miss Chan's invitation or not I have come to the conclusion that I would regret not going and finding out more about my father more than the potential impact the delay would have on my revision timetable. The problem is that there is no mention of an address to which to return an acceptance or declanation of the invitation, which returns me to my conjecture that I actually have no choice in the matter, and that the invitation is not an invitation as such but a summons, much as an Imperial invitation to a Samuri Lord would have been in the past.