For a Get-Well Gift, a Potted White Chrysanthemum

Because this world has no moon (it has satellites, but nothing that corresponds to a "moon"), its calendar is a solar one; yet, taking after a lunisolar calendar brought in long ago from some otherworld or other, the new year is reckoned from Risshun, the "start of spring," one of the eight seasonal divisions. In other words, the new year, and the start of spring, falls not a few days after the winter solstice but on the day of Risshun itself. Even so, cold snaps can still sweep in after Risshun has passed.

[Tier-Group 3 Rooftop Garden]

The winter solstice was past, and down in the world below the humans were busy with preparations for the new year.

"Marie-san, by way of Tsukuba, a potted white winter chrysanthemum has arrived from an Asura of Ibaraki County."

"dnt displa it"

"It's from Tsukuba. We took no damage on our side, so there was no reason to turn away even a messenger, and I let it through."

The former Tonosama of Tsukuba had launched an attack on the Library-City Dungeon, and his army had been wiped out to the last man.

"ibarki asra whoo"

"It's from the Chrysanthemum family, who live off to the north of the 'Magnetic Anomaly Dungeon,' on the far side of Mount Tsukuba."

(Magnetic anomaly, they call it, but even if the rock's geomagnetism is reversed, I can't see that it would mean anything in this world. A baffling sort of dungeon.)

Its unique law was "trains cannot run within the dungeon's sphere of influence," but since no railways exist in this region to begin with, the law is meaningless, and Marie and the others knew nothing of it.

"chrsanthmm eh"

(The Chrysanthemum family are a haughty lot of Asura who style themselves "the most evolved, the most differentiated" of clans, yet for all that, this gift is awfully courteous. Is it that, not being dungeon-dwellers, they struggle with water? Even so, we are far too distant to supply them with any, and there'd be no advantage in it for us.)

Alarmed by the Library-City Dungeon's disorderly expansion, the Chrysanthemums meant something more like, "Why don't you just take to your sickbed; better yet, hold a funeral while you're at it," but that meaning did not reach the present Marie.

"This dungeon can draw on agricultural knowledge from another world, so I imagine they'd like to learn methods of pest control or the like."

(It surely can't be carried over so simply from plants to Asura, and our industrial capacity is still nowhere near enough to mass-produce pesticides. But there's nothing for it; we can only press on.)

"And so, Marie-san, looking back over the course of things up to now, does anything seem like it might be a clue?"

(Asking me for a clue puts me in a bind. In the end it just comes down to: thinking too hard is dangerous. That's all. I do think I was careless, but I don't think I did anything wrong.)

"i dnt thnk i was rong"

(You cannot change the future or yourself, but you can change the past and other people. Yes. The past is the past. It is nothing but memory and record.)

An Asura is by nature an arrogant, overbearing creature. Marie in particular is of a species native to a semi-arid land of violent temperature swings, and is comparatively stress-tolerant.

"nthng to do but go on"

(There's no time to be downcast. The dungeon's expansion means there is more I must do, but it should also mean there is more I can do.)