Work Text:
There's a hole in the house. Not a physical one, not something Kronii could fix by paying or dumping some filler in the walls. It's in the soul, the very feeling of the house itself is amiss. It's the empty, cold room, where her memory still conjure laughter and warmth. Fauna and Mumei may have died in the car accident, but the house still keep them here. Every morning, she feel like they will wake her up, Mumei telling some inane story about a long dead civilisation, or Fauna gently teasing the historian while making their breakfast, but nothing ever happen anymore. The house is still, and so is Kronii. One the worst part of the grief is the smell. It's been months, but the kitchen still smells the vegetarian meals of Fauna. Flakering ink and paper older than the entire city are still in the air around Mumei's Library. But Kronii keep the hobbys of the two other. The plants collections of Fauna is easier to deal with. A few internet search and books were enough to keep them alive and thriving, even without their guardian. But the collection of antique books of Mumei feel harder to keep for her. She doesn't have the talent of the brunette to find books. Obviously, sometime she buy some reedition of older book, to keep the spirit, but it's not the same thing. The firsts books of the collection aren't even "books" to speak of. They are diary, alchemist or mad scientist notes, all searching some way to break reality and the way it's working. All of them old of centuries. And every time she would find a new one, Mumei will patiently work on it for months, reworking the letter and preserving the paper, giving it a new youth.
At least, the library stop her from being fully alone. Some of Mumei's friends still show up, either with new books or wanting to read some that have been already preserved. The most common are Ina and Shiori. They tend to like working together, taking pictures of the older books and talking quickly about whatever they are searching at the time. At first, they kind of freaked out Kronii. The two of them have a weird feeling, like they are never fully here. But after her lost, they showed up to help her, to make sure she was still taking care of herself. And so she started to respect them. Today, Kronii is reading a diary, while the two are talking about some ancient being. Her book is a diary of some princess, from a city long forgotten. At some point, Ina start talking with her. She tell her that nature hate the void, the emptiness, and that Kronii should keep herself open to new experiment, as the books and the plants would call new peoples to take care of them. Not to replace her girlfriends, but to push her back to the world of the living again. She doesn't really know what to say, so she dont answer back, simply nodding to show that she heard it. It's only a few days later, when her cousin Ame call her to see if she would be okay to loan some of the empty room to new students from the university that Ina words came back to her. So, against her better jugement, she accept to help, hoping it would help, at least a little bit.
At first, her new tenants are stressing her. She can see to much of her lost ones in them. Gigi is just as unhinged as Mumei, but by choosing to use the worst possible way of flirting with her, while Mumei could simply start talking about ways to cook human skin to take back the control of the conversation. The simples surviving smell of Fauna tea of all kind are finally leaving, replaced by Cecilia infusions. It's jarring at first, to see the old and the new in her life blinding together at first, before separating again, making sure she wasn't replacing her girlfriends. But at least, the house is changing again, free from the silence. Fauna's plant collection has been moved into the greenhouse, replaced in the room by Cecilia's music partition. She can be heard every others days, playing her violon or her piano, simply loosing herself in music. Gigi like fixing things too, but not books. Older toys and tools, vintage watchs and other things that she find and bring back to fix and take care of. It feel like a part of the library is becoming a museum. Ina and Shiori dont seems to really mind it, so no one stop Gigi from exposing her finding. It's only, a few months later, at night, as she felt herself falling asleep while listening to the two others mocking the bad movie they were watching, that she finally understood what Ina said to her, and that this house finally became her Home once more.