"So if she is going to take you in, she will need a way to know that she and her son will be safe, whichever one of the very weird things that could be going on is going on."

"Ummm.  Like what?"

"I'm not sure. Nothing quite like this has happened ever before, as far as I know. But if people talk about you maybe being a monster, that is not about whether you are nice to have around, right now. It is about whether a dungeon could control you."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Let's go have a chat with Swan-san, all right?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Back on the train they go. Takuma-san texts Swan-san on the way.

Which means Swan-san is home when they get there.

Haru is too.

"I have been reading about the Vadodara Incident," he says. "There was a dungeon with really really cute monsters and a bunch of them were kept as pets but then the dungeon came back in another city miles and miles away but it was still close enough for the cute monster pets to start acting aggressive again."

"...Oh.  I am not a monster."

"There are monsters that look like people and also specifically say they are not monsters," says Haru. "There was a dungeon called Demos that did that and sometimes Nightmare does it. But maybe your dungeon is dead! There's monsters with dead dungeons and they're just fine pretty much. Zoos have some. Ripley's back in Toronto has a monster turtle!"

"I see we have an interest in dungeons," says Takuma-san.

"They're interesting!" says Haru.

"I would be able to tell if I was a monster, though, right?"

"Maybe not! It's not obvious what it is like to be a monster. Only a very few of them can talk. I do think you would be unique if you were a monster though. In like at least two or three ways."

"How can I stay safe if I'm - I remembered something!"  She stands up.

"What'd you remember, dear?"

"I have ummmm, in the pocket of my skirt, I have my ID!"  She goes and gets it, and yes, here's a shiny plastic card with a picture of her belonging to one Kennedy Laurel Norton, autumn equinox, born 1/01/777, protected citizen of Verona.

"That makes it weirder for you to be a monster but far, far weirder for you to be a teleported and psychically altered little girl."

"You said I wasn't psychically altered."

"Yes, that's why I thought in the first place that being a monster was possible."

"There's sometimes stuff in dungeons with writing on it. It usually doesn't make sense. And this also doesn't make sense, because it is not eight years since seven hundred seventy seven, but it makes a little bit more sense than a usual dungeon writing thing..."

"What year is it here?"

"2016."

"Oh.  It was 785, for me.  In Tetrinary."

"I will get a book about stuff with writing on it found in dungeons, I don't already know a lot about it." Phone phone.

"At any rate, Swan-san -"