Having a best friend who was a Queen definitely wasn't as cool as you'd think it would be, Naru thought as life at the Institute went on as before. It seemed wrong--the Usagi she had known would have been terrified at the thought of becoming a queen and having all that responsibility. She would have liked the beautiful gown and gorgeous palace and handsome husband, but not the responsibility. Maybe that was why as Queen she was taking such stern measures to make sure there weren't any problems, because she was afraid she wouldn't be able to handle unhappiness and crime and rebellion. Naru didn't like Serenity's methods, but she wasn't in a position to criticize the Queen. She had no idea what she would do if she suddenly woke up one day to find herself Queen.

As for how Usagi became Queen... It was a mystery, but more strange rumors reached Naru in her little locked room. Supposedly the deep freeze had lasted for a thousand years. Which was ridiculous, of course. How could humans sleep for that long and still be alive? And besides, who was watching the calendar if everyone was asleep? But something had happened to transform Usagi from what she had been into what she was now, and to transform the restless, diverse, dynamic city Naru had known into this quiet, peaceful, persistently cheerful place. If it really had been a thousand years, no wonder that night had seemed so long.

Three days after the audience with the Queen, a pair of orderlies, smiling as they always did now, came to Naru's room. "It's a big day, Naru-san. You're being moved!" one of them said.

"Moved? Where?" Surely not out of the Institute...

"You don't have to stay in the protective custody unit any more. You're moving to Independent Living."

The other orderly held out a plastic tote bag. "Please pack your things, and we'll go."

Naru put her blue and green track suits, her pink pajamas, her socks and underwear, her hairbrush and toothbrush, and her three paperback books into the bag. She was wearing the stupid pink track suit from her meeting with the Queen; it was almost time for her laundry to go out, and this was the cleanest of her clothes. Once the plastic bag was filled with her few possessions, she followed the orderlies--two large men who, despite the smiles, looked like they could easily stop her if she tried to run away--down the hall, down one elevator, through another hallway, and up another elevator to the fifth floor. When they got out of the elevator, they came to a locked set of double doors that blocked the hallway. Each of the orderlies ran his plastic ID card through a slot on the locks, then the doors clicked open and the orderlies led Naru through. The doors closed with a heavy metallic sound behind them.

Naru looked around. A number of patient rooms had the doors standing open. Several people not wearing the uniforms of nurses or orderlies or the suits of doctors, psychiatrists, and social workers walked through the hall. She recognized a few of them from the return trip from the Crystal Palace. "Does this mean they've decided I'm not incompetent?" she asked as the orderlies led her around the corner and into a room.

They shrugged. "It just means that someone higher up decided you don't need to be in the protective custody unit any more," one of them said. The other orderly, who was carrying her bag, put it down on the bed. "Meals are announced over the intercom," he said. "If the nurse or doctor is supposed to come see you, they'll give you the schedule. Have a nice day." The two of them left, closing the door behind them.

Naru checked the door. It was unlocked. She opened and shut it a few times, just to make sure. Apparently the crazy people in this part of the Institute weren't considered to be as dangerous as the ones in the so-called protective custody unit. She shut the door, to have some privacy while she unpacked and got used to her new room.

It was as small as the other room had been, also completely done in sterile white linoleum and melamine. The window also had bars over it. However, the bookshelf was already full. Naru felt a shock down to her feet when she recognized the books on it. They had come from her apartment. She picked up the plastic bag with her things in it, and opened the dresser drawers. They were already filled with neatly folded clothing-- underclothes, socks, tops, pants, and skirts. Hers, from home. There was hardly any room for the track suits she had grown to loathe. She took the pink pajamas Umino had given her for their first wedding anniversary--their only wedding anniversary--and tucked them in with the underclothes.

Someone had gone into the apartment she had shared with Umino and her mom, and had brought her things over here. Only one person could be responsible for that. Usagi.

She felt a stab of pain like a knife in her heart. Usagi had had her things brought over here. The message was clear: I care about you, I want you to be happy and comfortable. But I don't trust you enough to let you out of there. "Usagi," Naru whispered. But I'm not dangerous, Usagi. You know that. You know I was telling the truth. Why don't you trust me?

She had to believe that Usagi--Serenity--was only doing what she felt she had to do, for the good of the city she now ruled. If the rumors were true, Crystal Tokyo was the only city in the world that had risen intact and more or less functional from the freeze, meaning that Serenity was the most powerful woman in the world right now, even apart from her powers as Sailor Moon. What a burden that must be!

Naru threw her bag to the floor. Serenity might be doing what she had to do, but that didn't mean Naru had to like it. Not when it affected her life so profoundly and unfairly.

She stripped off the horrid pink velour tracksuit and the hospital-issue socks and underwear, wadded them into a ball, and heaved them into a corner. Then she took her own clothes from the dresser and put them on. The yellow blouse and dark blue skirt hung loosely; she had lost more weight during her hospitalization than she had realized. But she arranged everything as nicely as she could. At the bathroom sink, she wetted her hair and combed it out properly, then found a blue scarf among her clothes and tied her hair back with it.

Looking and feeling more like herself than she had in months, she pushed her feet into her house slippers, opened the door, and stepped out to explore what was, courtesy of Neo-Queen Serenity-sama, her new home.

* * * * * * * *

There was a dining hall, for one thing, and the food was better. The chicken, fish, and shrimp were all recognizable as such, and sometimes there was even beef. The rice and vegetables were cooked just right, and the sauce actually tasted like sauce. There were even different flavors of sauce, depending on what it was being served with. You could serve yourself from an assortment of food at the serving counter, just like in a real cafeteria on the outside, and even go back for seconds. Naru wondered if the better food was a privilege reserved for the 'guests' in the Independent Living section, or if the food throughout the entire hospital had been upgraded after her complaint to the King. She wondered if the fish-loving old man would notice the difference.

She hadn't seen the old man in the Independent Living unit. Of course, judging by his claim of having conversations with his food, he was probably unable to look after himself well enough to leave Protective Custody. She hoped he was all right; in spite of his smell and the bizarre things he said, there had been something childlike and sad about him.

Even the privileged residents of Independent Living still had to eat with sporks, though. They weren't trusted enough to be given the opportunity to hurt themselves or anyone else with a fork or chopsticks. Knives, of course, were nowhere to be seen.

There was also a TV lounge, where cheerful variety shows and anime for girls and young children were constantly showing. In fact, that was all that ever seemed to be on the two stations.

On the second day after her move, Naru returned to her room to find a new radio on the dresser. Another gift from Serenity, she supposed. She turned it on and experimented with tuning it. There seemed to be four stations: cheerful talk shows, pop songs, classical music, and traditional Japanese music. Of course it was commendable that Neo-Queen Serenity wanted everyone to be happy, but the relentlessly enforced cheerfulness was starting to grate on Naru's nerves. Being forced into a mental institution by your best friend was not conducive to being in a cheerful mood. Naru turned off the radio, grabbed a novel from the bookshelf, and tried to read.

On the third day, as she sat at lunch, trying to manipulate her food onto the undersized plastic spork, someone sat down at her table right across from her. This was different; most people seemed to prefer to leave a buffer between themselves and their fellow inmates. She knew she did. She looked up and saw the thin, handsome man from the van. "Is this place taken?" he asked.

Naru shook her head. They ate in silence for a while as she surreptitiously studied him. His deep-set eyes and narrow face radiated intensity. Even his posture and movements as he ate seemed filled with tightly-focused energy. Though they had shared a glance and a smile on the van, and though he had approached her at the table, now he seemed to not notice her, or anything but his food. He put all of himself into the single task of eating.

Naru finished eating and was about to take her tray and dishes back to the serving counter when he spoke. "So," he said, his voice low and as intense as the rest of his manner, "do you have any regrets? Do you still think you did the right thing, in refusing the purification?"

Taken aback by his directness, Naru said, "Of course I think I did the right thing. Excuse me, please." Again she started to rise from her seat.

"The old man wasn't entirely wrong, you know."

"Do you expect me to believe that the Queen is a demon?" She sounded just like Dr. Tajima and everyone else who hadn't believed her, she thought.

"Of course not. The thing is, demons are easy. They are evil, there is no question about it. And everyone knows to beware of them. But how much more evil can be done by a good person, loved by all, who has good reasons for doing things that are very wrong?"

Naru's hands tightened their grip on her tray. She sank down onto the chair again. He had just said what she hadn't dared think to herself. "I have to believe that Serenity-sama knows what she's doing, and that she has good reasons for it." Naru felt like she was trying to convince herself as much as him.

"That is what she hopes we will all think," he said.

An orderly drifted near them, lingering close by, seemingly looking for dishes that hadn't been cleared away. The man glanced at the orderly, ate his last sporkful of rice, dabbed at his mouth with the napkin, then stood up with his tray. "It's been pleasant talking to you. Good afternoon."

After he left, the orderly walked away. Naru wondered what would happen to the man if someone had overheard the things he had said to her about Neo-Queen Serenity. Would he find himself back in the protective custody section of the Institute? Surely Serenity wouldn't permit that kind of suppression of speech. But Naru felt like she no longer knew what her friend would or wouldn't do.

* * * * * * * *

Two days later at breakfast, the man came and sat by her again. "Good morning," he said. "Are you enjoying your stay as a guest at the Institute for Wellness and Joy?"

Naru poked at her hot cereal and shrugged. "It's ok, I guess."

"Please forgive me. I haven't introduced myself. I am Mumeishi."

No one. "That's your name?" Naru winced inwardly at her rudeness as soon as she said the words.

The man smiled wryly. "As I said, I am Mumeishi. And you--?"

"Naru. Umino Naru."

"I'm pleased to meet you, Umino Naru."

An orderly wandered near them. Like the one who had been hanging around near them the other night, this orderly appeared less cheerful than most of the orderlies. Mumeishi turned to give him a surprisingly friendly smile. "Good morning."

"Good morning, Mumeishi-san." The orderly looked a little flustered, as though he really had been caught eavesdropping.

"You know Umino-san, of course. I was just about to say to her that the cooks have certainly outdone themselves this morning. This breakfast is extraordinarily delicious. Don't you agree, Umino-san?"

Naru didn't think it was anything special, but she realized what Mumeishi was trying to do. "Yes, I agree. Very delicious."

"You must try some," Mumeishi said to the orderly. "Of course, the chicken last night was some of the best I've ever had, even in three-star restaurants. I thought I detected just a touch of saffron in the sauce. Don't you agree, Naru-san?"

"Absolutely. What do you think?" She gave the orderly an innocent look. "Of course you must have tried it."

The orderly forced a grin. "I wouldn't know about fancy stuff like that." He wandered away.

Mumeishi watched till he was out of hearing range. "So, Naru-san--may I call you that?--I must assume that you have no family waiting for you on the outside, otherwise you surely would have accepted the purification in order to be reunited with them."

"I only had my mother and my husband, and they've both passed away."

"Ah. I am sorry to hear that. You are young to be a widow; what happened to your husband?"

"He and my mother were killed in a car accident a few months before the Awakening." She wished he wouldn't ask so many questions, but it was so long since anyone had been interested in talking to her like a normal person.

"I see. And how did you happen to come to the Institute in the first place?"

"I was badly injured in the accident, and had no one to take care of me after I was released from the hospital. Also... They decided that my state of mind after the accident made me unable to take care of myself or make decisions. So they put me here." She didn't want to go into the business about monsters with this man, who was still a stranger.

"And how do you like it here?"

Naru stirred her cereal. "It's better over here than in the protective custody unit, anyway. Don't you think so?"

"I have no basis for comparison," he said. "I was not a resident at the Institute prior to refusing the Queen's purification."

"I thought everyone there that day was from the Mental Health Institute."

He gave her another wry smile, as though he was letting her in on a private joke. "I was brought to the purification ceremony with a different group. Excuse me." He collected his empty breakfast dishes onto his tray and left the table.