Chapter 1.1- Superfluous Things
Mirei sat before a contract and put her signature down. Followed by her hanko stamp.
“Thank you, we hereby acknowledge the registration of your new account.”
The bank clerk gave her a perfect business smile followed by a flawlessly angled courtesy bow. It hardly registered in her mind.
“No, thank you.” She bowed with just as much ingrained training, but probably not even half of the clerk’s elegance. Without any further words, she quickly took her confirmation documents and left the bank branch. Safely outside, she stopped in her tracks and started tucking those documents into her bag.
Mirei always wondered why they wanted both, signature and stamp. It seemed so superfluous.
(About as superfluous as that name, I guess.)
Upon shoving the papers into her bag, her glance randomly fell on the parts that still stuck out. Naturally, documents of this sort would contain her name on them somewhere, and this was what happened to stare up at her.
Mirei was written in two characters, each most commonly known to mean 'beautiful'. With secondary meanings ranging from 'graceful' over 'lovely' to 'resplendent', the parts of her name were frequently used for female given names. Combining them was neither super common nor unusual enough that people couldn’t spell or write it. In fact, both of its characters were part of words ubiquitously in use in common parlance for ages. It certainly wasn’t rare for words like 'pretty' and 'beautiful' and its variants to follow up in a redundant row in outcries of admiration or fancy ravings over something or someone.
Her nose reflexively sniffed a bit, almost as if a sharp stink assaulted her. She quickly stuffed the documents further down into her bag and headed over to the subway. In Tokyo’s busy daytime hours, it took almost no time for a connection to arrive.
