Dear Diary,

We still can’t get through the barrier. Kimi has been sitting in the snow in front of the exit for three days now, glaring at it. I’ve taken her coffee and soup a couple times, and she hasn’t said anything to me. She barely even reacted when I told her about Via.

Aya was the first one to notice that the inn looked different. She came over while I was there having lunch with Via, and they get along well. While Via was showing Aya all the changes she’d made to the inn, Lilly came in to see why everything was silver. So she’s met Via, too.

Yesterday Via came over and helped me make a big lunch, since she hasn’t really had anything but sushi since cycle 1. Mika smelled all the food and finally came out of her shop, and was shocked to see a new catgirl in the kitchen.

Since Via spent so long as a siren, she loves to sing. She’s written a couple songs, and Mika is writing guitar music to go with the words. They get along super well, and want to be a mini-band since Via knows how to play drums.

Via still has sushi in her inventory, and gave me a whole bunch. It’s not complicated, just raw fish, rice, and seaweed. But that’s three ingredients I didn’t have before! I’m pretty sure she has other things in her inventory, like maybe soy sauce and wasabi, but she’s been having fun with Mika so I don’t want to bug her about it yet. My message stone still works, so I’ve been able to ask Nat what she thinks I can do with rice and fish. I have to figure out how to basically re-dry the seaweed before I can do anything with it, so I’m focusing on the rice and fish for now. Nat says fishburgers are good, or else fish and chips. And so far all I’ve done with the rice was mix it with scrambled eggs, but that was amazingly good. Sometimes food doesn’t need to be complicated or expensive to be delicious. Simple things need to be appreciated from time to time.

Oh yeah, we all have our message stones still, so we aren’t totally cut off from Staab and the kobolds. Mika has been chatting with her band, and it sounds like they love Via’s singing. And Lilly says she talked with Staab, but won’t say more than that. I took Kimi hers, so she can talk to Y, but I don’t know if she’s used it.

We decided to keep going with the marble races from last cycle. Via is taking Staab’s place, and tomorrow she’ll send her marbles (she found a bunch in a drawer at the inn) through prelims. Plus doing prelims will help her figure out what’s so cool about marble racing. Since we only had time to do one race, and Staab got silver, she’s starting in the championship silver spot. Which, that’s fitting. We’ll start the races back up as soon as Kimi feels up for it.

Hopefully that’s soon. I’m worried about her.

Goodnight, dungeon.