Some Things You Cannot Avoid

I had never really understood what Milia meant when she called her house a dump, until my knees... ahem, until I saw the first-floor hall of her home with my own eyes.

After Zagu... pfft... Uncle Zagu opened the door and let us into the living room, the first headache-inducing question was where we were supposed to take our first step. By Ding Dang, I could not imagine anyone's living room looking like this. Everywhere I looked was a dazzling assortment of junk: Broken car axles, chunks of metal, discarded books, Wood chips, flattened sheets of iron, snapped chains, Second Cousin's old shoe insoles—the last one was just for the rhyme. In short, the instant we saw Milia's grand and imposing living room, we had the urge to go outside and pitch a tent for the night. We also reevaluated Little Pao Pao's room, which was piled full of toys and comic books: Feminine Gilgamesh deserved praise for managing to keep it that tidy.

"Ahaha, it might be a little messy. People in our line of work are all like this," Uncle Zagu said with two unconcerned laughs, stretching lazily. "I'm going upstairs to sleep for a while. That Dead Girl has kept me from getting a good night's sleep for days."

With that, Uncle Zagu made his way through the rubbish littering the floor, swinging his arms as he disappeared into the opposite side of the house.

"Uh, still as lazy as ever. How embarrassing."

Milia pressed a hand to her forehead, looking thoroughly ashamed. Then she glanced at me with a hint of embarrassment. "Um, don't laugh, okay? The house is always this messy. Uncle is an incredibly, incredibly lazy person. He never cleans up his collections, and our only employee seems to only come in whenever she