Sarah POV
We walked down the same hall where my temporary room was, but she turned to a different door two doors down from a table on which sat a vase full of bright blue and yellow flowers. I stood in the open doorway as she put my phone on her nightstand charger, which oddly didn’t have a phone on it already.
Then she came back out and led me down a turn in the hallway, around a corner, and then out into the most beautiful Zen garden I had ever seen. Katya smiled at my little intake of breath. I saw it had been raked to perfection, not a grain of sand out of its place.
“It’s a copy of the Ryōan-ji garden at Japan’s Temple of the Dragon at Peace,” she explained with pride, “in Kyoto. Have you ever been to Japan?”
“No, but I really would love to go.”
She nodded. “It’s beautiful, and d
