When morning ca, I rolled up the futon and moved around the shop like a ghost. My hands knew the routine even if my mind didn't.
Shuji said nothing. He only watched —the kind of watching a man does when he's already guessing what you'll say before you say it.
I finally broke the silence.
"There was a handprint."
He didn't ask where. He didn't ask whose.
He just nodded, then turned away. "Go back to the Tachibana estate."
That was all.
***
The sun was low and bright by the ti I arrived. A few servants bustled around the gate, sweeping leaves and hanging freshly laundered curtains along the outer walkway. Rin was already outside, seated beneath a blooming bush of late-season chrysanthemums. She wore a darker kimono this ti, sleeves gathered loosely in her lap. She looked up when she saw , and didn't wait to speak.
"You saw it again."
I nodded.
She rose without another word and led through the gate.
The garden felt older than the house around it. Everything here had a kind of stillness—like it had been waiting far longer than anyone realized. The koi pond shimred faintly in the morning light. A stone lantern leaned slightly to one side, half-covered in moss. And in the center, beneath the shade of a persimmon tree, Rin knelt and gestured for to sit.
"I co here when the visions won't leave alone," she said. "Sotis they quiet. Sotis they don't."
I sat across from her.
For a while, neither of us spoke. Just the breeze, the rustling of trees, the occasional dip of a koi surfacing.
Then I felt it again.
The faint pull.
That sense of not being entirely in my body.
Rin's eyes widened. "It's happening."
And it was.
The garden blurred—just at the edges. A second image slipped beneath the first, like an overlay from so other ti. The trees grew taller. The pond shallower. The light colder.
I blinked, and suddenly we were sowhere else—the sa place, but not.
A different version of the garden.
A different version of Rin.
For a mont, we sat there, still facing each other, but not as we were. She looked older. Her eyes more sorrowful. Her kimono faded with ash.
She opened her mouth.
And then it all snapped back.
***
I gasped.
Rin was already clutching her sleeve, breathing hard.
"You saw it too," I said.
She nodded slowly.
And then, a voice cut through the air like a blade.
"You shouldn't be here."
I turned.
He stood at the edge of the stone path, posture rigid, eyes sharp. His kimono was dark and unadorned, sleeves neatly tied back as if prepared for sothing more serious than conversation. I hadn't heard him approach.
Rin stood quickly. "Tatsuya—"
His gaze never left . "This is a private estate. You're a commoner. You don't belong in the inner garden."
"I was invited," I said evenly.
"Then she's forgotten her place."
I stepped forward, but Rin gently placed a hand in front of . "Enough. I asked him here."
Tatsuya's jaw tensed. "That doesn't change what it looks like."
Rin's voice turned cold. "Then perhaps you should stop looking."
The silence that followed was louder than any argunt.
For a mont, Tatsuya didn't move. Then his eyes shifted to —not with rage, but with sothing more careful. Calculated. Like he was trying to decide what I was.
Finally, he turned on his heel. "Your father's expecting ," he said to Rin. "I'll wait inside."
And then he was gone.
***
She waited until the sound of his footsteps faded.
"I'm sorry," she said softly. "He wasn't always like that."
"You don't have to explain."
She didn't but she still looked away.
I glanced back at the garden—half expecting it to shift again. But everything remained still. Solid. Real.
For now.
"What we saw," I said, "It wasn't jut a dream, was it?"
She shook her head. "No. It was a mory."
I looked at her. "But not ours."
"No," she whispered. "Not yet."
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