It happened at eleven PM.
Tsukasa was at her desk with her textbook open — not reading it, just sitting in the lamp light the way she sometimes did when her brain was doing something separate from whatever her eyes were pointed at.
She was thinking about the garden bench in Okinawa.
About something is there said with genuine uncertainty.
About me too said that morning across four centimetres of desk.
She was thinking about the tree.
The specific tree — the one at the edge of the park, the one she had been able to describe in full detail for eleven years because some memories keep everything except the one thing you most want to keep. The bark. The way the light came through the leaves in late summer. The grass underneath. The sound of the city a comfortable distance away.
The boy under it.
