Aya's voice did not echo.
It didn't ripple or distort the way voices did inside the dream.
It simply existed — soft, close, human.
I opened my eyes.
The first thing I saw was ceiling. The real one. Wooden. Slightly uneven. A small brown stain near the corner where a leak had once been. No vines. No roots. No white sky.
I was lying in my bed.
Morning light filtered through the curtains, pale and warm, not the blinding white of the dream-field. The air smelled like dust and old tatami. My throat tasted dry.
For a long time, I didn't move. I listened.
No hum.
The house was silent.
I lifted my hand. My skin was pale, but not glowing. The green veins beneath the surface had faded to faint, ghostlike traces — as if something had been erased but not forgotten.
I pressed my palm against my chest.
My heartbeat was slow. Human.
Just one.
Not two.
I let out a breath I didn't realize I was holding.
Someone knocked gently on my door.
"Mizu?" Aya's voice. "Are you awake?"
My breath caught. I sat up too quickly — the room spun. My hand gripped the blanket, grounding myself. When I spoke, my voice came out thin.
"Yes."
The door slid open.
Aya stood there.
She looked normal. Hair tied loosely. School uniform. Warm brown eyes. A soft, tired smile. Not glowing. Not transparent. Not blooming.
Just Aya.
For a long moment, neither of us spoke.
Then she stepped in, closed the door behind her, and sat beside my bed.
"You were asleep for two days," she said quietly. "Everyone was worried."
"Everyone…?" I echoed.
She nodded. "The teacher came to check on you. The store clerk left soup. I cleaned the garden outside. Your aunt's shoes were still by the door, so I brought them inside."
Her voice didn't shake. Her hands didn't tremble.
But her eyes were watching me very, very carefully.
"Do you remember what happened?" she asked.
I opened my mouth.
I closed it.
The memory of the dream pressed softly behind my ribs — not sharp, not painful. Just there.
The white field. The blooming. The other me dissolving into petals.
The garden breathing.
"I remember," I said.
Aya nodded once, as if she had expected that answer.
She didn't ask what I remembered.
She didn't say what she remembered.
She just looked out the window and whispered:
"It's quieter now."
I followed her gaze.
Outside, the world was the same village I had always seen.
Houses. Laundry lines. Dirt roads. A dog tied in someone's yard.
No flowers.
No vines.
No white blossoms crawling across rooftops like veins.
Not even the sprout beside my bed remained.
The floorboard was whole. Smooth. As if nothing had ever grown there.
But the soil looked dark. Moist. Recently turned.
I felt a faint pulse beneath my heel when I stood — not pain, just warmth.
The garden wasn't dead.
Just sleeping.
---
We walked to school together.
The air was crisp and clean. Thin clouds drifted lazily across the sky. The distant sound of cicadas returned — ordinary, noisy, alive.
For a moment, I allowed myself to believe it.
Aya chatted softly the way she always had. The little things. The weather. Homework. The new chalkboard that the school ordered. How the tea shop changed its menu again.
Her voice was gentle and familiar.
But every now and then, she paused.
Mid-word.
Mid-step.
Like she was listening for something only she could hear.
I remembered her in the dream — hair pale, voice layered, speaking like she belonged to the garden.
I wondered if she remembered, too.
When we reached the school gates, I finally asked.
"Aya," I said softly. "Do you… remember any of it?"
She didn't turn. She didn't blink.
But her smile grew just a little too still.
"Yes," she whispered.
My pulse slowed.
"Then—"
"But we don't have to talk about it," she said, her voice soft as falling petals. "Not today. Not while everything is quiet."
She looked at me fully now.
Her eyes were brown.
But deep behind the brown, I saw a faint pale shimmer. A memory of the bloom.
Not gone.
Just resting.
Like mine.
She squeezed my hand.
"Let it stay quiet for a while," she said. "Please."
Her warmth was real.
I nodded.
We walked inside.
---
Class felt unreal.
Everyone was present.
Everyone smiled.
Everyone spoke in the normal cadence of everyday life.
No one mentioned the blooming season.
No one spoke of flowers.
No one remembered the church bell.
Or maybe they did.
And just like us, they chose silence.
The teacher wrote dates on the board.
The chalk left dust on her fingers.
She laughed at a student's joke, just a little too gently.
Her eyes were normal.
But when she erased the board, I saw something:
Her shadow did not move with her.
It remained still.
As if it were waiting.
Watching.
I looked down at my notebook.
The page was blank.
No matter how long I pressed the pencil to it, no words came out.
The village was still remembering how to be a village.
And I was still remembering how to be a person.
---
On the walk home, Aya and I didn't talk.
The wind moved softly through the trees. Leaves rustled. Something small scurried in the grass.
Life continued.
But every few steps, I felt the faint pulse under the ground.
Slow. Patient.
The garden dreaming.
Aya stopped beside me.
"Mizu," she said. "When the next season comes… we can face it together."
The sunlight caught her eyes.
For a moment, they glimmered white.
I nodded.
"Together."
We walked the rest of the way in quiet.
Not silence.
Quiet — like the air between two breaths.
Like the world before something blooms again.
---
The quiet didn't last long.
It rarely does.
Three days passed with the same soft rhythm: morning light, school, Aya's hand brushing mine when we crossed the old bridge, the steady thrum of the earth beneath my feet like a heartbeat I'd learned to ignore.
The garden slept.
The village pretended.
I followed.
But peace has weight.
And the heavier it feels, the easier it breaks.
---
On the fourth morning, something changed.
I noticed it before I opened my eyes — the air felt… tense. The silence in the floorboards wasn't silence anymore. It was listening.
I sat up slowly.
The sprout hadn't returned.
The walls remained clean.
No vines.
No pulsing.
No whispering voices from beneath the floor.
But the house itself felt alert, like an animal raising its head at an unfamiliar sound.
I stepped outside.
The village looked the same — pastel houses, wooden fences, clothes drying on lines. Only the sky was different: bluer than I'd ever seen it, too wide, too sharp. A sky that did not belong to this valley.
Aya was waiting by the gate.
"Mizu," she said quietly. "Don't react. Just walk."
Her tone was wrong.
Too direct.
Too awake.
We walked the narrow road in silence.
It didn't take long to see him.
---
He stood near the bus stop at the entrance of the village — tall, wearing a long coat far too heavy for spring, a folder under his arm. His hair was dark, cut short, and his posture was stiff in the way of someone who did not understand how to wait.
He looked like the living version of a question mark.
A stranger.
No one came here on purpose.
No one arrived.
Everyone in this village was born into it… or pulled into it.
Aya's hand brushed mine — lightly, deliberately.
Don't speak first.
The stranger turned.
His eyes were sharp.
Too sharp.
Like he was used to looking closely at things most people avoid.
When he smiled, it didn't reach his eyes.
"Good morning," he said. "You must be students."
His voice was polite.
That made it worse.
Aya bowed slightly — perfectly normal, perfectly polite, perfectly careful.
I did the same.
He studied us the way someone studies a map.
"I'm from the prefecture office," he said, tapping the folder under his arm. "We received some… concerning reports. Communications from the village have been irregular. Supply deliveries have gone unconfirmed."
Aya's smile didn't move.
She didn't blink.
"That sounds troublesome," she said softly. "But everything is fine here."
The man's eyes flicked to her, then to me — and I knew he was measuring silence. Counting breaths. Listening for something beneath our voices.
"So," he said, too casually, "you've noticed nothing unusual?"
Aya's fingers tightened around mine.
"No," she said.
The man watched her a second longer.
Then he looked at me.
"What about you?" he asked.
His tone wasn't casual anymore.
He had chosen me specifically.
He could feel something.
My throat felt cold.
But the wind answered for me — a soft breeze carrying the scent of soil and old rain.
"We're just students," I said.
My voice sounded normal.
Human.
His expression didn't move.
But his eyes sharpened.
Silence stretched.
Then he nodded once, politely.
"I see. Well — I'll be staying for a few days. Just to observe. I hope we'll get along."
He smiled again.
It was a smile with corners that didn't belong on a human face.
We bowed.
He walked away.
And only when his footsteps faded did Aya finally exhale.
---
We didn't speak until we turned the corner near the shrine path.
Then Aya whispered:
"He doesn't belong here."
Her voice trembled — not with fear, but with memory.
"He can't hear it," she said. "He can't feel it. The garden isn't inside him."
The world seemed to tilt slightly, like gravity had shifted by a single degree.
The air thickened.
Aya kept her eyes forward.
"If he stays too long," she said, "the village will notice."
"The garden," I corrected.
She didn't deny it.
"Yes," she whispered. "The garden."
A breeze moved across the path.
The leaves rustled.
Somewhere beneath our feet, the faintest hum answered — dormant, patient, waking.
Aya stopped walking and looked at me.
"We have to decide," she said softly.
My chest tightened.
"Decide what?"
Her eyes, normally warm, were now impossibly calm.
"Whether we let him leave."
---
The wind stopped.
The village held its breath.
Somewhere far below the soil, a pulse stirred — slow, steady, inevitable.
Like something remembering hunger.
---
The outsider's presence was a wound in the quiet.
Not loud.
Not forceful.
Just wrong.
Like a single note played off-key in a song that had been repeating for centuries.
He walked through the village with the posture of someone who thought his eyes were sharper than the world. The type of person who believed he could not be deceived.
That was what made him dangerous.
People who fear the unknown hesitate.
People who worship the unknown submit.
But people who do not believe — they break things.
Aya and I watched him from the school courtyard as he spoke with the principal. He showed her papers. She smiled politely. He said something. She nodded. They both bowed.
To anyone else, it was normal.
But the air around him stayed still.
No wind moved his coat.
No petals fell near his feet.
No birdsong touched the air where he stood.
The village did not accept him.
He was an intruder in a place that had forgotten how to be intruded upon.
Aya's voice was low. "He'll start investigating soon."
I didn't look at her. "He already has."
Because the garden was not subtle.
It never had been.
It simply simply waited for people to see what they were already inside.
And now, it was waiting for him.
---
School ended early that day.
The sky had turned gray — an unfamiliar gray, a city gray. The village sky was never gray. Even during storms, even during blooming, it had always been pastel, soft, alive.
The outsider had brought the sky with him.
Aya and I walked home slowly. Neither of us spoke.
When we reached the crossroads, the outsider was there.
He was leaning over the old stone well — the same one behind the shrine. The well with no bucket. The one the old villagers never approached. The one that sounded like it had breathing at the bottom if you leaned too close.
He wasn't afraid of it.
He was measuring it.
Literally — a small metal ruler in his hand, jotting numbers in the folder he carried.
Aya froze.
I did too.
The outsider looked up at us.
His expression didn't change.
But his eyes sharpened — that quick, surgical awareness of someone who sees behavior more than faces.
"Is this well still in use?" he asked.
His voice was calm. Professional.
Aya smiled — nearly perfect.
"No," she said. "It's just decoration now."
But her right hand, the one holding her school bag, had curled into a fist.
He didn't look away.
"Do either of you know how deep it is?"
Aya didn't answer that time.
Her silence was too still.
So I said the only answer that was safe.
"It's older than the village."
His eyes flicked to me — not surprised, not curious, simply noted.
"Interesting," he said quietly.
He crouched beside the well again and tapped the stone lining.
The sound that came out was hollow.
Deep.
And alive.
The outsider paused.
For the first time, something in his expression shifted — not fear.
Recognition.
A thought.
A suspicion.
The beginning of a map forming in his mind.
Aya stepped forward.
Too quickly.
"Don't touch it," she said.
Her voice wasn't sharp.
It was honest.
The outsider stood.
"Mizu," he said, ignoring Aya entirely. "Walk with me."
I didn't ask how he knew my name.
Of course he knew it.
That was his job — to arrive in places that shouldn't exist and make sense of them.
Aya didn't move.
She didn't stop me.
But her eyes said: Be careful.
I followed him down the path toward town.
---
We walked in silence at first.
Then he spoke.
"You were not born here."
It wasn't a question.
"No," I said.
He nodded slightly. "And yet, you fit here. You move the way the others do. You speak the way they speak. Your rhythm is aligned."
I didn't reply.
He glanced at me — analytical, not unkind.
"I've studied rural isolation before," he continued. "Small communities develop synchronized gesture patterns. Shared speech cadences. Neural mirroring. But this village…"
He scanned the houses, the fences, the stones.
"…this place is different. The synchronicity is too perfect."
My hands felt cold.
He wasn't seeing the garden.
He was seeing its effect.
A scientist examining the shadow of something he didn't believe in.
"Do you know why I came?" he asked.
I shook my head.
He exhaled once — steady, measured.
"Eight villages in this region have disappeared in the past forty years. Not suddenly. Not violently. They simply… faded from mapping records. Their names stopped appearing in census logs. Postal routes stopped listing them."
He looked at me.
"And their last confirmed messages were always the same: 'The blooming season is beautiful this year.'"
My heart slowed.
He watched my reaction carefully.
Not accusing.
Not emotional.
Just observing.
He did not fear the garden.
He thought he could understand it.
"We'll talk again tomorrow," he said. "I'd like to ask you more."
He bowed politely and walked away.
I stood there long after he was gone.
The wind returned.
And beneath my feet —
The ground pulsed once.
Slow. Deep. Awakening.
Aya appeared beside me, silent.
"He heard it," I whispered.
She nodded.
"And now," she said, voice faint as petals falling,
"the garden will hear him."
---
Night returned to the village like a held breath being released.
Not in its usual way — slow, gentle, wrapped in cicadas and cooling tea.
No.
This night came down sudden, like a curtain falling.
The sky turned dark without twilight.
Shadows didn't stretch — they appeared.
The air grew still, thick, full of the kind of quiet that waits.
Aya and I sat on the porch of my house.
We didn't speak.
We both knew that speaking would mean acknowledging what we felt:
The garden was listening.
And it was waking.
Somewhere in the village, the outsider settled into the spare room the mayor had prepared. I imagined him sitting at a small desk, writing notes in his folder, organizing his observations like a puzzle he was confident he could solve.
He didn't hear the soil breathing beneath his floorboards.
He didn't feel the old roots shifting in the dirt under his shoes.
He didn't recognize the silence for what it was.
He didn't know he had already been seen.
But the garden knew him now.
And the garden remembers everything.
---
Aya spoke first — her voice barely a whisper.
"He shouldn't stay the night."
I didn't answer.
She pulled her knees to her chest and stared at the darkened street. One streetlamp flickered at the corner — the only artificial light in the village. It buzzed faintly, like a dying insect.
"The garden isn't violent," Aya said. "But it protects itself."
I looked down at my hands — pale, ordinary, but still faintly pulsing beneath the skin. The mark hadn't disappeared entirely, just become quieter.
Sleeping.
Like the village.
"What will it do to him?" I asked.
Aya shook her head slowly.
"It depends on what he does next."
Silence again.
The lamp flickered once more.
Then it went out.
---
We both stood.
Not out of fear.
Not out of surprise.
But because we both felt it — the pulse beneath the earth shifting, deep as a tide under the ground.
The first sign.
I looked toward the outsider's lodging.
A single window glowed faintly with lamplight.
"He's awake," Aya murmured.
Of course he was.
People like him are always awake when they should sleep.
She stepped off the porch.
I reached toward her — not to stop her, but because the air between us felt like it could tear.
"Aya," I whispered.
She paused. Didn't turn.
"Stay behind me," she said softly. "If it begins to move, don't speak. Don't answer. Don't call to it. Let it pass."
"Let what pass?" I asked.
She closed her eyes.
"The part of the garden that walks."
---
We moved through the village without a sound.
The streets were empty.
The houses dark.
The wind gone.
The stillness felt aware.
Not the emptiness of a sleeping town — the stillness of something waiting beneath every wall, every roof, every breath.
The outsider's window grew closer.
Through the thin paper shoji, we saw him:
He sat at a low table.
Notebook open.
Pen moving.
He was writing quickly — too quickly — his expression sharpened with concentration.
He wasn't afraid.
He didn't feel watched.
But the village was watching.
Not through eyes.
Through roots.
The wooden floor beneath his feet flexed, almost imperceptibly.
Aya exhaled shakily.
"It started sooner than I thought."
The outsider paused.
Not because he felt it — but because he heard something.
A sound from outside.
Soft.
Dragging.
Not footsteps.
Something being pulled.
Aya grabbed my wrist.
"Don't look," she whispered.
But I did.
---
On the far end of the street, a figure moved.
Slow. Heavy.
It wore clothing — familiar, ordinary — but the shape beneath the clothes was wrong. The joints bent too smooth. The shoulders rolled like something without bones trying to imitate how bones move. The head tilted forward, swaying slightly with each step.
Then another shape appeared behind the first.
And another.
And another.
People.
Villagers.
But not living.
They walked as if carried by invisible strings, their feet dragging lightly across the dirt, their faces relaxed and serene. Their eyes open. Their mouths moving slowly, soundlessly, like they were speaking in dreams.
Aya tightened her grip.
"It's the ones who haven't finished waking," she whispered. "The garden is trying to remember how to hold them."
The outsider opened the door.
He stepped out.
Everything stopped.
The walking shapes froze mid-step.
The night held its breath.
Even the soil went still.
He looked at them — at all of us — with sharp, rational analysis.
Not horror.
Not awe.
Just observation.
He lifted the folder under his arm.
"Are these residents?" he asked calmly.
His voice did not shake.
Aya's mouth opened — but no sound came out.
Because there was nothing— nothing— the garden hates more
than a person who looks at it
and does not believe.
The first villager's head turned slowly.
Too slowly.
The neck bending wrong.
Bones… remembering how to be bones.
The outsider didn't step back.
He stepped closer.
"Are you in need of medical assistance?" he asked.
Aya's grip on my wrist became painful.
"Mizu," she whispered, "do not move."
The villager reached for the outsider.
Not to harm.
To recognize.
To remember.
Because the garden does not attack.
It absorbs.
The outsider touched the villager's wrist.
And for the first time — just for a moment —
I saw fear in his eyes.
Because the skin beneath his fingers pulsed.
Once.
Like something alive.
Something remembering him.
Something learning the shape of his name.
The villager smiled.
Slow.
Soft.
Meaningless.
But the soil beneath us shivered.
Aya's voice was barely audible.
"It knows him now."
The outsider stepped back, and his voice broke — just slightly.
"What is this place?"
Aya didn't answer.
I couldn't.
Because the garden whispered — not in words, not in sound, but in the pulse beneath my feet:
> He does not believe.
So we will show him.
The wind returned.
The flowers had begun to wake.
---