“You cannot hide forever,” Hotaru said.

It did not ring. It clattered against the floor—a dull, pathetic sound. Hotaru laughed. Then he stopped.

“What do you want me to do?” Kirei asked.

The sound of rain on a tin roof. His own roof. His own child, now dead fifty years, asking: Father, why does the rain sound sad?

Kirei caught it before it touched the ground. She did not stab him. She pressed the flat of the blade against his chest, where a heart still beat beneath the scars of amputation.

No one believed it anymore.

He coughed. And in that cough, a single memory returned.