It still came as a surprise when, yesterday, Yumi suggested they go to Ishiyama-dera Temple to ask advice from Murasaki Shikibu.

“We don’t know each other now. But we’re going to meet, and one day, we’ll be together. Actually, maybe that’s the real beginning.”

Her right hand undulates in front of her like a rippling wave. She raises the other hand above her head and with fluttering fingers, circles her wrist down to her waist. Outside a gentle wind stirs and it begins to rain.

Every marriage is a marriage of many different people, Justine said. We all change over time.

Most people don’t encounter their first murderer so young. Most people won’t meet the Fermi estimation of the national per-person lifetime average of thirty-six murderers, either.

“People don’t want to know the future,” the tarot reader goes on. She pulls off her headscarf, grimaces, reties it over hair tacky with sweat. “They want to talk through their troubles. They want you to wrap their desires in archetypes.”

I keep asking myself why didn’t I stop them. I was there. I was the only sane one, right? Personally unaffected by the tragedy. That’s what the judge said, anyway, even though I was never prosecuted.

"Before Dog, Heron had never seen someone remove their own heart."

The water off the coast of Gid tasted funny. At first it was just a faint tang in the back of the throat or the feathery farthest-out edges of the gills. The coastal patrols came back itchy and out of sorts, and everyone who ventured out there complained of the taste: bitter and sour at once, like something growing had twisted, or died.

"It's been three decades and I'm an adult and I'm tired of being afraid of a goddamned bridge.”