Chapter 11: Morning Light

Morning sun cut through the blinds in pale bars across the breakfast table. For once, the Signa home felt still in a way that didn’t unsettle her.

Winifred had come home. That alone changed the air. She’d marked the occasion the way she always did: steaming rice crowned with a soft egg, chicken folded into scrambled eggs with a slick of mayonnaise, chilled tofu dusted with scallions, four bowls of onion soup. The aromas crowded out the city’s usual breath of diesel and wet concrete. Apricot held her tea in both hands and breathed it in, letting the warmth do what warmth could.

Jasper poked at his rice, shoulders drawn tight. “I’m kinda worried about my history test,” he muttered.

“Did you study?”

“You’ve seen me studying. All I do is study.” He jabbed his chopsticks toward her for emphasis. “It’s all dead names and feudal wars. None of it matters.”

“Jasper.” Winifred’s eyes cut to the chopsticks pointed at her daughter. In Uchella, you might as well spit at someone. He lowered them instantly. Apricot hid her smile behind her cup.

Their father folded down the corner of his newspaper. “History wasn’t my strong suit either,” he said. “But a smart kid like you will manage.” Jasper’s shoulders loosened, and he dug back into his rice.

“Apricot, honey.” Winifred set her napkin aside. Her voice went light in a way that warned of something. “Can you watch the house for a couple of nights? Work’s sending me out again.”

The words settled. Another trip. Another stretch of empty rooms and too much quiet.

“Sure. No problem.” The lie came easy. Lately the silence in this house didn’t stay silent, and her thoughts weren’t the only things moving through it after dark. “Long-haul?”

“Full circuit. We’ll get a few days in Castor.” Tired as she looked, the name softened her face.

Castor. Apricot closed her eyes briefly and could almost breathe it in: pine, sea salt, open sky. Not the chemical weight of Blue Ash, where the air tasted like machinery wearing itself down. She wanted to be glad for her mother. She was. The wanting underneath it, the cobblestone streets and green parks and actual trees, she pushed that somewhere lower.

“What’s the occasion?” she asked.

“New atmospheric route they’re testing. And I couldn’t resist a chance to see home.” Winifred squeezed her hand. “I’ll bring you something.”

Harlan cleared his throat with enough ceremony that Apricot knew what was coming. “Speaking of news. My department picked me for a new project.”

Jasper perked up instantly. “What kind of project?”

“An atmospheric elevator for the Uchellian Space Agency.” Harlan adjusted his glasses, the excitement already leaking through his composure. “A hydraulic rail system reaching the orbital station. Cargo transport straight into orbit.”

Jasper’s jaw dropped. Apricot watched the same light ignite behind his eyes that always lived in their father’s, the two of them already disappearing into tensile loads and docking protocols. She caught her mother’s gaze across the table. Winifred smiled. They both knew this conversation could run for an hour if no one intervened.

Winifred set a gentle hand on Harlan’s arm, cutting through the rising jargon. “Oh, Apricot. I nearly forgot. You got a message this morning from Fukugata Network. They want to interview you about that article.”

Apricot set her tea down too hard. The cup rattled against the saucer.

“Fukugata,” she said. “The broadcast network.”

Her father beamed. “Quite a few people at the office have been reading it. It’s a good piece.”

Fukugata was the primary news source in Okabe. Millions of viewers. The kind of platform that turned local reporters into names people recognized, names that carried weight, names that drew attention. Apricot felt the heat climb her neck and settle in her cheeks. Thrilling. Terrifying. And somewhere beneath both, a small cold thought she couldn’t quite suppress: attention cuts both ways in this city.

Winifred’s expression sharpened further. “Just promise me you won’t do anything that reckless again. I worry about you.”

“I’ll be careful, Mom.”

The table went quiet. The real danger, the thing she’d seen, the thing she still couldn’t explain even to herself, sat between them like a sealed envelope. She had not told them. Could not. They would hear the words and not the meaning.

“Guys. Look.” Jasper pointed at the holo-screen in the living room.

A live feed filled the display: Rinjioh Shrine, its towering pagoda framed by police lights. Paramedics clustered at the base. The ticker scrolled beneath the chaos in clean, steady type.

Roe Okabe, High Priestess of Okabe, dead from apparent suicide.

The table went still. Winifred’s hand rose to her mouth. Harlan set down his newspaper.

Roe Okabe was not a local figure. She was the spiritual authority of the nation, the voice that blessed state ceremonies and guided millions through grief and festival alike. Her face appeared in an inset photo: composed, weathered, steady. The kind of face carved into public monuments. Apricot had seen her on broadcast every New Year since childhood, offering the national blessing in a voice that made the whole country hold its breath.

“Why would she jump?” Jasper’s voice came out thin.

No one answered. The broadcast cycled through angles of the shrine, each one clinical, each one inadequate. A crowd had already gathered at the base of the pagoda, some kneeling, some just standing with their hands at their sides as if they’d forgotten what hands were for.

Apricot watched the feed and said nothing. First the things in the dark. Now this.

She pushed back her chair. Life wouldn’t pause. She still had classes, a shift at Ichigari, and the ordinary machinery of a day that Blue Ash demanded regardless of what it took in the night.

She slung her bag over her shoulder and offered quick goodbyes. At the door, her mother called after her.

“Be safe, Apricot. I love you.”

“Love you too.”

The front door clicked shut behind her. The morning air hit her skin, cool and tinged with exhaust. Down the street, sirens threaded through the city’s hum.

---

The subway car rattled through the dark, fluorescents flickering. The morning rush should have packed the benches, but today the car felt hollowed out. A few passengers sat sealed in their own silence. Maybe the news had done it. Even the air felt muted.

Apricot stood at the center pole, fingers wrapped around cold metal. Her reflection hovered in the grimy window, pale and tired.

At the far end, a man lay sprawled across a bench in a heap of black clothes, limbs thrown wide. Greasy hair curtained his face. He stirred under her gaze, lifting his head with slow, pained effort. Bloodshot eyes found her.

“Ah, hell.” He pressed a hand to his forehead. “What do you want, reporter girl?”

Recognition clicked. The street peddler from weeks ago. The camera. She couldn’t place his name, but the encounter hadn’t faded.

“Still have that camera you were selling?”

He barked a dry laugh and looked away. “Should’ve bought it when you had the chance. Sold the damn thing.”

“Oh.” Her stomach dipped. “That’s too bad. I needed it.”

A grunt. Flat, dismissive. He looked wrecked: a bruise blooming along his cheekbone, one arm wrapped around his ribs. Life in Blue Ash wrote its stories in skin, and his had been written hard.

Apricot nodded to herself and turned to go.

A hand snapped around her wrist.

She gasped. He was on his feet, moving with a suddenness that didn’t match his battered frame. He shoved something solid against her stomach. She clutched it on instinct.

A camera. Sleek. Mint condition. A Nihon Dazzler.

The one he’d sworn he sold.

“I don’t need your pity,” Cortez snarled. His grip trembled. Anger, pride, shame tangled behind his eyes in something too raw to separate. “I know your type. Little do-gooder feeling sorry for the bum. Those thugs who jumped me, sure, they’d take your charity. Not me.”

“Please, it’s not like that.” Apricot held the camera out. “I was going to pay you.”

He jerked his head. Refused to look at it. “Keep it. I don’t want it.” He shoved past her toward the next car. “And I don’t want your money. Just stay the hell away from me.”

The doors hissed shut behind him.

Apricot stood near the pole, the gifted camera pressed to her chest. Her heartbeat thudded in her ears. Cortez’s bench held nothing now but a faint trace of sweat and despair.

She brushed her fingertips across the camera’s casing. Last year’s model, nicked and scuffed, unmistakably genuine. A knot of guilt tightened in her chest.

I’ll repay him. Somehow.

At least she could make things right with Sato.

---

Blue Ash rose around her in its usual jagged sprawl: brick walls plastered with peeling holo-graffiti, ad screens flickering atop skeletal high-rises, radio towers scratching at a bruise-colored sky. The road stretched ahead through a corridor of old brick buildings, the city quiet, almost still.

She slipped on her headphones and tapped her player. A pop tune burst into her ears, painfully bright against the city’s gray. Nothing is stronger than our love, the singer crooned with a sweetness that belonged to some other world.

The contradiction made her smile. She matched her steps to the beat, hopping a puddle that mirrored a shattered streetlamp. Troubles that surround me, all go away when you are here. Her hips swayed with each stride. Beneath a blinking pawnshop sign, she did a quick twirl, mouthing along. When you need me, baby, nothing keeps me away. Her yellow apron flared. For a moment, her laughter rose into the afternoon air, small and warm in a city that rarely offered either.

The laughter died as she noticed her breath fogging.

She raised her hand to her lips. A plume of warm air curled around her fingers and dissolved. Cold. In late summer.

She slowed and glanced behind her. Every streetlight on the road she’d just walked was dark. An entire block of dead lamps, as if someone had drawn a line through the grid.

A shiver crawled up her spine.

Nothing stronger than our love. Nothing stronger than our love. Nothing stronger than our love.

The chorus looped. The same four bars, rewinding and playing and rewinding. The singer’s voice had not changed, still bright, still sweet, but stripped of the street noise and the rhythm of her own footsteps, the words took on a different shape. A promise made in an empty room. A lullaby sung to no one.

Apricot pulled the player from her apron pocket. The display flickered, the progress bar jerking backward, resetting, jerking backward again. She hadn’t touched it.

She yanked the headphone cable free. Silence rushed in, hollow and carved. The screen continued to glitch in her hand, the song stuttering on without her. She shoved the player back into her apron and kept walking, faster now, trying to ignore the wrongness settling over the street like a film.

Ahead, a streetlight flickered. Sputtered. Went dark with a bright flash that left a dead tube behind.

A few steps further, the next one burned out. Then the next. Then the next. A neat, advancing line of darkness eating toward her, each pool of light shrinking as though something unseen swallowed them whole.

Apricot broke into a sprint.

Three blocks. Boots splashing through oily puddles, the air colder with every stride. She didn’t look back. Graffiti and rusted doorways streaked past in a smear of shadow.

Her lungs gave out beside a boarded-up arcade. She bent forward, palms on her knees, dragging air into her chest. Her legs trembled. She wasn’t built for sprints fueled by terror.

Seconds passed. She forced herself to look.

Behind her, the streetlights had returned. Every lamp she’d fled past now burned steady, as if nothing had touched them. But ahead, the lights strobed, flashing in rapid, arrhythmic bursts that made the street jump and shudder like a broken broadcast.

She was between two walls of wrong light. The dark behind her had healed. The dark ahead was waiting.

“Power surge,” she muttered. “Grid malfunction.” The words tasted like nothing.

The strobing slowed. Steadied. One by one, the lights ahead returned to their usual sickly glow, as if whatever had been playing with them had simply lost interest.

She scanned the street. Empty. No witnesses except a cat on a dumpster, watching her with bored judgment.

Apricot straightened and kept walking. Somewhere in the back of her skull, the chorus still echoed, faint and sticky. Nothing stronger than our love. It didn’t sound sweet anymore.

She held onto it anyway, humming under her breath, because the only thing worse than a song that had gone wrong was the silence underneath it.