Something in the river moved wrong.
Not louder—late.
The surge came first through the platform, a soft upward nudge under Hana's feet, and only after that did the water answer it with sound. Mud peeled away from the bank with a wet, dragging lag, as if the noise had to catch up. The track-bed soil hissed where cold seeped in, a thin, irritated sound.
Hana didn't step closer at first. She leaned, weight forward, then stopped. The rain hit her face in slanted bursts; for a second she tasted iron and thought of pipes, of the office floor, of the whisper still stuck behind her ears.
Just rain. Just runoff.
The surface buckled again—too smooth, too shaped—and the delay came with it, motion before noise. Her stomach tightened.
Not just runoff.
She stepped down to the edge of the platform. The grit shifted under her bare foot, a fraction later than it should have. Rain plastered her hair to her face; she shoved it back, fingers slipping once on the wet strands.
"You'll—" She stopped, listening.
The current pulled sideways, then corrected, as if it had overshot something. A pale reflection slid under, stretched thin, snapped back into place.
"You'll drown the beans," she said, firmer this time. "And the cucumbers. And the old woman who feeds you scraps of soap you pretend to hate."
For a beat, nothing matched. The water lifted, then the sound followed, a dull slap against the bank arriving late. Spray hit her ankle, colder than the rain, sharp enough to sting.
The surface gathered itself and pressed higher.
Her first read—attention—sat wrong. The push didn't follow her voice cleanly. It leaned, corrected, leaned again, as if answering something upstream she couldn't hear yet.
Under the churn, the current carried a second rhythm. Not the rain. Not the wind. A distant, uneven pressure that came through the supports in pulses—push, hold, release—like something opening and failing to close.
She swallowed.
"Not now," she tried, lower. The word thinned halfway out, her breath hitching on it. "Wait."
The river didn't wait. It rose another fraction, mud slipping free with a soft, tearing suction that arrived a heartbeat late.
Wrong direction. Wrong timing.
She closed her eyes for a second and listened past the surface. Water moving through narrow places. A hollow knock, distant and intermittent. A metallic strain that might have been memory or might have been real, too far off to resolve. The pattern didn't settle.
She exhaled and shifted.
The name came out quieter than she intended, shaped around the way the water hesitated in flooded basements, around the way it circled drains that no longer worked. Not the map-name. The one that fit its stutter.
For a moment, nothing aligned. Then the surface bulged—late, again—another handspan toward the greenhouse.
Hana's stomach knotted.
The rows of vegetables sat square in the shallowest part of the old rail bed. If the water took the tracks in one rush, the soil would slip. She pictured it and then lost the image halfway through, the timing off—collapse before movement, sound after.
She didn't try to fix it.
She turned and ran.
The platform shifted under her feet, each step landing a fraction before the sound of it. Rain hammered the roof in uneven bursts, rhythm slipping.
The office door stuck for half a second under her hand, wood swollen. She yanked harder; it gave with a soft tear. Warm, stale air hit her face, thick with sleep and foxfire and damp cloth.
"Kyo—"
Her voice came out too quiet the first time. She grabbed his collar instead and hauled.
He came awake in pieces. One hand moved first, claws flashing out before the rest of him followed; the other lagged, fingers still blunt for a beat too long. His eyes lit a fraction after his body tensed, glow catching up as the barrier reflex coiled in his chest, tight and misaligned.
Hana didn't let go. Momentum carried her forward; she fell with him, hands braced on his shoulders, faces a breath apart.
His skin was warm under the thin fabric, heat steady against her palms. Sweat, wood dust, and the faint, stale sweetness of the Lunar Garden clung to him.
Her pulse stumbled, out of step with everything else.
"The station," she said, too fast, the words tripping over each other. "The river— it's— coming up."
His pupils snapped narrow. "Hunters?"
The word came out sharp, already aimed.
"Water," she said. "Big—" She hesitated, the earlier misread snagging. "Big and not listening."
He held the hunter-frame a fraction too long, shoulders still set for impact. Then it slipped. He blinked once, breath resetting, the coiled reflex easing back into something else.
Ren jerked upright like the floor had kicked him. His hand went to his side, closed on nothing, shifted, searching again before stopping. His shoulders stayed tight, head angled, listening past the room.
Sumi dragged a forearm over her eyes, then went still. Her head tilted, just enough. The pipes under the floor ticked and stuttered—pressure building, dropping, building again, the rhythm off by a beat.
"…hear that?" she said, voice low. "That's not rain."
She swung her legs over the side of the futon and stood in one smooth motion, already awake in the way that mattered.
"Good," she added, a thin edge under it. "Peaceful nights mean something's waiting its turn."
In the corridor, movement—boots against floor, a light scraping late against the step that made it.
Grandma was already there, shoving her feet into them, flashlight clenched in one hand. The beam jittered once before steadying, catching the edge of the doorframe a fraction after it passed it.
"Of course it's tonight," she muttered. "River never—" She paused, listening, brow tightening. "—never comes clean anymore."