It had been lodged in a crack of the old pre-fall greenhouse, a tiny black teardrop no bigger than her thumbnail. She almost threw it away. But there was something about the shell — a faint whorl, like a fingerprint, like a promise.
Then, on the fifteenth night, she saw it.
The light spread.
The night after that, a foot.
They weren't blooming for her. They weren't blooming for the arcology. They were blooming because that was what they were made to do. In the dark, in the dead soil, in the belly of a dying world — they opened their petals and turned toward a sun that no one else could see. Himawari Wa Yoru Ni Saku
She didn't plant it in the hydroponic rows. Those were monitored. Instead, she took a broken clay pot, filled it with smuggled compost, and hid it in the deepest corner of the sub-levels, where the night was absolute and no cameras watched.
A pale green curl, no bigger than a fingernail, pushing up through the soil. Oriko knelt beside it, her breath fogging the cold air. She touched the stem. It was warm. It had been lodged in a crack of
But one month ago, she found the seed.