“You came back,” she said, without turning.
Kaito’s chest tightened. “Do I know you?”
“That’s why it’s cruel,” he replied.
Her name, she told him, was Yuki. But the old sakura knew her as Sakura no Yume —the Cherry Blossom Dream.
Every spring, the people of Kamibashi whispered about the old sakura tree on the Hill of Forgotten Wishes. It stood alone, gnarled and patient, surrounded by mossy stones and the rusted echoes of childhood prayers. Most years, it offered nothing but bare branches and silence. But once every ten years—on the first night of a warm southern wind—it exploded into a cloud of pale pink, so thick and luminous that the entire hillside seemed to breathe.