Roset stood barefoot on the engawa, watching the morning mist lift from the fields.
Lea was in her playpen just inside, chewing enthusiastically on a wooden toy shaped like a fox. The chickens scratched lazily near the garden beds, and the kettle inside was just beginning to whistle.
It was a simple morning, like so many since they'd moved here.
She liked the slowness. It wasn't the kind that came from boredom, but the kind she'd longed for when life had been too fast to breathe.
After breakfast, she bundled Lea into a thick sweater, tied her into the sling, and walked to the small market in town. Tanaka waved at her from his bench near the old bus stop, and Midori met them by the pickled radish stall, insisting on buying Lea a red bean bun "for later."
The villagers had come to accept her not just as Hino's wife but as Roset,a person with her own rhythm and roots growing slowly in their soil.
By the time they got home, Lea was asleep on her back with one sock missing, the bun clutched in a chubby fist.
Roset laughed quietly to herself and eased her into the cot.
Then she made tea, settled into her usual spot by the window, and opened her laptop to write.
That's when she heard it.
A sound she hadn't heard in months.
Ping.
Her phone. Her old phone.
The one she kept off and tucked away in a drawer beneath her journals.
Roset froze.
She hadn't touched it since that morning weeks ago when she'd looked at the photo of her and her sisters. She'd left it on the table, meaning to charge it later, and forgot.
Another ping.
This time she stood.
Heart suddenly tight in her chest, she walked to the table and picked up the device. The screen was smudged, the battery barely hanging on, but it had connected to the house Wi-Fi just enough to download a message.
There it was.
1 New Message
The sender name made her stomach drop.
Eliot.
Her half-brother.
She stared at the screen, unmoving.
Her thumb hovered over the notification. She didn't open it. Not yet.
Instead, she sat slowly at the kitchen table, holding the phone in both hands as if it were something fragile.
Or sacred.
Hino wouldn't be home for another two hours.
Lea stirred softly in her crib.
Outside, the wind moved through the persimmon tree, shaking loose a single fruit that thudded gently into the grass.
Roset closed her eyes.
Took a breath.
And whispered with a tear down her check, "You're alive."