# Episode 204: A Breeze from the Homeland
The wind shifted.
It was a southern breeze, carrying a dry, heavy heat. It did not kick up the dust of the highway, but instead blew as if to caress the cheeks of the three travelers. Koyoi’s bangs fluttered, and the drawstring of the pouch at his waist danced with a soft rhythm.
He almost slowed to a stop, but Asahi had already beaten him to it.
His back was rigid. He hadn't reached for the hilt of his sword; he simply stood there, tilting his chin up as if bathing in the breeze. While the withered grass lining the road swayed like breaking waves, Asahi alone remained motionless.
"Asahi?"
No answer.
The wind carried a scent. Campfire smoke. The verdant tang of drying grass. The silt of a riverbed, and the chill of water splashing against bare feet on stone. They were all smells Koyoi did not recognize.
And yet, the Droplet inside his pouch began to tremble. Through the fabric, a heat slightly warmer than body temperature seeped into Koyoi’s hip. It was the scent of a name once used for Asahi—the scent of a life from a time when someone called him by that name.
Kuon narrowed his artificial eye. A faint, pale blue light flickered within it.
"Fragments of a name. The wind is carrying them."
His tone was as level as ever. Yet, he did not reach for his Catalog. He chose observation over record-keeping.
Within the wind, there were voices.
They were indecipherable—sounds as fine and thin as grains of sand. But they were certainly human voices. Many voices overlapped, and all of them seemed to be calling out a single name. The laughter of children. A voice raised in scolding. The sound of someone drawing water, calling a name between the splashes.
This was Asahi’s home.
Koyoi pressed the pouch to his chest. The Droplet within pulsed like a heartbeat. As if resonating with the voices in the wind, a gentle warmth spread through him.
He caught a glimpse of Asahi’s profile.
His mouth was twisted—not in a smile, and not in anger. He was enduring. It was the face of someone clenching their teeth to swallow something down. The veins in his temple stood out, and sweat glistened on his sun-browned neck.
One voice reached them, clearer and closer than the rest.
A woman’s voice, soft and low, weaving the same sound over and over. A name. Not "Asahi"—but the name he had held before he became Asahi. The sound he was known by before he ever held a sword. A voice calling him home for dinner from the riverbank. That sound arrived, drifting upon the warmest layer of the breeze.
Koyoi could not make out the name. The wind carried a voice meant for a distance only Asahi could cross. Though they stood less than ten paces apart, only the rustle of the wind reached Koyoi’s ears.
Kuon started to open his Catalog, then stopped. He must have judged that this was not something to be recorded. The blue light flickered once more, then faded, as if he were closing his eye.
The wind died down.
The scent thinned. The voices sank into the sand. The southern sky remained unchanged, a vast expanse of dry blue. The withered grass returned to its stillness, and the dust of the highway settled.
Asahi’s throat moved—the motion of swallowing something. Then, he clenched both fists once and released them. He had gripped them so hard his knuckles had turned white.
He tucked his chin in and let the tension drain from his shoulders. He exhaled a long, heavy breath, as if pushing it out from the very bottom of his lungs.
"Let’s move."
His voice was the same as always. A little gruff, clipped, and focused only on the path ahead.
"Right," Koyoi said.
"...Yeah," Kuon replied.
Neither of them asked questions. It wasn't that they couldn't; they simply felt there was no need. Asahi’s back said everything that needed to be said.
The three began to walk again. Asahi’s footsteps were a fraction heavier than before. The sound of his soles firmly treading the sand—the stride of a man who would not run away.
Koyoi looked back just once.
The path they had traveled was already being covered by sand. Along with the traces left by the wind, the highway was rewriting its own surface. Footprints, scents, and the echoes of a mother’s voice—new sand piled atop the old, as if nothing had happened.
Asahi did not look back.
Koyoi turned his eyes forward. Inside his pouch, the Droplet was still faintly warm. He felt as though the nameless gods were cradling the heat left by that wind from his home, refusing to let it go.
Three sets of footprints were carved into the fresh sand.
They, too, would likely vanish soon. But for now, they were certainly there.