The fishing village known as Awari was far too small to be graced with the name "port."
Deep within the inlet sat a single wooden jetty. Dried nets swayed in the breeze, and only five boats remained. Shells and driftwood lay scattered across the beach, and in the spaces between them stood three small stone shrines.
The shrines bore no names. Their surfaces had been scraped away, leaving only the faint, ghostly traces of where characters had once been carved.
"They’ve been erased," Asahi said, pointing toward the shrines.
"The Observers?"
"Likely. They’ve brought everything under their control, right down to the name of the village."
Kuon didn’t touch the shrines. Instead, he stared out at the surface of the inlet. His prosthetic eye moved with a mechanical precision, as if licking across the water's skin.
"Bubbles."
Koyoi saw them too. Tiny bubbles were floating on the surface. One, then two. They rose quietly from the seabed, their ascent independent of the rhythm of the waves.
As the bubbles burst upon the surface, they made a faint sound. It wasn't the sharp pop of water splashing. It was a drier, shorter sound.
It was a human voice.
Just a single syllable. Each bubble held only one sound. The moment it burst, the sound was released, only to be immediately swallowed by the salt wind and vanish.
Koyoi knelt at the edge of the jetty and strained his ears. A bubble popped. "Ka." Another. "Mi." Another. "Na."
Fragments of a name.
"They’re leaking from an ancient water vein on the seabed," Kuon said, checking his sea chart. "An old aquifer runs beneath this inlet—an underground waterway that carries names. There must be a fracture somewhere, and the sounds of those names are rising to the surface as bubbles."
"Hmph. You lot can see 'em, then?"
A voice called out.
Koyoi turned to see an old man standing at the foot of the jetty. His face was dark from the sun and etched with deep wrinkles. He held a half-mended net in one hand, eyeing them as if weighing their worth.
"I’m asking if you can see the bubbles."
"We can," Koyoi answered.
The old man set his net down on the ground. "I see. Most of the youngsters these days can't see a thing. Can't hear 'em, either. Even when the bubbles rise, they just think it’s the sea being the sea."
The old man sat down on the jetty. His feet dangled just above the water, and the bubbles drifted past beneath them.
"Old man, do you know what these bubbles are?" Asahi asked.
"Know 'em? I’ve been picking them up since I was a lad."
The old man reached a hand toward the water. A bubble rose near his palm and stopped, remaining whole without bursting.
"There are voices inside those bubbles, aren't there? Scraps of names. In the old days, every fisherman in this village did it. You’d scoop up the bubbles, gather the voices, stitch them together, and restore them to their original names. Then you’d return them to the village well."
"Harvesting names... like fish," Koyoi murmured.
The old man nodded. "We called it 'Bubble Gleaning.' You catch fish to eat 'em. You scoop up bubbles to return 'em. Both are just things on loan from the sea."
Kuon took a step forward. "And you don't do it anymore?"
"It was forbidden."
The old man’s voice grew low.
"About twenty years ago. Men in white clothes came and told us not to touch the bubbles. They said the seabed channels were under their management, and we weren't allowed to go picking up names as we pleased. Three fishermen defied them. By the next morning, all three had forgotten their own names."
The salt wind gusted. The nets swayed, and the boards of the jetty creaked.
Koyoi looked at the old man’s profile. His eyes were following the bubbles on the water. For twenty years, those eyes had watched these bubbles every day, forbidden from touching them.
"The three who forgot their names... what happened to them?"
"They’re still alive. Deep in the village. Nameless as they are, they eat, they sleep, they wake. But no one calls for them. There’s no name to call them by."
A bubble burst. The sound "Ri" brushed past Koyoi’s ear and vanished.
"You want to pick them up, don't you?" The old man looked at Koyoi. "I can tell by your eyes. You've got the face of someone who can't look at a bubble without wanting to catch it."
"...Yes."
"I won't tell you to stop. But there’s a way to scoop the bubbles."
The old man pulled a small seashell from his robe. It was half of a bivalve, its interior shimmering with a pearlescent luster.
"If you try to grab a bubble with your hands, it’ll break. You have to catch it with this. If you rest the bubble against the inside of the shell, the voice will transfer to the pearl and stay there. Once you’ve gathered the shells and lined them up, the name will take shape."
"How do we know the right order to line them up?"
"Your ears." The old man pointed to his own ear. "Names have a flow to 'em. Like the current of a river. If you put them in the right order, the sounds connect smoothly. If you get it wrong, they snag. You’ll know when you hear it."
Kuon showed the sea chart to the old man. "Do you know where the fracture in this vein is?"
The old man studied the chart for a moment, then pointed a gnarled finger at the eastern edge of the inlet.
"Right here. There’s an old drainage port beneath the reef. It’s a hole that’s been there since long before this village was built. The bubbles rise from there."
Another bubble popped. "Tsu." Koyoi started to reach out, then stopped himself.
It was too soon. If he touched them without knowing the proper way, the names would scatter.
The old man stood up.
"Once I’m done mending this net, I’ll show you the shells. And the way of the Bubble Gleaning. Though... make sure those white-clat lot don't spot you."
The old man gathered his net and left the jetty. His pace was slow, but his footsteps were steady.
The bubbles continued to rise. One sound at a time, fragments of names burst upon the surface and dissolved into the salt wind. Twenty years' worth of names had been vanishing here, unharvested, for two decades.
Koyoi pressed his drawstring pouch to his chest. The Drop was pulsing quietly. As if syncing with the sound of the bubbles, it gave a small, faint throb for every syllable.