The sea was far away.
Dry sand stretched across the space where, until only yesterday, the shoreline should have been. The tide had retreated, and the roar of the waves had grown faint. It was at least a hundred paces from where they stood to the water's edge.
"It’s pulled back again."
Asahi kicked the sand. A cloud of parched dust billowed up and was snatched away by the wind. When they had walked here yesterday, the ground beneath their feet had been damp. Now, it was bone-dry.
"It didn't pull back."
Kuon opened the catalogue. The light from his artificial eye illuminated the pages. Under that azure glow, the lines of the sea chart seemed to fade away, one by one.
"The sea is forgetting."
"Forgetting?"
Koyoi looked at Kuon.
Kuon tapped a finger on a specific point on the chart. In that spot, there had once been a curve indicating an inlet. Now, only a faint trace remained. The ink hadn't vanished completely; rather, it had left only an indentation on the paper, like a ghost of a mark. You could tell that something had been written there, but you could no longer read what it was.
"The record of this inlet has been erased. When the record is lost, the information that made the inlet an inlet vanishes with it. Depth, currents, temperature, salinity—everything becomes indeterminate."
"And if it becomes indeterminate?"
"The sea loses its reason to be there."
Kuon closed the catalogue.
"Water is given its place by records. The information—defining where the sea ends and the land begins—is what holds the water in place. Once the record vanishes, the water loses its ground for existing."
Koyoi looked out over the beach. Shells lay scattered across the sand left behind by the receding tide. Seaweed had shriveled, and a tiny crab, having lost its way, was scuttling in endless circles.
"It’s like the water is afraid."
"It likely is," Kuon said, in a rare moment of plain speech.
"The records that define its very existence are being stripped away. The water is losing the proof of its identity, layer by layer. That’s why it retreats—back to the places where the records still remain."
Asahi walked to the far edge of the beach. Beyond that point was ground that had been the seabed until yesterday. The color of the sand was different here; dark gray grains were mixed with white crystals.
"Salt."
Asahi pinched a bit of the sand and tasted it.
"It tastes like the sea. Even though the water is gone."
"That taste is a remnant of the record," Kuon said.
"It takes time for a record to be completely erased. Taste and smell belong to the final layer of memory. Words vanish, shapes dissolve, colors fade... but for a brief moment, the taste and smell linger."
"The last things to stay are the taste and the smell."
"And names."
Kuon’s voice grew low.
"When a name is about to vanish completely, the last thing left is the sound. Even after the characters and the meaning are gone, the resonance lingers in the air for a while. That’s why we can sometimes catch the echoes of names on the verge of disappearing."
Koyoi clutched his drawstring pouch. A droplet pulsed slowly inside it. As the waves drew further away, the temperature of the droplet had begun to drop.
"Will the sea ever come back?"
"If we rewrite the record, it will."
Kuon reopened the chart. He meticulously studied the indented page with his artificial eye.
"The traces of the lines are still here. If we re-apply the ink, the record can be restored. But—"
"—We don’t have enough ink."
Kuon nodded before Koyoi could finish. Rewriting the record for even a single inlet would consume half of their remaining supply. Restoring the entire chart was impossible.
"We can't fix everything. But we can fix one place."
"Where?"
"The place where the most names have sunk."
Kuon traced the indentations with his finger. Among the fading lines was a spot that had once been a deep inlet—the point where the golden sea, glimpsed from the other side of the evening calm, had been at its most vibrant.
"I’ll rewrite the record here. If the water returns, the place where the names surface will return, too."
Asahi tapped his scabbard.
"Do it."
The words were short. Kuon took out the inkwell and unscrewed the lid. At the bottom of the jar, a meager amount of black liquid remained.
He saturated the tip of his brush and carefully drew a line over the indentation.
One line.
The outermost contour of the inlet's boundary.
The moment the ink touched the paper, the sound of waves echoed from the distance.
The three of them looked up.
Near the horizon, the surface of the sea was rising. The water was trying to come back.
It was still far off. A thin film of water began to crawl across the sand a hundred paces away. It wasn't fast, but it was moving steadily toward them.
A single line had called the water home.
Koyoi looked at Kuon’s hand. The ink on the brush was almost gone.
"Is it enough?"
"It’s not."
Kuon set the brush down.
"But one line is sufficient. Once the water knows the shape of the inlet, it will fill in the rest itself. As long as the record provides the skeleton, the water remembers the flesh."
The waves drew closer. The scent of brine grew stronger. The first touch of moisture returned to the parched sand.
The crab found its bearings and began to scramble toward the water's edge.
The sea was still far away.
But it was no longer retreating.