When I first set foot in Tsuyuno, the scent was what struck me first.
The scent of ink.
The heavy, damp aroma of old sumi dissolved in water rose from the very earth. In this southern land of parched sands, this place alone held a lingering moisture.
Koyoi looked down at his feet. Dew clung to the blades of grass. Unlike the bone-dry world outside, a patch of low-growing greenery flourished here, each leaf heavy with translucent droplets.
"Strange. For this much moisture to remain in the southern quarter..."
Kuon’s prosthetic eye hummed to life, focusing on a single bead of dew. A pale blue light refracted against the droplet's surface, casting a tiny, fractured rainbow.
"This isn’t water."
Kuon’s voice shifted. It was his analyst’s voice.
"The liquid composition differs from water. The information density is off the charts. This is—evaporated records that have condensed once again."
Koyoi knelt, bringing his face close to a blade of grass. The dewdrop swayed just before his nose. The scent of ink grew thicker.
"The records... they've turned into dew?"
"To be precise, it is likely that information regarding 'names' once dissolved in liquid has been concentrated through repeated cycles of evaporation and condensation. Information rising from the subterranean veins manifests as dew in the chill of the night."
Asahi walked among the grass. With every sway of the greatsword at his hip, the surrounding dew vibrated faintly.
"Careful. If you step on them, they’ll vanish," Kuon warned sharply.
Asahi froze and moved back to a patch of bare earth.
Koyoi inhaled the fragrance of the dew. Beneath the ink, there was something else. Something sweet. Not like a flower or a fruit.
The scent of a name.
The droplet inside his drawstring pouch sometimes gave off this same smell—the sweetness of welcoming a new name. The dew of Tsuyuno was saturated with it.
"Kuon. Can you read this with the Catalog?"
"I’ll try."
Kuon opened the Catalog, turning a blank white page upward. He caught a single drop of dew on his fingertip and let it fall onto the paper.
The moment it soaked into the fibers, a flash of blue light pulsed.
Letters appeared.
Small strings of text spread along the grain of the paper. Hiragana, kanji, and symbols he had never seen before. A staggering amount of information was compressed into that one drop.
"Names. Three—no, four. There are four names in a single drop."
Kuon’s voice trembled. The blue light of his prosthetic eye flickered unsteadily as he chased the script across the page.
"And these are pre-selection names. They haven’t been tagged with observer classification codes. They’re preserved in their original state—before the bleaching."
Koyoi’s breath hitched.
Before the bleaching. That meant the names were as they had been when they were still alive.
"If we collect them all—"
"It’s impossible. Even if we gathered every drop in this field, it would be but a fraction of the original record. However..."
Kuon stared at the page. The four names pulsed faintly against the paper.
"Even fragments are clues. If I can reverse-calculate the flow of the underground veins, I might find where the original records are stored."
Koyoi reached for another blade of grass. He transferred a bead of dew to his fingertip. It was cold. But as he brought it near his pouch, the droplet warmed as if in response.
The dew on his finger turned to gold.
The name wanted to go home.
Koyoi guided the dew to the mouth of the pouch. The golden drop slipped through the threads, merging with the pulse within. The pouch gave a single, deep thrum.
"...Welcome back," Koyoi whispered.
The dew on the grass shivered, though there was no wind—as if the remaining drops were waiting for their turn.
Asahi looked to the sky. The east was beginning to pale.
"Dawn is coming. Do what you can before the dew vanishes."
Kuon turned the pages of the Catalog, exposing fresh white sheets to the dew. Koyoi moved through the grass on his hands and knees, gathering them drop by drop into his pouch.
Morning broke over Tsuyuno with the scent of ink. Every time the sun touched the tip of a blade, a drop evaporated. The names ascended into the sky once more, only to descend again when the night returned.
They had repeated this cycle for hundreds of years, in a place seen by no one.
When the three left Tsuyuno, Koyoi’s pouch felt a little heavier. Seven new names were etched into Kuon’s Catalog.
The grass was still damp.