The windows were closed, yet wind found its way in.
It was not cold. The southern current sweeping through the Mist Train was utterly unlike any wind in Koyoi's knowledge. It was hot. A slow, pressing heat—the temperature of sand after it has been scorched, pushing against the skin.
"...It's hot."
Koyoi pressed a hand over the pouch. Through the cloth, the droplets' pulse was quickening.
"...A hot wind. Not geothermal, though."
Kuon narrowed his prosthetic eye, the ledger still lying face-down on his knees. A pale blue light flickered faintly.
"...The smell of scorched names. Not bleached—there are names here that were erased by incineration."
Koyoi held his breath.
He knew about bleaching. Names painted over in white, erased along with everything they had ever been. He had seen it many times since entering the southern quadrant. But burning—that was something he had never heard of.
"...Burning? You mean they were set on fire?"
"Precisely. A method that obliterates the coordinates themselves. Faster than bleaching, and deeper. It leaves not even the roots."
Kuon's voice was low and hard. The blue glow of his prosthetic eye intensified, casting blue shadows across the cabin walls. He opened the ledger and searched its pages, but the relevant records had already carbonized—no matter how many times his fingertips traced the surface, no characters appeared.
"...Nothing remains even in the ledger. When a name is burned, the record itself turns to ash."
Koyoi looked out the window. The sand horizon was hazy—not the usual white haze, but a shimmering distortion like heat mirages rising from the ground. Steam issued from the earth. Beneath the dry soil, heat still lingered.
The heat left behind where names had been burned.
It had smoldered deep underground for years—decades—never cooling.
"...That's terrifying."
Asahi said in a low voice, elbow still resting on the window frame.
"Bleaching erases quietly. Incineration erases by force. Both are the worst—but for the ones that were burned, anger stays behind."
The pouch grew hot.
Koyoi, startled, loosened the drawstring. Inside, the droplets were pulsing hard. This was not their usual gentle warmth. It was hot. As though the droplets themselves were resonating with the pain of scorched names, small lights flickered on and off repeatedly.
"...They're not angry. They're crying."
Koyoi drew the pouch to his chest. The heat reached his collarbone through the cloth.
The train shuddered. The floor creaked. Outside the window, the heat mirages thickened, and the color of the sand shifted to reddish copper. The embers of burned names were seeping up to the surface of the earth.
Kuon ran his fingers over the blank page of the ledger. A page without characters. The place where burned names should have been.
"...There were seven names here. All of them burned. Even the traces of their roots have turned to charcoal."
"Seven?"
"Yes. They were probably burned all at once. For the Observer, burning them together is more efficient than bleaching them one by one."
Asahi rose from his seat and moved closer to the window. The glass was hot. The moment he placed his palm against it, he felt a pressure—something pushing up from beneath the sand.
"...Even after the burning, the ground still remembers. The names are gone, but the heat stays behind."
Koyoi closed his eyes.
The heat of the pouch was gradually subsiding. But it did not cool completely. The pulse of the droplets overlapped with the reverberations of the seven burned names, resonating deep in his chest with a dull ache.
To burn a name.
It was not like bleaching—making something as though it had never been. It was ending what had been, by force. Anger and grief alike, sealed away as ash. But beneath the ash, heat remained. Heat that would not cool no matter how many years passed.
"...Is there something I can do?"
Koyoi said quietly.
"I can't bring the burned names back. But I can remember this heat."
Kuon did not close the blank page of the ledger.
"Remembering is enough. What burned names need is not restoration. It is the fact that someone exists to receive their heat."
Asahi pulled his hand from the window and returned to his seat.
"Wind's changed. We're almost through."
The train picked up speed. The reddish copper outside the window faded, the sand returning to its original gray. The heat mirages settled. The hot wind withdrew.
The temperature of the pouch, too, slowly settled to match his body heat.
But in Koyoi's palms, the heat of the burned names still lingered. When he curled his fingers, a slow ache reached deep into the bone. He remembered. His body remembered.
Koyoi looked out the window. The sand plain flowed past in silence. The site of incineration had passed. But there would be more ahead. Not only bleaching. Burned names still slept within the southern quadrant.
The train sounded its whistle. The next stop was near.
Koyoi retied the mouth of the pouch and placed his palms on his knees. As though engraving the memory of the hot wind into each and every finger.