the Story
Aya curled her fingers around a chipped porcelain mug, the steam fogging her glasses as rain braided silver ribbons down the café window. Old Kumo City’s crooked lanes vanished into mist, leaving only the glow of rain-lamps—teardrop bulbs strung on sagging wires that shone brighter the wetter they became. Their honey-orange halos pooled in every puddle, turning the street into a trembling galaxy of tiny suns.
She opened her sketchbook to a fresh page. The blank paper shimmered under the lamp’s reflection, and for a heartbeat Aya thought she saw a pulse behind the page —as if it were breathing. She touched her pencil point to the center and drew the faint outline of a gateway: two weather-blackened pillars crowned with tangled wisteria that dripped rain like beads of quicksilver. Each pencil stroke felt less like graphite and more like tugging thin threads out of the falling water. When the final tendril of wisteria bloomed, the sketch glowed ember-soft, then burst into quiet lavender light.
The café around her stretched, smeared like wet paint, and Aya felt herself slip forward—through page and window and lamplight—into weightlessness.
She landed in an abandoned metro tunnel where the tracks floated several inches above the gravel, loose as ribbons in unseen water. Bioluminescent mushrooms crowded the sleepers, caps wide enough to shelter two people, their undersides dripping neon-green spores that drifted not down but up, filling the air like reversed snowfall. Somewhere far away a single wind chime sang one clear note, and the spores shimmered in sympathetic ripples.
An origami crane unfolded from shadow. Its paper wings were ink-black, but its eyes glowed citrate yellow. With a quick tilt of its head, the bird launched itself forward, flapping in slow, deliberate arcs. Aya followed, her footsteps whisper-light on the hovering rails. Gravity felt hesitant here, as if deciding every second whether to stay.
The tunnel curved, walls widening into a cavern lit by moonlight that had no source. Cracks in the stone let thin waterfalls bleed upward, threading through the air toward some invisible sea overhead. Whenever a droplet brushed Aya’s skin, kaleidoscopic patterns blossomed in her vision—mandalas of jade, magenta, and cerulean that folded into one another like living stained glass. She let herself drift, each breath thick with petrichor and possibility, until the crane slipped through a circular archway rimmed in tiles that pulsed faint electric blue. Aya stepped through and the world blinked again.
Wind rushed with the scent of wet cedar. A colossal corkscrew tree stood before her, its trunk spiraling toward a sky smeared in dusk purples and dawn blues at once. Around the trunk coiled a bazaar in mid-air—suspended balconies formed from giant lotus petals, each petal lined with stalls. Air-fish glided between vendors, translucent bodies flickering oranges and pinks, casting watercolor shadows across drifting banners. Bells chimed from every direction, their notes weaving together like threads on a loom.
Fox-masked merchants beckoned Aya with wave fans painted in shimmering ink. She explored slowly, fingertips skimming glass bottles that held clouds, marbles that contained sunsets, lanterns harboring sleeping fireflies. At one stall she paused: a tiny vial labeled Memory of Tomorrow rested on a velvet cushion. The merchant behind the table—tall, cloak stitched from scraps of midnight sky—did not speak. Instead, he pointed at Aya’s sketchbook.
Aya tore out a blank page, still damp with spectral rain, and offered it. The merchant nodded, slid the vial into her palm, and bowed. In that instant, time hiccupped. The whole bazaar spun like a record finding its groove; colors ran then sharpened, and the corkscrew trunk began to rotate, stairs rising from one petal balcony to the next. Aya stepped onto the moving wood, climbing as gravity tilted ninety degrees without warning.
Each level up the trunk brought thinner air and brighter light, until she emerged upon the canopy’s rim—an endless night-sky sea where islands of lotus leaves floated like lanterns dropped by giants. Stars rippled in the petals’ reflections, and a soft wind carried flute-like melodies that seemed carved from silence.
When Aya placed a foot on the nearest lotus island, it felt warm, pulsing gently like the deck of a sleeping whale. Luminescent veins traced fractal patterns under her soles, and every step sent rings of light across the leaf’s surface, birthing miniature dragons wrought of sapphire mist. They flickered to life, circled her in spirals, then perched along her arms—delicate things with eyes like pale moons. One nudged the vial in her pocket.
Aya pulled it free, marveling at the soft glow within. She uncorked it. Violet fog poured out, curling into scenes across the open sky: sketches she had yet to draw—rambling cityscapes, laughing strangers, future rainy afternoons steeped in possibilities. The dragons breathed in the fog, bodies turning translucent, then translucent turned to constellations, each dragon a cluster of living stars. They unravelled from her arms into the sky, carving astral pathways that pointed home.
The lotus leaf shuddered, and Aya felt the pull of gravity reassert itself—but this time drawing her not down, but inward. Space folded, the edges of the world curling toward a center behind her eyes. The constellation dragons congregated, folding themselves into a single comet-bright droplet. It descended slowly, trembled once, and plunged straight toward her.
She blinked.
Rain clicked against glass. The café smelled of ground coffee and old books, the ordinary hum of ceiling lights filling her ears. Her hand hovered above the page, pencil frozen mid-stroke. Only a heartbeat had passed. Outside, rain-lamps still glowed—but one bulb, directly across from her window, burned lavender instead of amber.
Aya exhaled, warmth fluttering in her chest. She reached forward and touched the page. Nothing glowed now, yet the paper retained the faintest shimmer, like moonlight tangled in fibers. She flipped to the next page and began to draw: floating railways, corkscrew trees, origami cranes, fox-masked merchants, lotus constellations. The sketches emerged fluently, lines already half alive before she finished stitching them. As she sketched the last dragon-comet, a drop of rain struck the window—a solitary tap—then another. Each one rang out like a soft percussion in distant alleyways.
Aya gathered her things and stepped outside. Mist curled around her ankles, catching streetlight halos as if they were fireflies trapped in cotton. She walked beneath the lavender rain-lamp, felt it hum as she passed, and knew some dreams keep close when it rains, stashed between notebook sheets, ready to unfold whenever curiosity or drizzle invites them.
Galaxy puddles rippled under her boots. Far above, the wires trembled, coaxing brighter light from each bulb. Aya ducked her head against the drizzle, smiled, and let the city’s low-fi hush sync with the soft page-turns of her imagination—already plotting the next door she might draw, and the silent chime that would call her through.
the Gallery
