She tilted her head. A cascade of petals sifted through her hair without touching her. “Everything under this tree falls, Kaito. That’s why it’s beautiful.”
Her name, she told him, was Yuki. But the old sakura knew her as Sakura no Yume —the Cherry Blossom Dream.
“That’s why it’s cruel,” he replied.
He tried. God, how he tried.
A woman in a pale kimono, standing so still that Kaito mistook her for part of the tree. Her hair was the color of rain-soaked earth, and her eyes held the soft, unreadable sadness of petals about to fall.
