Meet Storyteller.

Wei stopped Fong with one hand against his chest. Fong froze on the roof ledge, one sneaker half over the gap between buildings. Below them, Mong Kok ran bright and loud at 10:30 p.m., all neon signs, bus brakes, and people who never looked up. Wei crouched beside a rusted water pipe and pointed two fingers toward the street.

“Not that one,” Lydia said to the rose, and moved it half an inch to the left. The rose, being blameless, accepted the correction. She stood at the kitchen table with the vase in front of her, sleeves pushed up, secateurs beside the party notebook. Late May light came and went through the faded blue curtains.

Ilya had one hand inside the dead house when the boots stopped outside. He froze with his fingers wrapped around a strip of copper wire. The house leaned toward Ash Road like it was tired of standing. Its front wall had burned away in the war, leaving a black mouth open to the street. Ilya crouched behind an overturned table, ash in his throat, a cut on his knuckle leaking into the dust. Outside, a man coughed.

The light over Isaac D’Souza’s sink blinked three times and died while the kettle was boiling. He stood in the dim kitchen, one hand on the counter, and stared up at it. “Of course,” he said. The kettle clicked off. Steam breathed against the underside of the cabinet. Outside the safety glass, rain blurred the yellow city lights into long stains.

“Up,” Haruto said, and Kenji came awake with his father’s hand on his shoulder. For one breath Kenji did not know where he was. The farmhouse was dark except for the red eye of the hearth. His little sister breathed beside Aya under the quilt. Rainwater dripped somewhere outside from the thatch, slow and steady, though the rain had stopped before midnight. Then Haruto’s hand left him.

“Stop moving that buckle.” Jonas froze with one hand on the chest strap of his harness. “I am adjusting it.” “You adjusted it three times.” Noor tightened the valve on her cylinder, then checked it again by touch. “Now you are worrying it loose.”