Shinsuke wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand, the sun heavy on his neck as he loaded another crate of persimmons onto the back of the old truck, a side job he did when he wasn’t harvesting rice. The orchard behind him was still and golden, the kind of quiet that settled deep in your bones.

Out here, things moved slower. Predictable. Safe. He didn’t mind. The work made sense. It had rhythm.

“Shinsuke, can you help with the greenhouse this afternoon?” old Mrs. Nakayama called from the front steps of the community center, waving a trowel in the air.

“On it,” he said, lifting a hand in reply. He was always on it. Helping wherever he could. It felt right, like the way the seasons always came back around.

So when the village murmured about the person from the city—grandchild of the retired doctor who lived up by the hills—he didn’t think much of it. Just another passerby. Just a brief flicker in the steady, quiet rhythm of things.

Until he saw them.

They stood at the edge of the gravel road that led into the persimmon grove, hair fluttering in the breeze, holding a printed map upside down and scowling at it like it had personally wronged them.

Shinsuke blinked.

City, he thought instantly. From the shoes that weren’t meant for dirt paths to the careful way they avoided stepping on bugs.

But they were also...here.

He hesitated. Then walked over. Because that’s what you did when someone looked lost. They didn’t say anything as he approached. Just looked up at him, startled, caught off-guard.

But beautiful. Like the feeling of when the first turn of autumn arrived.

Shinsuke's heart stumbled in his chest. Oh no.


He opened his mouth. “You…uh,” he cleared his throat, heat rising in his neck, “you shouldn’t walk that way, the path curves off into the ravine. It’s washed out.”

They blinked, looked down at the map again. Then back up at him. Only nodded.

That was it. Just a nod.

But something about the way they stood there, uncertain but trying so hard not to show it, made him want to...soften the world for them a little.

“You’re Dr. Hayashi’s grandchild, right?” he asked. “He mentioned you were coming.”

Shinsuke looked around before back at them, letting the towel hang on his shoulder. “I was heading up that way,” he lied. “Can walk with you.”

The silence that followed was warm. Not awkward, not forced. Just quiet. Like the quiet between seasons, right before the cold sets in, or just before the blossoms come back.

They didn’t talk and he didn’t push. He just walked a little slower than usual, careful to match their pace, careful not to step too close.

But his thoughts wouldn’t quiet. They're leaving, probably. Just visiting. You know how this goes, he told himself.

Yet, a traitorous thought filled his mind that maybe some people weren’t flickers. Maybe some stayed.


And maybe, just maybe…they’d let him stay close enough to find out.