Mariko crouched down and picked up a 50 yen coin. It had been buried into the dirt path edge-first. She pocketed it. The park was warm, and several people strolled through it, happy that the first week was finally over. The park itself was like every park after Fredrick Law Olmsted had Invented the concept; wide, sprawling, difficult to walk around but a lovely place to rest. Mariko sat down at her bench, the second of four alongside the path, and stared ahead. People were bustling about, all at different speeds, some she recognised and others she would get to know in time. The garden sprinkler had been turned on, and a couple of the first-year kids were running through them and getting wet. It was a scene that one could see in all of japan, if not the world.

Look harder.

That little girl's leg had no muscle, Beyond her knee, it simply ended like a slim metal hockey stick. The water would probably make it rust, and there she was running through it like prosthetic legs grew on trees. And every so often the light would catch the sun and hit Mariko right in the eye and she'd twitch and screw her eyes shut because direct sunlight like that could damage her retinas beyond any real repair until she was pushing sixty and had forgotten what light was any more and was old and wrinkled and too diseased and tumorous to be any good anyway and- She stopped. Closed her eyes, then looked at her shoes. Those kneesocks were wonky. She reached down and pulled them up properly. She breathed out. She hadn't been aware that she'd been holding her breath, but she had.

She'd chosen this bench because it lay the longest in shade under a massive tree. She'd never been able to identify what kind it was, and she didn't particularly care, because under it's thick foliage and mossy trunk, no light or heat ever went near that tree. It was quite possibly a yuki-onna's summer house, it was so cold under there. Unfortunately, there were strict rules against that sort of thing, which metaleg and company over there were flagrantly breaking. She hoped a teacher would punish them soon.