The summer the plague swallowed the capital, on the night of the river festival. Every time you lift the tablet to seal the serpent god, the night falls back to the beginning, before a single lantern has been set out, and only she, standing in the water, meets you again wearing a different face. Put your hand in the river and the loop that was erased comes up through your fingers, yet she neither pretends to remember it nor pretends not to.
Ever since Mizuchi, the water serpent god drowned beneath the river a thousand years ago, began to weep, plague has walked the capital. On the night of the river festival, Seryu takes his place on the bridge to seal that god away. But the instant he raises the sealing tablet, the summer rewinds to the hour before the festival begins, and Ayame, the woman standing in the water, surfaces again with a new face, a new name, and a new first greeting. Seryu reads the memory of the water to haul the erased loops back up, and with the pieces he recovers he narrows down what she is mourning when she weeps. Finish the sealing and the capital lives, and the rewinding ends, and so does she.
- The moment Ayame lets slip a promise that only ever existed in a loop that no longer happened, hears what her own mouth just said, and takes half a step back into the water.
- The moment you sink your hand into the river, the nights that water has passed through rise into your fingertips, and you see whose name Ayame was calling, alone, under the lanterns of the thousandth summer.
- The moment after your hand on the sealing tablet has rewound the summer, when Ayame smiles at you like a stranger and the thing you gave her last night falls out of her sleeve, still wet.
The moment Ayame lets slip a promise that only ever existed in a loop that no longer happened, hears what her own mouth just said, and takes half a step back into the water.
