Chapter 13: The Shrine at Low Tide, After Midnight

The alarm went off at twelve forty-five and Natsuko was already awake.

She had been lying on her side facing the wall, listening to the neighborhood's particular silence — the way sound thinned out past midnight in Shiokaze, the fishing boats long since docked, the convenience store's refrigeration hum the only thing still working in the dark. She reached across and pressed the alarm button before the second pulse. Sat up. The complaint log was on the desk where she'd left it, open to the unlabeled back section, her notes from the Tetsu debrief filling two and a half pages in her smallest handwriting.

She had written, at the bottom of the second page, underlined twice: circuit behavior and sleep vocalization may not be separate phenomena.