Chapter 16: Haruka, 1974 — The Map She Drew from Memory

The pencil arrived on a Tuesday.

Not given — Haruka was precise about this, even years later, in the way she was precise about everything she could verify. It was not given to her. It was left. A gap in inventory, a nurse's distraction, a Tuesday in late October when the ward quieted between the morning medication round and lunch, and someone set a clipboard on the common room table and walked away, and the pencil rolled from the clipboard's metal clip and came to rest against Haruka's hand like a thing that had been looking for her.

She sat with it for four minutes before she picked it up.