Chapter 2: Eight Months of Static (Kenji's Tapes)

The cassette player was held together with a strip of electrical tape along the hinge, which Kenji had applied so carefully that it almost looked intentional. He set it on the harbor wall between them and pressed play without preamble, the way he did everything — as though the preamble were a courtesy he had decided neither of them needed.

Hana listened.

For the first several minutes there was only the harbor: water moving against pilings, the low resonance of a boat hull settling, wind doing something irregular and toneless against the recorder's microphone. She had heard these sounds her whole life. They came through her bedroom wall at night in winter, through the kitchen window on still mornings. She knew this harbor the way she knew her own handwriting — the particular rhythm of it, the specific grammar of its quiet.