Chapter 5: Yuki, 1971 — The Volunteer Form

The chalk smell comes first.

It arrives before the memory does, before the classroom assembles itself around it — chalk and tobacco smoke and the particular staleness of a room where the window has been painted shut so many times the latch no longer reaches the frame. These are the things that persist when other things have gone. The body keeps its inventory long after the mind has been rearranged.

A Tuesday in October. 1971.