-hiep Studio- - Yasuko-s Quest -v.2021-09-17-mod1-

The gap closes. Her fingers scrape the ledge of a broken railcar. The Seeker’s pincers snap shut on empty air behind her.

It is “Run.”

For a single, floating second, Yasuko sees her reflection in the glass face of the building across the void. She is twenty-two. Her hair is chopped short, uneven, done by her own trembling hand. The scar on her jaw—a gift from the Yurei-gumi enforcer she killed with a frozen tuna last winter—is a pale white comma. Her eyes are the color of old television static. Yasuko-s Quest -v.2021-09-17-MOD1- -Hiep Studio-

The rain does not fall in the Neon Cascade District. It rises. From the grates, from the steam vents, from the weeping iron lungs of the old purification plants. Yasuko learned this at seven, when her mother first held her hand and whispered, “The city breathes upward, little one. Remember that when you run.” The gap closes

Yasuko wades through knee-deep water that smells of rust and jasmine. Above her, suspended in tanks of murky brine, swim the oaths people broke. Each one is a translucent fish, shaped like a folded letter, moving in slow, sad circles. Her mother’s oath is the largest: a koi the size of a motorcycle, missing one eye. It is “Run