“This thing reads souls,” she said, pointing.
Reluctantly—but unwilling to appear cowardly in front of Yumi—he put his hand on the machine. He wasn’t sure if it was because he expected it or for some other reason, but he could touch the cool plate on the top of the device.
Design watched the vibrating lines on the side. “Ha!” she said, turning so he could see them better. “See?”
“I can’t read that, Design,” he said.
“You’ve got a normal soul’s worth of Investiture,” Design said. “Exactly the level we’d expect for this planet, which has no Shard in residence and where the people haven’t been specifically granted extra. Shroud and Splinters of Virtuosity notwithstanding.”
“Again,” Painter said, keeping his hand on the device, “Shard? Splinter? Virtuosity?”
“Still not getting into it,” Design said. “Regardless, I see no evidence of Connection to the past in your spiritweb. Nikaro, you—absolutely, assuredly, conclusively—have not been time traveling. This is definite.”
“Do I have a Connection to another world?” Painter asked. “Can you read that?”
“Neither of you,” she said, “have been traveling to other worlds. You’re from this planet, both of you. I can see that easily. Though…Yumi has fewer Connections to other people than I’d expect. That’s not related to her power; it feels more like…”
“Like I don’t know anyone?” she whispered.
“Yeah, that!” Design said. “Never seen a person with so few Connections. You’re a very private individual, I take it.”
“Yes,” she said, looking down.
“I wonder what that’s like,” Design said. “But I don’t wonder it enough to try it.”
“How did you see her Connections to others?” Painter said. “I thought you said you couldn’t read her well.”
“I could see that,” Design said, rolling her eyes as if they were supposed to understand why. “She’s Connected to you, obviously. I could see that without the device. And a few others. Then there are these thirteen odd lines…”
“Thirteen?” Yumi said, standing up from her stool.
“Yup!” Design said. “Connection lines are easy to see at times, but notoriously hard to read. I don’t know what these are Connected to. Didn’t look like family though. More a thematic Connection…”
“Yumi?” he asked.
“There are currently thirteen other yoki-hijo,” Yumi said. “Where? Where are they?”
“I can’t read that,” Design said.
“Then what good is this?” Yumi said, gesturing to the device.
“What good is… Yumi, do you understand what a miracle this fabrial is? It’s reading things that until very recently you’d need a highly specialized individual who could—”
“Are they here?” Yumi asked. “This world. Nearby?”
“Definitely this world,” Design said. “That direction, somewhere.” She waved vaguely to the west, toward the near portion of the shroud where Painter patrolled. “But…” She sighed as Yumi dashed from the building.
Painter scrambled to follow, caught off guard. “Yumi?” he shouted, stumbling out onto the street. “Yumi. You promised the others you’d stay away from…”
She was running down the street and seemed not to be listening. He took off after her, catching up, then joined her as she eventually emerged from the outer ring of warehouses onto the road that circled Kilahito. She slowed here, walking up to the shroud—dangerously close.
“Yumi?” Painter said, approaching from behind, and reached out—but stopped just short of touching her.
Finally she sank to her knees and bowed her head. He walked around to her side and crouched there, worried.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I thought… Actually, I wasn’t thinking. I felt. That I wanted to see them. Be with them. It overcame me.” She looked at him. “I knew one of them, when I was a child. We were trained together. Did you know that?”
He shook his head.
“Then they took her, separated us,” Yumi whispered, “when we were growing to know each other too well. Wasn’t good for me, Liyun said, to form an attachment. In the years since, I’ve never met another one of them.”
“What, really?” he said. “Not even in passing?”
She shook her head.
“That feels tragic,” he said, settling down beside her and staring at the shroud. Black on black. He knew it was shifting and moving, but he felt it more than he saw it.
“How did you deal with the loneliness?” she asked softly. “When you were younger?”
“By painting.”
“When you make art,” she whispered, “it’s easy to forget.”
“Until you don’t have anyone to show it to.”
“I never had that problem,” she said. “But my audience was never human. I often wished that after it was all done for the day, someone would be there to tell me I’d done a good job.”
“Hey,” he said.
She glanced at him.
“Good job.”
“I didn’t mean right now,” she said （lowly）。
He grinned at her anyway. And eventually she grinned back. Then she idly picked up a few pebbles and broken cobbles from the ground. Unsurprisingly, she began stacking them.
“We’re missing today’s episode of Seasons of Regret,” she said. “I didn’t even remember. Considering all the…”
“Insanity?”
“Yeah,” she said, balancing another pebble.
“Ask Izzy,” he said. “She’ll know what happened. And will explain. In detail.”
“I almost…” she said, balancing a fourth pebble, “would rather not. I’d rather imagine it for myself. So I can pretend it turned out happy in the end.”
Painter glanced to the side. This wasn’t the best place for a conversation. At the very least, they risked running into Akane and Tojin, who would never let Yumi…
He frowned, then stood up.
The shroud was changing. Rippling. He almost shouted for Yumi to run, thinking a nightmare was coming out. But then the shroud drew back. Away from them.
Like darkness before light. Like water evaporating before a terrible heat. The shroud retreated in a kind of curve, bowing inward. He glanced at Yumi, who stacked another pebble.
The shroud pulled back farther.
“Yumi!” he hissed, then pointed.
She followed his gaze, then gasped softly. “What is happening?”
“The stacking,” he said. “The shroud is responding to the stacking.”
To test this, she placed another—and the shroud pulled back more. It was responding only in a small region, maybe ten feet across. But Painter found the behavior bizarre—until he realized there was an obvious correlation.
“That’s how it responds to hion lines,” he said, looking toward Yumi. “It’s how we survive; hion pushes back the shroud. We build new settlements by extending the lines into the dark.”