Oriko checked every night after her shift, her headlamp cutting a thin blue line through the dark. The pot sat there, stubborn and mute. Her coworkers laughed when she mentioned it. "You're chasing ghosts," they said. "Seeds sleep forever here."
The next night, it had grown six inches.
Then, on the fifteenth night, she saw it. Himawari Wa Yoru Ni Saku
She didn't plant it in the hydroponic rows. Those were monitored. Instead, she took a broken clay pot, filled it with smuggled compost, and hid it in the deepest corner of the sub-levels, where the night was absolute and no cameras watched.
The night was long. But the sunflowers had only just begun. Oriko checked every night after her shift, her
Oriko turned off her headlamp.
Oriko knew this. She had the radiation burns on her knuckles to prove it. She worked the night shift, tending crops that would never see the light — genetically modified tubers, pale fungi, things that thrived on darkness and chemical drip. It was honest work. It was hopeless work. "You're chasing ghosts," they said
She knew what would happen next. The authorities would come. They would tear out the garden, sterilize the soil, and seal the sub-level forever. That was the way of things. The arcology did not allow miracles.