-2011- Gensenfuro 28 ((top)) →

When he finally climbed out, his skin was red and pliable, the cold air no longer a shock but a refreshing contrast. He felt scrubbed clean. He walked back toward the room, the steam curling around his ankles. The number on the door seemed less like a label now and more like a promise kept. The source was still flowing.

Satoshi lit a cigarette. He didn’t know that in less than twenty-four hours, Gensenfuro’s roof would cave in. That Mrs. Tanabe would die pinned under her own copper pipes. That the young woman’s body would be found three weeks later, still wrapped in a towel, floating in the debris of a city erased by water. -2011- Gensenfuro 28