Himawari Wa Yoru Ni Saku -

She didn't report it.

She sat there until her shift started, watching the sunflower burn in the dark.

It didn't look like any sunflower she had seen in the old botanical archives. The stem was dark, almost black, threaded with silver veins that pulsed faintly — a heartbeat, or something like it. The leaves unfurled like hands opening in prayer. And the bud at the top grew heavier, fuller, until it began to droop with its own weight. Himawari Wa Yoru Ni Saku

The soil of Sector 7 was dead by noon. For twelve hours, the artificial sun of the arcology blazed down, a merciless eye that bleached the concrete and boiled the last nutrients from the earth. Nothing grew in the day fields. Nothing had for forty years.

Oriko watched from the shadows.

Instead, she brought more soil. More pots. She worked faster, quieter, smuggling nutrients from the hydroponic bays, rerouting a trickle of water from a leaky pipe. Every night, she came back. Every night, the garden grew.

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." She didn't report it

A child wandered down one night and saw the flowers. She didn't scream. She sat down in the middle of the golden light and laughed.

Oriko smiled.