With the turn of the tide came the flood.
Goods arrived first—crates, sacks, timber stamped with foreign seals—but aid never traveled alone. It came escorted. Soldiers marched alongside the convoys, boots striking the road in dull, disciplined rhythm. What they guarded was no longer subtle: long crates bound in iron, artillery wrapped in canvas, and—if Dōngzhí's suspicions were correct—rifles packed in oilcloth, their mechanisms sleeping beneath layers of care.
The town wore a fevered look. Faces flushed red—some from excitement, others from winter's lingering ghost—but the sun showed no mercy today. It pressed down on tiled roofs and bare streets alike, turning breath heavy and thoughts sluggish.
Inside the shrine, Victoria lay sprawled across the tatami mats, fanning herself dramatically, as though the sky itself had taken a personal interest in her suffering.
"It's unbearable," she muttered, voice thick with complaint. "Does the sun have no restraint?"
I took a measured sip of cooled tea, then retreated deeper into the shade like something nocturnal and deeply offended.
"What's for lunch?" she asked, shoving her book aside with little ceremony.
"I don't know," I sighed—and we both knew she would be asleep before an answer mattered.
The days had slipped by like this. Quiet. Unremarkable. No calamity, no revelation. Only the steady hum of change happening just beyond the shrine gates.
Outside, soldiers passed again and again, their uniforms unmistakable even from a distance. The cut of their coats, the polish of their boots—symbols repeated until they became part of the town's rhythm. Their presence no longer startled anyone.
That alone unsettled me.
Miss Li Hua had said nothing. Not a word about treaties, reparations, or the shape peace was meant to take. And yet the effects were impossible to ignore: streets repaired, buildings rising where ash had settled, and rumors of new quarters being erected—not for locals, but for foreigners.
Permanent ones.
I shifted to escape the worst of the heat and glanced at Victoria, now asleep in a thoroughly undignified sprawl. Her fan lay discarded beside her, breath slow and even. Watching her, I felt the tension beneath the calm—too measured, too controlled, like the pause before a mechanism clicks into place.
From town came the distant clatter of construction. Hammer on iron. Iron on stone.
This place is changing, I thought. And not gently.
Soldiers marched past again, rifles slung at their sides this time, metal glinting despite oil and cloth. They walked with swollen pride, chests full, fingers resting far too close to the guards of their weapons. Not on the trigger—never that. Discipline mattered. But close enough to remind everyone that violence now had rules. Procedures. Names.
Then—
"A letter came for you, Heiwa."
Miss Dōngzhí stood in the doorway, a sealed envelope in one hand, her fan in the other. She passed it to me without ceremony.
I broke the seal.
Draken.
My brother.
Overseeing the completion of a base.
The words settled heavily in my chest.
"What does it say?" she asked quietly.
"He's in Draken," I replied. "Supervising the construction of a base."
Dōngzhí's fingers brushed through Victoria's hair, smoothing it back from her face. "So that is what happened," she murmured.
A base.
Not a camp. Not a temporary measure. A base implied permanence—anchoring. A claim staked into foreign soil with stone, steel, and men who would not be leaving anytime soon.
I stepped back into the corridor, fleeing the sun again as though it might burn the thought away. Sweat traced slow paths down my spine. The heat lingered, oppressive and intimate, refusing to loosen its hold.
Yet the air itself felt calm—almost indifferent.
It drifted through the shrine, through the town, past soldiers and civilians alike, carrying with it the quiet truth no one wished to name:
Peace had arrived.
And it had brought teeth.