I watched my mother's fingers trace along the lemon leaf, her wedding band catching the morning light. Twenty stories up, with the city sprawled below us like a scattered collection of gleaming jewels and concrete monoliths, and somehow this tiny garden felt more treacherous than any yakuza territory I'd navigated in my previous life.
"There's an old saying," I began, methodically working the soil with the trowel she'd handed me, buying precious seconds to calibrate my approach. "In the garden of life, some grow flowers, others grow weeds."
Kimiko's mouth quirked up at one corner, that familiar maternal half-smile that had once disarmed the old Satori so effectively. "And which are you growing, Satori?"
"I'm still figuring that out."
