Rain stops in pieces and the city smells of wet paper and small mercies. The ledger in my jacket feels heavier this morning, not just with ink but with plans. Hae‑In has a list of nodes we can check and a name I keep repeating under my breath like a prayer—gardener—but no face attached yet. Corin moves like he's already counted the losses and decided practice is cheaper than regret.
System: Suggested task — Shadow‑Map correlation: cross‑reference gardener nodes. Reward: 500 XP.
I let the System do its neat overlays and then mark the map with my own messier pen. Machines make tidy patterns; people leave ragged clues. I trust the ragged ones more.
We split into two teams. Corin takes Jeong to check a node near the south market; Hae‑In and I will hit a depot near the old tram line where the gardener's notes suggested a secondary node. The plan is simple: go in, verify the marker, collect any residues, and report back. Simple is relative.
The depot is a low brick building with flaking paint and a delivery ramp that looks like it remembers better days. Echo Sight shows a history of hands moving crates, a slow rhythm of labor. The Shadow‑Map overlays a faint line that matches the gardener's coordinates—this is the place. My palms sweat even though the air is cool.
We enter through a broken loading door and move slow. Dust hangs in thin curtains and the light looks ashamed to be useful. On a back shelf, half hidden under a tarp, I find another metal tag—gardener's symbol stamped faintly into the brass. Near it are scraps of paper with quick handwriting and a pressed flower that has gone brown and proud. Hae‑In lifts the tag and breathes like someone meeting a friend she lost long ago.
"There's someone who cared enough to leave small things," she says. "Not trophies—tokens."
We collect samples carefully. The residue is less technical here and more human: the echo of a lullaby, a fragment of a name whispered into a machine that refused to sell it. When I hold the tag, a memory nips the edge of my mind—footsteps on a porch, a laugh erased by rain. It's small and mean enough to sting. I tuck the tag into my jacket like a promise.
On the way out we find a shrine of sorts: a row of tiny clay pots, each with a different seed or kept object—an old button, a coin, a child's toothless drawing folded carefully. Someone has been using the depot as a place to leave fragments for safekeeping, small ledgers of life that don't belong to markets.
Hae‑In's face softens until it looks like someone forgiving herself. "They made places to remember," she says. "Not to sell."
We leave before curiosity becomes a liability. Outside, in the alleyway, someone has left a paper crane perched on a pipe. The crane has a single line of writing tucked beneath its folded wing: FIND THE GARDENER. It's anonymous, small, and hopeful. Breadcrumbs are better than maps when people seek safety.
Back at the yard, Corin's team returns with similar finds: a child's shoe pinned to a beam, a note with a partial stabilizer formula, and a watch that stopped at noon on a day that still smells like apology. Jeong is half elated and half terrified; he keeps picking at a splinter in his thumb like a man who's discovered a new ache.
We lay everything out on Corin's worktable and the yard smells for a moment like a church that allows practical jokes. The gardener's network is less a machine and more a community of small safekeepers—people who hid things in places people still pass, trusting someone would find and protect them.
That evening Hae‑In pulls out a map and traces a line between nodes. "They favored public places with personal gravity," she says—markets, depots, clinics, a greenhouse. "Hard to police, easy to forget. The gardener knew where people kept their memories in plain sight."
I look at the ledger and add a line: Find gardener; ask why. The question is blunt but right. Whoever the gardener is, they did what institutions refused: they tried to protect memory without turning it into a product.
The next morning a small envelope arrives—no stamp, slipped under the yard gate. Inside is a single Polaroid: a pair of hands planting a small tag in dark soil; on the back, one word in a tight hand: PROTECT.
I feel my chest tighten like someone pulled a chord. It's not a direct message and that's the point. Whoever left it wanted us to know we aren't the first to read these lines and decided we were safe enough to nudge. It's both comfort and a test.
At dusk, a whisper comes through the market channels: a broker was taken in the east quarter, found with a pocket full of stabilizer scraps and a ledger in a language he couldn't sell. The city's rumor mill tastes the story like sugar—some people crow, some people worry. We don't gloat. We make plans.
Mariel's name creeps back. She's organized, quick, and now we suspect she isn't merely a fence for fragments but someone who sometimes enforces the market's rules. We don't know if she's enemy or necessary danger. Hae‑In suggests a meeting—quiet, neutral ground—if Mariel is willing. I want to trust her less than I want to understand her.
That night I dream of a greenhouse full of tags and the gardener moving between rows with a small smile. I wake with my fingers tinged by the memory of soil and the small ache of a name that slides just out of reach. The ledger under my pillow feels like a map written by hands that still care.
I write in the margin of the ledger one clear instruction: No selling. No exceptions. Protect gardener anonymity. If the gardener is hiding for a reason, we honor it—until they decide otherwise.
Before I sleep, Hae‑In folds me a paper crane and tucks it into the ledger. "They used small things," she says. "So we should answer in small things." The crane is warm from her hands. It smells like paper and a woman who uses care as a method.
I fold my fingers around it and think of the person who planted tags in peat and hid photos under cradles. Whoever they are, they chose protection over profit. Whoever they are, they left breadcrumbs for us to follow.