It happened on an unremarkable afternoon in late autumn, while I was reading in the garden.
I want to record it precisely because I know how memory works — how it softens edges, how it rounds things off into comfortable shapes. I have nine lifetimes of memory and they are not all reliable. This one I want to keep.
I was reading in the garden. Kaien came out to tell me that Lord Baek had sent word about the records correction — my mother's name, formally amended in the Ministry files. Done. Quiet. Real.
He told me this and then sat down on the bench beside me, and for a moment neither of us said anything.
The garden was bright with the particular clarity of autumn light, the kind that makes everything look more precisely itself. The plum tree his grandmother had planted had lost most of its leaves and was just branches now, clean lines against the pale sky.
I said: "In the seventh life, there was a version of you."
He turned to look at me.
