The sky bruises early, purple bleeding into the river like ink. The yard smells of solder and boiled tea; the ledger is warm where my palm rests on it. Corin is sharpening blades he swears are for nails and not people. Jeong practices knots in the corner like a man staving off panic with discipline. Hae‑In reads by lamplight and makes small notations that look like prayers.
System: Alert — High‑priority market movement detected. Suggested task: Monitor exchange at Riverwalk. Reward: 1,800 XP.
We treat System alerts like weather: notice them, then decide whether they require umbrellas. The Riverwalk is a place where commerce and character collide—fishermen, late vendors, and a string of booths that sell small comforts. It is also the sort of place where people arrange meetings because the foot traffic hides intent.
Mariel sends a single whisper through the market channels: a low‑key exchange tonight at the walk, items of provenance changing hands. She doesn't say whether she'll be there; Mariel is generous with information and stingy with attendance. We go because the Trust and its circles use public places when they want plausible deniability.
We station ourselves in plain sight with enough distance to look casual. Jeong sits at a railing pretending to fish; Amira watches from a shadowed bench; Corin loiters near a lamp post with a face that discourages nonsense. Hae‑In and I keep the ledger tucked and the copy of the greenhouse notes between us like a script we can read when required.
At dusk a procession arrives: tidy men, a woman with a carriage that smells faintly of perfume and paperwork, and two couriers who move like men who have kept secrets for a living. A small crowd gathers—oblivious to the gravity underfoot—and the exchange begins with polite words and more polite eyes.
The couriers slide a parcel between polished palms; the woman opens it and withdraws a stabilized tag that glints like a promise. She smiles in a way meant to be private and curious. I trace the woman's hand and see, in an old registry file I memorized, a name that maps into the Trust's hinterlands—a procurement liaison known for discretion and for paying in favors that obligate rather than satisfy.
Mariel watches from a distance, hood up like a shadow wearing a thought. She nods at me once, small and precise, and then steps into the crowd as if to scent which way the wind favors. A broker who needs convincing is a broker who can be led. Something small, animal, and efficient moves through the crowd—an unassuming vendor who drops a folded note into the liaison's pocket like a gift.
Hae‑In catches the slip and folds it open later beneath the lamplight: a short line and a set of coordinates leading to a Trust annex three blocks inland. It's a breadcrumb, not a trap. Mariel's hint was not to the Riverwalk itself but to where their paper leaves footprints.
We tail the liaison at a distance that lets us keep breathing without being obvious. The annex is a narrow building with a discreet door and staffing that looks like a legitimized secret: polite smiles, tidy desks, and a ticker of procurement requests. The liaison moves through with the ease of someone who has built routine on top of morality's absence.
A small exchange happens inside the annex—ledgers change hands, codes are whispered, and a man with a neat scar on his jaw passes a list of new acquisition targets. We take what we can: a scanned ledger entry, the liaison's card, and a copy of a procurement slip stamped with a Trust crest. Evidence is small things collected carefully and wormed into the light.
When we retreat back toward the Riverwalk the night surprises us. A taxi brakes, two men jump out, and a package changes hands in an alley that looks like any other. The courier slips, the package hits the stone, and a thin sheet of paper flutters loose—an inventory list. I catch the sheet reflexively and read names with my eyes like a thief counting silver. There's a column marked PRIORITY: GARDEN NODES, and beside it, three coordinates, one matching the greenhouse, one the tram bench, and the third a place we have yet to confirm. Someone has upgraded desire into a target list.
We walk away because confrontation in narrow alleys leads to knives and things harder to fix than bureaucracy. Back at the yard, we spread the documents on Corin's table and map the new priority. Hae‑In's voice is quiet when she says, "They're cataloging the gardener's network. That means someone intends to harvest, not just buy."
The ledger goes heavy in my hands like a weight that expects answers. We debate options—disperse nodes, move tags to living keepers, set traps, or go public and risk The Trust's legal muscle. No choice is clean. Corin votes for hard moves: scatter, secure, and make any takedown costly. Hae‑In wants to protect the living first, then objects. Min recommends targeted misinformation—seed bad provenance notes in Trust procurement paths to waste their budget. Mariel, when asked, suggests another path: negotiate for the gardener's anonymity by leveraging procurement leaks that make the Trust's buys look corrupt in the eyes of a board that still cares about optics.
It's the oldest lesson: markets fear exposure more than violence. A ledger showing favoritism or illicit buys can topple a front faster than a raid. We make a plan with threads in all directions—legal pressure, obfuscation, human relocation—because balance is survival.
That night I walk to the greenhouse alone. The city is quiet in that way that pretends to be kind. The gardener's tags are mostly moved, but one small marker remains by a bench where a child used to toss seeds. I kneel and touch the soil where it was planted and let a memory rise—not full name, not the laugh's edge, but a small, steady hand digging a hole. I trace the line in my head like a promise.
When I return to the yard there is a message tucked under the ledger's cover: meet at the east bridge at dawn. No signature, only a folded paper crane pressed flat. The crane is Hae‑In's origami and it smells like hope and small things. Whoever left it wants a meeting under a quiet sky.
I sleep with the night's list under my pillow and wake early, ledger in hand. Dawn at the bridge brings mist and a figure who steps into the light with no hurry. She is smaller than I expected and older than the photograph suggested—hair threaded with gray and eyes that have learned what secrets cost. She stands and removes her hood.
"You found my garden," she says. Her voice is softer than the ledger's ink and steadier than a market's promise.
"I found traces," I tell her. "We protected what we could."
She nods. "And you made enemies of people who prefer to own the past." She looks at the ledger. "You can keep names with names. That is a rare sort of bravery."
We sit on the bridge and she tells me her story in pieces—how she planted tags where people would forget to look, how she hid cradles under peat, and how she watched a system that treated memory like a ledger of commodities. Her name is small and clear when she finally says it: Ja‑Yeon. Saying it feels like setting a missing stitch in a sweater. The syllables fit somewhere in my chest.
She does not want to be a symbol. She wants to be a person with calloused hands and an old ache. She asks for two things: that we keep the gardener's methods secret and that if anything happens to her, the network continues. She laughs once, a sound that is both brave and tired, and folds her hands like a woman who has done more than most think possible.
I promise we will protect the nodes and we will not trade names. Ja‑Yeon presses a small, battered tin into my palm. Inside is a list of other gardeners and keepers—names and coordinates written in a cipher that the ledger's margins will hold. "If I go quiet," she says, "they find me and the nodes go cold."
I look at her and suddenly the ledger's pages ripple with meaning. The gardener is not a myth. She is a tired woman who plants seeds and hides memory in soil and kindness. She asks only for the city to remember without making a market of grief.
We leave the bridge with a heavier ledger and a lighter chest. The Trust's list is a threat; Ja‑Yeon's presence is a promise. We will tighten, obfuscate, and when possible, expose. We will protect living keepers and scatter redundancies. We will not sell names.