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Prologue: A Club of Only Two

The Gardening Club room was a discarded old greenhouse. Water stains on the glass drew a map.

When Nakamura Haru pushed the door open, he saw only one senior in a wide-brimmed hat watering the flowers. The sound of the water was softer than the school’s radio calisthenics.

“Leave the membership form next to the watering can.” Tsukimi Kaze didn’t even turn her head. “There are only two of us. You haul the soil. I keep them alive.”

Haru pressed the application under the can. The greenhouse was warm—warm enough to make a person want to take off their secrets too.

Chapter 1: Night-Blooming Flowers

The night-blooming flowers opened only after ten. Their color was a moon diluted in water.

Kaze would not let them be shown to outsiders. “They can’t stand a crowd,” she said. “When there are too many people, the flowers hide their ears.”

Haru thought it was a metaphor. Until one night of overtime, when he watched his senior take off her hat—and under the hat there was no hair ornament, but a pair of pointed ears lying flat along her hair, veins showing green beneath skin thin as paper.

The watering can hit the floor. Every night-blooming flower opened at once, like a row of eyes startled awake.

Chapter 2: Ears That Were Seen

“An elf whose ears have been seen by a human must make the one who saw them part of the garden.” Kaze put her hat back on, but her voice was shaking.

Haru raised both hands. “Please don’t plant me in a flowerpot. I still have exams.”

Kaze froze, then laughed—and after the laugh, she was angry again. “That’s not what I meant. It means… you have to stay. Observe. Water. Keep the secret. The garden needs someone who knows the secret and doesn’t cut it off.”

“Then I’ll apply to be the soil.” Haru picked up the watering can. “Soil doesn’t pass ears along.”

The pointed ears shifted under the brim, as if that sentence had watered them.

Chapter 3: Part of the Garden

The first page of the observation notes was written by Kaze: date, humidity, the opening and closing times of the night-blooming flowers. The second page was written by Haru: whether his senior had put her hat on straight today.

“This page doesn’t count as science.” Kaze reached out to tear it.

“This page counts as gardening.” Haru held the paper down. “Gardening includes taking care of the grower.”

The greenhouse glass cut the sunset into small pieces. Kaze did not tear the page. She only added a line beside it: Soil condition—stable, slightly talkative.

The night-blooming flowers opened half an hour early. Haru wrote that down too, and in the notes he added: Possibly related to heartbeat.

Chapter 1: The Heartbeat of Watering

Watering meant listening to a heartbeat. Kaze pressed Haru’s hand to the side of the pot and taught him to tell the flow of water from the roots.

What he made out was her pulse. Both of them pulled their hands back at the same time. Water from the can spilled onto their shoes.

“Don’t write this in the notes,” Kaze said.

“I already did.” Haru was honest. “Right after the soil condition.”

Kaze pushed her hat down low. The pointed ears lifted the brim into a small arc that would not stay hidden.

Chapter 2: The Senior’s Secret Soil

His senior’s secret soil was really a bag of ash brought from her hometown. She said it was powder left after an elf-tree fell, and that it could let any seed live through winter in a human school.

“I’ll give you a little.” She poured the ash into Haru’s palm. “That way you’re part of the garden too.”

Haru tucked the ash into the inner pocket of the observation notebook. The greenhouse door tapped softly in the wind, as if a third person wanted to join the club.

The two of them looked toward the doorway together. No one was there. Only the night-blooming flowers sent their scent out into the corridor, as if recruiting for the Gardening Club in the quietest way.