But as she looked at the child's face — lit up for the first time in her life by something that was not a screen or a lamp — Oriko realized something.
Then, on the fifteenth night, she saw it.
Instead, she brought more soil. More pots. She worked faster, quieter, smuggling nutrients from the hydroponic bays, rerouting a trickle of water from a leaky pipe. Every night, she came back. Every night, the garden grew. Himawari Wa Yoru Ni Saku
They weren't blooming for her. They weren't blooming for the arcology. They were blooming because that was what they were made to do. In the dark, in the dead soil, in the belly of a dying world — they opened their petals and turned toward a sun that no one else could see.
It didn't look like any sunflower she had seen in the old botanical archives. The stem was dark, almost black, threaded with silver veins that pulsed faintly — a heartbeat, or something like it. The leaves unfurled like hands opening in prayer. And the bud at the top grew heavier, fuller, until it began to droop with its own weight. But as she looked at the child's face
Oriko turned off her headlamp.
In the absolute darkness of the sub-level, the sunflower began to glow. More pots
By the end of the month, the entire sub-level was a forest of glowing sunflowers, their soft radiance filtering up through the grating, spilling into the lower corridors. People began to notice. At first, they were afraid — the arcology had taught them to fear anything that grew without permission. But fear turned to curiosity, and curiosity to wonder.
She didn't report it.
The next night, it had grown six inches.
She didn't plant it in the hydroponic rows. Those were monitored. Instead, she took a broken clay pot, filled it with smuggled compost, and hid it in the deepest corner of the sub-levels, where the night was absolute and no cameras watched.