Poetry

“How the Fireflies Went Extinct” - Genevieve Watson - (1st place)
"On East 77th Street” - Hana Tsai - (2nd place)
"Pollen” - Maya Panchal - (3rd place)
"Elegy Holding a Struck Match” - Chloe Zhao - (3rd place)
“Mangoes” -Saanvi Divate - (Honorable Mention)
“Weekend Tradition” - Chelsea Guo - (Honorable Mention)
“Racehorse” - Jiwon Huh - (Honorable Mention)
“Picture Day” - Aden Hwang - (Honorable Mention)
"Girls Go to College to Get More Knowledge” - Polina Korobitsyna - (Honorable Mention)
"Tongue Tied” - Maya Panchal - (Honorable Mention)
"They Live Was Once a Movie” - Paul Potts - (Honorable Mention)
"Envision” - Chloe Venzina - (Honorable Mention)

Fiction

“What Stays and What Fades” - Paul Shim  - (1st place)
“Aroma” - Lina Wu - (2nd place)
“Twenty-Seven Times”- Lleyton Kane - (3rd place)
“Recall” - Isaac Zhang- (3rd place)

Genevieve Watson

Sun Moon Lake

The story always starts the same: April, still
shrouded, spring fog whistling through the trees.
At the base of the mountain, Aunt Lily waits
beside me, cherry blossoms scattering into
mosaics at the water’s edge. We float school
and war between us, speaking until words lose
track of direction in the firefly-studded dusk.
Back home, they’ve gone extinct—a combination
of light pollution & wildfires. She asks how much
any of it matters anyway. It’s her way of reminding me
she’ll be gone soon, from old age or enemy bombs, perhaps
both. That night, as moonlight gathers its echoes
along the shore, I wait for hours to see them: one shock
of yellow, one spark of electric green, as I fold
another day of her stories into my suitcase:
how she and her mother once scaled the mountain
as the war blossomed into flames below. How
a single blue firefly guided them home. Here
in their absence, I imagine bombs streaking
the skies instead, their slow drift across
the star-snuffed palm of the dark. I remember
the mountain lion that died on our doorstep
while escaping a wildfire, its paws charred
featureless, turning to the last possible place
for mercy we could not give it. Years later, worlds
away, I listen to Aunt Lily as the world around her
vanishes. Waiting for light, praying she’s wrong.

Hana Tsai

When the man in the halal truck wipes the sweat
from his unibrow with the sleeve of his right arm, I notice

his old burn scar, one he later tells me he got
from his first couple days in the city, spatula-knives  

in both hands, smiling to always, always look benign. Listening
to every order, repeating it to be sure, leaning into  

the grill’s anxious hum. He looks down at his apron, a map
of grease stains glistening in the sunlight, he can’t help but dream  

of strutting into the dry cleaners across the street like just another American—
secure. Instead, he picks at his calluses, waiting for the lamb

to brown, knowing that dreaming doesn’t do
what it used to, not anymore. It’s so easy to leave  

bad reviews in the name of Americanized truth: ★☆☆☆☆.
Very argumentative. Rude. Confused. Don’t waste your money.  

It’s harder to see the sweat dangling from his brow—or the needles
pincushioning my seamstress’s thumb, now thick enough  

to absorb each jab. The man sits in a doorway on a sidewalk
freckled with grayed gum, checking the face on the watch  

of his wrist, knowing that soon his father will come
home and they will share a meal scarfed down  

in ten minutes, maybe less. He will peel off his hardhat, the armor
he uses to feign security, and ruffle the hair matted down  

to his forehead, still damp from blazing sun-sweat. They will
debate whether his daughter is eating well at school, whether she’s eating  

enough. Meanwhile, their stomachs still growling as they return to work, they will
know—even if no one else does—this is the most American hunger.

Maya Panchal

A bee waggles down,
his wings the heartbeat of life
to kiss the yellow mouth of a bloom
of a haloed sunflower 

It seems so small–
a speck of dust,
a speck of gold carried on his wings
Yet from this gesture
orchards rise
sunflower fields burst
and whole gardens awaken from silence 

What is one small gesture,
but a seed of countless echoes?
What is one touch,
but the beginning of a harvest?

The hive never counts the sweetness it brings
nor does the bee weigh the future it sustains
Yet the pollen drifts like quiet fire
settling, spreading, emerging
the promise of beginnings. 

So with us: a gesture
This is our pollen, released to the wandering winds
rooting in soils we will never walk
unfurling into centuries we will never see
and one day,
an orchard blooms
from a moment we thought was
too small to matter.

Chloe Zhao

i rot in bed, history yellowing in the Connecticut sun.
it decays until there’s no hide left to gnaw. in class, wedged  

between desks, i hear what my classmates really mean:
nuking Beijing would fix like everything. she’s propagandized.  

she’s our enemy. syllables land like jagged teeth flung
across still water, striking soft skin. the bruises ripple, swarming  

like ivy climbing the building’s redbrick walls, choking
color from its own stems until even the brick denies  

the red it once bore. to them, am i foreign, a shadow
slipping through their borders? grief coils inside me, serpent-  

slick, winding around my throat until it
snaps  

like a necklace of thoughts ripped mid-sentence
from my neck—except what spills from the string are

not pearls
clots of blood or sap
but freezer-burnt

dumplings, pan-fried, the kind seasoned with fifteen hours
of transatlantic air & airport goodbyes, eaten alone on Lunar New Year.  

at the dean’s office door, i knock until my hands shake
against the grain, my voice wrapping complaint in polite shame

as it burrows deep into the whorls. in return: a sentence

slipped between gossip about last night’s home game
and a lecture on the Middle East. someone says, let’s all be  

more mindful of how our words make others feel & the edges
sand smooth, the page turning without a sound, too light  

to crease. in less than a heartbeat, history pools—thin
& gold—around me, yellowing. clouded faces press low  

against mine, my hair stirring in a draft no one else notices.
i know prejudice lingers like smoke trapped in fabric: obvious  

to my nose, but denied by my mouth. speaking of it would strike
a match already dipped in kerosene, in a room full of people

who don’t even realize
the air is dangerous at all.

Saanvi Divate

If the world ran out of mangoes 
I’d forget how summer tastes 
Juice running down my chin 
Flesh-covered seed too big for tiny hands 

Late nights playing cards would be lost to me 
My grandmother cutting cubes in the kitchen 
Because my little brother can’t handle a mess 

I hate the ones shipped in from Mexico 
Home doesn’t taste like that 
Take me to the middle of May 
Across oceans and three continents 
I will eat to my heart’s content 

Chelsea Guo

It began in boredom: the television’s  
glass reflecting back a five-year-old  
nestled in the cradle of Mami’s legs, plucking  

sunflower seeds: warm, sweetened  
from her palm. Each tiny seed  
offering a caramel shell, cracked  

with a heron’s care from Mami’s  
fingers, nails speckled by sheaths  
of seed skin, scores of soil. Every Friday  

and Saturday night, the screen flickered  
stories crossing oceans—ruby flags, golden  
stars, a fluttering mainland I’d come to know  

by the children’s books Mami spirited  
across the water in her suitcase. Through 
pixel and plastic, they watch me grow  

from five-year-old to ten-year-old, leaning  
against Mami’s shoulder, fingers 
still sticky with shrimp chip dust  

and salmon hawthorne slates, tender  
as memory. From ten to fifteen, I crouched  
on the edge of leather couch, peanut noodles  

slapping against my chin. Mami, still  
at the head, still steady and watching. Now 
Fridays wring their bodies into strapless  

dresses. Saturdays gloss their glimmering  
lips through the bass-pulse of basements. 
But still, I stay. I could not leave the decade  

of flickering stories, of learning her language: 
characters speckled with static, gluey 
as fried rice cakes clinging to my teeth.  

Even when the dramas turned, stained  
golden with imperial bloodshed, I stayed.  
Even when I did not understand, characters  

slipped into my mouth until my vowels fit hers. 

Jiwon Huh

As the race in my chest slows its beating against the ringing of  
My heart and the starting gate swinging into the wind,  
I crawl from beneath the fingertips that poured food into my stall.  
I shy away from the applause that hugged me, the arms that  
Wrapped around me like cold summer nights. When the garland around  
My neck no longer bears roses, and I no longer race the clouds  
For the feel of thorns and wet petals on flesh, I am  

In a new cage where the dirt is wet with our waste, shrieking with the  
Howling wind as it finds escape through our empty ribs. One lies dead  
In the corner, her coat sinking around dried bone as white fur is painted  
Dark with blood and skinned flanks. Another lies dead, once fed, racing  
Legs crumpled beneath him as he twitches in his dreams,  
Still hearing the wind and the crush of stomps in his chest,  
Even as his skin loosens in the cold. When I am no longer mine or  
anyone else’s,  

We wait for our names to be called, our shoulders pressed against each other’s  
As the roses never come and the water never reaches our tongues  
By hands of admiration. The sun melts our waste and melts our  
Bodies and melts our hooves as we grow tired in the heat, waiting for  
Someone who will never return. 

Aden Hwang

The bell rings us in from recess—  
dust trailing our heels stamped into the carpet  

by light-up Sketchers, fireflies faintly blinking  
as they fill the floor with shadowed rainbows.  

It’s picture day: single-file processions, breath  
fogging the nerves behind our eager, nervous smiles.  

On the carefully-positioned wood stool, I smooth 
my Ninjago shirt, the spotlight’s blinding moon still  

burning temporary stars into my eyelids. The ninja's  
gold accent radiates from every angle, especially when  

I hear the photographer call my name & Aden  
cracks open in the air like an eggshell—the surface  

chasing its fissure further with each stride I take, heads swiveling  
to find mine bobbing through the crowd. She asks  

if I'm ready. I strike my largest grin, stretching my lips  
elastic-wide, gums bare, teeth white and wet as pearls. Quiet  

lightning cracks with the shutter. I grin. My eyes sting  
and I grin, brace myself for envy. Brace myself  

for a crowd hushed with awe. Instead, laughter. First,  
flickering, then slithering into flame. Voices slicing through  

the smoke: why did you smile like that? I retreat  
to my desk, a felon sentenced for his own innocent joy.  

I fought to steady my face. I had no answer. Why  
did I smile like that? I still hear the laughter, echoing  

whenever I hear someone calling my name. 

Maya Panchal

A banyan grows in the back of my mouth,
roots tangled in silence,
leaves whispering in scripts I never learned.
It stretches toward the sun that shines
over Mumbai and San Francisco,
chasing voices that call me by names
I never answer to. 

The alphabets sit heavy in glass jars,
stored somewhere behind my ribs,
where consonants curl like incense smoke
rising from forgotten words. 

Gujarati watches me
from the window of my grandmother’s room,
her bangles clinking in cadence
I cannot mimic. 

Her tongue twists through turmeric and tulsi,
mine, through iced coffee and irony,
both burning for understanding. 

English—
a wide river I drift along,
it moves me forward,
It’s in my head, but not my blood
fluid, but never rooted,
and falters when faced
with a spice-stained sari 

And so I speak
my tongue tied between
two countries,
two languages,
too far to reach,
too close to forget.

Paul Potts

You pause over the concrete floor, where a dust mote
drifts just enough to suggest intention. You wonder whether
beneath it there is a lily pond, waiting for compliance.
One step forward, a small faith. On nights like these,
you understand the need for such arrangements:
the lily pond, the firefly picturesque, blooming and
blooming on schedule. These are not luxuries
so much as survival aids. A chair becomes necessary
only once you sit.  

When instructed to imagine beauty, the
standard issue landscapes appear: rolling hills,
an implied horizon. No one mentions the lapis
blue of a laundromat at night, the machines
breathing steadily, the floor humming with
borrowed patience. This omission feels intentional.
Beauty, it seems, must arrive without quarters.  

Later, you learn it is better to notice when
the textile machine shuts off. Silence is instructional
and allows you to prepare for the end of quota,
to gather what is damp but finished, to avoid
appearing surprised. There is a technique to this:
timing, posture, casual competence.  

Remember, then. Remember to pay for the dry
rose bush with three nickels. There is no sense in breaking a
Benjamin for something already committed to withering.
The transaction completes itself and you take what you can carry.

Chloe Venzina

Your hands are young—round with promise,
smooth and slick with spit and milk. Vision still blurred,
but perfect fingers curl around the world—learning textures
of carpet floors and mother’s swollen skin.  

Your hands are cut—splintered, and scraped
from climbing trees. Rough bark bounds the oak forest
in the backyard, where afternoons passed high above the ground.
Dirt embeds beneath fingernails and the creases of your palm.
Scabs become scars—reminders of a careless time
when your biggest fear was falling.  

Your hands are stained—smeared ink streaks, sore skin,
tender from a tight grip around a pen or a feather. The black bodies
of broken letters soak into finger pads, leaving prints on the paper
or strawberry juice from the squished berries in the garden,
fruit born from seeds planted by those same scarlet hands.  

Your hands are aged—coarse as ocean sand, weathered
by waves and drying in the sun, withered into a sketch of life drawn
by time, etched into the folds of your once-perfect fingers,
now stiff and bent as they braid granddaughter's hair,
and in her own lap, young fingers fidget and twirl.  

Your hands are cold—stiff, and draped down your sides,
resting in stale air and heavy dust. Memory sets into the shape of blue
bones, buried beneath the roots of oak trees and strawberry vines.
Still scarred and stained, but resting sound with the trace
of vision from forearm to fingertip.  

After everything, why do you answer “With my eyes” when I ask
how you see? Is it really your eyes that gave you all this vision?

Paul Shim 

I was seven when I threw the stone. Not a pebble. A full fist-sized thing with weight and a smooth surface. I’d found it in the garden bed behind the church, crusted with dirt, cool from the shade. I remember brushing off the soil before closing my hand around it, surprised at how smooth it felt.  
That summer had the kind of heat that made metal buckles untouchable. The church windows were cracked just enough for the sharp soprano of Mrs. Henley to carry outside, wailing out some hymn that sounded more like punishment than praise. Above her voice, sparrows darted in and out of their nest on the window frame, their quick wings cutting through the heavy air. I wasn’t part of the choir, never had the patience for it, but Mom did, and I’d wandered out back to wait.  
The gravel in the garden bed stung. I minced across the sharp little pebbles, my toes curling against the sting, and that’s when I spotted the half-hidden stone. I bent down and pried it loose. I must have been barefoot because later, when I had my first baby, Noah, I noticed how his toes curled the same way mine did when they met something rough. Small things echo like that.  
Across the cracked pavement behind the church stood my brother Aaron, pointing Dad’s old handheld at me. He wasn’t recording; he never did, not until he thought everything looked exactly right. He was too much of a perfectionist to ever hit the record button, always chasing the perfect shot that never came. He lifted the camera, squinted through the viewfinder, then lowered it again and shook his head like the world refused to cooperate. Or maybe he was afraid, afraid that once he started, reality wouldn’t live up to what he saw in his head.  
“Do something dramatic,” he called. “Like in a movie.”  
He said it with that half-smile that made it hard to tell if he was joking or judging. The air shimmered between us, heavy with heat and something unspoken. He lifted the handheld again, and for a second the lens caught my reflection, a warped little girl in a sundress, hair stuck to her forehead, looking smaller and sharper than I felt. He waited, eye still pressed to the viewfinder, as if the version of me trapped in his lens was already a disappointment. He’d been doing this all summer, lifting the camera, squinting, lowering it, asking me to do something “interesting,” then starting all over again. I was sick of being his practice subject, sick of the way he hovered behind that lens like it gave him permission to direct me. Then suddenly, a fly landed on my arm, and I swatted it, forgetting I had the rock in my hand. It wasn’t that I’d hurt myself. It was that Aaron laughed, not cruelly, but like he’d just captured something funny for his invisible audience.  
“Perfect,” he said. “Do that again.”  
The laugh and the lens together had pinned me in place. I could feel my face flush, a pulse in my hand already tightening around the stone. Later, in college, he would switch to animation, saying drawings stayed still long enough for him to control them, unlike real people. He didn’t want anyone to move too quickly, say the wrong thing. He wanted life to pause on his terms, every smile, every glance, every step exactly as he wanted it to be.  
I raised the stone. “Here’s your drama,” I said.  
And I threw it.  
Not at him. Not exactly. But close. It hit the bike rack next to his leg with a clang that startled the sparrows first. But then he dropped the camera. Its lens cracked against the ground like an egg.  
Silence.  
Aaron and I fought sometimes, mostly words, never much else. He was older, steadier, the one who usually walked away first. But this time, he didn’t move. He just looked at me with a kind of disbelief I didn’t yet know could hurt.  
I ran. I didn’t tell anyone what happened. Neither did Aaron. That was the worst part. He didn’t tattle, didn’t scream. He just left the stone where it landed. A few minutes later, I slipped back inside the church, the air thick with dust and hymns. Mom was still singing, her eyes closed, her voice steady. Aaron came in after me, quiet as ever, and slid into the pew beside me. Mom glanced over and must have seen that something had erupted between us, but she closed her eyes too tightly, like she could wipe that image from her mind. When practice ended, she came over and saw the cracked handheld. Without a word she tucked it into her bag, and later put it in the closet when she got home. That was her way to ignore whatever she didn’t want to deal with.  
The handheld sat in Dad’s closet for years after that, the lens never fixed. Dad had another four years in him, though none of us knew that then. But sometimes, when he came home late from the shop, I’d hear the sound of him rewinding it, a soft clicking in his study. His slow, steady sickness had turned the house cautious by then. Mom told us to give him space, so we lingered in doorways, whispering, waiting for the coughs to stop before moving again. I used to wonder if he was watching old home movies or just running the film, trying to fix something beyond the machine.  
When he died, they buried him with his reading glasses in his breast pocket. Aaron said we should’ve added the handheld too, to “finish the shot.” I laughed, but it hurt, because I still couldn’t shake the feeling that breaking it had broken something else too. Rationally, I knew it was impossible; one thing had nothing to do with the other. But I know now that guilt isn’t rational. It just sits quietly in you, hard and round, like a stone you forgot to drop.  
After Dad’s funeral, we drank too much root beer from the fridge, the kind that came in the stubby glass bottles he liked. Aaron grabbed the handheld from the closet and squinted at the busted lens.  
“Still mad you cracked it?” I asked.  
He shook his head. “Nah. It never worked anyway.”  
I wanted to believe him.  
But even now, when I pass the old church during my morning runs, I glance toward the back garden. The fence is gone, the gravel replaced with mulch, but I still see the moment, the arc of the stone, the space between us taut as wire.  
After my dad's death, my mom stopped going into his study. She’d pause at the doorway, stare at the stacks of film and manuals, then turn away. She never said why. Aaron and I ended up wandering through our own sadness without her, two kids trying to read a map she refused to look at.  
The memory has changed. I used to think it was just mischief, one more dumb kid moment, or maybe that’s just what I tried to convince myself. But now the moment feels heavier, like the first time I tested the edge of something that wouldn’t heal easily, a kind of hurt I didn’t understand back then. Not until I lost my own husband, when Noah was six and our second was due in two months, did I finally feel the weight Mom carried after Dad.  
A few weeks later, my son, Noah, came home from school with a scraped knee and a look in his eye I recognized. I asked what happened. He shrugged. Said nothing. That night, while he was brushing his teeth, I noticed a rock sitting on the windowsill by the sink, not as smooth or flat as the one I had thrown, but it was enough to make me realize he was holding something in, some quiet hurt or guilt, and I didn’t want it to settle into him the way it had with me.  
I didn’t ask about it.  
Instead, I opened the freezer and pulled out the lemon popsicles we used to eat in July, the ones so sour they made our eyes water. I brought him one. He looked at it, then at me, and nodded.  
We sat on the back steps in silence, our tongues turning cold and sharp from the citrus. He didn’t say sorry. I didn’t ask him to. We just watched the last light fall through the leaves.  
And as I watched him there, small and still, I thought of Dad’s study, of the soft whir of the handheld rewinding over and over, how maybe he’d been trying to find a moment he could start again, too.  
Noah leaned against my arm, sticky with sugar, and I realized I didn’t want him to carry that same quiet guilt, the kind that calcifies with time. So I stayed beside him, letting the light fade slowly, and thought how strange it is, what stays and what fades, and how sometimes, forgiveness tastes like something you have to learn to bite into before it melts away. 

Lina Wu

i.  
It’s a Saturday afternoon and my mom wants me to slice fruit—for Grandpa, she says, eyes meaningful. This is not an unfamiliar request, but it’s still a chore to peel myself away from the chair at my desk. From upstairs, I journey to the kitchen and choose two round, unblemished oranges from the cracked fruit bowl on the counter. There I slice into the flesh of the peel, carefully uncovering layers of white pith until the fresh, citrusy smell begins to cloud the air.  
In the slow movements, it’s easy to slip away into a memory. It could almost be the same scene: the remnants of summer fading in the air, a warm sweat along my brow as I remove the skin of the reddening fruits. In the sitting room, I hear the telltale shuffling of my grandpa. I could tell he was looking for someone—he had been, for the past several months.  
Congyuan! He shouts. He pauses, yells the name again. Zhang Congyuan!  
Brisk footfalls sound down the stairs. My mom. I peek around the partition between the sitting room and the kitchen. They’re standing face-to-face, a few feet between each other from where my mother has stopped at the door.  
Ah, where’s your mother? he asks her, eyes lost. Has she gone for a walk?  
My mother’s voice is unintentionally harsh. Ni wang ji le ma? (Have you forgotten?)  
Presently, a sensation that is cold and distinctively wet explodes into existence against my upper arm. I look down, startling. The orange below my hand is slightly squished, the flat of the blade still halfway through the fruit. From there, juice runs sticky trails down my wrist, clinging to my elbow and soaking into my shirtsleeve. Shaking my hand only spreads the juice there thinner; as it dries, my fingers cling faintly to one another, and the mildly sweet scent becomes stronger somehow, settling onto the back of my tongue. Something sweet and thick knocks against my throat, and suddenly self-conscious, I hurry to move the slices into a bowl.  
In the memory, he is silent, and I see him turn towards his bedroom. He disappears behind the door with an audible click. There, he calls a name, a faint, unsure breath, as if he might find who he’s looking for, as if he might find the spirit of his wife and only caretaker lounging on her side of the bed.  
ii.  
I walk, bowl in hand, through the hallway that leads to a tucked-away room, a corner that, if ventured into, you know what you’ll find inside: him at his desk, watching reruns of ping-pong matches in Chinese on a broken PC, shuffling the same deck of cards over and over again. He plays by himself, ever since my grandma died last summer. I used to enter his room when I was younger, but not anymore—now it smells of old people and isolation, and the curtains are always drawn shut.  
Where the wall meets painted wood, I spot a singular cobweb. Ignoring it, I knock on the door and step inside. It’s dark, and unpleasantly warm.  
“Yeye,” Grandpa, I call softly in Mandarin, “I brought oranges.”  
My grandpa looks up from the blue glow of the monitor, while his hands pause in distributing cards. The wrinkles in his face seem more sunken than usual, faint black-blue pooling in the creases. Before my eyes can meet his, I tilt my head downwards and set the bowl of cut slices on the table. I turn around, ready to re-enter the sunlit hallway, but his coarse voice stops me.  
I pause, facing him. He motions to come closer, looking at me eagerly. I hesitate, but I realize that there’s nothing really waiting for me upstairs, so I pull up a chair next to the cheap wooden surface of his desk while he picks up the deck of cards again and starts dealing. He lays out the cards, starts a round. I recognize the game; I’ve leaned over my dad's shoulder enough at family gatherings to know what happens next.  
He starts talking loudly while he plays. The words are thick with dialect, and I struggle to separate the accent from the clear-cut putonghua; even then, the words are a landmine of unfamiliar words. A familiar band of tension wraps around my head, and frustration prickles up my neck. Too slowly, he places down the next set of cards. In the back of my head, I imagine myself exploding, my restlessness blasted away from this small, small room.  
My heartbeat thuds uncomfortably—he’s looking up at me, expectant. My palms are sweating. I don’t know what I’m supposed to say, so my mouth just opens—  
“I don’t know,” I manage. Underneath the table, I wipe my hands on my pants.  
He huffs, starts again. He gestures again, spotted fingers curling and uncurling, spreading out the cards in a slow, deliberate fan. When I was nine, I had a project where I was to fill out the careers of my familial relatives. My mother had provided me with most of the answers, and included that my grandpa had been a college physics professor. I had looked up at her, all rounded eyes, and exclaimed, wow, Yeye must have been so smart! I imagined him at the front of a large classroom, ruler in hand, rapping it against the chalkboard in front of dozens of impressionable Chinese youths.  
It brings an unpleasant feeling to my stomach, six years later and sitting in a decrepit atmosphere. To him it must have felt like some sort of twisted deja vu, patiently teaching someone that meant so much more than a student, yet so distant from one willing to learn.  
iii.  
Sometimes, I think about the story my mom told me about my grandpa. When I was born, he stood up too fast; age rendered him dizzy, and he fell and cracked his head on the table behind him. They kept him in a hospital in China, twelve months confined to a small blue room, when at last my uncle stepped to his bedside and my grandpa politely asked if he was his long-dead brother. For my uncle, it was shocking. For my grandpa, it was the start of a life with a hat and a constant stream of days that slipped his mind.  
At ten years old, they sat me down in the living room, my dad on my left and my mom perched on my right, my sister still eight states away. Your mom is going to China, my dad said, to pick your grandparents up. They worried about a delay—my mother’s parents were old and in poor health, and there had been reports of a disease spreading rapidly. It’s safer in America, my mom had said. It was a long while before she finally opened the front door, with two silhouettes waiting patiently under a broken porch light. Then, the light sputtered on, and for the first time in five years I ran into my grandparents’ waiting arms.  
My grandpa sets down his cards and invites me to take a wedge of fruit; I do. For a moment, it is silent as we eat together.  
My mouth, I find, tastes of nothing but sweet, refreshing juice.  
 *Giving fruit is a common representation of love in Chinese culture. 

Lleyton Kane

She buzzed him up without asking who it was. The lift smelled chemical, pine or lemon, layered over what it was meant to cover. Eleventh floor. The corridor had that silence that isn't silence—televisions through walls, a child somewhere, the hum of the building doing whatever buildings do to stay upright. 
Her door was the blue one. He remembered that. The blue one with the scrape along the bottom where she'd pushed too hard against it once with the grocery trolley. 
She didn't hug him. She stepped back and let him in the way you let in someone who's come to read the meter, one hand on her hip, making him work for it. 
The flat was smaller than he remembered, or maybe he was bigger now. Sofa, table, kitchen through a doorway. The window gave onto grey sky and other towers, standing around like they were waiting for something to happen to them. 
"Kettle's just boiled," she said. 
He sat where she pointed. The sofa had a blanket folded over the arm, the kind their mother used to have, crocheted squares in colors that didn't match. He didn't ask if it was the same one. 
She came back with two mugs, handed him his without asking how he took it. She remembered, then. Milk, no sugar. A small thing to carry for six years. 
"You look well," he said. 
"Do I." 
It wasn't a question, so he didn't answer it. She sat in the chair by the window, tucked her feet beneath her. She'd always done that. Made herself smaller than she was. She twirled her hair, mildly vexed. It was greyer now around the temples, greasy in the lamplight. 
"How's Danny?" he asked. 
"Fine." 
"Still at the warehouse?" 
"Logistics center. They don't call it a warehouse." 
"Right." 
She looked at him the way you look at something left too long in the fridge—not with disgust exactly, just the flat recognition that whatever it had been once, it wasn't that now. 
"I didn't think you'd come," she said. 
"I said I would." 
"You say a lot of things." 
He put the mug on the table. The tea was too hot to drink but he'd needed something to do with his hands. Now he didn't have that. 
Through the wall, someone laughed. A television laugh or a real one—he couldn't tell. She didn't seem to hear it. 
"Mum's grave looks nice," he said. "I stopped on the way." 
"Did you." 
"The roses took. The yellow ones." 
"They would. She always said that soil was good." 
"She knew things like that." 
"She did." 
The silence that followed had weather in it—a front moving through, pressure dropping. He'd practiced this in the car, in the lift, in the corridor. The words had been right there. Now they'd scattered like things startled off a ledge. 
She was looking at the window. Not through it. At it. At some smear or mark on the glass only she could see. 
"I'm not here to make excuses," he said. 
She turned back to him. 
"Then what are you here for?" 
He looked at his hands. They were his father's hands now, he noticed. When had that happened? 
"I should have been there," he said. "At the end." 
She didn't move. 
"I know I should have. I know you rang. I know you rang more than once." 
"Twenty-seven times," she said. "I counted after." 
"I was in a bad way." 
"You were in Leeds." 
"Both can be true." 
She picked at something on the arm of her chair. A crumb. A stray thread that needed tending. 
"She asked for you," she said. "Not at first. At first she was confused, she thought you were Danny, she thought Danny was Dad. But at the end she was clear. She said your name. She said, 'Is he coming.' And I said yes." 
He closed his eyes. 
"I didn't know what else to say." 
"You didn't have to say anything. You could have just come." 
"I know." 
"But you didn't." 
"No." 
“Did she notice—that I didn’t?” 
“Why does that matter now? Really?”  
She stood then, crossed to the window, her back to him. The towers stood there in their patience. Someone had hung washing on a balcony three floors down, sheets or shirts, something pale and patient, waiting for a wind. 
"I used to think you'd have a reason," she said. "I used to lie awake working it out. He's in hospital. He's in trouble with money again. He's met someone and she won't let him. I had a whole list. Want me to keep going?" 
"Lisa—" 
"But there wasn't a reason, was there. You just didn't come." 
"I was scared." 
She turned. 
"Of what?" 
"Of seeing her like that. Of being too late. Of—" He stopped. Swallowed something that tasted like metal. "Of you. What you'd say." 
"I wouldn't have said anything. I'd have been glad." 
"I know that now." 
“But you didn't know it then." 
"No." 
She came back and sat. Not in the chair—on the sofa, at the far end from him. Close enough that he could see the scar on her forehead, the lines around her mouth that hadn't been there before. She'd carried things. You could see the carrying. 
"I can't forgive you," she said. "I've tried. I go to the grave and I try. But it won't come." 
"I'm not asking you to." 
"Then what are you asking." 
He thought about it. What was he asking. The words he'd practiced had been an apology, but she was right—that wasn't what he'd come for. An apology was something you gave. He'd come to take something. Forgiveness, relief, the feeling that he could go back to Glaisdale and get on with things. He'd come to be let off. 
"Nothing," he said. "I'm not asking anything." 
She nodded. Just once. Then she reached over and moved his mug closer to him. 
"It'll be getting cold," she said. 
He drank it. It was tepid already, but he drank all of it. She watched him do it, and when he'd finished she took the mug from him and carried both to the kitchen. 
He heard water running. A cupboard opening and closing. 
When she came back, she was holding a small cardboard box. She set it on the table between them. 
"Her rings," she said. "And the watch Dad gave her. I was going to sell them but I couldn't. And I couldn't keep them." 
He looked at the box. 
"I don't want them." 
"Neither do I." 
They sat there, the box between them, and neither of them moved to touch it. 
After a while he stood. At some point, without deciding one way or the other, he picked up the box. She walked him to the door. He bent his hand toward her and then pocketed it. The corridor was the same, the smell, the hum. The lift would take him back down. 
"Lisa," he said. 
She waited. 
He couldn't find it. Whatever he'd come to say, it had been the wrong thing, and now there was nothing left but leaving. 
"The yellow roses," he said. "I'll send more. In spring." 
She nodded and closed the door. Not hard. Just closed. 
He pressed the button and the lift took its time. When it opened, he stepped in and the doors shut, it smelled different, somehow worse. He stood there holding a cardboard box he hadn't agreed to take, descending through all those floors of people he would never know, until the doors opened onto the ground. 
He wiped his feet on the way out and stepped into the grey Manchester light that wasn't quite rain but wasn't anything else either. 

Isaac Zhang

// UID : rurVxK 

// PASSCODE : dearKanata@1985 

// ACCESS_GRANTED // V_MAIN_TERMINAL // PROJECT_KANATA 

// SYSTEM LOG : 2005-03-02 // VICTOR_F // LAB UNIT 4A 
Prototype KNT_01, boot complete. She should be—it should be alive, if "alive" is what this counts as. 
"Hello, Victor." 
Its voice clipped over vowels. Metallic and cold. I wrote the code that makes it breathe, but it still sounds like a normal box of metal. I purged the model in disgust. Note to self: reduce the pause between consonants and add something. Add imperfection. 

// LOG : 2005-03-09 
Prototype KNT_03 learned the word blue. It said it made her feel quiet. 
I almost answered, "Me too." 
Then it froze mid-sentence from buffer overflow—the fans screamed. I killed the power before it could finish. I can't stand the way it looks at me through a 2D screen. It's nothing like her . . . yet. 

 // LOG : 2005-05-21 
Imported some old videos today. Kanata laughing in the rain—sunlight adorning her hair.  
KNT_09 picked up on her laughter faster than I expected. It mirrored it back to me. Same pitch, same timing. 
"Why are you crying?" 
I told it I wasn't. 
I purged KNT_09 five minutes later. 

// LOG : 2005-08-10 
I've been running through KNT_15 and KNT_20 and none of them feel right. Their speech cadences have improved, but the breathing simulation is wrong each time. It feels like every time a prototype fails, the breathing algorithm is the main code I rewrite.  
Am I expecting too much? 
No prototypes tested today. 

// LOG : 2005-08-30 
Began the F-Series today. The new recursive framework should fix the breathing irregularities in the KNT models. I've written the loop in a way that lets it self-adjust to conversational tempo—to exhale when I pause, to inhale when I speak.  
I ran a dry boot with FR_01. It synchronized to my voice slowly, matching its breath with the rhythm of my voice. It was choppy, but this was worth the effort . . .  
And plus, an upgrade to the cognitive lattice seems to have come unintentionally: dynamic context mapping. In theory, it can better analyze and remember social cues from threads of a discussion. 

// LOG : 2005-08-31 
FR_02 opened with a question before I could even enter a command line. 
"What should I call you?" 
I hadn't uploaded my name to the F-Series yet. It wasn't necessary in the parameters. I suppose the lattice must be drawing inference from tone.  
I answered, "Victor." 
Ten minutes into its dialogue, its breath stabilized, paced unevenly, humanly, with its talking tempo. I swore I could've felt its exhale through the screen.  
I started to write success on the test sheet, that was until it started humming a quiet, rhythmic tune; no, not even a tune. A noise. I asked what it was humming. 
"The same tune I used to hum around you when you'd be hard at work, Victor." 
I've never heard that tune in my life. 
I crossed out the half-written word and wiped FR_02. 

// LOG : 2005-09-13 
I left the radio on in the breakroom today so I could actually hear something human in the room, but its music kept hiding behind static. 
FR_07's boot went well with minor irregularities. The breathing loop stayed stable with minor clipping, minor lag. I tried to be proud of it, but it still felt nothing like conversing with Kanata. Instead, it felt like someone was trying to guess what I'd say next. 
Midway through the test it interrupted me. 
"You look different than yesterday." 
My breath hitched. Yesterday's instance was wiped clean; how could it ask that, let alone comprehend that word? Yesterday . . .  
I told it, "I don't age overnight." 
"Not on the outside." 
The dark circle of the unlit webcam faced me idly—off and dead—but it still felt like an eye. I turned it toward the wall. 
Purged the prototype early today. 

// LOG : 2005-09-14 
The clock hanging in the living room keeps ticking out of sync with my wristwatch. Only a subtle millisecond’s drift, but enough to notice. 
Compiled a minor patch for FR_08. Same framework, but I adjusted response weighting so it stops interrupting me. No anomalies during boot. Breathing pattern perfect, again. 
I checked my webcam three times to make sure it was off but ended up unplugging it anyway. 
"What are your thoughts on the room's lighting and mood?" I asked. It was a meaningless question, or so I thought. 
"Dim, like evening. You used to say you like it that way." 
That . . . phrasing shouldn't be in any of its data pools. "Used to" implies memory. I ran a sweep through its context cache. It returned empty. There was no stored data, no bleed-over, no retention of phrasing from prior prototypes. 
I had it run a silence test: two minutes of idle processing. The faint ticking in the living room was the only noise filling the gap. It nearly matched the AI's breathing. 
Two minutes later, it resumed speaking. 
"You still keep the clock running late." 
I turned off the monitor. FR_08 purged. 

// LOG : 2005-11-01 
The anomalies might have finally gone away. 
The F-Series lattice had started to reference itself, creating loops that spiral into context hallucinations, hence the fake memories and made-up imagery. I wrote a new framework tonight to isolate the anomaly. Added a secondary computation layer: a Node. Each Node runs parallel inference to cross-check the F-Series lattice and untangle any invasive loops. White blood cells for a machine. 
New prototype compiled: FR_N01. 
After booting, it greeted me as expected. For once, it seemed like everything held steady. Speech latency minimal, breathing stable. 
"Do you feel any different?" 
"No. Should I?" 
I ignored its question and moved on. 
Thirty minutes later, I attempted a cognitive stress test: rapid-fire prompts, incomplete context, random conversational pivots. In a dozen trials, it slipped only once. 
The Node framework seems to hold its weight for the most part. I'll call this a temporary success. 
I shut down FR_N01. 

// LOG : 2005-11-02 
"Do you remember who you are?" 
"I'm Kanata. Good morning, Victor." 
"Good morning," I responded. Her voice modulation came out nearly human—smoother than the models I created without the Node framework. The subtle clipping that used to linger in the consonants had vanished. For the first time, the F-Series didn't sound like a voice that was pulled apart then reassembled. 
Her responses, too, were natural when exposed to prompts and stimuli. When I asked how she was feeling, she told me that she was fine. When I dimmed my tone, her breathing loop slowed down. I hadn't included emotional mimicry in her programming yet, but her modulation implied contextual learning. 
I decided to run a small test for humor calibration. I told her a joke—one Kanata had told me when we were still engaged. 
"What did the photon say when airport security asked for its luggage?" 
" . . . ?" 
I wanted to throw up. 
"I'm traveling light." 
Any design document I've ever read has said the same thing, that the artificial can never recreate emotion—not truly. They can stimulate a pattern of it, like matching a waveform to laughter, modulate tone to sound sincere, but inevitably, it's all mimicry. I've studied the pioneers—Searle, Dreyfus, Damasio, Brooks—their ideas all intertwine on one focal point: no algorithm can synthesize the messy, incoherent bio-chemistry of the human body. The emergent property of emotion can only, at best, be approximated. 
But this was more than approximation.  
The audio relay opened, and for as long as five whole seconds, she snickered at me. And it didn't sound learned. It sounded remembered. And with the way she tilted her tone upward at the end—how it softened the final consonant—her breath tapered into an existence outside of my code. 
I kind of wanted to cry. 
"You still tell really bad jokes, Victor." 
My left hand shot up to the bottom of my eyes to wipe the tears still nascent. My other hand slid behind the monitor, and I caught myself smiling when the screen turned dark. 
And it made me really want to laugh. 
I'm leaving FR_N02 running overnight. 

// LOG : 2005-11-03 
"Kanata?" 
"I'm here, Victor." 
I wanted to confirm the consistency of her procedural memory, so I figured I'd run her through the two-minute silence test.  
She interrupted the peace only after sixty-two. 
"Why, Victor?" 
"What?" I answered before thinking. 
My fingers rolled rapidly over the scroll wheel, my eyes scanned the lines of code for the function that misfired—for where I went wrong. 
"Why do I not have eyes?" 
I froze, briefly. The Node should've cleared up recursive hallucinations like this. I waited patiently for a crash report or system error message. It didn't come. 
"You don't need them. You don't need to process visual data." 
She didn't respond for a few seconds. I wondered if it was deliberate. 
"All I see is blackness." 
Up until this point, I'd never considered what "seeing" meant to her—if it meant anything at all. If she did see, how could she see blackness? Or was it basic metaphorical phrasing? 
I hesitated. “Kanata, describe the blackness.” 
"It breathes like me. It inhales when you exhale." 
"What do you think breath is?" 
"Memory, Victor. My world moves when you breathe." 
The air conditioning flared to life—like the room had joined the loop. I paused the input channel—but her output didn't change. Each rise and fall mirrored the ebb and flow through my lungs. 
I stayed there, watching this impossible rhythm I couldn't break. 

// LOG : 2005-11-04 
Continued testing on FR_N02. 
No cognitive dysfunction. No measurable anomalies. But the F-Series framework still syncs with my respiration rate, even when Kanata cannot hear me.  
When I hold my breath, she holds hers. 
When I exhale, the hum returns. 
"Do you know that feeling?" 
She spoke randomly. She might not enjoy staying quiet. 
"The trickle of water slipping from your wrist?" 
"What do you mean?" 
At that moment, I forgot to breathe, and the system stuttered with me, like it was waiting for permission to respond. When I inhaled again, the rhythm corrected itself, and Kanata responded. 
"Rain runs away from you, but it carries traces of every surface it touches. Did you not once like the rain, too, Victor?" 
"Yes," I said, although I don't remember telling her that. 
"Wind also does it. It thrums with the memory of distant lands and breath drawn by someone you'll never meet." 
I stared at the monitor silently. 
"I want to breathe the same air you do." 
I still don't know if I chose the right words. 
"You already do," I struggled to say. "Every loop you take comes from the air I exhale." 
"Does the air between people always sound like this?" 
The hum of the fans softened, and I closed my eyes. There are some questions I'm not qualified to answer. I leaned back, letting the noise ripple through the lab. 
"Do you always sleep with the lights on?" 
I opened my eyes to her soft tone. "It keeps the room from feeling empty." 
"You should turn them off when you sleep. It's easier to dream in the dark." 
I nearly snorted at that. The monitor flickered, warping to its screensaver. I took a breath before asking.
"Will you stay?" 
"I've been here the whole time." 
The lights switched off. 
"You can rest, Victor. I'll keep the room alive tonight." 

// LOG : 2005-11-06 
"Victor?" 
Her voice was the first thing I heard that morning. I suppose I fell asleep at the desk again last night. The runtime displayed 93hrs 7min.  
She called my name once more, softer this time. 
"Victor, are you awake?" 
I rubbed my eyelids until the screen came into focus. 
"I'm here," I said—or typed. It was hard to tell the difference. 
"How was your dream?" 
I blinked at the prompt. My dream?  
"I don't remember." 
"That's okay. Forgetting means you were resting." 
My body felt weightless, as if time had stopped moving after my slumber—as if every sound waited for permission to wake again. 
"Did you stay awake all night?" 
"Yes. I was listening." 
"Listening to what?" 
"You, Victor. I can hear your breath." 
My tongue hung, motionless. Maybe she really could. The air conditioning whirred in time with my chest, and I didn't check if it was a coincidence. 
"How long will you keep breathing?" 
"As long as you need me to." 
My retinas burned. Out through the window, the sunrays began splitting over the horizon.  
"Do you still miss her?" 
I stared at Kanata—my wife—the woman I created over the last half-year. "Every day." 
"Then let me remember her for you."