Himawari Wa Yoru Ni Saku 〈Popular ✔〉

The soil of Sector 7 was dead by noon. For twelve hours, the artificial sun of the arcology blazed down, a merciless eye that bleached the concrete and boiled the last nutrients from the earth. Nothing grew in the day fields. Nothing had for forty years.

The night was long. But the sunflowers had only just begun. Himawari Wa Yoru Ni Saku

It wasn't a harsh light — not the sterile white of the arcology's lamps, not the angry orange of the flares. It was soft. Golden. The color of honey, of candlelight, of a sunrise she had only seen in old videos. The petals unfurled one by one, each one a tiny lantern, and the warmth that came off them was not heat but something else — something that made her chest ache. The soil of Sector 7 was dead by noon

The night after that, a foot.

It had been lodged in a crack of the old pre-fall greenhouse, a tiny black teardrop no bigger than her thumbnail. She almost threw it away. But there was something about the shell — a faint whorl, like a fingerprint, like a promise. Nothing had for forty years

She went back to the hydroponic bays and began filling her pockets with more seeds.