On the night of her 454th month—an arbitrary milestone the facility celebrated with a slightly larger portion of fish—Mio decided to leave.

“It feels like pressing a warm seashell against my skin.”

The Ghost smiled—a terrible, beautiful expression on a face that had forgotten how. “Now we open the bridge. And then we walk out the front door.”

“What happens now?” she asked.

Mio looked at the open road, the distant mountains, the sky so wide it seemed to hold no ceiling at all.

“You’re the first,” she replied.