Storm Clouds Gathering

"Cover Story Serial: Shiryu of the Rain, Part 2: 'A Bad Premonition'"

"They still hadn't returned? Early that morning, Shiryu of the Rain waited at the harbor docks, pacing back and forth anxiously and occasionally glancing toward the distant horizon."

"By all reason, no matter how rough the journey had been, his girlfriend and her family should have arrived at the G-6 Branch base long ago, right? But a whole week had passed, and there was still no word from them."

They hadn't run into some kind of ocean storm along the way, had they? he prayed silently. Then, from the corner of his eye, he spotted a warship docking at the northeastern side of the harbor. Quite a few Marines were enthusiastically welcoming it, as though greeting heroes returning home...

Time rewound to two days earlier.

Night had fallen, and everything beyond the window was pitch-black.

In the dimly lit living room, the tea on the coffee table had long since gone cold. Tulip and her husband had taken the children back to their room to sleep.

Yet the three women still sat apart from one another.

One turned her head away with an indifferent expression, another leaned against the sofa and stared blankly at the ceiling, while the last hugged her knees and curled up silently in a corner.

No one spoke. The room was so quiet that a pin dropping would have been audible.

Bell-mère was the one curled up in the corner of the sofa. She clutched a photograph she had asked Tulip for, staring without blinking at Noah and Momousagi standing together in it.

They looked so well-matched...

The two in the photograph were both rear admirals, draped in white coats of justice and standing side by side on a warship's deck with smiles