Every day at noon, Kunxi would stare blankly at Rusty Great Lake.
He imagined his older brother returning, waving again and again.
Just as he had on the day he left.
"The lake is calm and still over there, as though something terrible has already happened."
That was what the villagers under twenty-five always said.
Kunxi was twenty-nine that year.
He had been young back then and could not remember whether it was noon or afternoon. He remembered only an unprecedented downpour.
Waves of clouds had churned, crowding the sky as though flocking to a market.
That day, he had just heard the roar of the sea.
Then the torrential rain had come crashing down.
Time had made him forget the tornado's name.
But that year, in rain-soaked Dalatran City, it had seemed as though every alley was holding a mournful funeral.
"A tornado? Hah, is that what they told you?"
Kunxi turned his head blankly and looked at the man who had walked up beside him uninvited.
He was about six foot one, with a thin face, eyes as bright as black gems, and long, curly black hair. A cigar roughly five inches long hung from his mouth as he asked with a chuckle.
When Kunxi said nothing and merely stared at the cigar in his mouth, the man took it between his fingers and offered it to him. "You smoke? Binlizhi type. Ever tried one?"
Kunxi glanced at it. The cigar was half smoked; if he did not take it, it would go out on its own in five minutes at most.
Kunxi shook his head without taking the cigar. "A tornado can't sweep up a city, but that's what 'they' said. We can only believe them."
"Pfft-if anyone spouted that bullshit in front of me, I'd twist