After the Bloom. Leslie Shimotakahara

      “Good,” Kenny said. “’Cause your boyfriend’s been taking some pretty interesting pictures.”

      “Pictures?”

      “Not just pin-up girls, like the kind he takes of you. Real pictures. The kind that’ll help our cause.”

      Kaz reached into his satchel. The circle tightened around him as Akira cupped his lighter to create a glow. An array of photographs fanned out in Kaz’s palms.

      Wizened faces of old people: cracked, smiling bowls of clay. Their gnarled, claw-like hands digging through the soil.

      Bean fields the old issei farmers had planted. Mammoth mountains looming above, laughing down on their meagre human efforts.

      Massive camouflage nets hanging across the sky, all too familiar, yet also new in their strangeness, their rebirth as images. The shadowy faces of the weavers were barely visible on the other side. Could one of those dim, sad faces be her own?

      While these pictures brought tears to Lily’s eyes, others filled her with a cold, stark terror. She couldn’t believe Kaz had managed to capture all this. Fights breaking out, pale faces strained to the point they looked like moonlit carvings, fists swinging in an arced blur. Men dropping to their knees, punched in the gut, photographed from weird angles. The camera must have been hidden under Kaz’s jacket.