Monas | Tone 1 | Phrase 1 | The secret of the backstage

When the east wind blows, let your fragrance ride the breeze, O plum blossoms. Forget not the spring, even though your master is gone.  (There is also a theory that it translates to "Do not forget the spring".)

On that miraculous first day of spring (Risshun)—the exact alignment unseen for 124 years, when the two, bound by magnetic resonance, finally crossed paths—the wind remained bitterly cold. Yet, a mere twenty-five days later, the plum blossoms began to gracefully unfurl, and the ‘Plum Blossom Festival’ (Baikasai) graced the historic grounds of Kitano Tenmangū Shrine in Kyoto.

In stark, unforgiving contrast to those idyllic spring days, the world in 2021 lay stifled beneath a state of emergency brought about by the global pandemic, bound by severe restrictions that silenced the streets.

On the cheap burner phone Kai had procured merely "just in case I need to return to Japan," he was relentlessly bombarded with daily, massive "academic thesis emails" from Kaho. These dispatches radiated such a feverish, unyielding passion that they seemed to entirely obliterate the 600-kilometre void separating Kyoto from Kyushu.

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