"Seven-twenty?" Keiko whispered.
The words made no sense at first. Keiko held the scrap to the window light and traced the loop of her name. The ink matched the careful slant she recognized from her grandmother's notes. This was deliberate. 1000giri 130614 keiko 720 high quality
The second X took them to a narrow stairwell behind a bakery where seven steps led to twenty tiles set differently—worn by generations of footsteps. Behind the twentieth tile was a hollow that smelled faintly of citrus and old glue. Inside lay a thin wooden box with a single key and a folded photograph: Keiko as a child, holding hands with the woman on Platform 7's map marker—the vanished granddaughter. The back of the photo had a scrawl: 13/06/14. "Seven-twenty
"Because her handwriting ends like yours," Aya answered. "Because someone wanted you to find it." The ink matched the careful slant she recognized