Category: issue 1

In retrospect, ‘I’m dying’ was a bad pick-up line.

Minako plucked a particularly lucky prime number from her garden to ensure the robot exhibition wouldn’t be too crowded. She had been planning the excursion to Universal Studios Japan for months and everything had to be perfect.

I can’t stay long at the Sea Palace. I have little enough funds, despite having taken a couple of reading jobs. Still, it’s good to have a bed and a door that locks after fleeing the Amber City, so I sit on the deck, eating lightly fried, gently spiced seaweed, feeling the warmth of the rising sun on my skin.

Henrietta’s mother is an engine driver and wants her daughter to become one too, but Henrietta prefers the buffet car. She can see her future self there, all grown up in a waistcoat with her hair cropped short, smiling as she dispenses tea and spoonfuls of powdered milk.