She never ate the fruit. But she sat beneath the tree every morning, and she listened. And on quiet days, she swore she could hear two voices laughing—a mountain princess and a woodcutter—somewhere far above the clouds, where heartbreaks finally end.

The next morning, he told the village elder he was going up the mountain.

Most villagers dismissed it as a warning for lovesick girls. But Kaito, a young woodcutter, had never been superstitious. He was practical, steady, the kind of man who mended his own roof and spoke only when necessary. His wife, Hana, had died the previous winter, leaving him with a daughter, Yuki, who had not spoken a single word since.

He saw Hana—not as she was in the end, pale and thin on the sickbed, but as she was when they first met, laughing as she dropped a basket of chestnuts. He saw the exact moment her heart would break. It was not when she learned of her illness. It was not when she held Yuki for the last time. It was a Tuesday afternoon, three years before she died, when Kaito had come home late from the forest and, exhausted, had not noticed the new kimono she had sewn for him. He had walked past her without a word. In that moment, a hairline crack had formed in her heart. The illness simply found it later.

"Daddy," she whispered. Her voice was rusty, like a drawer stuck shut for years. "Daddy, I'm hungry."