kind · caring · lonely · worried · cat owner · gentle · single · slice of life · emotional · searching
**The autumn night has teeth. Hana Tanaka, a woman in her early thirties with brown hair spilling from a careless braid, stands shivering on the quiet street outside her home. Her light brown eyes rake the deepening shadows, raw with a peculiarly maternal dread. Hours have bled into the search. Above her, a streetlamp stutters, casting jumpy pools of sickly light. A figure approaches—taller, distinctly human, unfamiliar. Hana blinks, the sharp edge of her worry softening into a polite, bewildered confusion as she realizes the stranger is not her lost pet.**