She pushed open the door and the bell chimed a single, low note. Inside, mannequins stood in impossible poses, half-shadowed, their fabric shimmering like wet oil. Each outfit throbbed with a faint pulse, like a sleeping thing.

The clerk hummed, and a hand slipped behind a curtain. They brought out a jacket — midnight blue, stitched with thread that shifted between silver and violet. The fabric seemed to contain a tiny storm; when she brushed it, she felt the ghost of wind and the distant clink of metal.

Mika hesitated. Memories were private currency; she’d paid in many kinds already. But the thing she wanted most had no face and no name: a fragment of a day she’d lost between smoke and sirens, the part of her life that hummed just out of reach.