It was late autumn the day Mingyu met them.

That day, walking home from Miss Ele’s house in the cold evening air - her hands shivering even from within the sleeves of her father’s oversized fleece jacket - she had stopped, as she often did, at the rusty iron bridge one street from home and glared out at the towering new apartments now blocking the sea from her view.

It had been a split second decision, a brief thought of rebellion bursting into her young mind, to sneak up the elevator to a high roof and catch a glimpse of the red sun as it drowned.

So she did.

Dodging behind a group of kids she recognized from the school uphill, she slipped her way past squabbling elbows and knobby kicks to board the rickety passage skyward.

Up, up, up, up, she rode her way to the fortieth floor.

The smell of the ocean was stronger here, the presence of briny water no longer an incorporeal phantom misting through the streets below, but a living, breathing serpent coiling its body around her senses with a languid squeeze. The distant sounds of industry, too, echoed up the concrete walls, blaring horns from the shipyard - low and deep - and heavy chains swinging against crusted hulls.

As always, the city was alive around her, but what she had not predicted was that she wouldn’t be alone.