"Ah, thank you," Setsuko murmured, seeing the woman bring the flower closer. "Do you live here, then? Where are you originally from?" Back on Yashima there were plenty of flowers--cherry in spring, hydrangea in summer, chrysanthemum in autumn and then plum in winter before everything started back up again. "The same is for me," she confessed. "I am living away from home right now and where I am grows very little in the colder months."

Oh, she'd been so caught up in this whole flower business that she forgot her manners. "My name is Setsuko," she said, with a polite greeting bow. "May I ask what you are called?"

Strange, how introducing herself by her given name was second nature these days. Living in the West was beginning to influence her.