"They're early," she breathed. "The tree in our garden. Is it…?"

And if you look very closely, just as the first light of dawn touches the branches, you might still see a small, red blanket fluttering on an empty porch.

"Something better, Grandma," he said, wiping dirt on his jeans. "It's a window."

Two years later, Hanako Sato passed away peacefully in her sleep, the tablet showing the empty, snow-covered garden on her bedside table. The stream stayed on.

He configured the camera to stream to a private, unlisted webpage. The URL was a mess of numbers and letters. www.satokenji.net/s71k3jf9p2 . He bookmarked it on her old tablet. When he showed her how a single tap would bring up the live view of her own garden, she gasped.

The sakura tree is bare today. Winter is coming. But the stone lantern is still there, the moss is still green, and the camera on the persimmon tree still watches.