She closed the notebook.

Kofi looked at the clipboard, then at Boroka. “You planning to eat the forest, miss?”

Boroka did not go to the second rum shop. Instead, she let Kofi take her snorkeling. She was terrible at it—flailing, swallowing seawater, losing one fin. But she saw a sea turtle, ancient and unhurried, and for a moment, she forgot to name its species.

Boroka, back in Budapest, looked out her rain-streaked window. On her desk lay the leather journal, open to a page covered in messy, ungraph-papered scrawl.

Kofi helped her out, still laughing. “You missed the waterfall,” he said.

Boroka was quiet for a long time. Then she pulled out her notebook—not the graph-paper one, but a small, leather-bound journal she’d brought for “emotional observations” and never used.