Nocturne Files

The overwhelming majority live their whole lives on the daytime map alone. Even with the thing that isn't a person standing in front of them, their eyes skip over it on their own, and afterward they say: I must be too tired.

Yaoguai live on the reverse side of the city, but most of them are not monsters that pounce the moment they see a person. They have rules of their own, needs of their own, memories of their own, and some kind of relationship with this city.

There is a school in the city that opens only after midnight, its buildings hidden inside the city's second map. Anyone the earth-pulse has marked receives a notice of enrollment.

After the talisman slip was torn off the lintel of the old house, a dark patch stayed on the wall—a circle with a piece missing, the gap always falling in the same place. The same figure appears on more than this one wall.

A very few people can hear the city itself—the earth-pulse moving, the old temples murmuring, the yaoguai speaking up. At the start they usually think their ears are ringing. It comes at a cost.

A harbor city in 2065: a maglev line standing on newly filled land, oil still burning in the temples of the old quarter. The Rivermag Line was built along a Qing-dynasty river channel, 15 stations end to end.