The sky was the color of bruised flesh—purple and gray and sickly yellow where the sun tried to break through clouds that refused to part. Buki noticed this clinically as he stood outside the Imperial War Correspondence Office, calculating the probability of rain. 73.6%. High enough to warrant an umbrella, though he'd forgotten to bring one. Again. Clara kept buying them. He kept leaving them places, as if his subconscious rejected the concept of preparation, of future planning, of existing beyond the immediate present.
Two weeks had passed since his conversation with Takeshi Hayashi. Two weeks of reduced postal routes and mandatory therapy sessions and medication that made everything feel distant, muffled, like experiencing life through thick glass. The pressure in his heart had stabilized at 4.8—not baseline, but manageable. Survivable. Barely.
He'd stopped drawing stick figures. The one he'd made—five figures, two names: "Onii-chan" and "Karanome"—remained folded in his pocket. He touched it compulsively throughout the day, checking that it was still there, that he hadn't imagined it, that proof of his brother's existence persisted even when memory failed.
Yuki arrived at 0847 hours, three minutes late, her hair slightly disheveled and her eyes carrying dark circles that suggested inadequate sleep. She'd been different lately—quieter, more withdrawn, crying more easily during deliveries. Buki had documented this change but lacked the emotional vocabulary to address it. How did one ask "Are you okay?" when he barely understood the concept himself?
"Morning," she said, her voice lacking its usual warmth. "Ready for today's route?"
Today's route consisted of twelve deliveries—all civilian correspondence except one. That one sat in Buki's satchel like a live grenade: final letter from Private Takeru Amane to his family, written three hours before the Battle of Kuroda Pass. The same battle where General Hazami died. The same battle that ended the war. The letter had been lost in bureaucratic chaos for three years, only recently recovered from a destroyed communications outpost.
Yuki had been unusually quiet when Kaito assigned them this delivery. Had said only: "I'll take it. That one's mine."
Yuki arrived at 0847 hours, three minutes late, her hair slightly disheveled and her eyes carrying dark circles that suggested inadequate sleep. She'd been different lately—quieter, more withdrawn, crying more easily during deliveries. Buki had documented this change but lacked the emotional vocabulary to address it. How did one ask "Are you okay?" when he barely understood the concept himself?
"Morning," she said, her voice lacking its usual warmth. "Ready for today's route?"
Today's route consisted of twelve deliveries—all civilian correspondence except one. That one sat in Buki's satchel like a live grenade: final letter from Private Takeru Amane to his family, written three hours before the Battle of Kuroda Pass. The same battle where General Hazami died. The same battle that ended the war. The letter had been lost in bureaucratic chaos for three years, only recently recovered from a destroyed communications outpost.
Yuki had been unusually quiet when Kaito assigned them this delivery. Had said only: "I'll take it. That one's mine."
Buki hadn't understood then. Didn't understand now. But he followed her through the streets of Shin-Tokyo as morning gave way to afternoon, as the bruised sky began fulfilling its promise of rain—light at first, barely more than mist, then gradually intensifying.
They completed eleven deliveries in silence. Yuki moved mechanically, her usual empathy dampened, her tears absent even when recipients cried. She handed over letters, accepted signatures, moved to the next address with the efficiency of someone executing a program, not living a life.
Buki recognized this behavior. He'd perfected it himself.
The twelfth delivery took them to the eastern district, to a modest house with a well-maintained garden where someone had planted chrysanthemums—white ones, traditional for mourning. The door was painted dark blue, almost black, and a small memorial tablet sat in the window with incense burning, sending thin threads of smoke into the rain.
Yuki stopped at the gate. Stood there for two minutes and thirty-seven seconds, staring at the house like it might transform into something else if she looked long enough.
"Yuki-san?" Buki prompted. "The delivery window closes in forty-three minutes. We need to—"
"His name was Takeru," Yuki said quietly, still staring at the house. "My older brother. He was twenty-one when he died. He liked terrible jokes and making origami cranes and he promised—" Her voice broke. "He promised he'd come home. He promised."
The pressure in Buki's heart spiked. 6.4. Understanding arrived slowly, piecing together data: Takeru Amane. Yuki Amane. Sibling connection. The letter in his satchel wasn't just another delivery. It was Yuki's grief, made tangible.
"This is your brother's letter," Buki stated. "You knew. When Kaito assigned it."
"Yes." Yuki's hands were shaking. Tremor frequency: 5.1. "I've been working at the postal office for two years. Started right after we got the notification that Takeru was dead. I thought—I thought handling soldiers' letters would make me feel connected to him somehow. That reading their final words would help me understand his final words. That witnessing other families' grief would help me process my own."
She turned to face Buki, and her eyes were wet but the tears weren't falling yet. Still held back by whatever discipline postal workers developed—the ability to witness suffering without drowning in it.
"But it didn't work," she continued. "Every death notification I helped you deliver, every widow I held while she cried, every child who asked when Father was coming home—I saw my family. My mother when we got the news. My sister-in-law who was dealing with depression, who had to raise Takeru's son without him. My nephew who'll never know his father, because of his death. At such a young age to. Every single delivery became about them, about us, about the hole Takeru left. I've been using other people's pain as a substitute for my own because I'm too scared to actually feel it."
The rain intensified. They stood there getting soaked—Buki without an umbrella, Yuki having dropped hers somewhere without noticing. The water was cold, running down their faces, mixing with tears that had finally started falling from Yuki's eyes.
"I can't go in there," she whispered. "I can't hand my sister-in-law Takeru's final letter. Can't watch her read his last words. Can't be professional and efficient and helpful when I'm barely holding myself together. I thought I could. Thought two years was enough time. But standing here, knowing what's in that envelope—I can't. I just can't."
Buki processed this information. Calculated options. Assigned probability values to various responses. Nothing seemed adequate. The social integration videos hadn't covered this scenario: what to do when your friend has a breakdown during a delivery that's deeply personal to them.
He did what General Hazami used to do for him. Placed his hand on Yuki's back. Steady pressure. Warm. Grounding. "We can return the letter," Buki suggested. "Mark it as undeliverable. Complete the assignment tomorrow when you're more—"
"No." Yuki's voice was sharp suddenly. "No. She's been waiting three years. My sister-in-law, Keiko. She's been waiting for closure, for his final words, for anything from him. I can't make her wait longer because I'm too damaged to function. I just—" She looked at Buki. "Will you come with me? Inside? Be there while I—while we—"
"Affirmative," Buki said immediately. Then, remembering: "Yes. I'll be there."
Keiko Amane answered the door holding a child's hand—perhaps three years old. She looked at Yuki and something complicated happened to her face—surprise, recognition, confusion.
"Yuki-chan?" Keiko's voice was soft, uncertain. "What are you doing here? I thought you were working at the postal office, I didn't know you delivered—" Her eyes fell on the envelope in Yuki's shaking hands. "Is that—"
"It's from Takeru," Yuki said, and her voice broke completely. "His final letter. Written before the Battle of Kuroda Pass. It was lost. They just found it. I'm so sorry it took three years. I'm so sorry you had to wait. I'm so sorry for everything."
The apologies weren't about the delayed delivery. Buki understood this instinctively. They were about still being alive when Takeru wasn't. About working at the postal office and not being able to save her brother. About existing in a world where he didn't.
Survivor's guilt. Takeshi had explained it. Buki was intimately familiar with it, even if he couldn't remember what he'd survived.
Keiko let go of her sons hand—Takeru's son, who would never remember his father—and took the letter with hands that trembled worse than Yuki's. Tremor frequency: 6.8. She stared at the envelope, at handwriting she'd recognize anywhere, at proof that three years ago her husband had been alive, had been thinking of her, had been writing words she should have received before his death instead of years after.
"Do you want me to read it to you?" Yuki offered. "Or I can leave you alone. Or—"
"Stay," Keiko said quickly. "Please. I don't—I can't—" She looked at the three-year-old kid playing with a wooden train on the floor. "Hiro shouldn't hear this yet. He's too young. But I need—I need someone here. Please."
They moved into the small living room. Keiko sat on the floor, the letter in her lap. Yuki sat beside her. Buki stood near the door, unsure of his role, uncertain if his presence helped or hindered. But he stayed. Yuki had asked him to stay.
Keiko opened the envelope with excruciating care, as if the paper itself was sacred. Unfolded the letter. And began reading aloud, her voice shaking but determined:
My dearest Keiko,
If you're reading this, then I didn't make it back. I'm sorry. I know I promised. I know I swore I'd be alive still. I know I said a million times that nothing would stop me from coming home to you. I'm breaking all those promises. I'm sorry.
We're about to go into battle. Big one. Maybe the last one. Everyone's saying this is it—win or lose, the war ends tomorrow. I should be scared. I probably am scared, somewhere under the adrenaline and exhaustion and the strange numbness that happens before major combat. But mostly I'm just tired. Tired of fighting. Tired of seeing friends die. Tired of being away from you.
I need you to know something: every single day of this war, I've survived by thinking about you. About the life we had. The house we'll buy—nothing fancy, just enough room for our family. The garden you'll plant because you love watching things grow. That future has kept me alive through everything. Even now, writing this letter that might be my last, I can picture it so clearly.
But if I don't make it—and I have to be honest, Keiko, the odds aren't good—I need you to take of everything.
Don't spend your life grieving. I know that's what everyone says in these letters, and I know it's almost impossible, but please try. Find happiness again. Let someone else love you the way I loved you.
And tell our child about me. Not war stories. Not heroic soldier nonsense. Just... me. Tell them I liked terrible jokes that made you groan. That I made origami cranes for you every morning before deployment. That I cried at weddings and couldn't cook to save my life and once tried to surprise you with breakfast after you woke up from bed but nearly burned down the kitchen. Tell them I was human. Flawed. Real. Not some idealized memory, but a person who loved them.
My sister Yuki—please watch over her. She tries to be strong, tries to take care of everyone else, but she's still just a kid herself. She'll probably do something stubborn like try to work through her grief instead of processing it. Don't let her. Make her cry. Make her feel. Make her be human instead of just functional. She needs that. She needs you.
I love you, Keiko. I loved you the moment we met. I'll love you in whatever comes after death, if anything comes after. And if there's any way for the dead to watch over the living, I'll be there.
Be happy. Please. That's not a request. It's an order from a dying soldier to his beloved wife: be happy. Choose joy. Choose life. Choose to bloom even in soil soaked with grief.
Yours eternally, Takeru"
Keiko finished reading. Folded the letter carefully. Set it in her lap. And then made a sound—not quite a scream, not quite a sob, something between the two. Raw. Primal. The sound of three years of suppressed grief finally, catastrophically, breaking free.
She folded forward, arms wrapped around herself, rocking slightly while sounds poured out of her that barely resembled human language. Yuki's arms went around her immediately, holding her sister-in-law while they both cried—Keiko for her dead husband, Yuki for her dead brother, both for the futures that died with him.
Buki stood frozen. The pressure in his heart climbed rapidly. 8.7. 10.2. 12.4. He knew this sound. Knew this grief. Had heard it before in—
A memory, sharp and immediate: someone crying exactly like this. Someone he'd failed. Someone who'd lost everything. A different voice, younger. Screaming. Begging. Calling a name that wasn't Buki but was—
"Onii-chan, please! Please don't die! You promised you'd protect me! You PROMISED!"
Small hands on his face. Blood—his blood, so much blood—making everything slippery. Pain beyond description. And a child's voice breaking completely:
"I can't do this without you! I can't! Please wake up! Please!"
Karanome. His little brother Karanome. Crying over his dying body. Watching him bleed out. Being left alone with trauma. And him—Daichi? Was that his name?—unable to speak, unable to promise anything except dying, failing, abandoning—
Buki's legs gave out. He collapsed against the wall, sliding down to sitting, his vision blurring at the edges. The pressure in his heart was crushing. 14.9. 16.2. Critical levels. System failure imminent.
"I promised," he heard himself say, voice young and broken. "I promised Karanome I'd protect him. Promised I wouldn't leave. Promised I'd always be there. And I died. I broke every promise. I left him alone with—with—"
The memory wouldn't complete. Sealed itself away again. But the guilt remained. Absolute. Annihilating.
Yuki was beside him suddenly, one arm still around Keiko, the other reaching for Buki. "Buki-san, breathe. You're having a panic attack. You're safe. You're here. You're—"
"I'm not safe!" The words exploded from him. "Karanome isn't safe! I died and left him alone and I don't know if he survived! Don't know if my sacrifice meant anything! Don't know if he's okay or destroyed or dead or—" His breath was coming in gasps now. "Takeru promised Keiko he'd come home. I promised Karanome I'd protect him. We both broke our promises. We both died. We both left people who needed us. How do they survive that? How does anyone survive being abandoned by the person who swore to stay?"
The question was for Keiko. For Yuki. For himself. For the universe that seemed systematically designed to break promises and destroy families and turn love into grief.
Keiko looked at him through tear-swollen eyes. "You don't survive it," she said quietly, brutally honest. "Not really. You just exist after it. You breathe and eat and sleep and go through motions that resemble living. But surviving? Actually being okay? That's—" She looked down at the letter in her lap. "That's not possible. Not after this. Not after losing someone who was supposed to be there forever."
"But you have to try," Yuki said, and her voice was desperate now, almost pleading. "Both of you. Keiko, you have Hiro. He needs his mother. And Buki-san, you have—you have people who care about you. Who need you to stay. Who—"
"Why?" Buki interrupted, looking at her directly. "Why do I need to stay? What purpose do I serve? I deliver death to strangers. I carry grief I can't process. I exist in this impossible space between human and weapon, and I don't know how to function in either category. Takeshi said surviving is possible. Said forty years is bearable. But barely. Just barely. Is that enough? Just barely surviving for decades?"
Yuki's face crumpled. "I don't know," she admitted. "I don't know if barely surviving is enough. But it's better than not surviving at all. It has to be. Because the alternative—" Her voice broke. "The alternative is what Takeru did. Not on purpose. But he died and left us and I'm so angry at him. So furious. How dare he go to war and not come home? How dare he make promises he couldn't keep? How dare he leave me alone with grief I don't know how to carry?"
She was crying fully now, no longer trying to hold it back. "I became a postal worker because I thought it would help. Thought surrounding myself with other people's grief would make mine feel smaller. But it doesn't work like that. Every letter I deliver, every widow I hold—it's all Takeru. It's all my pain reflected infinitely like mirrors facing mirrors. I'm drowning in everyone else's sorrow because I'm too scared to face my own."
Keiko reached for Yuki's hand. "We're all drowning," she said simply. "You. Me. Everyone the war touched. We're all drowning in grief and trauma and broken promises. And maybe—" She looked at Takeru's letter again. "Maybe that's okay. Maybe drowning isn't failure. Maybe it's just what happens when the world floods and you're doing your best to keep your head above water even though you're exhausted and you don't know how much longer you can keep going."
The three of them sat there in Keiko's small living room while Hiro played with his wooden train, oblivious to the people falling apart around him. Rain continued falling outside, steady and relentless. The incense in the window had burned down to nothing, leaving only ash.
Buki forced himself to breathe. To count. To implement the grounding techniques his therapist had taught him. Five things he could see: Keiko's tear-stained face. Yuki's trembling hands. Hiro's wooden train. The letter on the floor. The ash in the window. Four things he could see clearly: the wall against his back. His uniform. The drawing in his pocket. The floor beneath him.
Slowly—so slowly—the pressure decreased. 14.1. 11.7. 9.3. Not baseline. Not manageable. But not critical. Not lethal. "I'm sorry," he said finally, looking at both people. "I shouldn't have—this was your grief. Your brother. Your husband. I had no right to—"
"Stop," Keiko interrupted gently. "Grief isn't something to be carried alone. There's not a limited supply. You're allowed to break down too. Especially—" She studied him with eyes that had seen too much loss. "Especially when you're carrying your own deaths. Whoever he is. Your own broken promises. And stuff none us entirely understood. Which we all carry with you, together in the end."
Buki nodded slowly. Couldn't speak. His throat was too tight, his voice too compromised.
They stayed like that for a long time—three people drowning together, keeping each other's heads above water through sheer proximity. Not solving anything. Not healing anything. Just existing in shared agony, witnessing each other's pain.
Finally, Yuki stood. Helped Buki to his feet. Hugged Keiko one more time—long, tight, both of them trembling. "I'll visit more," Yuki promised. "Not as a postal worker. As family. As someone who misses him too."
Keiko nodded. Picked up Hiro, who'd fallen asleep on the floor beside his train. "Thank you for bringing the letter. Even though it hurts. Even though I'll probably read it every day and cry every time. Thank you."
Outside, the rain had stopped. The sky was clearing, revealing the particular quality of light that came after storms—clean, sharp, almost painful in its clarity.
Buki and Yuki walked back to the postal office in silence. Both soaked. Both exhausted. Both carrying weight that exceeded human tolerances.
"I lied," Yuki said suddenly. "When I said I became a postal worker to feel connected to Takeru. That was part of it. But the real reason—" She stopped walking, turned to face Buki. "The real reason is I wanted to suffer. Wanted to surround myself with death and grief and pain because I felt guilty for being alive when he wasn't. Thought maybe if I carried enough of other people's sorrows, it would balance out. Would make it fair somehow. Would justify my existence."
Buki understood this perfectly. "That's why I keep delivering letters," he admitted. "Even though it destroys me. Even though every delivery triggers something I can't remember. Because if I'm not useful—if I'm not completing missions, serving a purpose, functioning as something other than a damaged person—then what am I? What's the point of surviving when everyone else died?"
"I don't know," Yuki said honestly. "I don't have an answer for that. But Buki-san—" She placed her hand on his arm. "Maybe there doesn't need to be a point. Maybe surviving is enough. Maybe we don't need to justify our existence. Maybe we're just allowed to be alive, even when it feels wrong, even when it hurts, even when we'd rather not be."
Maybe. The word hung between them, neither promise nor answer, just possibility. The barest, most fragile hope that existing without purpose, surviving without justification, being alive despite guilt—maybe that was acceptable. Maybe that was enough.
They continued walking. The postal office appeared in the distance, solid and real and waiting. Tomorrow there would be more letters. More grief. More drowning. But tonight—tonight they had survived one more day. Had witnessed each other's breaking. Had shared the weight.
And somewhere—in another world, in memory, in the empty rooms—Karanome and Takeru watched. The dead watching the living struggle to exist without them. Unable to help. Unable to intervene. Just watching. Always watching. Forever waiting for the living to figure out how to be alive again.
TO BE CONTINUED...