Buki didn't remember leaving Emiko Tanaka's house. Didn't remember Clara arriving to collect him—Emiko must have called her, panicked by the postal worker having a complete breakdown in her living room. Didn't remember the walk back to the apartment, the rain that had started falling, the concerned faces of people who moved aside as he stumbled past.
He remembered only fragments: Mother Tanaka's letters scattered across the table like casualties. Emiko's voice reading words written to a corpse. The pressure in his heart exceeding 17.2, climbing higher, some critical threshold breached. And then—darkness. Not sleep. Not unconsciousness. Just absence.
When awareness returned, he was in his room at Clara's apartment. Night had fallen. How much time had passed? Hours? Days? The clock read 03:47, but that provided no useful data. 03:47 which day? Which week?
His body ached—muscles sore as if he'd been fighting, though he couldn't remember any physical exertion. His throat was raw. Had he been screaming? His hands were bandaged—white gauze wrapped around both palms. He stared at them, trying to access recent memory files. Found nothing. Just static and empty rooms and a sense that something catastrophic had occurred while he was absent from his own consciousness.
The drawing of stick figures lay on the desk, but it had been altered. Someone—him? someone else?—had scribbled over it violently, black ink obscuring the careful lines until only chaos remained. And written across it, over and over in handwriting that became progressively more illegible: KARANOME KARANOME KARANOME KARANOME.
His little brother's name. Repeated like a prayer or an accusation or a drowning person calling for help. What happened to me?
The door opened quietly. Clara entered, carrying tea she probably knew he wouldn't drink. She looked exhausted—dark circles under her eyes, hair uncombed. Time was unreliable.
"You're awake," she said softly, setting the tea on his desk. Not surprised. Just... relieved. "How do you feel?" How did he feel? The question required accessing emotional states, requires self-awareness he wasn't certain he possessed anymore.
"Uncertain," he said finally. His voice came out hoarse, damaged. "Temporal disorientation. Memory gaps. Physical indicators suggest trauma response but cannot identify triggering event. Status: compromised."
Clara sat on the edge of his bed, careful not to touch him. "You've been having severe dissociative episodes. After the delivery to Mrs. Tanaka, you... fractured. That's the best word Dr. Tendo could find. Like your mind couldn't hold together anymore under the pressure. You've been cycling between catatonic states and violent flashbacks for three days."
Three days. 72 hours. 4,320 minutes of his life—gone. Inaccessible. "The bandages?" Buki held up his hands.
"You were trying to claw your way out of your own skin," Clara said quietly, clinically, like delivering a diagnosis. "Literally. You kept saying you needed to find Karanome, that he was waiting, that you'd promised to protect him. You tried to..." She paused, composing herself. "You tried to dig through your own scalp. Said the memories were buried in your brain and you needed to get them out. We had to restrain you."
The information arrived distantly, like news about someone else. Some other damaged person. Not him. Except it was him. His hands, his breakdown, his mind systematically destroying itself trying to access files that had been sealed away for protection.
"I don't remember," he said.
"I know. That's what dissociation does. Your consciousness splits off, creates distance between the experiencing self and the observing self. It's a defense mechanism. Your mind protecting itself from trauma it can't process." Clara's voice was gentle but firm. "Buki, we need to talk about hospitalization. Dr. Tendo thinks—"
"No." The word came out sharp, immediate. "No hospitals. No clinics. I spent three years in the Northern Clinic and it changed nothing. Fixed nothing. Just delayed the inevitable breakdown. I won't—I can't—"
"You tried to hurt yourself," Clara interrupted. "Severely. This goes beyond what outpatient treatment can manage. You need—"
"What I need," Buki said, and his voice was rising now, control slipping, "is to remember. Fully. Completely. Stop having fragments and implications and empty rooms. I need to know what happened to Karanome. Need to access the complete memory files. Need to understand why I died and what happened after and whether my sacrifice meant anything or if I just abandoned him to—"
The words dissolved into something that wasn't quite language. Sounds. Raw. Animal. The cry of something wounded beyond healing.
Clara moved closer, wrapped her arms around him despite his rigid resistance. "You're remembering," she said into his hair. "Slowly. Piece by piece. Your mind is bringing it back at the pace you can handle. You can't force it. You can't excavate trauma like it's archaeology. It doesn't work that way."
But he wanted to force it. Wanted to tear open those sealed rooms, flood his consciousness with whatever horror was buried there, process it all at once and be done with this slow torture of fragmented recall.
"Tell me about the flashbacks," Clara said. "The ones during the episodes. What did you see?"
What did he see? He didn't remember the episodes, but— there were impressions. Residue. Like waking from dreams he couldn't quite recall but that left emotional aftermath.
"An apartment," Buki said slowly, reaching for the fragments. "Small. Tokyo. The smell of cooking—ginger and soy sauce. My mother in the kitchen. But wrong. Something wrong with her eyes. Empty. Dead eyes even though she was moving, breathing, functioning. And Hana—my sister, I remember her name now—Hana trying to talk to her, trying to reach whatever part of our mother still existed. And then—"
The memory tried to complete. His mind rejected it. Sealed it away again.
"And then blood," he whispered. "So much blood. Hana on the floor and our mother standing over her with a knife and Karanome screaming and I couldn't—I wasn't fast enough to—"
He stopped. Breathing irregular. Heart rate spiking. 9.4. 11.7. The pressure building again. "That's enough," Clara said firmly. "You don't have to—"
"She killed Hana." The words came out flat, emotionless, the only way he could speak them. "Our mother. After our father died, something broke inside her. And she killed Hana. Stabbed her. Multiple times. I watched my sister die on our apartment floor while my mother stood there with empty eyes like it didn't matter, like Hana was just an obstacle being removed."
Clara's arms tightened around him. "Oh, Buki. Oh Buki dear."
"And then she came for Karanome. My little brother. Eight years old. Gap-toothed smile. Drew stick figures of our family, everyone smiling, everyone alive. She came for him and he ran and I—" The memory was surfacing now, unstoppable, the doors in his mind opening whether he authorized access or not. "I got between them. Took the knife meant for him. Felt it enter here—" He touched his ribs, just below the ribcage. "Felt it grind against bone. Felt it pull out. And the pain—Clara, the pain was—"
He couldn't describe it. Language had no words for dying at fifteen, for feeling life leave with blood, for the absolute terror of mortality hitting all at once.
"But Karanome got away," Buki continued, forcing words through the horror. "He ran. Got out of the apartment. And I held our mother back while I bled out because if I didn't, if I let go, she'd follow him and kill him too. So I held on. Died holding on. Heard police sirens. Heard gunshots. Heard Karanome screaming my name from the hallway—not Buki, but—"
The name was there. His real name. The one he'd had with him in Tokyo, 2027.
"Daichi," he whispered. "My name was Nakamura Daichi. And my little brother was Nakamura Karanome. And I died at fifteen trying to save him from our mother who'd gone insane with grief. And I don't know if I succeeded. Don't know if he survived the trauma. Don't know if the police got there in time. Don't know if my death meant anything or if I just—"
He was crying now. Proper crying, not the silent tears he'd had before. Full sobs that shook his entire body, that made breathing impossible, that felt like they might physically tear him apart.
"I was Daichi," he said through the crying. "I had a family. I had a life. And then I died and woke up as a three-year-old in this world with all my memories intact and no way to process them. And I suffered through new parents who were worse than death and forgot everything by age five and spent the next ten years being a weapon and I just—I just want to know if Karanome is okay. If he's alive. If he remembers me. If he—"
"Shh," Clara murmured, squeezing him slightly. "I know. I know. But Buki—Daichi—whoever you are—you can't know. There's no way to find out. He's in a different world, a different timeline. All you can do is hope."
Hope. That poisonous thing Mother Tanaka had died from. Hope that Hiroki would return. Hope that became delusion. Hope that killed through disappointment.
"I can't hope," Buki said. "Hope is torture. Hope means living in uncertainty forever. At least if I knew he died, I could grieve properly. But this—this infinite maybe—it's destroying me."
"Then don't hope," Clara said surprisingly. "Accept the uncertainty. Accept that you'll never know. Accept that some questions don't have answers and some wounds don't heal and some part of you will always be fifteen-year-old Daichi bleeding out on an apartment floor, wondering if his sacrifice mattered."
The honesty was brutal. Devastating. True. "How do I live like that?" Buki asked. "Carrying that uncertainty forever?"
"The same way you've been living," Clara said. "Badly. Imperfectly. One day at a time. Some days you'll be okay. Some days you'll try to claw your way out of your own skull. Both are valid. Both are survivable. Barely. But survivable."
Barely survivable. Takeshi's words. Clara's words. The fundamental truth of trauma survival—it was possible, but only just, and only through constant, exhausting effort.
Buki pulled away from Clara's embrace, wiped his face with bandaged hands. "I need to go back to work," he said. "Absolutely not. Dr. Tendo recommends at least two more weeks of—"
"I need to go back," Buki insisted. "If I stay here with nothing to do but think, I'll fracture completely. At least delivering letters gives me purpose. Gives me something to focus on besides—" He gestured vaguely at his head, at the chaos inside.
Clara studied him for a long moment. Then sighed. "One delivery. Tomorrow. Just one. And I'm coming with you. And if you show any signs of dissociation, we stop immediately. Agreed?"
"Acknowledged," Buki said. Then, remembering: "Yes. Agreed."
The next morning arrived gray and cold, the kind of weather that suggested winter approaching, summer forgotten, autumn dying. Buki getting ready real carefully, his bandaged hands making simple tasks difficult. The drawing on his desk—now just black chaos and repeated names—went into his pocket anyway. Evidence. Proof that he'd existed as Daichi, that Karanome had existed, that his previous life wasn't elaborate delusion.
The Imperial War Correspondence Office felt different somehow. Smaller. More fragile. As if it might collapse under the weight of all the grief it contained. Kaito was there, sorting letters with his eternal precision, and his weathered face showed relief when Buki entered.
"Kid," he said simply. Just that. No questions about the three-day absence, the breakdown, the hospitalization that almost happened. Just acknowledgment of continued existence.
"I'm ready to work," Buki stated.
"One delivery only," Kaito said, and his voice carried unusual firmness. "And it's not a death notification. Just a personal letter. From one surviving soldier to another. Nothing traumatic. Just—connection between people who understand."
He handed Buki a single envelope. Simple. Unadorned. Addressed to: "Corporal Hideaki Sasaki, Western District, Shin-Tokyo."
"Sasaki served in the same unit as the sender," Kaito explained. "They survived the war together. Lost touch afterward. This is just a letter saying 'I'm alive, how are you, remember when.' Easy delivery. Low stress. You can handle it."
Could he? Buki wasn't certain he could handle anything anymore. But he took the letter, placed it carefully in his satchel, and nodded.
Clara accompanied him, as promised. They walked through streets that smelled like approaching winter—cold air, dying leaves, smoke from heating fires. The western district was familiar territory, addresses Buki had delivered to before, though he couldn't remember specifics. Everything before his breakdown felt distant, like it had happened to someone else.
The address led to a small apartment building, third floor, unit 304. Buki climbed the stairs with Clara behind him, counting each step because counting was stable, reliable, safe. Twenty-seven steps to the third floor. Four doors in the hallway. Unit 304, second door on the right.
He knocked. Three times. Evenly spaced.
The stranger who answered was perhaps mid-twenties, though trauma had aged him prematurely. Scars visible on his face and hands—burn scars, shrapnel damage, the topography of violence survived. One eye was clouded, vision probably compromised. He moved stiffly, suggesting additional injuries hidden beneath clothes.
"Yes?" His voice was rough, suspicious. War had taught him to distrust strangers.
"Imperial War Correspondence," Buki stated. "Delivery for Corporal Hideaki Sasaki. Personal correspondence from—" He checked the sender's name. "—Private First Class Makoto Ishida."
Sasaki's expression transformed. The suspicion vanished, replaced by something that might have been joy if joy wasn't such a foreign concept to people like them.
"Mako," he breathed. "Mako's alive. He—when the war ended we got separated during demobilization and I didn't—I thought maybe he—" He took the letter with shaking hands. Tremor frequency: 4.3. "Thank you. Thank you for—"
He stopped. Really looked at Buki for the first time. And recognition flickered across his scarred face. "You're a soldier," Sasaki said. It wasn't a question. "Former child soldier, if I'm reading the signs right. Unit 47?"
"How did you know?" Buki asked.
"The eyes," Sasaki said simply. "Dead eyes. Seen it before in the youngest recruits. Kids who'd been fighting since they could walk. You've got that specific kind of empty that comes from starting too young, seeing too much, forgetting what civilian life even looks like." He paused. "How old are you?"
"Fifteen years, eight months, twenty-one days."
Sasaki's face did something complicated—anger and grief and something that might have been guilt. "Fifteen. Same age as my little brother. He wanted to enlist. Begged me to let him join my unit. I told him absolutely not. Told him war wasn't for kids. Told him to stay home, stay safe, stay innocent."
"Did he listen?" Buki asked, though he already knew the answer.
"Of course not. Enlisted anyway under a false name. Served for eight months before taking a shrapnel to the gut at the Battle of Kuroda Pass." Sasaki's voice had gone flat. "Died calling for me. Bled out in a field hospital while I was three kilometers away, fighting, not knowing he was even there. He was fifteen years old. Same as you. And he died because I couldn't protect him."
The pressure in Buki's heart spiked. 8.7. Because this was his story too. Wasn't it? A little brother. A promise to protect. Failure. Death. Eternal guilt.
"I have a little brother too," Buki heard himself say. "Had. In another life. Before this one. His name was Karanome. He was eight years old. I died trying to protect him. And I don't—I'll never know if I succeeded. If he survived. If he's okay or destroyed or—"
Sasaki studied him with that one good eye. "Another life? You believe in reincarnation?"
"I don't know what I believe. But I remember dying at fifteen in Tokyo, 2027. Remember my mother killing my sister. Remember putting myself between my little brother and a knife. Remember bleeding out while police sirens approached. And then—then I woke up as a three-year-old here. With all those memories. All that trauma. And by age five I'd forgotten everything except in dreams and now it's all coming back and I don't—I can't—"
He stopped. Breathing too fast. Control slipping. Clara's hand on his shoulder, grounding. "Buki, we should go. This is too much."
But Sasaki was looking at him with something that wasn't quite understanding but was close to it. "You're carrying two lifetimes of grief," he said quietly. "Two deaths. Two failures. A brother you couldn't save. I can tell there's another. That's—that's more than anyone should have to carry."
"I don't know how to survive it," Buki admitted. "Everyone says 'one day at a time' and 'it gets better' and 'you're stronger than you think' but none of that helps. I just want to know if Karanome is okay. If my death meant something. If—"
"You'll never know," Sasaki interrupted, brutal honesty that matched Clara's from the night before. "I'll never know if my little brother forgave me for not protecting him. You'll never know if Karanome survived your sacrifice. We're both stuck carrying that uncertainty forever. And it's torture. Absolute torture. But it's also—" He held up the letter from his surviving friend. "—it's also what keeps us human. The caring. The wondering. The love that has nowhere to go except inward, eating us alive but also proving we're still capable of feeling something. Even if nobody understands reincarnation and all that. I certainly believe your story."
Buki stared at this scarred veteran who understood, who carried similar weight, who'd somehow survived despite the crushing guilt. "Does it ever get easier?" he asked.
"No," Sasaki said simply. "It doesn't. You just get better at pretending it did. But—" He held up the letter again. "—sometimes you get moments like this. Proof that someone you care about survived. Connection with someone who understands. Small evidences that suffering isn't completely meaningless. It doesn't fix anything. Doesn't heal anything. But it helps. A little. For a little while."
A little help for a little while. That was all trauma survivors got. No grand healing. No dramatic recovery. Just small mercies, temporary respites, brief moments of connection before the weight returned.
"Thank you for the delivery," Sasaki said. "Tell your friend Ishida—" He paused. "Tell him I'm alive. Damaged. But alive. And I remember. I remember all of it. The good and the terrible. Tell him that matters."
Buki nodded. Couldn't speak. The pressure in his heart was 11.3 now, climbing toward dangerous levels again.
Clara guided him away, down the stairs, out of the building, into the cold air that smelled like winter approaching. Buki walked automatically, his mind elsewhere, processing Sasaki's words, comparing traumas, calculating the mathematics of grief.
Two lifetimes. Two failures. Two little brothers lost to violence. And infinite uncertainty stretching forward into a future he couldn't calculate.
"I can't do this," he said suddenly, stopping in the middle of the street. "Clara, I can't. I can't deliver letters and work and function and pretend to be human when I'm carrying this. It's too heavy. The weight exceeds structural tolerances. I'm going to collapse. I'm going to fracture completely. I'm going to—"
"I know," Clara said, and she was crying now too, tears running down her face. "I know it's too heavy. I know you're breaking. I know this is impossible. But you're going to do it anyway. Because that's what survivors do. We carry impossible weight. We function while fracturing. We exist in spaces that shouldn't support life but somehow do. You're going to survive this, Buki. Badly. Imperfectly. But you're going to survive."
Buki looked at her—this person who'd taken responsibility for him, who witnessed his breakdowns, who stayed despite every rational reason to leave—and felt something crack inside his heart. Not breaking. Opening. Just slightly.
"I basically remember everything now," he whispered. "My name. My family. How I died. What I lost. And it's destroying me. Knowing and not-knowing simultaneously. Remembering and forgetting. Being Daichi and Buki and neither and both."
"Then be both," Clara said. "Be Daichi who died protecting his brother. Be Buki who delivers letters about death. Be fifteen twice. Be traumatized across lifetimes. Be all of it. Stop trying to be just one thing. You're complicated. Damaged. Multiple. That's okay. That's survivable."
Was it? Could he exist as fractured multiplicity? Could he carry both lifetimes, both failures, both loves that had nowhere to go?
He didn't know. But standing there in the cold, with Clara's hand on his arm and Sasaki's words echoing and the weight of two little brothers pressing down—he decided to try.
One more day. One more breath. One more moment of existing despite everything. For Karanome, wherever he was. For General Hazami, who'd believed in blooming. For himself, whoever that was.
TO BE CONTINUED...