The snow finally arrived that night—not the gentle, poetic kind that Buki remembered from picture books in his previous life, but heavy and relentless, the kind that buried everything indiscriminately. By morning, Shin-Tokyo was transformed into something unrecognizable, familiar landmarks erased under white that would turn gray and ugly by afternoon but for now created the illusion of renewal.
Buki arrived at the Imperial War Correspondence Office to find Kaito standing at the base of the internal stairwell—the one that led to the residential floors, the sealed upper levels that no one had entered in twelve years. The old gramps stood perfectly still, one hand on the bannister, staring upward at the landing as if it might contain something dangerous, something that could destroy him if approached incorrectly.
"I need to show you," Kaito said without preamble, without turning to acknowledge Buki's presence. "But I can't—I can't go up there alone. Haven't been able to since Ren. The door is locked. Has been locked for twelve years. And I'm—" His voice fractured. "—I'm terrified of what I'll find. Not physically. The rooms are exactly as I left them. But emotionally. Psychologically. I'm terrified that opening that door will finish what I started twelve years ago when I wrote that letter."
Buki approached slowly, giving Kaito space to change his mind, to retreat, to choose the safer option of continued avoidance. But the old gramps just stood there, hand trembling on the bannister—tremor frequency: 7.3—waiting for witness, for accompaniment, for someone to share the weight of confronting what he'd been fleeing for over a decade.
"I'll come with you," Buki said quietly. "Whatever's up there—whatever you're afraid of facing—you don't have to face it alone."
Kaito nodded once. Began climbing. Each step deliberate, measured, the ascent of someone approaching execution. Buki followed, counting steps because counting was stable: twenty-three stairs to the first landing, another twenty-three to the second floor, another seventeen to the third—the residential level, the family floors, the place where three people had died slowly while one person watched helplessly.
The door at the top was heavy wood, darkened with age and lack of maintenance. Dust had accumulated in the crevices, cobwebs stretched across the upper corners. The lock was stiff, protesting when Kaito inserted the key with shaking hands. It took three attempts before the mechanism finally turned with a sound like bones breaking.
The door swung inward on hinges that screamed from disuse. And beyond—
The smell hit first. Not rot exactly—nothing had decayed in the traditional sense. But the air was thick, stale, preserved like the interior of a tomb. Dust floated in the weak morning light that filtered through curtained windows. And underneath the dust: medicine. The sharp chemical scent of illness. Of treatments that failed. Of bodies betraying themselves from the inside.
The apartment beyond was frozen in time. A museum of normal life interrupted. Breakfast dishes still in the sink—twelve years of dust covering plates that had held the last meal Kaito's family ever shared. Coats hanging on hooks by the door, waiting for owners who would never wear them again. Shoes lined up neatly, from largest to smallest: father, mother, teenage son, young daughter.
Kaito stood in the entryway, unable to move further. His breathing had become irregular—rapid, shallow, panic response activating. Buki placed a hand on his shoulder, grounding, the same way Clara and Yuki had grounded him through his own breakdowns.
"One room at a time," Buki suggested. "We don't have to see everything today."
But Kaito was already moving, drawn by something Buki couldn't see. Down the hallway, past closed doors, to the room at the end. He opened it carefully, reverently, as if whatever lay beyond was sacred.
Hana's room.
It was exactly as an eight-year-old child had left it, except stiller, dusty, preserved like an insect in amber. The bed was made—hospital corners, tight enough to bounce coins, suggesting Kaito or Yumiko had done it after Hana became too weak to make her own bed. Stuffed animals arranged on the pillow: a rabbit with one ear missing, a bear with button eyes.
On the desk by the window: crayons scattered across paper. A drawing, half-finished. Stick figures—the same kind Buki had drawn, the same kind Karanome used to draw—depicting a family. Five figures: two adults, two children, and a fifth figure that might have been a pet or might have been an angel. Everyone holding hands. Everyone smiling. Everyone alive.
"She never finished it," Kaito said, his voice hollow. "Started it the morning we got her diagnosis. Said she wanted to draw the family so she could remember what we looked like when she was in afterlife. But she never—she got too weak before she could finish. And I—I couldn't bring myself to complete it for her. Couldn't presume to know how she would have drawn the final details."
Medical equipment occupied one corner—IV stands, medication dispensers, machines with silent screens that had once monitored failing vital signs. Evidence of the eight-year-old's room transforming into a hospital space. Childhood and death occupying the same space, unable to coexist but forced to anyway.
Buki noticed something else: letters. Hundreds of them. Scattered across every surface—the bed, the desk, the floor, pinned to the walls. All addressed in different handwriting. All unopened.
"What are these?" he asked.
"Hana's letters," Kaito said quietly. "After she died, I—I couldn't stop hoping she'd been telling the truth. About the afterlife having postal services. About sending us letters every day. So I started—" He paused, ashamed. "—I started collecting letters from the office. Random correspondence. And I'd bring them up here. Pretend they were from her. Pretend that somewhere in this mountain of mail, there might actually be one from my daughter telling me she was okay."
The confession was devastating in its desperate illogic. A grieving father so broken by loss that he'd created elaborate delusion just to feel connected to his dead family.
"Did you open any?" Buki asked.
"No. Because as long as they remained unopened, they might be from her. Opening them would destroy the possibility. Would force me to confront that they were just—normal letters. From living people to living people. Nothing from the dead. Nothing from the afterlife. Just my desperation made tangible."
Buki understood this completely. Wasn't he doing the same thing? Choosing to believe Karanome was fine somewhere, choosing hope without evidence, choosing delusion over unbearable truth? "Maybe that's okay," he said quietly. "Maybe choosing what to believe is the only way we survive impossible loss."
They moved to the next room. Yumiko's room—the master bedroom, though "master" suggested authority over something, and death had been the only authority here.
The room was similarly preserved. Clothes still in the closet, hanging like ghosts waiting to be thrown out. Jewelry on the dresser—simple pieces, nothing expensive, just the accumulated decoration of a life lived modestly. Photographs on the wall: wedding day. Everyone impossibly alive.
On the bedside table: a letter. Unsealed. The paper yellowed but ink still legible.
Kaito picked it up with trembling hands. "I haven't read this since—since right after she died. Couldn't. But I think—I think I need to now. Need to remember her words. Need to—"
He couldn't finish. Just held the letter out to Buki. Permission. Request. Shared burden. Buki took it carefully. Read aloud, his voice steady despite the content:
My dearest Kaito,
If you're reading this, I'm already gone. The doctors say I have days, maybe a week. My body is failing in the same way Hana's failed. Same disease. Same progression. Same inevitable ending.
I'm not writing to apologize. I've apologized enough—sorry for getting sick, sorry for dying, sorry for leaving you and Ren alone. I'm done apologizing for things I can't control. Instead, I want to tell you what I should have said more often when I was healthy enough to say it:
Thank you. Thank you for twenty years of marriage. For being patient when I was impossible. For loving me even when I was unlovable. Thank you for watching Hana die with me. For holding my hand while we lost her. For being strong enough to survive what destroyed me.
Thank you for staying. For not running when things got hard. For witnessing my suffering without flinching. For making me feel loved even when I was unlovable—body failing.
I need you to know: I'm not sorry I married you. Not sorry for any of it, even knowing how it ends. Hana's eight years were beautiful. Worth all the pain that followed. Worth dying for. And Ren—our brilliant, kind son—he'll carry on. He'll make you proud. He'll keep your dream alive.
Take care of him, Kaito. Help him grieve properly. Help him live despite watching his mother and sister die the same horrible death. Help him find purpose beyond this family tragedy. Promise me.
I know what you're thinking. Know you're already planning to give up after I'm gone. Know you well enough to recognize suicidal ideation even when you think you're hiding it. Don't. Please. Ren needs you. The postal office needs you. The world needs people who understand grief intimately enough to witness it in others.
Live for me. Live for Hana. Most importantly, live for Ren. He's going to need you so much in the coming months. Don't abandon him to process this alone.
I love you, Kaito Hanabishi. Loved you from the moment we met. Will love you in whatever comes after this, if anything comes after. And if there's no after—if death is just ending—then I'm grateful our endings overlapped for twenty years. That's more than many people get.
Be happy. Eventually. Not now—now you should grieve. But someday. Find joy again. Find purpose again. Find reason to wake up that isn't just obligation. Promise me you'll try.
I'll be waiting for you. Whether in the afterlife or oblivion or wherever the dead go. I'll be waiting. With Hana. We'll both be waiting. But don't rush to join us. Live first. Live long. Live well.
That's not a request. It's my dying wish. My final order. Live.
Yours eternally, even in death,
Yumiko Hanabishi.
Buki finished reading and carefully set the letter down. Kaito had collapsed onto the bed—bed, the place where she'd died asking him to live. He wasn't crying. Past crying. Just sitting there with his face in his hands, shoulders shaking with silent sobs that had no sound because grief this profound exceeded vocalization.
"I failed her," Kaito finally managed. "She asked me to help Ren grieve. To help him live. To be there for him. And I—I tried. For three months, I tried. But I was drowning in my own grief. Couldn't help him process his. Couldn't be the father he needed because I was too busy being the grieving husband, the grieving father to Hana. And then—"
He stopped. Couldn't continue. Buki waited, giving him time, giving him space.
"And then Ren got sick too," Kaito finally said. "Three months after Yumiko's funeral. Started showing the same symptoms. Same disease. Third diagnosis. And I realized—Yumiko's dying wish was for me to take care of Ren. To help him live. And instead, I got to watch him die too. Got to fail her final request. Got to break my promise to my dying wife."
"You couldn't have prevented his illness," Buki said quietly.
"No. But I could have helped him face it differently. Could have been stronger for him. Could have—" Kaito's voice broke completely. "—could have done so many things better. But I didn't. I failed. Failed Hana, failed Yumiko, failed Ren. Failed everyone who trusted me to protect them."
The words echoed in the stale air. Failed everyone who trusted me to protect them. Buki understood this intimately. His own core of failures: Hana, Karanome, General Hazami, everyone he couldn't save despite promises, despite trying, despite dying for.
"Show me Ren's room," Buki said. "Whatever you're most afraid of seeing—let's face it together."
Kaito nodded. Rose slowly, like a much older person, like someone whose skeleton had given up supporting his weight. Led Buki down the hallway to the final room.
Ren's room was different from his sister's. More organized. More adult. Fifteen-year-old space instead of eight-year-old fantasy. Books lined the shelves—schoolbooks, novels, technical manuals about postal logistics. Maps covered the walls—delivery routes, optimization charts, the same kind of tactical planning Buki had done during the war.
On the desk: a journal. Leather-bound, well-worn. Ren's private thoughts during his final months.
"I can't read it," Kaito said immediately. "Can't. Every time I've tried, I—I see the first line and I break completely. It's—" He struggled for words. "—it's too intimate. Too final. Too much like hearing his voice when his voice is gone forever."
"Would you like me to read it?" Buki offered. "Read it aloud so you don't have to face it alone?" Kaito nodded, unable to speak. Buki opened the journal carefully. The first entry was dated three days after Yumiko's funeral:
Mom died this morning. I watched her stop breathing. Watched the machines flat-line. Watched Dad collapse. And all I could think was: I'm next.
I haven't told him yet. Haven't told him about the bruising on my arms, the fatigue that makes walking upstairs impossible, the way food tastes like metal and my bones ache constantly. Haven't told him because he's already destroyed. Already barely functioning. If I tell him I'm sick too—same disease, same death sentence—it'll kill him before it kills me.
So I'm going to hide it as long as possible. Going to pretend I'm fine. Going to be strong for him the way he tried to be strong for me. Going to give him a few months of peace before the universe destroys him completely.
Buki continued reading, voice steady despite the content. Entry after entry of Ren hiding his illness, managing symptoms secretly, researching his own prognosis, understanding exactly what was coming and choosing to face it alone to protect his father from additional grief.
The entries grew more desperate as time passed:
Week 4: The symptoms are getting harder to hide. Dad noticed I've been tired. Made excuses about school stress. He believed me because he wants to believe me. Because accepting I'm sick would break him completely.
Week 7: Can't hide it much longer. The bruising is extensive. My gums bleed when I brush my teeth. But Dad is so deep in his own grief he's not seeing me. Not really seeing me. Just seeing through me to his own pain.
Week 9: Have to tell him. Have to. Can't hide this anymore. The question isn't whether to tell him but how. How do you tell your parent he's about to watch his third family member die the same horrible death? How do you destroy someone who's already destroyed?
Week 10: Told him today. Watched his face when the doctor confirmed the diagnosis. Watched something fundamental break behind his eyes. Watched him become not-father, not-person, just shell containing grief too large for human expression. I did this to him. I killed him by being sick. Added my dying to his collection of unbearable losses."
Buki's voice was shaking now but he continued:
"Week 12: Decided to refuse treatment. Dad doesn't understand. Thinks I'm giving up. But I'm not giving up—I'm choosing how I die. Watched Hana suffer through doctors for six months just to die anyway. Watched Mom deteriorate through treatment that only prolonged her agony. I won't do that. Won't let Dad watch me suffer for months. Will give him three clean months instead of eight horrific ones.
He thinks this is defeat. But it's actually love. It's me choosing his trauma over mine. Better he remembers me conscious and coherent than destroyed by treatment, reduced to vomiting and pain and desperate begging for death.
The entries continued—Ren documenting his own decline with clinical precision, noting symptoms, calculating remaining time, preparing his father for inevitable loss while trying to give meaning to his own death.
The final entry was dated the day before Ren died:
This is probably my last entry. Tomorrow, maybe the day after, I'll stop being. Stop existing. Stop writing these thoughts that no one but me will read.
I'm not afraid anymore. Was afraid at first—terrified of pain, of dying, of becoming nothing. But now I'm just—tired. Ready. The pain is constant. My body is failing systematically. Staying alive is harder than letting go.
I'm leaving these journals for Dad. Maybe he'll read them someday. Maybe he'll understand that my death wasn't his failure. That he did everything possible. That some things can't be fixed or prevented or survived. That love isn't measured in years but in moments that mattered.
And we had good moments. Despite Hana's death. Despite Mom's death. Despite my dying. We had mornings at the postal office, organizing letters together. Had evenings talking about the future I wouldn't see but he would. Had three months of honest conversation about death and meaning and how to continue when continuing seems impossible.
I hope he continues. Hope he doesn't follow me into death like I know he wants to. Hope he keeps the postal office running. Hope he finds reason to persist beyond obligation.
If you're reading this, Dad—and I know you will eventually—please know: You didn't fail me. You loved me. That's all anyone can ask for. That's all that matters.
Keep delivering those letters. Keep witnessing other people's grief. Keep living, even when living hurts worse than dying. That's not a suggestion. It's my dying wish. My final order.
Live.
Your son,
Ren.
Buki closed the journal carefully. Set it down with trembling hands. Looked at Kaito, who had collapsed completely, folded into himself on Ren's bed, making sounds that weren't quite human—raw, primal grief finally released after twelve years of suppression.
"He ordered you to live," Buki said quietly. "Same as Yumiko. Same as General Hazami ordered me. Our dead give us impossible orders because they believe we're capable of impossible things. No matter how much blood we have on our hands."
"But I didn't live!" Kaito's voice was anguished, torn from depths Buki couldn't fathom. "I survived! I persisted! I went through motions! But I didn't live! I locked myself in the office downstairs and avoided these rooms and delivered letters and existed and that's—that's not what he asked for! He asked me to live and I failed him! Failed my dying son's final request!"
Buki knelt beside the bed. "Maybe persistence is living for people like us. Maybe going through motions is all we can manage. Maybe Ren understood that. Maybe he knew you'd barely survive and accepted that as enough."
"Is it enough?" Kaito asked desperately. "Is barely surviving enough?"
"I don't know," Buki admitted honestly. "But it's what we've done. What we're still doing. And maybe—" He looked around Ren's room, at the maps on the walls, at the delivery routes planned by a fifteen-year-old who'd never implement them. "—maybe that honors them. Our persistence. Our refusal to quit despite wanting to. Our—"
He stopped. Because he'd noticed something else.
On the wall beside Ren's desk: another map. But not delivery routes. This one showed the residential building attached to the postal office. Floor plans. Architectural drawings. Annotations in Ren's handwriting:
"Future expansion: Convert third floor to family apartments for multi-generational postal workers. Create living legacy. Build something that lasts beyond individual lives. Make the Imperial War Correspondence Office not just business but home. Forever."
Ren's dream. The family legacy he'd been planning. The future he'd been designing even as he died.
"He wanted this place to house generations," Buki said, pointing to the plans. "Wanted it to be home for postal workers' families. Wanted what happened to your family—living and working in the same space—to continue beyond you. To become tradition."
Kaito looked at the plans. Really looked at them, perhaps for the first time in twelve years.
"I'd forgotten," he whispered. "Forgotten he was planning this. Forgotten he wanted the office to be more than just mine. Wanted it to be—" His voice broke. "—wanted it to be ours. Our family's contribution to Shin-Tokyo. Our way of mattering beyond our own brief existences."
They sat in silence, surrounded by evidence of lives interrupted, dreams deferred, futures canceled. But also: evidence of love. Of planning. Of belief that meaning could be created even in the face of inevitable death.
"I need to live up here again," Kaito said suddenly, decision crystallizing. "Not avoid these rooms. Not lock them away. Actually live in these spaces. Make them home again, not tomb. Honor their memories by existing in their presence instead of fleeing from it."
"That sounds like healing," Buki observed.
"No," Kaito corrected. "It sounds like survival. Active survival. Choosing discomfort over avoidance. Choosing to face what I've been running from for twelve years. Choosing—" He looked at Ren's journal, at Yumiko's letter, at Hana's unfinished drawing. "—choosing to keep their final orders. To live. However imperfectly. However painfully. To live."
They descended the stairs together. Returned to the postal office. Back to work. Back to delivering other people's letters while carrying their own undeliverable grief.
But something had shifted. Not healed—shifted. The weight remained but was distributed differently. Acknowledged rather than avoided. Witnessed rather than hidden.
And upstairs, in rooms that would soon be inhabited again, three ghosts waited patiently. Not for their father to join them in death, but for him to finally, truly, begin living again.
However imperfectly. However painfully. But living nonetheless.
TO BE CONTINUED...