The rain had started sometime during the night—not the dramatic kind that announced itself with thunder and lightning, but the quiet, persistent kind that felt like the sky was slowly dissolving. Buki watched it from his window, calculating the rate of precipitation, the angle of descent, and the temperature.
What he couldn't calculate was why rain made everything look sadder.
The city below was the color of wet stone, all grays and darker grays, punctuated by the occasional yellow rectangle of a lit window. People moved through the streets with umbrellas like mushrooms sprouting from their shoulders, their faces hidden, their purposes unknown. The rain made everyone anonymous, which Buki found oddly comforting. Anonymity meant no expectations. No requirements to understand things he couldn't understand.
Clara knocked softly before entering, carrying a cup of tea that steamed in the cool morning air. She'd been doing this every morning since he arrived—bringing tea he didn't particularly want, asking questions he didn't know how to answer, treating him like something fragile that might break with too much pressure.
"How did yesterday go?" she asked, setting the tea on his desk. "Your first day at the postal office."
He could have told her the truth: that he'd delivered seventeen pieces of correspondence and witnessed twenty-three crying episodes and calculated that if he continued at this rate, he would deliver approximately 4,080 pieces of grief annually, not accounting for holidays and administrative closures. That the pressure in his heart had not decreased overnight. That he'd dreamed of Mrs. Matsuda's face and woken up not knowing why his face had moved through many expressions of sadness.
Instead, he said: "I completed all assigned deliveries. Performance was optimal."
Clara's expression did that complicated thing again—the one he was learning to recognize as worry disguised as something gentler. "Kaito told me what happened. With the first delivery." She sat on the edge of his bed, uninvited but not unwelcome. "He said you watched a stranger collapse and didn't know what to do."
"I awaited further instructions," Buki reported. "Yuki Amane provided necessary intervention."
"Buki..." Clara's voice had that texture, soft and careful. "You don't need instructions for compassion. It's not a protocol you follow. It's something you feel."
Feel. That word again. That impossible requirement.
"I have no data on compassion," he said, still watching the rain. "I can observe it. Yuki demonstrates it frequently. But the mechanism by which one generates compassion internally remains unclear."
Clara was quiet for a long moment. Then: "Maybe that's okay. Maybe you don't need to feel it right away. Maybe just... trying is enough." Trying. Attempting. Making effort toward unclear objective.
"Acknowledged," he said, though he didn't understand what trying would look like. How did one try to feel? What were the steps? Where was the manual?
Clara left him with the tea and the rain and questions that had no tactical solutions.
The Imperial War Correspondence Office was quieter on rainy days. Fewer people came to collect civilian mail, and the sound of water against the windows created a kind of gray static that muffled everything. Kaito was sorting letters when Buki arrived, his movements methodical, almost meditative.
"Morning," the old man said without looking up. "Rain's going to slow you down today. Routes'll take longer." Buki nodded, calculating route adjustments for wet conditions, reduced visibility, increased pedestrian caution at intersections.
Yuki arrived moments later, her uniform damp despite her umbrella, her hair slightly wild from the wind. She smiled when she saw him—genuine, warm, incomprehensible. Why did she smile at him? He had provided no humor, no comfort, no reason for positive emotional response.
"Ready for round two?" she asked, hanging her coat on a hook that seemed specifically designed to drip water onto the floor. "I am prepared to execute assigned deliveries," he confirmed.
"That's not what I asked." She studied him with those large, bright eyes that seemed to see more than they should. "Are you ready? After yesterday?" Yesterday. Mrs. Matsuda. The collapsing. The crying. The pressure in his heart that still hadn't fully dissipated.
"I am functional," he said, which was true even if it wasn't an answer. Yuki's smile became sad. She was developing an extensive collection of sad smiles, he noted. A catalog of gentle disappointments.
"Okay," she said finally. "But today, I'm coming with you. All of your deliveries. Kaito-san already approved it." Supervision. Quality control. Performance monitoring. Standard protocol for new personnel.
"Understood," he said.
They gathered the day's correspondence—twelve letters, all war-related, all heavy with implications he was still learning to decode. Yuki handled them carefully, reverently, as if the paper itself was sacred.
"These aren't just letters," she said, echoing her words from yesterday. "They're pieces of people's hearts. The last pieces, sometimes. We have to treat them with respect."
Respect. Regard for passion and worth. Another abstract concept he could define but not demonstrate.
The rain had not lessened. If anything, it had intensified—a steady curtain of water that turned the world soft and blurred. They walked side by side through streets that smelled like wet stone and earth.
The first delivery was unremarkable—a letter from a soldier to his elderly parents, written weeks before his death but cheerful, optimistic, lying about his safety. The mother cried quietly while the father stood rigid as stone. Yuki stayed with them for twelve minutes. Buki counted.
The second delivery was similar. And the third. But the fourth...
The house was small, well-maintained, with a garden that someone had tended with obvious care despite the rain. Flowers—he didn't know their names—bent under the weight of water, their colors muted but still somehow vibrant against the gray. A child's toy lay abandoned near the door, a wooden horse with one wheel missing.
Yuki knocked. Buki held the letter—official envelope, death notification, Private Takeshi Miyamoto, killed in action. The door opened.
A child stood there. Six years. She wore a yellow shirt that was too big, rolling up at the sleeves, and her hair was pulled into two uneven pigtails that suggested she'd done them herself. Her eyes were dark and curious and completely unburdened by the knowledge of what the envelope in Buki's hand contained.
"Hello!" she said brightly, and her voice was like bells, or what he imagined bells would sound like if they could be happy. "Are you from the post office? Do you have a letter for us?"
Buki looked at Yuki. Yuki looked at him. Some wordless communication passed between them that he didn't have the context to interpret. "Is your mother home?" Yuki asked gently, kneeling so she was at the child's eye level.
"Mama's in the kitchen making lunch!" The child bounced slightly, excited. "Are you bringing news about Papa? Is he coming home soon? He's been gone forever!"
"Can you go get your mother for us?" Yuki's voice had become even softer, if that was possible. "This is very important."
"Okay!" The child spun around—inefficient rotation, and ran into the house, calling: "Mama! Mama! People from the post office are here! Maybe it's about Papa!"
Buki and Yuki stood in the doorway, rain falling behind them, and he noticed that Yuki's hands were shaking. Tremor frequency: 3.7. Her breathing had become irregular. Stress response: clearly activated.
"She doesn't know," Yuki whispered. "That little kid doesn't know her father is dead."
Dead. Permanent termination of consciousness. The child's father had been dead for four months according to the letter's date. Four months of the child asking when Papa was coming home. Four months of the mother knowing and the child not knowing and the space between those two states of knowledge creating a kind of temporary reality that was about to collapse.
The mother appeared—mid-thirties, with the same dark eyes as her daughter, but these eyes carried weight. She knew. Even before she saw the envelope, she knew. Buki had learned to recognize that look yesterday: the expression of someone who's been waiting for confirmation of their worst fear.
"Chiyo, go play in your room," the mother said, her voice carefully controlled. "But Mama, the letter—" "Now, please."
The child's face fell—disappointment, confusion, the beginning of understanding that something was wrong even if she didn't know what. She retreated into the house, glancing back with questions in her eyes.
The mother stepped onto the porch, closing the door behind her. The rain was loud now, drumming on the roof, creating a kind of privacy through sound.
"It's about Takeshi," she said. Not a question. A statement of fact she'd been preparing for. "Imperial War Correspondence," Buki began his standard protocol. "Notification regarding Private Takeshi Miyamoto. Killed in action, Battle of—"
"Don't," the stranger interrupted, her voice sharp suddenly. "Don't do that. Don't recite it like... like it's a grocery list. My husband. His name was Takeshi. He liked plum wine and terrible jokes. He cried when Chiyo was happy. He's not just a name on a form."
Buki stopped. Processed. The stranger was correct—he was reciting standardized information. But what was the alternative? How did one communicate death in a way that honored the complexity of a ceased existence?
He looked at Yuki, seeking guidance. She was crying again, silent tears mixing with rain on her face.
"Mrs. Miyamoto," Yuki said softly, "I'm so sorry. Your husband... Takeshi... he died serving his country. He was brave. And this letter..." She took it gently from Buki's hand. "This is the official notification. But there's also a personal letter he wrote. His last words to you and Chiyo."
The stranger took both envelopes with hands that shook worse than Yuki's. Tremor frequency: 6.2. She stared at them like they were living things, like they might suddenly speak in her husband's voice.
"How do I tell her?" she whispered, and Buki realized she wasn't really asking them. She was asking the rain, the sky, the universe that had taken her husband and left her with this impossible task. "She's six years old. She still thinks he's coming home. She draws pictures for him. She... how do I tell my daughter her father is never coming home?"
The question hung in the air, unanswerable. Buki had no protocol for this. No training. No tactical solution. The social integration videos had not covered how to destroy a child's world with information.
"I don't know," Yuki admitted, and her honesty seemed somehow more helpful than any lie could be. "I don't know if there's a right way. But... but maybe you don't have to tell her alone. Do you have family nearby?"
The mother nodded, barely. "My mother. She lives two blocks away." "Would you like me to get her?" Yuki offered. "Or... we could stay with you, if that would help. Whatever you need."
The mothers face crumpled then—not dramatically, not suddenly, but slowly, like a building collapsing in stages. "I need my husband," she said, and her voice broke completely. "I need him to not be dead. I need to wake up and have this all be a nightmare. I need—"
She couldn't continue. Just stood there in the rain, holding letters from a dead husband, while inside her daughter played with toys and drew pictures for a father who would never see them.
Buki watched this. Recorded it. Calculated nothing because there was nothing to calculate. Just raw human pain. And inside him, that pressure in his heart increased. 8.3. 8.7. 9.1.
Something was building. Something was trying to break through the static, through the emptiness, through all the carefully constructed barriers that separated him from whatever feelings were supposed to be.
"When did he die?" Mrs. Miyamoto asked suddenly, looking at Buki with eyes that demanded truth. "How long have I been lying to my daughter? How long have I been telling her Papa's coming home when he's been dead in the ground?"
Buki consulted the letter. "Four months, seven days, approximately sixteen hours ago from current timestamp."
The mother made a sound—half laugh, half sob, all pain. "Four months. Four months of bedtime stories about Papa coming home. Four months of her asking when, when, when. And I kept saying soon, sweetheart, soon." She looked at the door behind which her daughter played, oblivious. "How do I take that away from her? How do I kill her hope?"
"You tell her the truth," Buki said, and the words came from somewhere he didn't recognize, some database he didn't know he had access to. "You tell her Papa loved her. You tell her he didn't want to leave. You tell her it's okay to be sad. You tell her—"
He stopped. Where were these words coming from? This wasn't protocol. This wasn't training. This was something else, something that felt like memory but couldn't be memory because he'd never had conversations like this before.
Except... he had, hadn't he? In some other life, some other version of himself that had understood these things before understanding was beaten out of him.
The mother stared at him. "You're just a kid yourself," she said, and something in her expression shifted. "You're a soldier. You've seen people die." "Affirmative. I have caused multiple deaths. I have witnessed approximately—"
"Did you kill my husband?" she asked suddenly, directly, and the question was like a blade. "In that battle. Were you there? Did your bullets kill Takeshi?"
Probability calculation: Given his involvement in the Battle of Kuroda Pass and the number of enemy casualties he'd caused, the statistical likelihood that he'd killed Private Takeshi Miyamoto was approximately 3.7%. Low but non-zero.
"I don't retain memory of individual casualties," he said, the truth exact and terrible. "If I killed your husband, I would not remember. There were too many. I apologize for this deficiency."
The mothers face did something complicated. Not quite anger. Not quite grief. Something that contained both and more besides. "Get out," she said quietly.
"Mrs. Miyamoto—" Yuki began.
"Get. Out." The mothers voice rose. "I don't want you here. I don't want him here. A child soldier who can't even remember the people he killed, delivering letters about death like it's nothing, like it doesn't matter—"
"It matters," Buki said, and the words came out wrong, too loud, too sharp. "I don't understand why, but Yuki says it matters. The letters matter. The people matter. Their pain matters. I'm trying to—"
"Trying?" The mother laughed, bitter and broken. "You're trying? My daughter is in there playing with toys, thinking her father is coming home, and you're trying?"
Buki felt something crack inside him. Not physically. Somewhere else. Somewhere he didn't have words for.
"I don't know how to do this," he said, and his voice sounded strange, younger, like it belonged to someone else. "I don't know how to deliver death. I don't know how to feel what I'm supposed to feel. I don't know how to be human. I'm just—I'm just—"
The pressure in his heart spiked. 11.4. His vision blurred. His hands were shaking—tremor frequency: unknown, too rapid to measure. His breathing had become irregular.
"Buki." Yuki's hand on his arm. "Buki, breathe. You're having a panic attack."
Panic. Fear response. But he wasn't afraid. He wasn't anything. Just pressure. Just building. Just something vast and dark and crushing. "I can't—" he started, but couldn't finish. The words were stuck, trapped behind whatever was breaking inside him.
Mrs. Miyamoto's expression changed. The anger drained away, replaced by something softer. "You're just a kid," she said again, but different this time. "They did this to you. Made you into this. And now you're trying to deliver news about death when you're barely alive yourself."
She stepped forward. Put her hand on his shoulder. The same place Clara touched. The same place General Hazami used to touch. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry they broke you. I'm sorry you have to do this. I'm sorry for everything."
And Buki didn't understand why she was apologizing. He was the one who'd killed people. He was the one delivering her grief. He was the one who couldn't feel what he should feel.
But her touch was warm. And the rain was cold. And somewhere inside him, in those empty rooms he'd been living in for so long, something was finally beginning to stir.
They left Mrs. Miyamoto with her mother, who arrived quickly, gray-haired and grim-faced and capable. Inside the house, a child played, still innocent, still hoping, with maybe an hour left before her world changed forever.
Buki and Yuki walked back through the rain in silence. He counted his steps because counting was stable, reliable, safe. 1,247 steps from the Miyamoto house to the postal office. Each one identical. Each one carrying him further from the child who didn't know yet that hope was a temporary condition.
"You did good today," Yuki said finally, as they approached the office. "I destabilized emotionally. I failed to maintain professional composure. Performance was suboptimal."
"No." Yuki stopped walking, turned to face him. The rain plastered her hair to her face, made her uniform cling to her, but she didn't seem to notice. "You felt something. Maybe you don't know what it was, maybe you couldn't name it, but you felt it. That's not failure. That's progress."
Progress. Movement toward objective. Advancement from previous state. "It hurt," he said, surprising himself with the admission. "The pressure. In my heart. It hurt."
"I know," Yuki said gently. "That's what feelings do sometimes. They hurt. But hurt means you're alive. Hurt means you're human." Human. That impossible category he kept failing to fit into.
"I don't want to deliver more letters," he said, another surprise. Wants. Desires. Preferences. Things he wasn't supposed to have. "I know," Yuki said again. "But we have eight more today. Eight more families waiting for news. Eight more chances to do this with compassion, even if you don't fully understand what compassion is yet."
Eight more. And tomorrow, more. And the day after, more. An endless chain of grief, stretching forward into a future he couldn't calculate. But also: eight more chances to try. Whatever trying meant.
"Acknowledged," he said. Yuki smiled—not sad this time, but something close to proud. "Come on. Let's get dry first. Then we'll continue."
They went inside, leaving the rain behind, carrying the weight of other people's sorrow and their own confusing feelings and the impossible task of delivering death with respect.
And in his heart, the pressure remained. But now Buki had a name for it, or part of a name: Human. Still learning what that meant. Still trying. Still alive.
TO BE CONTINUED...