Three weeks passed like water through cupped hands—present, then gone, leaving only the dampness of their passing. Buki delivered 127 letters in that time. He counted them because counting was reliable. Numbers didn't lie. Numbers didn't require interpretation.
127 letters. 89 death notifications. 23 personal effects packages. 15 final letters from soldiers to families who would never receive replies.
He had witnessed 176 crying episodes. 34 instances of anger. 12 cases of complete emotional shutdown where recipients simply stared at him with empty eyes, as if they'd stopped existing in any meaningful way.
He understood that look now. Had started seeing it in his own reflection.
The autumn had deepened while he wasn't paying attention. The city had turned the color of old copper—rust and amber and dying gold. Leaves fell constantly, creating drifts against buildings like small mountains of decay. The air had that particular sharpness that came before winter, clean and cold and somehow accusatory, as if the world itself was asking: Are you prepared for what's coming?
Buki didn't know how to answer.
He stood now in the Imperial War Correspondence Office, watching Kaito sort through a new shipment of delayed letters. The old gramps moved slower these days, Buki noticed. His hands shook slightly—tremor frequency: 2.1. But also something else. Something that looked like the weight of all these letters pressing down on him, bending his spine one envelope at a time.
"This batch is different," Kaito said without preamble. His voice had that rough quality, like stones grinding, but underneath it was something softer. Hesitation, maybe. Or concern. "These are personal letters from high-ranking officers. Just declassified. They've been held in military archives for the past three years."
Three years. The same amount of time Buki had spent in the clinic. The same amount of time since—his thoughts stuttered. Static. Empty rooms. "Why were they held?" he asked, focusing on procedure, protocol, anything concrete.
"Security concerns. Military intelligence. The usual bureaucratic nonsense." Kaito pulled out a letter, and Buki noticed how carefully he held it. Like it might explode. "But also... some of these letters are from soldiers to other soldiers. Personal correspondence between officers. Things that might be... difficult. For the recipients."
Difficult. Challenging. Complex. Words that meant something was about to hurt.
Kaito held up an envelope. Official military seal, but not the standard death notification format. Personal correspondence classification. The paper was slightly yellowed—time had touched it, changed it, the way time changed everything.
The address read: "Buki Kirā (Sakura), care of Northern Clinic, formerly Unit 47, personal aide to General Hazami Kokoro." The world stopped.
Not metaphorically. Something in Buki's perception actually froze—time, his mind trying to process information that was too large, too significant, too impossible.
"This one's for you," Kaito said quietly, and there was something in his voice that sounded like apology. Like warning. Like goodbye. "From General Hazami. Written the night before the final battle."
General Hazami.
The name arrived like a blade between ribs—sharp, precise, finding all the places that should have been protected but weren't. Buki's hand moved without conscious direction, reaching for the letter, then stopping halfway as if hitting invisible resistance.
"I can't," he said, and his voice sounded wrong. Too high. Too young. Like it belonged to someone who still knew how to be afraid. "You don't have to read it now," Kaito offered. "You could take it home. Read it when you're ready."
Ready. Prepared. Optimal conditions for task execution. But how did one become ready to hear from the dead?
Yuki burst through the door then, her timing impeccable as always, bringing cold air and the smell of autumn leaves and her particular brand of overwhelming empathy. She stopped when she saw them—Buki frozen, Kaito holding the letter like an offering, the space between them heavy with something unspoken.
"What's wrong?" she asked immediately, because of course she could sense it. She could sense everything. Her emotional receptors were calibrated to frequencies Buki couldn't even detect.
"A letter," Kaito said. "From Buki's commanding officer. From before."
Before. The war. The death. The moment everything ended and he didn't even know it because he couldn't feel endings, couldn't feel anything, just continued executing orders in a world that had already moved on without him.
Yuki's eyes widened. Then, very gently, she approached Buki. "Do you want to read it?" Want. Desire. Preference.
Did he want to hear General Hazami's voice again, even just on paper? Did he want to know what she'd written the night before she died? Did he want to remember everything he'd carefully filed away in those empty rooms?
"I don't know," he admitted, and the admission felt like failure. Uncertainty. Incomplete data. Mission parameters unclear.
"That's okay," Yuki said, and her hand found his arm—that now-familiar pressure, warm and steady and somehow grounding. "Not knowing is okay. We can read it together. Or not at all. Or later. Whatever you need."
Whatever he needed. As if he knew what that was.
"I should read it," he said finally, because leaving it unread felt like abandoning a mission. Like disobeying a direct order. And even now, even after everything, orders were what he understood.
Kaito handed him the envelope. The paper was rough against Buki's fingertips—texture irregular, slight water damage on one corner, evidence of three years stored in less-than-optimal conditions. His hands were shaking. Tremor frequency: 4.8, increasing. He noticed this clinically, documenting his own deterioration like an outside observer.
"Do you want privacy?" Yuki asked softly.
He should say yes. This was personal correspondence. Meant for him alone. But the thought of reading it alone, of facing whatever words were inside without witness, without anchor—
"Stay," he said. "Please."
Please. A word he rarely used. A request, not an order. Human language for human needs. Yuki nodded. Pulled up a chair beside him. Kaito retreated to his desk but remained present, a silent guardian against whatever might happen next.
Buki opened the envelope.
The paper inside was covered in precise handwriting—General Hazami's handwriting, he recognized it instantly even though he hadn't seen it in three years. Neat characters, slightly tilted to the right, each stroke deliberate. She wrote the way she fought: carefully, efficiently, with purpose.
He began to read.
"My dear Sakura,
If you're reading this, then I didn't come back. I'm sorry. I wanted more time to help you remember what it means to be human, but it seems time has run out for me.
I'm writing this from my tent, listening to rain against canvas, and I can hear the soldiers outside preparing for tomorrow's battle. Some of them are singing. Some are writing letters to families they might never see again. Some are just sitting quietly, thinking about everything they'll lose if the morning goes badly.
I'm thinking about you.
You're sleeping now—I checked on you twenty minutes ago. You sleep like you're standing guard, did you know that? Even unconscious, you're alert, ready, weapon-ready. It breaks my heart every time I see it. No one your age should sleep like that. No person should carry war into their dreams.
You asked me once why I call you Sakura. I told you about the cherry blossoms, but I didn't tell you everything. The truth is, you remind me of a story my grandmother used to tell.
There was once a cherry tree that grew on a battlefield. Every spring, it bloomed despite the blood in the soil, despite the violence, despite everything. Soldiers from both sides would stop fighting when they passed it, just for a moment, to remember that beauty still existed. That life still mattered.
Then one year, a terrible winter came. The tree didn't bloom. Everyone thought it was dead—that the war had finally killed even this last beautiful thing. But the tree wasn't dead. It was just... waiting. Gathering strength. Remembering how to bloom.
The next spring, it flowered more beautifully than ever before.
That's you, Sakura. You think you're dead inside. You think feeling was beaten out of you, trained out of you, erased completely. But I've seen evidence otherwise. Small things. Moments when you pause before responding to me, as if something inside is trying to surface. The way your eyes track falling cherry blossoms even though you claim to only calculate their trajectory. The fact that you still dream at all, even if they're nightmares.
You're not dead. You're waiting. Gathering strength. Remembering.
I'm ordering you—one final time—to live. Not for me. Not for the military. Not for anyone else. For yourself. Find something that makes your heart beat faster. Find someone who makes you want to smile without being told. Find a reason to wake up that isn't duty or orders or the mechanical execution of survival.
Find your spring, Sakura.
I know you'll try to execute this order literally. You'll probably create a checklist: Step 1 - Identify heart rate elevation triggers. Step 2 - Catalog smile-inducing stimuli. Step 3 - Optimize waking motivations. And honestly, that's fine. Start there if you need to. Turn being human into a mission if that's what it takes. But eventually, I hope you'll discover that being human isn't something you achieve. It's something you already are, underneath everything they did to you.
There's something else I need to tell you, and this is the hardest part to write.
I know about your previous life.
You talk in your sleep sometimes. Not often, and not clearly, but enough. You've mentioned things that don't exist in this world—moving metal boxes, glowing tablets, buildings that touch the sky in ways our architecture doesn't allow. At first, I thought it was fever dreams or trauma-induced fantasy. But the details were too consistent, too specific.
I don't understand how it's possible. Reincarnation? Parallel worlds? Some phenomenon beyond my comprehension? I don't know. But I believe you. I believe you died before. I believe you carry trauma from a life that technically hasn't happened yet. I believe you've been broken twice.
And I am so, so sorry that the universe gave you this burden.
But here's what I want you to understand: You survived twice. You died twice and came back. That means something. That means you're stronger than death itself. That means even when everything is taken from you—your family, your innocence, your humanity—you find a way to continue. Even if you don't remember any of it. Because deep inside you do, but you don't realize it yet. As those memories haven't properly surfaced Sakura.
That's not weakness, Sakura. That's the most profound strength I've ever witnessed.
So yes, I'm ordering you to live. But I'm also asking you—as someone who cares about you more than I should, as someone who sees you as more than a weapon, more than a soldier, more than a tool—please live. Please find your spring. Please bloom.
The world needs beauty after so much violence. And you are capable of beauty, even if you can't see it yet.
I'm about to go into battle. I might not survive tomorrow. But if I die, I want to die believing that you'll be okay eventually. That somewhere, years from now, you'll stand under cherry blossoms and feel something other than emptiness. That you'll smile because you want to, not because someone ordered you to. That you'll find purpose beyond violence and meaning beyond duty.
If I'm gone, know this: I died believing you would bloom. I died with hope. And hope, I think, is the most human thing there is.
Thank you for letting me try to save you, even though I probably failed. Thank you for existing, even when existence is painful. Thank you for being my Sakura.
With all my hope, all my faith, all the love a commander probably shouldn't feel for her soldier but feels anyway,
General Hazami Kokoro
P.S. - If you're reading this and feeling nothing, that's okay too. Feelings take time. Sometimes years. Don't rush them. Don't force them. Just... stay alive long enough for them to arrive. That's all I ask."
Buki finished reading.
The office was silent except for the sound of breathing—his own, uneven and sharp; Yuki's, trembling with suppressed sobs as she struggled to understand this glimpse of another world; and Kaito's, steady, aged, and tinged with quiet sadness. He didn't fully grasp the otherworldly part either, but chose to push it aside for now.
He read the letter again. Then a third time. Each pass revealing new layers, new meanings, new impossibilities.
She knew. About his previous life. About dying in 2027. About Tokyo and his mother and the knife and everything he thought was sealed away in rooms no one could access. A life he couldn't remember but except only when he was not conscious. Memories stored deep inside his heart.
She knew, and she believed him, and she never told him she knew because—why? To protect him? To let him reveal it when ready? To avoid forcing memories that might destroy what little stability he had?
The pressure in his heart was back. But different now. Not building gradually. Just... there. Fully formed. 15.7. Crushing. Impossible. "Buki?" Yuki's voice seemed to come from very far away. "Are you okay?"
Was he okay?
His vision was blurring—optical distortion, possibly due to tear production, though he wasn't consciously crying. His hands wouldn't stop shaking. His breathing had become gasps. The room was spinning—malfunction, inner ear disruption, or possibly just the world itself tilting on its axis.
"She knew," he said, and his voice broke completely. "She knew about before. About my mother. About dying. About everything. And she believed me. And she—she—"
The words wouldn't come. Too large. Too significant. Stuck in his throat like stones. "She loved you," Yuki said gently, and the statement was so simple and so catastrophic that something inside Buki finally, completely, irreversibly broke.
The sound that came out of him wasn't quite human. It was the sound of three years of suppressed grief, ten years of trained emotionlessness, fifteen years of systematic dehumanization, and an entire previous lifetime of trauma all trying to escape at once.
He doubled over, arms wrapped around his himself as if physically holding himself together. The letter fell from his hands. He couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Couldn't do anything except feel—and the feeling was too much, too vast, too everything.
"I never—" he gasped. "I never got to—she died and I felt nothing and she died believing I would bloom but I can't—I don't know how—I'm still just—" "Shh," Yuki was beside him now, arms around him, holding him while he fell apart. "It's okay. It's okay to break. It's okay to feel this. It's okay."
But it wasn't okay. Nothing was okay to him. General Hazami had died three years ago and he'd felt nothing. Had reported her death like reporting weather conditions. Had continued fighting, completing missions, executing orders, while her belief in him became just another casualty of war.
And now, reading her words, understanding that she'd seen him—truly seen him, all the broken pieces, both lifetimes of trauma, every empty room—and had believed he could bloom anyway...
It was too much. Too late. Too impossible.
"She said to live," he choked out. "She ordered me to live. But I don't—I don't know what that means. I've just been delivering death. Every day. More death. I'm still a weapon. I'm still—"
"You're not," Kaito's voice, rough and gentle. "You're not a weapon, kiddo. Weapons don't break like this. Weapons don't grieve. Weapons don't read letters from dead commanders and feel their hearts split open. You're a human. Messy, broken, grieving human."
Human. That impossible category.
Buki looked up at Kaito through blurred vision. The old gramps's eyes were wet too—he was crying, silently, for a child he barely knew and a general he'd never met and all the pointless violence that created moments like this.
"What do I do?" Buki asked, and the question encompassed everything. How to live. How to bloom. How to execute an order from a dead general who believed in him more than he believed in himself. How to be human when humanity felt like drowning.
"You start," Kaito said simply. "You start by crying. Then you start by getting up tomorrow. Then you start by delivering one more letter. Then one more day. Then one more moment. You start by trying, even when trying feels impossible. That's what living is."
Trying. That word again. That impossible requirement. But General Hazami had asked him to try. Had ordered him to try. Had died believing he would try.
And orders—even from the dead, especially from the dead—were what he understood. "Acknowledged," he whispered into Yuki's shoulder, the word muffled and broken but still a word, still a response, still a soldier accepting a mission he didn't know how to complete.
Outside, autumn leaves continued falling. Inside, a child who had forgotten how to be human slowly, painfully, began remembering.
And somewhere—in whatever place the dead went, if they went anywhere—General Hazami Kokoro smiled, believing still, hoping still, loving still. Her Sakura was finally beginning to bloom.
TO BE CONTINUED...