[KIYOMI]
There were so many ways to deal with grief and loss. Kiyomi had mastered them like the back of her hand. She had never once left anything to chance, because grief had been a part of her.
It had been her identity for over thirty years. She had been a runner alongside grief, in ways that no one would ever be able to truly comprehend. The stakes for her had always been worse than she had imagined.
Because, regardless of what she tried to do to make things right, the solution was never what it seemed. It only ever made things worse.
Grief was the worst possible thing anyone would ever have to experience.
Grief was a horror that even the devil himself had struggled to leave aside. It was a hard nut to crack, but nothing ever beat the grief of mourning someone who was not gone or dead.
Someone who was there, still living.
Mourning the living was a pain that Kiyomi had learned almost two years ago in Odanera.
