The sky above the Northern Clinic was the color of old newspaper—a gray so absolute it seemed to drain meaning from everything beneath it. Buki Kirā stood at the window of Room 47, his fingertips resting against the glass with the precise pressure of 2.3 kilograms per square centimeter. He had calculated this unconsciously, the way other kids his age might hum a melody without thinking.
He was not like other kids.
The glass was cold. He registered this fact the way one might note the time on a clock—as information, nothing more. Beyond the window, skeletal trees stretched toward that meaningless sky, their branches empty of leaves, empty of birds, empty of purpose now that winter had claimed them. Three years. He had been standing at this window, or one identical to it, for three years. One thousand and ninety-five days. Twenty-six thousand, two hundred and eighty hours.
The war had ended. Someone had told him this. He couldn't remember who. Information came and went like rain against windows—present, then gone, leaving no mark.
Behind him, the door opened with a sound like a breath being drawn. He did not turn. Turning required motivation, and motivation required caring about what might enter, and caring was a function he had not accessed since—
Since when? The question flickered and died, unanswered. "Buki Kirā?"
A persons voice. Soft. It had texture, like fabric against skin, though he didn't know why he thought this. He turned with military precision—ninety degrees, weight balanced, hands at his sides. Ready for orders. Always ready.
The person in the doorway was perhaps thirty, though age was difficult for him to calculate in civilians. She wore a long coat the color of dried roses, and her eyes were dark and sad in a way that suggested she had seen many rooms like this one, many kids like him. Her hair was pulled back simply, a few strands escaping to frame her face. In her hands, she held a folder—his folder, he assumed. His information. His data.
"My name is Clara Hoku," she said, and her voice was still soft, still textured. "I'm here to take you home."
Home. The word arrived in his mind like a letter in an unknown language. He could see the shapes, recognize it as a word, but its meaning remained foreign. Classified. Inaccessible.
"Acknowledged," he said. His voice came out flat, a single note on a broken piano. "Where is General Hazami Kokoro?"
Clara's face did something complicated—muscles contracting around her eyes, her mouth turning downward at the corners. He had seen this expression before. Designation: distress. Probability of mission complication: high.
"Buki," she said, and something in how she said his name made his heart feel strange, tight, like hands pressing on his ribcage. "I'm going to help you transition back to civilian life. The war ended three years ago. You've been here recovering. Do you understand?"
"The war ended." He repeated the information. "General Hazami Kokoro. Where is she?"
Clara's distress intensified. She opened her mouth, closed it. Opened it again. "We'll... we'll talk about everything. First, let's get you out of here. Would you like that?"
Would he like that? Like. Preference. Desire. Positive emotional response to stimulus. He accessed the memory banks where such responses should be stored. Found nothing. Static. Empty rooms in an empty house in an empty world.
"I have no data on my preferences," he reported. "I await orders."
Something happened to Clara's face then—her eyes became shiny, reflective, like glass in rain. Water. She was producing tears. Hypothesis: emotional distress reaching critical levels. He should probably do something. Provide comfort. That was... what people did, wasn't it? In the social integration videos they'd made him watch here, people touched each other when tears appeared. Hands on shoulders.
He did not move. The distance between understanding and action was infinite. "Oh, sweetheart," Clara whispered, and he didn't know why she used a word that meant follow me. "Let's just go. Come with me."
An order. He could follow orders.
He walked toward her, his footsteps perfectly even, perfectly measured. 1.2 seconds between each step. As he passed the window one final time, he glanced out at the gray sky, the skeletal trees.
Nothing looked different. Nothing ever looked different.
The city of Shin-Tokyo stretched before them like a promise he couldn't read. Clara had signed papers—many papers—and now they walked through streets that hummed with a life he couldn't quite hear. People moved past them, their faces animated with expressions that changed like weather: laughter, irritation, exhaustion, joy. Each face was a language he'd never learned.
"You must be hungry," Clara said, and he noticed she kept her voice gentle, as if he might break. People used to speak to him differently. Clipped. Sharp. Military efficient. "There's a restaurant nearby. We could stop."
Hunger. He assessed his hunger. Last meal: 0600 hours. Current time: 1347 hours. Stomach empty. Yes. Hunger was present. "Affirmative," he said. Clara made a sound—soft, sad. "You can just say yes, Buki. Or even just nod."
He filed this information away. Unnecessary verbosity in civilian contexts. Noted.
The restaurant was small, warm, filled with the smell of cooking rice and grilled fish. They sat at a table by the window—Clara had chosen it specifically, he noted, positioning him so he could see the street. Tactical consideration: maintaining visual awareness of environment. She had training. Interesting.
"Order whatever you want," she said, sliding a menu toward him. Want. Desire. Preference.
He stared at the menu. The characters swam before his eyes. Not because he couldn't read—his literacy scores were optimal—but because the question itself was incomprehensible. What did he want? What did wanting feel like? Was it like hunger? Like thirst? Like the strange tightness in his heart when Clara said his name?
"I don't..." he began, then stopped. Words were failing. This happened sometimes. Language required intention, and intention required desire, and desire required—
"It's okay," Clara said quickly. "I'll order for us both."
She did. Food arrived. He ate with mechanical precision, optimal bite sizes, efficient chewing, adequate hydration between portions. Clara watched him the way one might watch a complicated machine—with concern, with sadness, with something he couldn't name.
"Buki," she said finally, setting down her chopsticks. "I need to tell you something important. About General Hazami." His hands stopped moving. "Is this new mission data?" he asked.
"No, sweetheart. It's... she..." Clara's voice broke like glass. More tears. "The General died, Buki. Three years ago, in the final battle. She's gone." The words arrived. He processed them. Parsed their meaning. Analyzed their implications.
General Hazami Kokoro: deceased. Status: KIA. Classification: mission commander eliminated.
He should feel something. The social integration videos had been very clear. Death of important personnel = grief response. Grief = emotional pain + behavioral changes + elevated stress.
He accessed the grief protocols. Found nothing. "Acknowledged," he said, and resumed eating. Fork to mouth. Chew. Swallow. Repeat. Clara made a sound like she'd been struck. "Buki—"
"Mission parameters are unclear," he interrupted, his voice still flat, still that single broken note. "General Hazami Kokoro was my commanding officer. Her death removes chain of command. Who assigns my new objectives?"
"You don't have objectives anymore," Clara said, and now her tears were falling openly, and he didn't understand why his information was causing this response. "The war is over. You're free. You can just... live."
Live. Verb. To remain alive. To be alive. To have life.
But what was life without orders? What was existence without purpose? What was he supposed to do with days that stretched forward endlessly, each one identical to the last, each one empty of meaning?
The tightness in his heart increased. Heart rate: elevated. 98 beats per minute. 102. 107.
"I don't understand the parameters of this mission," he said, and some quality had entered his voice—something sharp, something jagged. "I require clarification. I require—"
His hands were shaking. He stared at them. Tremor frequency: 4.2. Cause: unknown. Medical emergency? System malfunction?
"Breathe," Clara said, and suddenly she was beside him, her hand on his back, warm through his shirt. "Just breathe, Buki. You're having a panic attack. It's okay. You're safe."
Panic. Fear response. Sympathetic nervous system activation. But he didn't feel afraid. He didn't feel anything. Just this pressure, this tightness, this sense of something vast and dark opening beneath him like a hole in the world.
"I don't have the protocols for this," he said, and his voice sounded wrong, younger, like it belonged to someone else. "I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to—"
"Shhh." Clara's hand patted his back. "You don't have to know. Not yet. We'll figure it out together." Together. Plural. Two or more entities working in coordination toward shared objective.
Slowly, the pressure eased. His heart rate decreased. 103. 98. 91. His hands stopped shaking. He stared at his half-finished meal, at the restaurant around him, at the people eating and laughing and living their incomprehensible lives.
"General Hazami used to do this," he said suddenly, surprising himself. The memory arrived unbidden, unclassified. "When I couldn't sleep. After battles. She would put her hand on my back. Just like this. And she would hum. A song about... about..."
Cherry blossoms. The memory fully materialized. A melody. Her voice, slightly off-key but warm. The feeling of her hand, exactly like Clara's hand, patting his shoulders.
"She cared about you very much," Clara said softly.
Cared. Past tense. Because she was dead. Because he would never see her again. Because the last order she gave him—what was it? His memory glitched, fractured. Something about living. Something about...
Nothing. Static. Empty rooms.
"I should feel something," he said, and this was perhaps the first true statement he'd made all day. "Someone important died. I should feel... what is the correct response? What am I supposed to do?"
"There's no 'supposed to,'" Clara said. "Grief is different for everyone. Maybe you're not ready yet. Maybe it'll hit you later. Or maybe..." She paused. "Maybe they trained you so well to not feel that you've forgotten how."
Forgotten how to feel.
Was that possible? Could emotions be lost like memories, misplaced like objects, erased like data? He tried to remember the last time he'd felt something—truly felt, not just registered information. Tried to remember joy, or sadness, or fear, or anything beyond this endless gray neutrality.
There was something. Distant. Age four? Five? Someone hitting him. Pain. Crying. Being told crying was weakness. Being punished for weakness. Being punished again. And again. Until the crying stopped. Until the pain became information. Until everything became information and nothing became feeling.
How old had he been when he stopped? He didn't know. He didn't remember. The empty rooms in his mind seemed to stretch forever.
Clara's apartment was small but warm, filled with things that suggested a life: books on shelves, photographs on walls, plants on windowsills. She showed him to a room—"your room," she called it, and again the possessive pronoun felt strange—furnished simply with a bed, a desk, a window.
"I'll be right next door," she said. "If you need anything, just knock." Need. Requirement. Necessity. "Acknowledged," he said, then remembered: "Yes." She smiled—sad, but a smile. "Good night, Buki."
She closed the door. He stood in the center of the room, calculating optimal sleep position, optimal resource utilization, optimal everything because optimization was what he did, it was what he was for.
But then he moved to the window instead.
Outside, the city glowed with ten thousand lights, each one marking a life, a person, a story he would never know. The sky was dark now, true dark, not the gray of the clinic. And there, just visible above the buildings, were stars.
He had seen stars before. On night marches. On guard duty. During the war. But had he ever really looked at them? He stared upward, trying to feel something, trying to find some response beyond clinical observation. The stars were distant. The stars were bright.
"General Hazami," he said quietly, speaking to the empty room, to the distant stars, to the ghost of a general who had tried to teach him what it meant to be human. "I'm trying. I'm executing your order. I'm trying to live. But how to live is something I don't understand."
His reflection in the window stared back at him: a kid of fifteen with empty eyes and a face that had forgotten how to show what little feeling remained. A weapon that didn't know how to be anything else. A person who had forgotten he was a person.
"I just don't know how," he whispered.
The stars didn't answer. The city lights flickered. And somewhere inside him, in one of those empty rooms, something that might have been grief—or might have been nothing at all—lay waiting for him to remember how to open the door.
Tomorrow, Clara had said, they would begin. Begin what, she hadn't specified. But orders were orders, even when you didn't understand them. Even when you didn't understand anything at all.
Buki Kirā turned from the window, lay down on the bed with military precision, and closed his eyes against the darkness that felt exactly like the darkness behind them.
Somewhere, cherry blossoms would bloom in spring. But spring was very far away.
TO BE CONTINUED...