The night before the war was quieter than any night had a right to be.
Outside, the camp slept like a held breath. Inside my room, the silence was a blade.
I dragged myself through the door half-dead, every muscle screaming from the day's punishment.Army training wasn't easy. The bathroom light flickered once, then steadied, and I turned the taps until steam rose like ghosts. While the tub filled I started cleaning my room, as I didn't clean it since the attack on camp.My gaze snagged on the small wooden box beneath the bed.
Inside lay the letters.
Dozens of them. Folded so many times the creases had turned soft as cloth.
Letters I wrote when thinking about him felt knocking at locked door.
When I pressed my forehead to the wall at night and whispered his name into the dark like a prayer no one would ever answer.
When I imagined his hands on me and hated myself for wanting a man who would never want me back.
I took one out. The ink had bled a little from tears I didn't remember shedding.
To Akira,
If you ever read this, I will already be ash…
I dropped it on the bed like it burned.
My life had changed a lot that it made me remind the life I had with my dad, I murmered to myself, "Dad never came," I whispered to the empty room. "Not once. Maybe I was always just… weight."
The words tasted like rust. I yet want him live a long life. He could hate me but as a daughter I was unable to hate him .
The tub was ready.
I sank until the water closed over my shoulders, scalding, perfect. It drank the ache from my bones, but it couldn't reach the deeper wound. I closed my eyes and saw tomorrow: laughter cut short by gunfire, mouths frozen mid-sentence, bodies folding like paper dolls. And somewhere in that red future, Akira (my Akira) bleeding out on foreign soil while I screamed his name across an ocean that wouldn't carry it.
A sob tore loose. Then another. I pressed both hands over my mouth, but the tears came anyway, sliding hot down my cheeks to vanish into the bathwater like they had never existed.
"Not him," I begged the steam. "Anyone but him. Take me instead. Take me."
The water cooled. My skin pruned. I rose shivering, wrapped myself in the thin night kimono the colour of old blood, and stepped back into the room.
He was sitting on my bed.
Akira.
Moonlight carved silver across the sharp angles of his face, the shadows under his eyes, the fresh bandage darkening again with new blood. In his hand: the letter I'd left open.
Our eyes met. Mine were swollen, red, traitorously wet.
"Amane." His voice cracked on my name. "Are you crying?"
I tried to turn away. He stood, crossed the room in two strides, and cupped my face like I was made of glass.
"You're terrified," he said, soft, lethal. "You don't have to do this. Stay here. Let me go alone. I can protect myself—"
"Shut up!" The scream ripped out of me raw and ugly. "Shut up, shut up, shut up! I'm not afraid for me, you idiot—I'm afraid for you!"
Tears spilled again, violent. "My heart is screaming that tomorrow I lose you. Every beat feels like goodbye and I can't—I can't breathe with it—"
He crushed me to his chest. One arm locked around my waist, the other cradling the back of my head. I felt his lips in my hair, felt him inhale like he was memorising the scent of me.
"Shh, princess. Just sleep tonight. Let me carry this one."
He stabbed injection at my back.
I didn't feel the needle at first.
Only the sudden bloom of ice beneath my skin as he slid it between my shoulder blades while he held me. A perfect betrayal wrapped in tenderness.
Pain flared, bright and cruel. My knees buckled. I clawed at his shirt, nails tearing fabric, trying to hold on.
He whispered in my ears , " It's a sleeping drug. You will wake up after one day. I'm sorry princess."
"You… bastard…" The words slurred, thick with tears and sedative. "I have to… save you…"
He laid me down like I was already a corpse. The blanket he pulled over me still carried his warmth.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, voice breaking into shards. "I can't watch you die for me. Not you. Never you."
I fought the darkness with everything I had left. My fingers found his wrist, gripped until bones ground together.
"Akira… don't… leave me…"
He pressed his forehead to mine. I felt the tremor in him, the war inside the man who would burn the world to keep me safe.
"I love you more than tomorrow," he said, so quietly I almost missed it. "That's why I have to do this."
The drug dragged me under. The last thing I saw was his silhouette in the doorway, shoulders shaking with silent sobs he'd never let me hear.
The last thing I heard—raw, ragged, final:
"I'm sorry, Amane… forgive me…"
Then I blackout.
And in the dark, my heart kept screaming his name long after my voice was gone.