The street was a graveyard of paper.
Sheets fluttered across the icy ground, half-buried in slush, words smudged and blurred but legible enough to stab. Rejections. Denials. Letters typed in cold, polite language that said the same thing over and over: We regret to inform you...
The wind pressed them down like epitaphs, and Raka sat in the middle of them, knees tucked in, cigarette drooping in her fingers. She looked less like a warrior and more like a monument someone had abandoned—tall shoulders slumped, braid streaked with frost, eyes hollow.
Akio had never seen her like this.
He bent down, hands trembling as he gathered the letters one by one. The paper was stiff, edges cutting at his skin as if punishing him for even touching them. His violet eyes traced each cruel phrase, and the silence in his heart grew heavier with every scrap he collected.
When the last page was plucked from the snow, he didn't immediately hand it back. He stood there, the bundle clutched against him, watching the smoke curl from her lips.
Her laugh had vanished. Her stubborn scowl too. What sat before him was raw, stripped, unbearably human.
The snow thickened. The city's neon signs flickered weakly against the storm, their colors bleeding into the dark like old paint washed by rain.
He knelt. Not too close, not too far. Just near enough that his breath fogged between them.
"Raka."
Her head jumped. "Don't. Just—don't."
Her voice was brittle, splintering on the edges. She turned away, as though she could vanish into the storm if she ignored him hard enough.
But Akio didn't leave. He looked at the bundle of rejection in his arms, then back at her, and said softly—words that felt stolen from somewhere deep inside him:
"I wanted to be a pharmacist too."
Raka froze.
Her cigarette dropped into the snow with a hiss. She stared at him, eyes wide, unsure if she'd misheard. But Akio didn't look away. He seemed almost ashamed, as though confessing a crime.
"I wasn't supposed to make it," he continued, voice low. "Not at first. I failed. Over and over. I didn't have the money, the connections, the background. Schools laughed at me. Companies ignored me. Everyone said the same thing: give up many times."
The storm muffled everything else—the cars, the footsteps, the life of the city—until only his words and the whisper of falling snow remained.
"And for a while," Akio said, a humorless smile tugging at his mouth, "I did. I told myself it wasn't worth it. That maybe I should just work in some store, or on the docks, or anywhere that paid enough to eat. That dreams were for people who could afford them."
His hands clenched around the papers, crumpling the rejection letters as though he were holding his younger self in his grip.
Raka's eyes trembled. Her lips parted, but no sound came.
"I was ready to disappear," he whispered. "And I would have—if not for them."
He lifted his head, meeting her eyes, violet burning faintly behind the snow. "People. Strangers, really. A few friends. They didn't owe me anything, but they... they couldn't stand to watch me sink. They helped. They taught me, vouched for me, opened doors. And then there was one—a leader, someone who had power—who looked at me and said: You tried. You kept trying. That's worth something. And thats Hikata but you don't know him."
He laughed under his breath, shaking his head. "That's all it took. One chance. And I built everything from there. Slowly. With their help."
He hesitated, voice dipping even quieter. "But I did fail one thing. One person. That's a story I'll keep buried, for now. It still burns when I touch it. But I learned from it."
The snow piled in his hair, softening his shape, but his words cut sharper than any storm.
"Failing doesn't mean you're finished," he said. "It just means you need someone to stand beside you."
His hand opened then. Slow. Steady. Palm up in the space between them, as if offering not only a gesture but a piece of himself.
"No matter how old you are. No matter how many times you've fallen. You can still reach for it. I know it feels impossible. I know it feels like you've already lost. But fate..." He breathed out, white mist curling from his lips. "Fate's stubborn. It keeps dragging us back to the path we were meant to walk, whether we like it or not."
He held her gaze, his voice softening to something unbearably human.
"Being alone doesn't help. I tried it. It only makes the darkness louder. Don't let it swallow you. And if nobody else will hire you... then I will."
The faintest smile flickered, fragile as a candle flame. "Not out of pity. But because you're more than a customer. You're someone I don't want to lose. Someone I... want as a friend."
The words rang in the stillness like a bell.
Raka's breath hitched. The air cut her lungs, sharp with cold and grief. Her memories surged without mercy—her great-grandfather's warm hand guiding hers over the pharmacy counter, the word destiny whispered in her ear; the cruel laughter of her classmates mocking her illiteracy; the silence of her parents, their backs turned when she begged for help.
Nights clutching a notebook filled with symbols she couldn't read but refused to throw away. Days carrying the weight of expectation like a stone on her mind. Years of rejection pressing her further and further into herself.
She wanted to scream. I am trying. I have always been trying.
But no one had ever heard.
Until now.
Her vision blurred—not from snow, not from smoke, but from the sting of tears she hadn't allowed in decades.
Akio didn't flinch. He simply waited, hand steady, eyes steady, a presence carved against the storm.
The silence stretched unbearably long. The kind of silence that could break a soul in half.
And then, with a trembling breath, Raka lifted her hand. It shook violently, fingers stiff with fear, with shame, with the unbearable risk of reaching.
At last, her palm met his.
Her voice broke, raw as an open wound. "Then... I'll take it."
The words fell into the snow like a prayer.
"I'll take the job."
Akio's grip tightened, not crushing but grounding. He nodded once, firmly, as though sealing a vow.
"Good. Then no more being alone Raka."
Her tears spilled freely, trailing hot against her frozen skin. She didn't wipe them away. For the first time in eighty years, she didn't care who saw.
The snow kept falling, covering the letters, burying rejection under white silence. And in that silence, something impossible stirred: the faint, fragile seed of a beginning.
Raka didn't know if she could grow it. Didn't know if she deserved to.
But she wasn't carrying it alone anymore.
And that was enough.
TO BE CONTINUED...