The city never slept. Tokyo was a creature of its own, humming and rattling, pulsing like the veins of a body that could never rest. Neon signs hissed in the mist. Subways spat out waves of people who looked like shadows with briefcases. Traffic lights blinked in regimented rhythm, red to green, green to red, like heartbeats.
Raka Grundane stood in the middle of it all and felt like the only one who didn't belong.
She was a mountain in a land of rivers. Her shoulders too broad, her muscles too thick, her voice too loud. She had survived eighty years by becoming stronger than anyone expected her to be, but here—here in the belly of the city—strength didn't matter. Words mattered. Papers mattered. Numbers mattered. She had none of those even after moving from her small town to Tokyo all from that new recent little resolve in her heart.
Her bag was proof of it.
Inside, stuffed until the seams bulged, were one hundred rejection letters. She had counted them. One hundred and three, to be exact, but the number barely mattered anymore. Each was folded neatly, smoothed flat, because she couldn't bring herself to crumple them. Crumpling them felt like denying their reality, and she had spent her entire life being told she was in denial about her failures.
Better to carry them. Better to let them cut me every time I look at them.
She had come to Tokyo with her chin high, muscle out, fists clenched. She thought if she could survive parents who abandoned her, an aunt who raised her without love, bullies who spat on her, a disability that made even reading street signs feel like scaling cliffs, then surely the city would offer her something.
Instead, it ate her alive.
Factories turned her away when she misread instructions.
Cafés shook their heads when she stumbled over registers.
Construction sites laughed and told her she was "too slow to follow orders."
One place even said it outright: "We can't take on someone like you. We'd spend more time fixing your mistakes than paying you."
She carried every word like another brick on her back.
So she smoked.
It had started as a way to kill the silence of nights alone in her rented room, staring at the walls that smelled of mildew. A cigarette was something to do with her hands, something to press to her lips when there was nobody else to talk to. She didn't enjoy it. She didn't need to. The smoke filled her heart with something other than despair for a few seconds, and that was enough.
And when the city's rejections piled too high, her old goofy mask—the one she had perfected as a child when teachers mocked her—slipped back into place. She laughed louder. She made bad jokes. She clowned for strangers. If she looked ridiculous, then at least nobody could see her breaking.
That night, Tokyo was painted white.
Snow fell heavy and wet, muffling the honks of taxis and the chimes of convenience stores. People rushed faster than usual, collars turned up, hands stuffed in pockets. But Raka wandered.
Her boots left deep dents in the powder. The city lights turned every flake into a prism, falling diamonds that vanished the instant they touched her shoulders. She dragged her breath deep and slow, then puffed out a cloud of smoke that mingled with the snow like ghosts escaping her lungs.
Her wandering took her where it always did: the pharmacy.
It wasn't deliberate, not at first. But her feet carried her there anyway. A little shop wedged between a laundromat and a ramen bar, its green cross glowing faintly against the night. She leaned her back against the brick wall, pulled a cigarette from her pocket, and lit it with hands that shook—not from cold, but from everything inside her she could never name.
The irony wasn't lost on her. Smoking outside a pharmacy. The place where her dream had always lived. She almost laughed aloud at herself, but the sound died before it reached her lips.
She puffed. Inhale, exhale. Pretend the smoke was her soul leaving her body. Pretend she was lighter each time.
But her bag tugged at her shoulder, reminding her of its contents. A hundred failures pressing into her ribs.
She muttered, voice low, broken. "Dead now. That dream's dead. Better off buried."
The snow fell heavier.
The door opened.
"Again?"
The voice cut across the night, sharp as a slap.
Raka didn't turn. She knew it too well by now.
A young teenager stepped into the snow, the pharmacy light behind him casting his hair into a pale halo. It was the color of frost—light blue strands fluttering in the cold wind. His eyes were violet, deep enough to catch the reflection of falling snowflakes, making it seem as if winter itself lived in his gaze.
Akio.
He had caught her here before. Dozens of times, maybe more. Every time she lit up in front of this shop, he emerged like a ghost of disapproval, arms folded, scolding her with words that should have bounced off but never quite did.
He carried himself like someone much older, like the world's weight was already resting on his back.
"Raka," he said, pinching his nose against the smoke, "how many times have I told you? Don't smoke here. Especially here."
Raka barked a laugh, loud and raspy, her goofy mask slipping into place as easily as breathing. "What's wrong, kid? Afraid customers will think you sell cigarettes instead of cough syrup? Free advertising! Look how tough I am! Still puffin' at eighty!"
Akio's eyes narrowed. He strode forward, boots crunching the snow. "You'll kill yourself. You are killing yourself."
"Then I'll die lookin' cool." She struck a ridiculous pose, flexing one enormous arm while letting the cigarette dangle from her lips. The smoke curled like a banner of defiance.
He groaned, reaching for her hand. "Give it here. Just—give it."
The motion was too quick, too sudden. His sleeve snagged her bag strap. The leather snapped.
The bag fell.
And with it, the weight of her life spilled out.
The snow became a blizzard of paper. White sheets scattered across the ground, sliding across the icy pavement, sticking to boots, tumbling into slush. Akio froze, then bent instinctively, gathering them before the wind could drag them away.
He picked one up.
Then another.
The words stared back at him: Application denied. We regret to inform you. We cannot employ you at this time.
Dozens of them. Hundreds.
Rejection after rejection.
He hadn't meant to pry, hadn't meant to read—but he couldn't stop. His violet eyes flicked from page to page, horror dawning with every letter. He had thought she was just an eccentric old granny, a nuisance with a cigarette habit. But this—this was something else.
Behind him, Raka froze. Her goofy grin vanished. Her cigarette shook between her fingers.
"Don't," she rasped, her voice a whip-crack of shame. "Don't look."
But it was too late.
Her body crumpled inward, shoulders hunching as if trying to fold herself small enough to disappear. Her breath hitched. For a moment she looked less like the steel granny everyone in Tokyo had learned to scoff at and more like a lost child, standing in the snow with her failures scattered like bones.
Akio held the papers in his hands, unsure what to say, unsure how to move. His eyes lifted from the words to her face, and for the first time he saw her—not the smoker, not the brute, not the clown. But the Raka who had carried one hundred heartbreaks alone and pretended they weighed nothing.
The snow fell harder, muting the city's roar.
Between them, the cold night held its breath.
And the episode ended there, on that silence—the young pharmacist clutching her rejected dreams, and the old granny trembling under the weight of having been seen.
TO BE CONTINUED...