‘ blue letters unsent ’

━━━━━

Cream paper feels soft on her fingertips, smells nice and it reminds her of the scent of the porch in summer with the wild berries blooming nearby. The comfortable cushioned seats and a hammock, overhead the featherlike cirrus clouds and the azure sky.

His handwriting— the slightly crooked, perfectly punctuated reminiscent of Cambria— occupies the entire page and she tries so hard to keep the tears from falling 'cause it's the words that hold more power than the bullet wounds.

Kai, it says at first, no traces of Dear or Beloved and it makes this small smile embrace her lips. Kaede is not dear or beloved or anything of the matter. She's an unapologetic fiend that's perfectly fine with herself. And Kai sounds perfectly fine with herself.

My heartfelt greetings although I imagine you loath to reciprocate with the same. It's Tomoe through and through. Our story is one of buts and maybes, and I know you're aware of your side of the story, but maybe it's time to tell you mine. And it's a matter of reminiscing the things they did when they were children.

Tomoe touring her through the vast compounds, pointing the boring parts of the place and Kaede, a girl who was more resentful than thankful for what he was doing. Tomoe pointing at the stars and telling her stories, myths of the people that had their names on them, the asterisms and the constellations, because that was what fueled her to love those brilliant space rocks.

I know you loved the stars more than I did (you're probably going to vehemently deny this) and it makes me so happy that I could make you smile for once. You probably didn't see it back then. The first time I took you around the compound, with that perpetual frown on your face and your aura emanating resentment. You smiled that day, when I pointed at the stars and told you, the sun is a star and you looked at me with eyebrows furrowed, told me that I was so stupid, that you may be merely ten years of age, one hundred and twenty months old, but you weren't stupid enough to believe. Believe me.

And I told you all the details, about how the sun was also a star and when you started to believe, looked down on that slightly damp patch of grass, I saw you frown, as if defeated by me and I put a hand on your shoulder. I told you I was lying, that the sun is not a star and you smiled, and it was beautiful, and terrifying at the same time.

Kai, your desire for victory frightened mo so much, you looked at the world as if there was nothing in it than wrongs needed to be turned right, no more than bleeding and making others bleed, painting right all over— your version of right, and I tried to stay away, but I came back every evening, told you stories about the stars, visited forbidden parts of the compounds and I was equal parts relieved and apprehensive that you weren't smiling anymore.

You looked at the world as if it was just in primary colors, of red, blue and yellow. Red for blood, blue for your feelings, and yellow for the sunshine you were so terrified of.

Then you pushed me away, so faraway that I lashed at you and told you all those horrible things, and I could never take them back, because it was true. I just omitted the part where I was terribly frightened of you, for what you could become.

I heard them talking Kai, in low murmurs on the corridors, over at coffee partnered with sweets I always found distasteful, how Kohaku and the other fanatics were overcame with joy.

Because you were going to be the exact thing I failed to be.

The perfect weapon.

There's a signatory and a postscript telling her to read the next letter and there are three of them in total and it isn't difficult to flip open the next letter which has the faint marking of two in it.

Unlike the first one, it was filled with more her name. Kai Kai Kai Kai, so many, one five ten fifteen eighteen twenty one in all.

I'm so sorry. It's my fault. It's mine. I shouldn't have wanted to become human, I shouldn't have stuck to those morals, and goodness that sensei hated. I shouldn't have believed in that woman.

Her name was Shimura Nana, a hero and she told me all the good things, talked to me when we crossed paths in the streets. It was my first mission, that's why I remember so much. I was ordered to follow her, note all the things she was doing and sensei had taught me so many things back then, but tailing someone was something I was never good at, so she found me— and you know what she did, Kai?— she gave me bread, melon bread and talked to me.

She thought I was just a beggar asking for food and I didn't want to be found out, so I rode along with the lie. Maybe it was better to be a beggar than who I am.

It's my fault Kai, because if I hadn't listened that day, if I wasn't so foolish as to ask her why she became a hero, you wouldn't have been so ruined.

Kai, I was turning five, my quirk hadn't even manifested yet, and I asked things, things that weren't supposed to be asked by a villain-in-training. I asked her if I was good, would the world be a little brighter? Would the murmurs about how I was a monster reverberating throughout the hallways cease? Would my parents finally be proud? Would the aching of my bones from all the time sensei broke them in an attempt to make me strong stop?

Could I have all the apples I wanted, all those sweet fruits? And juice? Would I have friends? Friends who wouldn't be afraid of me, afraid of what I was made to become?

Could I listen to music without being chastised? Could I watch the stars until they fade? Could I read comic books instead of The Art of War? Could I watch the television show about animals instead of educational videos created by sensei?

And she smiled at me Kai, as if I wasn't broken, put a hand on my shoulders and sensei would have called her naïve, but I believed in her, those things she was saying, about how people would be saved if only they believed, how the world would be a little better if you gave a smile.

I wanted to take her hand, Kai. I wanted to clutch her cape, tell her that I want to come with her and stop being bad, but sensei's voice rung in my ears — a telepathic quirk he collected, I figured a few weeks after that— and told me to run back to base.

I wanted to say no no no no, but the explosions begun and sensei told me that the explosions were my fault and that if that woman in front of me knew, she would destroy me and I was a naïve child who thought sensei was God. His shadow loomed over me whenever I went, so I ran away. I ran away from Shimura Nana and since then, I became so indecisive, so uncertain as to who I wanted to be.

He gave me her last name as a reminder of my mistake.

Shimura Tomoe, I was sensei's biggest disappointment.

The third letter and the paper feels so heavy on her palms. She's almost afraid to open it.

I was supposed to be the perfect weapon, my brother — the brother he assigned to me— the perfect wielder and we were supposed to carry on his wishes, but I broke apart and when my quirk manifested, he thought that it could fix me, so he sent me to that mission, the one I told you about. The one where I killed the family, but it only widened the cracks in me, Kai.

Sensei can make mistakes too and it was the biggest he had yet.

He tried and tried. Sent me to lots and lots of difficult missions and I came back bringing exactly the opposite of the results he wanted. I came back afraid and remorseful.

And days passed. Days that inevitably turned into weeks and coalesced to create months and years and Tenko was learning so many things and I did too, but I was forever broken in my mind, so he tried to search for a cure. Found nothing and heard about you.

The hateful psychopath of a girl much younger than me and he asked a lot of people to monitor you, to figure out if you were worthy. You probably didn't know, but half the people who wanted to kill you were sent by sensei. Tests, all of them and when you managed to succeed at the last one— with the mission the mobster gave you— that mobster who was was one of the fanatics. He ordered me to retrieve you.

I knew that I could kill you back then Kai, before sensei turned you into the perfect weapon, but I was petrified by you. I was too terrified of the look in your eyes that I even spared the two girls who were with you.

And I saw the exact person who I didn't want to become, but Shimura Nana told me, just once that everyone had the right to be saved and one act of good could make the world a little brighter, so I saved you. I ended up taking you back to the base, and even when I saved you, I hated you, continued to fear you, but when you said sorry, told me your name—

Kai, I was so happy, because I never thought I could have a friend until that day.

Maybe it meant nothing to you, that simple sorry, but it meant everything to me.

And maybe, just maybe, there was still hope inside you, so when you came back, with that look on your face. I was certain Kai. There was that grief you're masking, beneath those eyes of yours, there is a compunction for choosing them.

Those people whose broken shards fit perfectly into yours. Those people who you choose to erase from your mind, but I'm dying Kai— dead now, probably and with me are the barricades you put up to stop remembering them.

The cream paper is crumpling beneath her palm and she can feel the time of the paper trickling through her fingertips, but Kaede stops, remembers that this is a keepsake for Tomoe, so she wipes the tears and reads.

You've always wanted to be a queen, haven't you?

Kai, you are one. For what's it worth, you are the queen of your life and even though one life is just a drop in the ocean, Kai, the ripples you make will be unstoppable and the waves that churn from that ripple will topple pillars of darkness.

Kai, as cliché as it sounds, it's not to late to choose good. It's not too late to choose yourself.

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E N D  O F  C H A P T E R
— s e t t l i n g