Shinjiro died before the war even had the courage to begin.
On an ordinary evening, in a spring too cold to bring anything back to life.
In a hospital room with a cracked ceiling, lit by a flickering neon light.
For days, his breath had been nothing more than the shadow of a breath.
His gaze had slowly emptied, like a night sky swallowed by endless clouds.
I sat there, on a chair too narrow, watching a body that was no longer truly his.
His face had become a crumpled parchment.
Every wrinkle, every spot, every fold told the slow story of a human life fading away.
And I watched, without understanding, unable to share in his decay.
In one last movement, he turned his head towards me.
A thin, trembling smile, more fragile than a leaf in autumn.
— "You know… it's funny, in a way. I spent my whole life chasing time. You… you just stayed the same."
His frail hand rested on my arm, so light it could have floated away with a breath.
— "You haven't changed… all this time. I think I knew it… deep down."
He closed his eyes.
His breath faded away.
Quietly.
Silently.
As if apologizing for leaving.
I stayed there.
Still.
Always.
The world didn't wait for my grief to end.
The embers of politics had long been smoldering, stoked by the pride and foolishness of men.
The newspapers spoke of fragile alliances, quiet threats, sanctions traded like knives in the dark.
And then, nothing quiet anymore.
Words became shouts.
Shouts became blows.
Blows became fire.
The first missile was launched under a stormy sky.
A capital city erased in the blink of an eye.
A flash brighter than human anger.
The news spread faster than the radioactive dust.
And the world burned.
Whole cities were turned to ashes.
Millions swept away like crumbs in a foul wind.
I was there that day.
On a street I knew well.
When the sky tore open, swallowing the earth and its people in one bite.
A flash.
An inhuman heat.
A monstrous blast.
I felt my bones shatter.
My flesh burn away.
My very being erased.
Nothingness.
Then, against all logic,
My eyes opened again.
The world had vanished.
Only a desert of ash remained.
In the days that followed, I walked.
Through ruins, through corpses, through shadows.
The air tasted of iron and ashes.
The wind carried only the smell of burnt flesh, of memories reduced to dust.
Under a collapsed beam, voices.
Faint.
Human.
I slipped between the rubble.
They were there.
A young man, his arm crushed beneath a wall, his mouth full of blood.
A woman, curled up against the small body of a dead child.
An old man, sitting, his gaze empty, already deserted by life.
When I came closer, the young man looked up at me with clouded eyes.
— "How the hell… how did you…"
His sentence died in a gurgle.
The woman just stared at me, her eyes filled with a resigned terror.
— "He's dead, right? Tell me…"
I said nothing.
Because there was nothing left to say.
That night, I stayed.
I watched them die, one by one.
The old man first.
Then the young man.
And finally the woman.
Her last words were almost a sigh.
— "Why you… why are you the one who stays…"
And then, nothing.
Only the cold.
Only the silence.
In the days that followed, I met more ghosts.
A father dragging the mutilated body of his child.
An old woman whispering the name of a husband, of whom only a charred hand remained.
A boy kneeling over his spilled guts, screaming a name that would never answer again.
Each time, I reached out my hand.
Each time, too late.
I stayed.
They left.
When the bombs stopped, when nothing was left but dust for the wind to carry, I kept moving.
Through rubble.
Through crushed bones, through ruins, through remains.
There were no more screams.
No more prayers.
Not even hate.
Only silence.
Heavy. Clinging.
A silence that wouldn't let go of me.
I walked.
Like a tightrope walker over the ruins of a world that no longer existed.
And in my mind, a single question, turning over and over:
Why them? Why not me? Why always me?
It was there, among the ashes and bones, that I finally understood.
I wasn't a survivor.
I was a mistake.
A leftover.
A ghost trapped in a body that refused to die.
Immortality wasn't a blessing.
It was a punishment.