The Letter to No One
To most, the 16th of March, 1982, was a completely ordinary day. To some, however, it was a very special day, and a small, eight-year-old boy was one of them.
Even if he was about to fall asleep out of sheer and utter boredom.
Really, he didn't know how good he had it. If he'd been the one currently winging his way across the English Channel in pouring rain, he certainly wouldn't have complained about having to wait around in an office in order to sign some papers.
But as it was, he was, in fact, not a raven flying across the English Channel in pouring rain, and so he did not properly appreciate his boredom; no, he was just happy that it would end soon.
For you see, today was the day Zoro Roronoa would become Zoro Roronoa Isshin and officially move out of the orphanage he had been living in for the last two years and move in with his new official guardian, Koshiro Isshin.
Note the "officially"s; Zoro had already been acting as a son in the Isshin house anyway, so the papers were mostly just a formality as far as the two (and Koshiro's daughter, Kuina, who one should never forget on pain of... pain) were concerned.
Considering that, perhaps it is understandable that the boy was quite a bit less excited than most young children would be in the same situation.
Still, he should have spared a thought for the poor raven, especially considering how he was just about to make things worse for the black-feathered fowl.
But it is seldom fair to blame a person for things that they could not possibly have been aware of, and as such we cannot think ill of the boy as he put his pen to paper, and, with seventeen letters in three words put to paper, completely severed the tenuous magical thread that the raven had followed all of the way from Japan in order to find the recipient of the letter clutched in his talons.
Confused, wet, cold, miserable and more than a little peeved, the raven resolutely dropped the now useless letter into the turbulent waters of the Channel and turned around to start making his way back to Japan.
He resolved to have words with whatever idiot had addressed the letter.
For those curious: no, the principal of Mahoutokoro did not appreciate the painful pecks to her hands and the repeatedly crowed "Inaaai, inai! Inai, baaaaaka!" in her ear.
Inai means "does not exist" and baka means "idiot" in Japanese.