Heaven's Postman
There wouldn't be a sky full of stars if we were all meant to wish on the same one. –Frances Clark
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Guide To Becoming Heaven's Postman
Number 28:
Duty will end early if the living being who sends the letters realizes what you do, who you are and that you have cheated them.
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Chapter 7 – Star Light, Star Bright
The next morning, Sasuke searched the streets for a diner that was open before sun rise. He stopped walking when he saw the flashing, pink neon lights read OPEN in the window of a small diner that gave off a country, western feel to it. Entering, he realized that it was just him and an elderly man who chowed down on noodles. Since he though that the place looked promising, he took a seat on one of the wooden chairs next to rectangular tables that was covered with a lace, white table cloth. He clearly heard the rattle of pans and plates in the kitchen and the loud ticking of the clock.
"Excuse me!" he called out. Movement in the kitchen did not stop. "Excuse me? I want to order!"
A waitress came out from the doors with a rug in her hand. Proceeding to cleaning a table, Sasuke realized he was being ignored.
"I'm ordering here," he said, frustrated now.
Nothing came from the waitress or anyone else.
Annoyed, he stood from his seat, making noise with his chair. "I'm trying to order," he repeated in a firm tone.
Then the waitress poured more tea into the old man's cup.
"I'm ordering!" he said with volume. He felt like he was invisible. "I said… I'm trying to…"
He quickly gave up when a sudden thought came to his mind. His time was almost up and everyone around him didn't notice him anymore. He suddenly worried about Sakura and how she would feel if he never came to meet her again. What would she think of him? Would she compare him to Daisuke? The same worries of yesterday came back and haunted him, fighting to be fixed.
Desperate to find someone who could actually see him, he entered a coffee shop with a sign reading KAZUMA outside with Roman-style letters. Sasuke paused at the front door, silently watching as a man in his fifties tossed a black-binder on a table and tended to the flowers in the vases. What would he do if nobody could see him? He bit at lip at the thought.
"Sorry, when did you come in?"
Turning back to the reality and away from his thoughts, Sasuke took notice that the man was speaking to him and nobody else since the place was still empty at so early in the morning. "You can see me," he mumbled, sighing.
He blinked twice at his statement. "Of course… Would you want a drink or food?"
"Coffee please. Black."
"Right away." He moved to the kitchen swiftly. "Please wait for three minutes."
Looking around, Sasuke thought that the place was heart-warming and had a sense of home to it. There were yellow sheets over the tables, vases of bright flowers that displayed on every table and metal chairs with yellow polka-doted cushions. On the walls were beautiful paintings and photographs.
He wandered over to the table where the man had earlier tossed a black binder on to. Sasuke flipped through the pages in curiosity. He saw many pictures of the sky and clouds in different occasions—sunset, dawn, dusk, twilight, a storm…
"That's not for sale, costumer. You're not actually allowed to look at that," the man said, walking back to the dining area.
Sasuke bowed quickly. "My apologies."
The owner shook his head after a thought. "No, sorry. I mean it's not a big problem for you to see, but…" he trailed off, unable to finish.
"I'll be careful," he assured.
He nodded at the postman. "Of course."
Studying the album again, he noticed a signature that read "Kazuma," just like the restaurant's name on some of the corners of the pictures. "Is your name Kazuma, Misuta?" Sasuke questioned.
"No, that's my son's name. He took some of those pictures in the album and those pictures on the walls over there." He gestured to the photographs on the wall that hung proudly. "My name is Ryouji."
Ryouji held a grey tray with a mug of coffee after he had come back from the kitchen three minutes later after the coffee was brewed. Carefully, he placed the steaming mug down next to Sasuke's elbow.
Sasuke bowed again in thanks, suddenly feeling very grateful. Maybe because he was still relieved that someone could see him, though he could not figure out why the waitress had ignored him at the diner. Poor service?
"Mind if I join you for a seat?" he asked, his hands folded together at his abdomen.
The postman shook his head. "Go ahead, Ryouji-san."
The owner sat down from across him and a longing expression suddenly flooded his face as Sasuke flipped to more pages of the album in wonder.
"These are all sky photos," he observed, saying his thought aloud. Then he took a sip of coffee, careful not to drip some into the album.
"Yes, they are sky photos. I spent my life taken pictures of them, though only some of them belong to me. My son took the rest."
"Since when did you start taking these pictures?"
Ryouji leaned back on his seat, pondering. "Seven or eight years now, I guess."
"It looks like you really like the sky." Sasuke cleared his throat. "Sorry. I sound like an idiot asking these questions."
"Not at all. It's not that I like this hobby, but my son kept taking pictures of the sky."
"I see," he muttered.
That longing expression came back to Ryouji once again. "My son passed away seven or eight years ago. It doesn't really make sense, but I'm continuing his hobby, I guess." He chuckled with no emotion because it was forced, trying to lighten the atmosphere. Ryouji somehow felt safe to share it with Sasuke.
Sasuke knew that he could not say "It's okay," because of the time he had been working as a Heaven's Postman, he knew that something so simple could not heal broken and permanent wounds on the heart. He also could not say "I'm sorry to hear about that," because his son was a stranger to him and did not even know how he looked like.
"I'm sure he's doing well in a better place," Sasuke said instead.
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The postman made it a habit to check the area around for people before he preceded into empting the legendary, red mailbox. And that was what he did exactly when he arrived at the hill at seven in the morning after coffee with Ryouji.
He inserted the key and twisted it. Sasuke was not surprised when he found the mailbox empty. The day before, next to the lighthouse, he had given Sakura a duplicate key. He scanned the sight once again before fleeing, planning to take the bus to the lighthouse, though he did not expect that Sakura could grab the letters before he could.
Sasuke was relieved to know that the bus driver could see him, therefore stopped in front of him and allowed him to take a seat. As the bus rumbled, the dark-haired boy searched through his messenger bag and pulled out the book titled Guide To Becoming Heaven's Postman. Sasuke began skimming though he book, trying to determine why he had been invisible to some people but not Ryouji or the bus driver.
Finally, he had found the right page, one that he had accidentally skipped.
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Number 5:
You are to only appear visible to those who suffer the lost of a loved one. To anyone else, you are not seen.
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He sighed in relief, because he knew that his duty was not being cut short because he had disobeyed a rule. When fifteen minutes passed, Sasuke got off the bus and started his way toward the lighthouse, expecting a pink-haired girl there.
Sasuke walked through the concrete path in the drizzle and took the stairs down to the basement where the lighthouse's watcher kept his office. The building was abandoned many years ago when ships stopped docking by the shore. Now the tall tower was just a piece of scenery. When he came downstairs, he was surprised by the fact that Sakura was hugging the bundle of letters to her chest with her head bowed over them, as if a little girl hugging a pillow or a stuffed animal during a frightening storm.
"Sakura, what are you doing?" he questioned, hesitating at the foot of the stairs.
She looked up at him, not releasing grasp of the papers. Her eyes were twinkling with liquid, proving she was crying again. "Oh sorry… I brought all the letters from the mailbox first."
"No, that's all right," he began. "But what are you doing?"
Sakura looked down at her arms. "My heart is aching. The mother who left that lunchbox with sushi and egg rolls to the child last time left another letter."
"What did she say?"
She began reading…
To the Inari that I love,
Obachan [grandmother] passed away already. We used to look at the stars at night and make wishes together. Do you remember that? Today, I looked at the stars and asked myself what I wanted to wish for. I want to see you. That's all I can think of—a simple wish saying "please bring me back my child."
When Sakura was finished reading the letter she sighed and said, "But we can't fulfill her wish, Sasuke."
A tiny smile formed at Sasuke's lips. "Is that why you're hugging the letters, because you can't fulfill her wish?"
The pinkette nodded.
Sasuke put his bag down next to a chair beside her and sat on it. He then threw his arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer into a sideways embrace. Sakura liked how her head fit perfectly into the crook of his neck.
"I'm hugging you, who is hugging those letters. Then I'm hugging the letters too," he said, his voice sweet like caramel in Sakura's ears when he talked comfortingly.
They stayed in that same position for a long moment as they hoped that time could freeze and keep them together like that. He thought about how he would miss her hugs, her voice, her laugh that made the birds stop and stare and how she cared for those who sent the letters when no one cared for her when she sent letters to Daisuke.
"You know that I'll write, right?" she asked.
"Hmm?"
"Remember what you said to me last time? You wished that there will be someone who cares for a person even if he or she is dead."
Then she quoted in a dumb voice, "'No one will write a letter to a person like me.'" She laughed. "Remember saying that to me?"
Sasuke smirked. "Yes, I do." He clearly remembered that afternoon on the hill where he had told her that.
Sakura closed her eyes. "I'll write to you. Every single day, Sasuke… I'll write to you."
Even if Sasuke didn't reply, she knew that he felt happy inside. Though he did not express his emotions very often, Sakura learned how to read the boy's mind properly without words. She leaned away, separating from him slowly.
"What's wrong?" he questioned her.
"My eyes are dry. Thank you, Sasuke."
He looked down at his hands, slightly embarrassed and not knowing that to say.
For the next fifteen minutes, they read through the letters together, separating those they can fulfill and those that would take a miracle from God to achieve. As he was reading, Sakura thought that Sasuke's eyes were glassy and still, a sign that he wasn't reading the letter, but day dreaming.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
Instead of answering, he put the letter down and got up from his seat, wandering toward the wall. He examined the net that was pinned against it. The net where they clipped photos using peg clips they found around the room. There was one where Sakura took a picture as he was reading a letter a meter away form the mailbox, sitting on the gradd. Another with Sakura in it this time as Sasuke folded his arms over the mailbox and Sakura smiled and took a picture with the camera facing the both of them. His favourite was one he took—Sakura was pointing at the sky, indicating a jet plane, and it looked as if she was pointing to Heaven.
"Sasuke?"
He shook his head. "Nothing important."
Sakura pursed her lips. "If you say so… What's that in your pocket? Is it another letter?"
Sasuke fished the brown envelope from his pocket. He noticed the letter written by Ryouji in the coffee shop earlier. Then he told Ryouji had he was going to drop a letter off in the red mailbox. The man, in turn, mentioned that he was going to do the same thing in the afternoon.
"I'll save you the trouble and bring it there for you," Sasuke had said.
Passing the letter to him, he knew that Ryouji trusted the envelope in his hands, despite that he was a stranger.
"Here," he said, passing Sakura the envelope.
Author's Notes: How's about that heart-warming scene? And it's about time I introduce this new character (Ryouji)! This man's case about his deceased son will be further looked up than the other major cases Sakura and Sasuke dealt with like Yuu and Shinchi. I hope you are looking forward to it! Have a happy New Year!