To: My Home

~~~📜~~~

The workshop smelled of oil, copper, and damp paper. Two oil lamps hung like tiny suns above the table, their flickering light casting long shadows across scattered gears. Clay bowls held ether crystals, and diagrams marked with arrows adorned the desks. Rei dipped the quill, brought it close to the parchment, and took a deep breath before writing.

“Kaede, Mei, Yūta, Haruto. How are you? I hope well, though to tell the truth, I don’t know if this letter will ever reach you. I hold on to the hope that Solaria, or someone, might send it to you as a sign, somehow…”

As the ink flowed with his pulse, the world outside seemed to fall into order. In the castle's corridors heralds hurried back and forth with lists and seals. More urgent than ever. King, Queen, nobles, and Council members bent over maps, debated patrol routes and guard rotations. Kounaria’s banner flapped in the window like a proud, swelling chest.

Rei set down the quill for a moment. The name he was about to write next clenched his throat. Closing his eyes, he returned for an instant to Kyoto. The polished wooden workbench, the iron glowing red, and Gorō’s figure laughing first with his eyes, then with his mouth. He breathed again, and the quill moved on.

“Not a day or night goes by that I don’t think of you. About Gorō… I regret that deeply. I wish I could have done more in that moment, or been there to protect you. But now I have a mandate: to free this world, Sylvaterra, from the Pirate Kingdom. Until then, my mission lies here, waiting for me.”

He paused. His hand trembled slightly. In the open workshop window—open since he wasn’t preparing any secret prototypes yet—the sky brightened into a cold shade of blue. A distant hammer strike marked the rhythm of the port under reconstruction.

He wrote again.

“Since I arrived, it hasn’t been easy at all, to be honest. I’ve suffered many blows, both physical and of spirit, and I’ve faced countless dangers. But please, don’t feel sorry for me. Quite the opposite, it’s shaping me into someone entirely different. Despite the hardships, I fought and carried on, and today I am the light of hope for a kingdom called Kounaria, as I fight against the wicked pirates. I’m sure you would love to be here, fighting by my side.”

As the words took shape, memories cut through him in brief scenes. His arrival, fighting a wolf. That first failed clash with a Malbrine, now just history. The horse chase, the fall from the fishing boat onto the pirate brig. His first stun grenade exploding too soon, thunder shattering his ears. Drey Malbrine’s cold eyes looming with a crooked smile and the stench of rotten salt. Sylve waking on deck with a frightened scream. His and Leonoris’s hands pressed together over the crystal, white light blossoming in the air like a flower. Nessus laughing from a rooftop with a cat held high. Ettor shielding him while he worked his tricks. A parade of fears and laughter hovered for a moment on the page, then drifted away like a wisp of smoke.

The quill ran on.

“I met so many wonderful people. People who risk their lives for me and for their people. An archer as stubborn as he is funny, a serious swordsman who reminds me of Gorō, and a gentle princess who shines even when she wants to hide under a hood. They are… like a family.”

In the castle courtyards, Leonoris moved with a crystal in her palm, her other hand pointing to the target, her clear voice teaching recruits how to invoke Solaria’s Blessing. Beside her, two young men repeated the gesture, failing and laughing. Further on, Nessus gathered a circle of children, each with a wooden sling, showing them angles as he retold epic battle stories. A few meters away, Ettor corrected stances and nodded with his eyes whenever someone hit their mark.

Rei pressed his forehead against the back of his hand for a moment. He wished his siblings could have seen it firsthand.

“We won a great battle a few days ago, and the city is being rebuilt. Now I’m learning about this world. You would be amazed by the number of monsters, much stranger than the bedtime stories. Werewolves, dragons, demons, ice masters… there are even elves and a strange fox-like people. And that’s just from my first class.”

He remembered, days ago, Leonoris and Queen Valeta unrolling a map that smelled of aged leather and salt. A wide circle, twelve kingdoms marked like petals at the rim. And at the center, the Pirate Kingdom, in the mysterious vortex where everything floated effortlessly, where islands hung in the sky. “I’ll focus on that later,” he thought.

“The most incredible thing is that, after fighting, the people lost their fear. They no longer hide when they hear of pirates. Now they build barricades, train, sing, and laugh. They rise at dawn to rebuild what was burned, and they go to sleep knowing that tomorrow Kounaria will shine a little brighter. I had never seen anything like it. And that is what I want you to do right now. If you fled from those thieves… never stop fighting. Wherever you are, take care of each other, and also of those who lend you a hand, just as you cared for Gorō and me.”

At the port, carpenters sawed planks as if the wood were bread. They rejoined railings, patched hulls, swapped old ropes for new ones that smelled of fresh hemp. A grandmother painted the word hope on a board to hang over her door. Two children played “Pirate Buster.” An old fisherman set out to sea after months. For the first time in ages, the tide didn’t seem eager to swallow them whole.

Rei slowed his hand for the closing lines.

“I’m going to free this world from the pirates. And sooner rather than later… I’ll return home to you. Wait for me. With love, your brother Rei.”

He reread everything. It wasn’t perfect. He wasn’t sure it was everything he wanted to say. But it was enough, and at least it reflected what Rei truly was: a Hero with many flaws, fears, and uncertainties, but a Hero nonetheless. He folded it carefully, wrapped it in waxed cloth, and went to the messiest table in the workshop. From between two blueprints he pulled out a hollow metal cylinder, screw-sealed, with small rubber washers he had improvised to keep water out. He slipped the letter inside, sealed it, tapped the thread three times with his nail to check it was tight. Projectile ready, clipped to his belt.

The dawn greeted him with a breath of air that smelled of salt and fresh bread. He walked alone toward the pier, passing neighbors who saluted him with a nod and let him through in silence. Respect lay in the clear sky and calm water, both now free of pirates.

He stopped midway and looked back. The city alive. New tarps on rooftops, kitchen smoke instead of flames, fading songs of the last taverners. The castle still standing, Kounaria’s flag bigger than ever on the main mast. Strange to think that, somehow, all of this had passed through his hands. Shame mixed with a pride that warmed his chest.

He clasped his hands. “May it reach them. May it find them. May they know I am well, and that I will return.”

He pulled out the pneumatic launcher. Slid the letter-cylinder into the rail, tightened the clamp so it wouldn’t shoot off at an angle. Opened the valve and heard the soft hiss of compressed air. Aimed upward, forward, toward the shining future.

“Here we go,” he murmured.

He pulled the trigger.

The projectile flew like a mute arrow, slicing through the crystalline dawn. For a heartbeat it seemed frozen, as if the world had paused to let one remember, then traced a clean, beautiful arc, echoing the shot that had struck the Scarlet Colossus. It gleamed faintly as a gust of golden light caught it, then dropped gently into the waters that hid the Colossus’s bones.

Rei holstered the launcher. He didn’t move his feet. He lifted his face to a sky now painted in the perfect blend of orange and blue he loved. One stubborn star lingered, or perhaps it was the fading trail in his mind of what he had just launched. He thought of Kyoto. He thought of Kaede, Mei, Yūta, Haruto. He thought of Gorō, arms crossed, smile tilted to the side.

“I hope you’re proud of me, of my plan, Gorō,” he whispered.

He turned away. There were maps to study, pieces to polish, people to train. A world to free, and a home to return to. That same sky. That same sea. Kashiwa Rei would have to conquer them if he wanted to make it back. And, for the first time since arriving, he believed without a shadow of doubt that he could.