Letters never sent - Personal diary of Kaori Yamamoto

[Kiith]

Welcome back, K.Y.!
Entry number: 2

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11.01.825 A.S.

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Dear Heiji,

it's me again, I know. Sorry to bother you so much all of a sudden but, well, I guess I have a lot of free time on my hands now. I hope you have been well nonetheless. I sure have.

The last days have been almost unnaturally quiet. I wake up to the first beams of morning light, and nothing awaits me but myself. No tightly packed schedule in rythm with a ship that never sleeps, no constant noise, no imminent sense of threat and danger. No war.

In a way this is a highly unnerving feeling. All that I wrote you about about the lack of aim and purpose? This is exactly it, and it amplifies my unrest. There is nothing I have to do anymore, no need to shift my attention away from myself onto greater matters all the time. Even when I was imprisoned and by myself it was not quite like this. There I at least had to stay focused, had to remember what I was and how I could possibly escape one day to keep finding. Now on the other hand: what would there even be to escape from?
Yet, it does not seem entirely unbearable. If anything, it gives me a lot of time to think, for better or for worse. And when I cannot stand my own thoughts anymore there is at least one other thing I can spend my time on.

Work on Soyokaze has not been overwhelmingly succesful, but I am getting there, slowly. All crucial internal systems look like they will work well enough, even though I might want to stay a little farther away from the reactor as long as the shielding looks like it does. But a lot of the plating especially around the underbelly has eroded, making the hull definetely not sealed - I guess I should expect nothing less from something that was parked a rice paddy for five years.
That means there's a lot of welding to be done, some simple, quick fix will not do, and I doubt I can pull that off on my own. The problem there would not be time, I would say I have enough of that, but especially the tools. And if it comes so far that I might have to exchange whole sections on the lower hull I am screwed anyway.

I am afraid that is a bridge I will find out how to cross when I get there, though. Until then there is still some internal rewiring to be taken care off. Looking for a solution to this also gives me something else to worry about.

Gen has also been on my mind lately. Do you remember him? I do not think you two ever had the chance to meet each other, but I am sure I showed you a picture or two when we were talking about our families that one evening in the bar. He is still alive, luckily. We met again shortly after the fleet arrived in Kyushu; he is a pilot now, just like you and me. His skillset reminds me alot of yours, although I am pretty sure he would claim to outshine you by a country mile.

But I have not seen him in at the very least a few weeks. Before, you know, our schedules meant we both were busy most of the time and basically living past each other. And now I don't know. I want to meet with him, but something just keeps me from it. I think I just need some more time for myself. Gen will be doing fine without me for a little longer. He is a grown man now, and still at handling whatever life throws at him.
He is better than me.

Anyway, enough of my contemplations. If there is really as much to do on Soyokaze as I whine about I should probably get back to it. I will make sure to report to you on my progress soon, though. Until then, you will be in my thoughts.

Sincerely
Kaori

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Squished bigly ~Champ - Thanks, you're a champ.
"What's the word for when it feels inside your heart that everything in the world is all right?"