August 6th, 1,945 8:17 a.m.
Captain Kenji Nakamura is alone in the sky.
His zero hum steady at 15,000 ft.
Routine patrol.
Eastern sector.
Nothing unusual.
He checks his fuel gauge.
He adjusts his oxygen mask.
He’s done this flight 2000 times.
But in 30 seconds, the world he knows will stop existing.
The horizon ignites, not with fire, with light.
Pure white light that shouldn’t be possible.
It’s 80 mi away, but Kenji has to shield his eyes.
His first thought, the sun fell.
His second thought, I’m hallucinating.
His instruments scream.
The compass spins.
The ultimeter jumps.
The radio explodes with static so loud it feels like his skull is cracking.
Then silence.
Complete.
Total silence.
He banks west toward Hiroshima, toward where the light came from.
His hands are steady on the controls, but his breath is shallow.
From 60 mi out, he sees the cloud not rising, growing like something alive.
Like the sky is giving birth to its own death.
The cloud climbs 10,000 ft 20,000 30,000.
It keeps climbing a mushroom shape, dark purple and black, boiling upward.
Kenji’s been in combat for 4 years.
He’s seen cities burn.
He’s seen ships explode.
But this this is different.
He gets closer.
50 mi out, 40 mi.
He should see Hiroshima now.
The factories, the bridges, the castle, the downtown district with its seven rivers.
He sees nothing.
Just smoke.
Just ash.
Just a gray void where 350,000 people used to live.
His radio crackles.
He tries to call it in.
Iwauni base.
This is Nakamura.
I’m approaching Hiroshima sector.
I need confirmation on static.
He tries again.
Wauni, do you copy? There’s been an explosion.
The entire city is static.
No response from Hiroshima Tower.
No response from military command.
No response from anyone.
The silence is louder than the explosion.
He circles once.
Just once.
The heat rising from the ruins makes his plane shake.
He can smell it even at altitude.
Burnt metal, burnt concrete, burnt things he doesn’t want to name.
He turns east back to base.
His fuel gauge is dropping, but he doesn’t care.
He needs to land.
He needs to tell someone.
He needs someone to explain what he just saw because his brain refuses to accept it.
8:56 a.m.
Iwauni Air Base.
Kenji’s landing gear hits the runway too hard.
He doesn’t care.
He climbs out of the cockpit before the engine stops.
His legs are shaking.
Mechanics run toward him.
Captain, you’re early.
Is there? Where’s Commander Sarto? He’s in briefing, but Kenji doesn’t wait.
He bursts into the command room.
Commander Sato looks up annoyed.
Nakamura, what the hell are you? Hiroshima is gone.
The room goes silent.
S’s face doesn’t move.
Repeat that.
Hiroshima.
Sir, it’s gone.
I saw it.
There was a flash, a cloud.
The entire city is impossible.
That word hangs in the air.
S stands.
His jaw is tight.
You saw smoke from a bombing raid.
Americans are increasing there.
No, sir.
This wasn’t a raid.
This was one explosion.
One light.
One bomb.
S’s face goes white, then red.
You’re telling me one bomb destroyed an entire city? Yes, sir.
That’s physically impossible.
I know, sir, but I saw it.
Another pilot enters.
Lieutenant Hayashi.
He’s pale.
His flight suit is drenched in sweat.
Commander, I was on western patrol.
I saw it, too.
The flash, the cloud.
Hiroshima is Stop.
Sato slams his fist on the table.
Both of you, you’re reporting hallucinations, oxygen deprivation, combat stress.
I will not have panic spread through this base on the word of two exhausted pilots.
But then a radio operator enters.
His voice is barely a whisper.
Sir, we’ve been trying to contact Hiroshima for the last hour.
military command, civilian radio, police stations, hospitals, nothing.
Not even static.
It’s like the entire city is.
He doesn’t finish the sentence.
He doesn’t have to.
The base goes quiet.
Not the quiet of discipline, the quiet of dread.
Mechanics stop working.
Pilots stop talking.
Everyone is waiting.
Waiting for orders.
Waiting for explanations.
Waiting for someone to tell them this is a mistake, a malfunction, a trick.
But the orders never come because the people who give orders are in Hiroshima and Hiroshima is gone.
Kenji walks to the edge of the runway.
He lights a cigarette.
His hands are still shaking.
He’s flown through flax storms over Shanghai.
He’s dodged bullets at 400 mph.
He’s watched friends spiral into the ocean in flames.
But this silence, this silence is the first thing that makes him want to run.
August 9th morning, 3 days after Hiroshima, Kenji is in the hanger, inspecting his plane.
The mechanics are whispering.
He catches fragments.
Another city, Nagasaki.
Same thing, same flash, same cloud.
He drops his wrench.
It clatters on the concrete, impossibly loud.
One bomb was a weapon.
Two bombs is a message.
America isn’t bluffing.
They can do this again and again and again until there’s nothing left.
August 15th, noon.
The bass radio crackles to life.
Not static this time.
A voice.
The emperor’s voice.
Kenji has never heard it before.
Nobody has.
The emperor doesn’t speak to commoners, but now he does.
The words are formal, distant, divine.
But the message is clear.
Surrender.
The word hangs in the air like poison gas.
Commander Sto smashes his fist into his desk.
Wood splinters.
Some pilots weep openly.
Others stand frozen, eyes empty.
Lieutenant Hayashi walks outside and vomits.
Kenji doesn’t move.
He just stares at his zero through the hanger door.
47 confirmed kills.
The paint is chipped.
The engine still smells like burnt oil and victory.
He’s kept it alive through four years of war.
Repaired it, refueled it, prayed over it, but now it’s just metal, a relic, a samurai sword in the age of the atom.
That night, Kenji can’t sleep.
He keeps seeing the cloud, the mushroom rising into the sky, the void where Hiroshima used to be.
He thinks about his training, bushidto, honor, sacrifice.
They taught him that death in battle was glory.
They taught him that surrender was worse than death.
But they never taught him what to do when the enemy splits the atom.
When honor is incinerated in seconds, when 350,000 people vanish before they can even scream.
They weren’t beaten by better pilots.
They weren’t beaten by strategy or courage or will.
They were beaten by the sun itself.
Weaponized.
Dropped from the sky by men who split the atom before they understood what it would cost.
August 16th.
Dawn.
The base is still asleep.
Kenji walks to the hanger alone.
He runs his hand along the Zero’s fuselage.
Cold metal, dented, scarred, beautiful.
He climbs into the cockpit.
He doesn’t file a flight plan.
He doesn’t request permission.
He doesn’t load ammunition.
Just a full tank of fuel.
The engine roars to life.
By the time the mechanics realize what’s happening, he’s already rolling.
Commander Sto runs onto the runway.
Nakamura, stand down.
That’s an order.
But Kenji doesn’t stop.
He pulls back on the stick.
The wheels leave the ground and he’s gone.
He flies west toward Hiroshima toward the ruins.
The sun is rising behind him, painting the sky red and gold.
From 10,000 ft, he can see the devastation clearly.
Now the city is a crater.
The rivers are choked with debris and bodies.
Thousands of bodies.
But there are survivors.
Shadows moving through the ash.
People digging through rubble with bare hands.
Looking for family, for food, for any reason to keep living.
Kenji drops to 2,000 ft.
He flies low over the ruins.
Slow, respectful.
Some of the survivors look up.
They see the zero.
The rising sun painted on its wings.
A relic from a world that ended 9 days ago.
Kenji dips his wings.
Once to the left, once to the right.
A final salute.
Not to the empire.
Not to the emperor.
To the people who remained.
The ones who have to rebuild.
The ones who have to carry the weight of what happened here.
Then he climbs higher.
6,000 ft.
10,000 ft.
15,000 ft.
20,000 ft.
Higher than regulations allow.
Higher than oxygen allows.
His vision starts to blur at the edges.
His breath comes shallow, but he keeps climbing.
The radio crackles.
Iwauni base is calling him.
Nakamura return to base immediately.
Acknowledge.
He reaches down.
He turns the radio off.
Complete silence now.
Just the engine, just the wind, just him and the sky.
He levels out at 25,000 ft.
The sun is fully up now.
Ahead of him, blinding, beautiful.
He points the nose west into the light into the future.
He can’t survive.
Some say he flew into the ocean.
Others say he ran out of fuel and crashed in the mountains.
But the mechanics at Iwauni swear they saw something else.
They say his plane kept climbing higher and higher until it was just a black dot against the sun and then it was gone.
No explosion, no smoke, just gone.
His zero was never found.
No wreckage, no body, no closure, just another name on the list of the missing.
Another soul that couldn’t exist in the world after August 6th.
Back in Tokyo, General Anami sits alone in his office.
August 14th, night, he writes a letter apologizing to the emperor.
Then he performs sepuku, ritual suicide, the samurai way.
He can’t live with surrender.
Can’t live with the shame.
Can’t survive the future.
Two men, one general, one pilot.
Both chose death over a world they didn’t recognize.
The age of the samurai ended twice that August.
Once in a flash of light over Hiroshima.
Once in the silence of a missing plane.
One bomb.
One choice.
Everything changed.
The warriors of the old world couldn’t survive the new one.
So they did the only thing that made sense to them.
They vanished into the sky, into the past, into the sun.
And the world kept turning without
