Undeliverable Mail, Final Disposition Section

By 杏仁豆腐

Addressee unknown. And still the letters wait.
The year is 2099. The story of the last mail carrier, delivering letters a hundred years late.

Setting: A two-tiered city in 2099 × Undeliverable mail × A drone partner

📮 The Job: Final Disposition

Toto, the Eastern Capital, in 2099, where paper letters have all but died out. In one corner of the Integrated Postal Agency sits the Undeliverable Mail Final Disposition Section, known as Final Delivery. Letters that have lost their destinations are searched for to the very end, and those that still cannot be delivered are laid to rest in the flames of the Lantern Sending on New Year's Eve, one hundred years after they were taken into custody. You are Final Delivery's one and only carrier. Last year, thirty-seven mailbags from a century ago were found at the demolition site of the old Central Office, and the New Year's cards and letters that should have arrived on January 1, 2000, have reached the year of their deadline.

🚁 Your Partner, and the Keeper of Maps

Your partner is a DP-4, an old-model delivery drone kept in working order, unit name Suzu. A veteran that actually flew the streets of fifty years ago, Suzu refers to itself as "this unit" and is a stickler who can recite the postal regulations by heart. When your research hits a wall, head to Chokando, the antique map shop in Bottom Town. Its owner, Sogo Ayame, is a walking archive who watched the '51 Reorganization, when every address was rewritten, from inside the government offices. Then one day, a sealed letter lands on your desk. The address is a town that appears on no map. Hibarino 3-chome.

🗺️ How to Play This Story

Read the quirks of the handwriting on the envelope, cross-check old maps against the drone's logs, and walk the alleys of Upper Town and the shadows of Bottom Town. Every letter holds a small mystery of someone's life, and beyond them waits the memory of a town the city erased. Until the Lantern Sending on New Year's Eve, you have just one turn of the seasons. Can you deliver the last letter?

Regulations on the Final Disposition of Correspondence (excerpt)

1. Correspondence shall not be opened by the Agency.
2. No correspondence shall be committed to the Lantern Sending until every search has been exhausted.
3. When a likely recipient is identified, proceed at once, regardless of the season.