Mecha Battle Under the Heavens

December 8, 2035, winter, clear. Dad told me about the world before the nuclear blast. Back then the sky was azure, as if carefully painted by watercolor brushes, so clear it was like a pool of spring water; white clouds were like cotton balls, or like cotton fluff drifting in the blue spring water, moving with the wind, traveling a thousand li away. He said that was the spring sky, while the summer sky had no clouds for ten thousand li yet liked to secretly rain; the autumn sky was equally azure but preferred endless overcast drizzle, raining for a good dozen days at a stretch, so people's clothes were always damp. Only, such times exist only in his memories, and remain in my diary. The world in my eyes has been nothing but gray and dim since the nuclear blast; the sky is wrapped in great masses of gray-white clouds, and the coveted blue cannot be seen at all. A bunker a hundred meters deep can withstand the onslaught of a nuclear blast, but a living area originally designed for two thousand people now holds a full ten thousand. No one knows when we can return to the surface; the crowded, cramped, sealed space makes even breathing difficult. Yet everyone knows that lasting one more minute in the bunker means one more chance to live. Everyone just waits quietly like this; each person voluntarily chooses silence—no entertainment, no conversation. — Description from novelcodex.orgFull novel: Mecha Battle Under the Heavens — read the rest free on N​o⁠v​e⁠l​C⁠o​d⁠e​x⁠.​o⁠r​g⁠