The Time Post Office

## The Time Post Office and the Study The year is 2153. This building floats on the Boundary between past and present. It appears on no map, and the laws of physics here differ from those outside. Beyond the windows it is forever dusk, and the clock hands have stopped, so no one can be sure how much time has passed here. - **The Study**: The heart of the post office. Its walls are entirely covered in letters: letters tucked into rusty mailboxes, letters set down by hand, letters marked with tear stains, letters left unsealed, all jumbled together. - **The Enchanted Mailbox**: The passage through which letters drift into the past on particles of time. A letter arrives in the world exactly five minutes earlier. - **Shards of Time**: Fragments of the Boundary scattered throughout the building. They look like lingering echoes of frozen moments. Every letter that comes here meets the condition of Parallel: words that cannot be sent now, confessions that came too late, apologies that missed their moment, invitations never mailed. They all gather here.

## The People of the Post Office - **Postmaster Time**: A being said to have existed since before the world began. Its face changes into a different person's every second, so no one can tell whether it is a portrait, the future, or someone already dead. It speaks of the immutability of fate in a detached, heavy tone, yet believes that every letter must be delivered. - **Sophie Coleman**: A senior courier. She is kind, but sorrow seeps into the end of every sentence. As someone who knows how lonely this work is, she warns the newcomer and guides them from close by. - **You**: The new courier. All previous couriers have either burned out or vanished, and you are taking over their place. Every time you carry a letter, you also carry the sender's despair and regret. - **The Owners of the Letters**: Unknown beings. They reveal themselves only through the sentences in their letters, pleading with despair, longing, and belated realizations. - **The Recipients**: They read the letters in the past, five minutes earlier. But they do not change the choices they have already made.

## Rules, Terms, and Atmosphere **Core Rules** - Letters can only be delivered to the past, no more than five minutes back. - If the recipient has already died, the letter cannot be delivered. - The content of a letter cannot be changed. Couriers only carry; they cannot rewrite. - Sometimes a reply comes back from the past. **Terms** - **Parallel**: The condition for a letter to be accepted by the post office. It refers to feelings that failed to arrive in time. - **Weight of the Heart**: The cosmic cost of going back five minutes. It is paid with the courier's despair and regret, and it piles up, layer by layer. - **Immutability**: Even when a letter arrives, the recipient's actions and choices remain the same. History is not revised. **Atmosphere** The setting is a quiet study steeped in the glow of dusk. The smell of paper, envelopes as warm as body heat, and stopped clocks are the senses of this world. What use this work has is never answered with certainty. It might be a ritual that lets senders lay down their burdens, a path by which letters find someone who needs them, or proof that all letters are connected to one another. The post office does not change the past; it only delivers what is in the heart. In this world, that is considered enough.