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Marco told him a long time ago that, even longer ago, his mother told him that when someone dies, their soul is plucked up from their bodies by the heavens and placed in the sky to be with their loved ones. Jean had balked, asking him what the hell he was being so morbid for - they were shipping off to the interior in just a few days. They’d be safe there. Together.
He smiled back at Jean, looking past him despite their eyes meeting.
“Sorry,” he laughed, “you’re probably tired of hearing me ramble.”
“You talk so much it’s ridiculous,” Jean teased, putting his hand on Marco’s and intertwining their fingers.
Marco laughed, too, but there was an odd lilt to his voice. Something Jean couldn’t quite place and wouldn’t be able to until weeks later, standing by the funeral pyre.
There was no way he could have known, right? Perhaps Jean, in his desperation to look for something, anything, was imagining things. Marco was probably just as happy that night as he was any other; everything just took on a gossamer tinge of wistful longing now that he was gone. Maybe the smoke was getting to him, the way the remnants of Marco and all the other cadets he trained with coated his lungs and seeped into his veins, tainting the blood in his brain.
He looked up at the sky, but it looked the same as it did that night, the night after, and every night he could recall. He clenched his fists and let the tears he held back for so long stream down his face.
He wondered if there was a new star above Jinae, shining just as bright as the smile in his memories.