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the moon
Junna gets nightmares often. Every night, in her sleep, the shadows surround her and tears fall from the corner of her eyes. She hears screams behind locked doors and the gentle voice of someone beckoning her. Junna. Junna. Junna. Maybe she was still breathing, but in the night it feels as though there were invisible hands squeezing the life out of her. In dreams, Junna sees moths. Marching and marching onwards into flames. The sky is red, like her mother’s bloodshot eyes. And then she sees shapes, strange figures, people whose faces she never knew. They set the ashes aside and whispers to her father in words she can’t untangle. And father points straight at her and tell her she’s dead.
So, many nights, she’s wide awake, leaning on the cold metal of her balcony’s railings, watching the starry skies and the sad, swaying trees in the town’s plaza. She has to struggle against her drowsiness to escape the death in her dreams. When it gets to be too much, she’d prick her fingertip on the sharp edge of a railing and watch everything else fly by. Sometimes, she presses one hand on the left side of her chest and ponders.
She’d been living in her father’s grand mansion ever since she was five, emerald eyes shining, still untainted. But the kids in the town surrounding this mansion never once came to play with her. Letters were never slipped under their door. In her home, it felt as though birds don’t even bother to sing. But she can’t be the only lonely person in this world, can she? She knows an old lady who spends her nights in the shack where the townspeople store firewood. A young woman who spends her days picking flowers off the side of the road. The two of them don’t even have time to stay still and lean out the balcony to watch the sky.
Junna knows a girl who’s always on the rooftop at night. She’s pretty close by. Only right across the town plaza. But that girl? Even if that girl had owned an entire corner of the night sky, it still wouldn’t be enough. Today, they meet again, from balcony to rooftop.
Green eyes half open, soulless. And she walks.
rises
Nana can’t come out of her room.
Or so her father tells her. He said she can’t go out in the sunlight, ever, unless she wants her skin to be permanently damaged. It means all she can do is sit in her room all day. Play cards by herself. Read books alone. That’s what her mother decided. All her friends who used to come by every other day stops coming, one by one. It’s like they’re scared to face her now. Even her mother’s visits are becoming more and more rare. Her bedroom door is always locked.
Is she lonely?
Nana isn’t sure. But she’s sick of staying in her room. Her life seems to have become some kind of isolated territory, separated from the rest of the world. There is absolutely nothing connecting her to everything else out there. She can’t even see her own shadow. For a long time, she hasn’t been able to tell colors apart anymore. All the vibrant shades she used to know soon turned dull, too. It’s just something nameless now. Something like herself.
Why not just disappear?
Nana isn’t sure if her constitution is infectious, but the townspeople sure think so. The neighboring ladies show off their great medical intellect with her mother and the other women in town, every day. They say she’s going to die any time, now. If not now, then in a couple of minutes. But how would they know? They don’t even bother to glance up and try to see where Nana is in her room. They forget about her the way they would with the mementos from their childhood. The door is barely ever open.
It’s ridiculous. She feels like she’s living the life of a blind man. Everything is so dark, so quiet, all the time. Even if they don’t have to be. She’d tried to reason with her parents. It’s only the direct sunlight. It’s only the direct sunlight! But they shake their heads sadly and said that they can’t know for sure. Words have a strange power when they come from a mob.
In Nana’s case, words, especially, are powerful when they come from a witch.
above
Hide! Hide!
For if you walk under sunlight,
Your skin will turn to ash.
Hide! Hide!
Father will bring his cross
And mother will have the garlic
And we, we will pierce your heart with a silver blade.
Hide! Why hide, cursed thing?
Is there place for a coward among your kind?
All you know how to do is hide in the silent shadows.
Hide! So won’t you hide away, then?
For if you walk under sunlight,
Your skin will turn to ash.
It’s been long enough for them to make such songs. They parade around the street and loops, round and round her house, cheering, jeering. It’s been sang so many times now that the townspeople can’t even trace it back to whoever first wrote it anymore. It’s a mocking song. A song of extreme content. It’s sharp to the ear, but it echoes like a battle cry. It makes Junna feel like they’re all ready to break into that house any moment now to kill the girl.
And Junna doesn’t want the girl to die. They’ve met at the new bookshop a couple times, before. But of course her parents had banned her from even approaching that general area. They’ve heard, too, they heard the words about the girl who can’t come into sunlight. They worry that one day their young Junna, too, will become like that, and then it’s the end. That would be the end to the noble, aristocratic Hoshimi name. Their entire family might be mocked and defiled just like how the words had summoned a gloomy cloud over the girl’s house. And that is simply unacceptable.
“I can’t allow something like that to happen, my dear. Will you promise me that you won’t go there?”
“Yes. I promise.”
“Don’t just say it to make me happy, Junna. You know, if you got infected too, we won’t have anything left to our name. We can’t force you to do anything, darling. But, you understand, don’t you? It’s just unacceptable.”
“Yes, I promise, father. I won’t even go near that house.”
Her parents don’t know. They don’t know about the dreams. They don’t know about the girl walking the rooftop across the plaza, trying to drink in the dim light from the moon. They don’t know about the silent conversations between two pairs of eyes gazing at the same sky. Why’s she letting them tell her what to do when they don’t know?
the clouds
Nana jolts awake on the rooftop when the sharp edge of a stray brick pricks at her forearm. Thank the Gods, she exhales, it was still nighttime. Everything feels to much like a dream. The world fades around her and it seems she can’t even sit up straight. When she looks out, this time over the empty town plaza, she thinks she sees her future. Just a forgotten ideal, left behind and stuffed away in a corner where no one will ever know it. Never. She’s just a seventeen years old child. She’s supposed to go find her dreams in what little time she has left. She can’t allow time to pass by too quickly.
So, Nana made a list.
It fits nicely on a corner of a page she tore from her old notebook, including things she’d like to do after she dies. Nana wishes that after about two years, her grave would be covered in flowers, and she’d become a guardian of dreams. When the night descends from upon the hill, she’d walk over rooftops and dance her way through the main roads and chase away all the terrible dreams that haunts others. She’d sing for them the small lullabies that mother had hummed when mother still sang to her. Or if they don’t want to sleep then she’d play with them, all through the night. She’d take them to some faraway field, and show them a sky overflowing with starlight.
A sky so beautiful and so brilliant that she wishes it could be the sky she sees every night when she climbs up to the rooftop.
Nana doesn’t write anything else on that list. Just those two things. That’s enough. She doesn’t really want to live a busy life after she’d died. She doesn’t like to be the center of a whirlwind of words anymore.
Wind starts picking up on the rooftop. Nana tries to hold onto the tiny piece of paper she just took out from the pocket of her coat, and turns her eyes upwards to look directly across the plaza. Moonlight falls on her skin and drowns the entire town, making even the most ordinary and trivial of items look like shining stars. Each and everyone of them leaves a shadow in the depths of her eyes. Nana breathes in the dreamlike atmosphere and lets out a soft sigh.
“Hey, are you seeing this? The sky is really beautiful tonight.”
From across the plaza, she almost hears someone calls. But maybe it’s just her imagination. Before she could reply, though, her mother had already called for her to come down, quickly, quickly, before the sun rises.
Nana turns around one last time, hoping to hear a different voice.
But there’s no one standing at the balcony anymore.
sunlight
Junna folds her arms and narrows her eyes at the sound of some bard passing by the street. It’s already morning, well into the morning, and the girl - Nana - is gone. Last night, she had another date with the stars, and couldn’t allow herself to catch a wink of sleep. She’d listened to the singing wind out on the balcony and waited for the scent of spring flowers to spread across the gardens surrounding their plaza. Last night, she felt it. She was alive, hidden in the beats of this world’s mystical rhythm.
She misses her mother sometimes. They used to live in another house, far from the town, far from everything, and they had an old tree and a small cat. Her mother called those two things the charms protecting their fates. Junna wishes she could turn back into the past and fall asleep in a realm only meant for stars.
She spoke to Nana, once, long ago. But the more she thinks about it, the more she needs to hear it again. In truth, Junna feels as though the girl’s voice carries a familiar feeling. It’s almost like the voice beckoning her in the dreams, or what little she could remember of the dreams, anyway. Her father tells her to look into her own eyes in the mirror and then let the doctor hypnotizes her. But he doesn’t know. He knows about the dreams, but he doesn’t know at all. He thinks it’s working, and he only means well, but it makes her a little upset, because he doesn’t know.
Death’s grip around her dreams is loosening.
And one month after the promise, Junna decides that she will break it, after all. See, if it were a vow, then she’d stick to it until not a single piece of her soul is left in this world. But it’s just a promise. To her, it means just about as much as gossip.
In the night, a small figure silently turns the lock on the inside of the bedroom door, traces a simple path from the balcony down to the ground, and fumbles with the gate to the mansion’s side. It runs across the plaza, shrouded in moonlight. Waves at the girl walking on the rooftop. And the girl extends one hand down, and now there were two.
“Hello, Nana.”
“Hi, Junna-chan.”
It was only during the night that they were safe, so she vowed, “I’ll come here every night.”
Unlike the usual kind of night. This night would last for eternity.
drips
“Once upon a time, there was a ray of sunlight, small and almost pitiful. It’s brilliance isn’t intense like its brothers from the same sun. It was chased away by all the other rays of sunlight. They won’t allow it to join them, for if it did, maybe their light as a whole would falter. And so this ray of sunlight was alone. It’s tiny heart, broken.
One day, that ray of sunlight decides that it will find a place to belong. It starts inbetween the leaves of a young, tall tree. A pigeon flies by, and laughs:
- How strange! How ridiculous! Something like you would dare become actual sunlight? You’re just going to taint the beautiful shade of this tree. Go away, pitiful thing!
And the ray of sunlight leaves. It goes a little higher, lingering on the clouds, but the moment it touches them, they hurriedly dissolves.
- Something like you would dare become actual sunlight? It’s disgusting, how you’re tainting my beautiful coat! Go away, puny thing! You’re dampening the heavens we guard. Go away!
The little ray of sunlight is rejected everywhere it goes. And it goes on and on, but it can’t seem to find a place that would let it shine its weak, dim light. And in the end it chooses to bury its light in the bottom of the deep blue water.
The sea is silent. Schools of fish greets the ray of sunlight when it touches the rocks in the depths. And the ray of sunlight is fading, with every passing moment. It’s becoming a part of the sea. It’s not so alone anymore.
Wouldn’t it be so nice if we could live at the bottom of the sea, Nana? Even the most intense of sunlight would soften and seep into the waves. If I could do that, I’d be with you until the end of everything. I wish you can walk on sunlit paths with me. The roads must have forgotten how your footsteps feel like. I wish the world can feel you like I do.”
from
“I’m going to die soon. Would you like to come with?”
“For what?”
“We can be the guardians of dreams. Or whatever. I just want you to keep watching the stars with me.”
“Nana?”
“Are you crying?”
“No. It’s just some stardust got into my eyes.”
“Aren’t you going to sleep tonight?”
“It’s a beautiful sky, so no. I’d regret it for the rest of my life if I can’t have this in my memories.”
The night after, Junna comes again, this time more cautious, more methodical. She said that the other night she was careless enough to forget to lock the side door back, and that the maids had suspected some thief entered their mansion.
“You don’t have to come every night though, Junna-chan.”
“But I’ve already vowed it.”
“Aren’t you afraid that my curse would get to you, too?”
“Isn’t that just baseless rumors? I don’t believe in such things.”
“But how can you be so sure?”
Junna doesn’t say anything else. Her eyelids flutter. She remembers the old days, the more recent old days, when she was living in the mansion all alone. Father used to be so busy, always at some other kingdom, handling supplies or something of the sort. And the maids don’t like Junna, not really. Sometimes, they say things just to make sure she hears them. Ugly, ugly thing about her mother. They know she won’t respond.
But those days to her must feel the same as they do to Nana, now. Lonely. Dark.
Until one day, when she’s visiting the bookstore that had just opened up in town. An unfamiliar face peeks out from behind the stall and leans down at her. Hair golden, as if glowing in the sunlight. Eyes green like a reflection of herself. She glances at the book in Junna’s hand and smiles. It was just a smile and a passing compliment on her preferences in literature.
It’s still the same Nana.
“You’ve already raised sunlight in my heart, and for that I am eternally grateful. Now, you tell me your light has gone, so I’ll take that light and shed it into your heart again.”
Junna says, but she’s not satisfied with just that yet.
And every piece of her soul is screaming, touch her, touch her, but Junna can’t afford to. Nana was like a masterpiece that couldn’t belong in this town’s horrible reality, and she wouldn’t forgive herself if she’d ruin the only dream she allows herself to enjoy anymore.
“Anyhow, I’m told that when you’re in love, you don’t need reasons to do things.”
within
A few years ago, before Nana’s encounter with that witch, her mother told her a story. Of a princess in a land not too far from their own, locked in a tower, hundreds of stories high, for a curse she hadn’t asked for. And she couldn’t go out. Wouldn’t. So she finds every way possible to grasp joy. Every day, she watches the valley out through her window. Her eyes - the most beautiful eyes in the world, people would say - had witnessed every change that could occur in this world of theirs. And she keeps looking, looking on. And when Death takes her away, she’d been smiling. And people say perhaps she hadn’t been trapped at all. She was loved by something bigger than herself, and thus she was free.
“We’re all going to die one day, aren’t we?”
“...That’s right, dear.”
“Then what does it matter if I die now?”
“Once you’ve been given this life, you ought to treasure it. You never know when you’ll be swept off the surface of the Earth, and you’ll never know when you’ll become one of those nameless stars in the sky. So long as you can, just try to live a loving life, my precious girl.”
Nana chuckles. She used to think that was just her mother’s sweet talking. She didn’t know then, how true that story would be. But can she watch the sceneries outside her window like that princess did, when just a single ray of sunlight was supposed to burn her down to the bones?
No, but I can. I can do it! Junna-chan is a ray of sunlight. And she’d been with me through all of these nights. And it doesn’t hurt when I’m with her. Nothing hurts when I’m with her.
Thank you, Hoshimi Junna.
It’s a little earlier than she’d like, but it’s time.
And they have to sleep now.
"Now, and this is just my guess, Junna-chan. That path filled with sunlight in your heart will never fade. It's a gift, from me, to you, for eternity. Even if you were to sleep at the bottom of the sea, it still wouldn't fade. Not one bit."
her soul
Nana’s gone. She sits, slumped over her desk, window wide open. And her skin didn’t burn under sunlight. Maybe the real sunlight was just too blinding for her. People say that her eyes weren’t closed. But they weren’t looking at the sun either. And there’s an envelope on her table, address scrawled on with shaky hands, almost intelligible.
It happened three days ago. But only today, when her mother breaks the door open, did they find out. Junna knows, though. She already knew, but she says nothing anyway. She only opens her palm under moonlight to see if she could catch stardust. A day later, the first and only letter to ever be slipped under her door arrives. There’s nothing on the inside. Save for a ripped out corner from a notebook page. Yours, it says. That’s all.
Junna doesn’t have nightmares anymore. It makes her happy, just a little bit. They’re living.