Chapter Text
“Ready?”
“Yeah… count of three?”
The two children nodded simultaneously, and when a moment had passed and they finally pulled away from each other’s gazes, a high-pitched, two-person holler broke out in the neighborhood.
“Shu-chan! If you don’t hurry, big bad Minato-san is going to come get you!”
“I-I’m coming! One second!”
The other kid, Shuichi, hollered back from his bedroom window, slim fingers holding tightly on the window sill as he leaned his body over. Below him, his friends were waiting impatiently under the sun, beads of sweat on their forehead and arms crossed. If he had been wearing his glasses, he would have also noticed their tapping feet.
It was mostly Kaito who did these things, since he was usually the one to react intensely, but if his other friend, Maki, was also shouting, then he must be doing something wrong.
Worry caused him to tumble out of his bed, short legs steadying as he held onto the nightstand. When he had regained his bearings, he hurriedly palmed the surface of the table, grabbed his glasses, and ran out of his room.
“Shuichi? Where are you going?”
Shuichi stopped. His meek gaze made it to his rather lean uncle, standing in the hallway with the latest newspaper in hand. He observed the way his uncle’s eyebrows reached the upper part of his forehead, making him look a bit like Minato-san. But Shuichi knew better, so he wasn’t scared.
“Um…” the boy trailed off, eyes lowering to the wooden floor. His fingers fidgeted slightly. “I-I want to play with my friends, if that’s okay.”
It wasn’t a lie, so he shouldn’t be feeling guilty.
“Oh…” his uncle seemed to be taken aback. “You’re not going to the border today, are you?”
“N-No! I know I can’t do that.” The short boy immediately refuted. “I’ll probably hang out in Kaito’s house again, you know, with Maki. And I’ll come back after an hour or two.”
Shuichi looked at him innocently, the smile on his face slight but gentle. It was hard to say no to the kid, so with a frown, the man gave up on the suspicion. Shuichi’s a good kid, after all.
“That’s fine, then...” He sighed, kneeling down on the floor to ruffle the child’s dark hair. “Just be careful, alright? Don’t go too far.”
Relieved, Shuichi nodded, giving his guardian a smile and a quick embrace. “I won’t. Thank you!”
From Shuichi’s house, the three children quickly ran through the street, orange hues tinting the sky as the sun followed after them. Some of the street vendors they knew waved at the group in motion — even young Haruki-san, who usually sold his things on the other block, gave them a quick “yo!”
It's a small town, so knowing almost everyone wasn’t uncommon.
When the group finally reached the nearest street to their destination, they stopped by Aiko-nesan’s store and tried to catch their breath. Shuichi had leaned against the store’s exterior — a wall plastered with different advertisements. There’s also a ‘missing’ poster somewhere in the middle, but Shuichi was too tired to see whose it was.
“Shu-chan…”
The tallest of them all, Kaito, was the one to talk first. It was a small whisper caught in the wind, so when Shuichi lifted his gaze, stood up, and felt the sudden, jolting grip on his shoulders, he wasn’t expecting it.
“Shu-chan, you took so long!”
“E-Eh…?”
Shuichi stared back at the taller boy, almost forgetting the way he had lost his breath just a second ago. Kaito, on the verge of tears, was holding Shuichi’s frail shoulders and shaking him, Kaito Momota fashion. Unsurprisingly, the kid with pigtails, Maki, rolled her eyes.
“You’re being dramatic again, Momo-chan.” Maki pointed out, but she didn’t really do anything about Shuichi being shaken. Maybe she thought he deserved it, after having them wait and run so much.
“Sorry… I-I took a nap,” he admitted, an apologetic hand scratching the back of his head as Kaito let him go. At his response, his two friends stared at him silently. It was Maki’s turn to nudge his shoulder — a little strongly, but Shuichi didn’t mind.
“Out of all the days you could take a nap, you did it today…?” The short girl reasoned with a raise of her brow. “Where’s the careful Shu-chan we know?”
Shuichi pushed the center of his glasses, a habit he had before looking away. His lips straightened into a thin line, the nervousness overwhelming him as he quietly threw a glance at Kaito. He was also frowning.
“Harumaki has a point!” He shouted vehemently, almost grabbing his shoulders again before Maki managed to stop him. “You almost crushed my dreams, you know! The next time this is gonna happen is in… in ten years!” Kaito paused to sniffle. “That’s, like, a billion days!”
“Three thousand six hundred and sixty-five days.” The short girl pointed out. Narrowing his eyes, the boy just looked at her, seemingly about to start an argument.
“I know—”
This time, Shuichi found his voice and squeaked out. “T-To be fair, I didn’t think we were allowed near the border…” He trailed off, hesitant. Then he glanced at the far away hill, barely in sight from where they stood. “Besides, they have a festival for it, so we can just wait until later this week.”
At Shuichi’s suggestion, the aspiring astronaut snapped.
“Festivals aren’t the same thing! What’s better than seeing it for yourself?”
“Well, we also made it this far. There’s no use getting worried about it now.” Maki tilted her head slightly, indicating the loss of time. “Let’s go.”
It’s true. There’s no use overthinking about it. Besides, if they did get caught, then it wouldn’t matter anyway. The town was too small to care, and the most punishment they could get was a quick slap on the wrist. So, with a quiet nod, he followed after them.
“A-Almost there!”
After running for what could be an eternity, the group managed to slip past the guards and made it to the empty grassland.
With this, the town was soon out of sight.
There was no more concrete path to follow, no more wooden signs to guide them, and as he ran and ran, the grass slowly grew tall enough for it to reach his elbows. It swayed amid the spring wind and tickled on his skin, the dimming sky in a mixture of blue and purple hues. It was almost like he was entering another world.
“C’mon, Shu-chan! Push yourself a little more!” Kaito glanced behind him to shout at the boy, who was falling behind and had almost stumbled on a rock.
“You’re also taking so long, Momo-chan,” Maki, who was way ahead of them, shouted too. She wasn’t bothered by having to run a lot, which wasn’t surprising — she’s more active than both of them combined. To Shuichi, that fact was like a tidal wave: he really was trying his best, but Shuichi’s still unable to carry himself as fast as the other two.
Before he knew it, everything seemed to flicker around him. He just moved his legs without thinking, running with all the fastness he could muster, running on steep land until a single thought was left in his head: if he could just run faster —
“We’re here.”
When he had reached the others, Shuichi immediately pushed against Kaito’s back, stopping abruptly as he kept himself steady on the rocky ground. He rubbed his eyes behind his glasses and shook his head out of the dizziness.
“This is it…?” He asked, but none of his friends responded. They seemed to be frozen in surprise, so in curiosity, Shuichi detached himself from Kaito’s back and peered from behind him, attempting to look at the scenery.
Then, there it was.
The crater before them extended far beyond what the eye could see, almost as if it was an ocean of nothing but greenery in between. Below the rim followed a steep curve — he thought about falling down and rolling on it, and imagined how he would land on another expanse of grass.
After a moment, the boy turned around and watched from a vantage point on the crater, overlooking the town from where he stood. Shuichi thought that he could fit the entire town in his small hand, but even if he had stretched all his fingers and reached out, it wasn’t enough to cover the area.
“It’s beautiful.”
One of them — Maki, was the first to break the silence, a puff of mist forming in the air as she spoke. The three of them seemed to have forgotten their tiredness.
“If this amazes you, just wait ‘till we get to the good part!” Kaito beamed energetically. “This isn't something you can see every day.”
Shuichi nodded, observing the rock they stood on.
“This crater…” The boy with glasses trailed off, hiding his frown behind a hand as though he was thinking deeply. “A meteorite struck here centuries ago?”
“It could be a millennium — who knows?” His friend rubbed his chin and shrugged. “But my grandparents told me that this,“ he spread out his arms to motion at the crater, “used to be part of our town.”
Even Maki seemed to be impressed. “This whole thing?”
“Yeah! That sounds so cool, doesn’t it?” Kaito nodded. “It was probably bigger than the mainland, so there used to be a lot more people here. Can you imagine that?”
“If that's true, everyone who used to be here would have died,” Shuichi said softly, mostly to himself. “The meteorite left too much impact, so it would be impossible to survive that.”
“So… there are ghosts here.” The small girl summarized, glancing around the crater for a moment.
The pride on Kaito’s face soon faded, and it was replaced by a petrified look.
“G-G-Ghosts?!” He squeaked out.
“Use your brain, Momo-chan,” Maki sighed. “What did you think happened to all the people? Went to space?”
The boy thought hard when he narrowed his eyes. “They could have moved before the meteorite landed, or something…”
“I-If that happened a long time ago, then there wouldn’t be any technology to forecast that.” Shuichi added, trying to sound a little more confident.
“You’re just not thinking positive again.” The taller boy scowled. “There’s a lot of ways you can — “
“Hey, it’s starting,” Maki called for their attention, causing Kaito’s angry expression to quickly dissipate.
“It is?!” He exclaimed. “Shu-chan, come closer!”
The taller boy pointed at the sky with a hand and beckoned to his friend with the other. With unexpected excitement building inside him, Shuichi made his way to Maki and Kaito, situating himself beside the boy.
On the high rim of the crater, three children stood, the sky above them neither day nor night. The tallest of the three wrapped his arms around his friends’ shoulders, gazes fixated on the view as they waited in silence.
And so, the sun took a final dip onto the horizon, and an expanse of falling stars fully enveloped the earth.