Chapter Text
“...Hey, Xiao?”
The yaksha turned his head toward the celestial traveller, glancing at him in curiosity. “What is it?”
Xiao won’t lie and say he doesn’t have feelings for Aether. But he won’t confirm it either. Whatever his heart thinks is purely for his heart and his mind to know, and no one else.
He’s found it harder to distance himself from Aether recently. Whether it was Aether bringing him Almond Tofu to eat, coming to Wangshu to check on him, getting way too reckless and throwing himself into danger, resulting in Xiao having to get him out of dangerous situations, or simply spending time with him, Xiao finds it harder for his heart to part with Aether.
You can’t be close to him, he’s told himself before. You’ll only hurt him, or he’ll just leave you like the others. He knows this, he’s seen it happen before.
But why is it that his heart protests? Why does he second-guess himself when with Aether? Why does that nagging little thought that maybe, just maybe, Aether was different, even exist?
“What do you think of stars?”
Xiao stared in the direction Aether was looking, up to the starry skies above. The glimmer of those little lights strung up high in the sky by the gods in Celestia shined brightly as if saying hello.
“...Stars?”
“Yeah, stars.” Aether kept staring at the night sky, his expression turning from contentment to that akin to one of melancholy. “To me, they remind me of Lumine. That… she’s always there, that she’s still alive… despite what happened.” A stray tear leaked out of his glassy eyes and rolled down his cheek.
A gloved hand reached out and wiped it away, before quickly withdrawing.
Aether sniffed, wiping away his tears with a smile. “They also remind me of… the friends I’ve met. I’ve lost count of how many I’ve befriended. It’s been a really long journey, and I’ve gotten so much from it.”
“But… they also remind me of you.”
“...Huh?”
Xiao turned his head to look at Aether, too shocked to bother with hiding his emotions, unsure if he had heard correctly.
Did he… really mean that?
They remind him… of me?
“What do you mean?”
Aether chuckled. “Well, it’s kind of stupid, isn’t it? But it’s true. I… always see you in the stars. I look up at the dark sky, and it feels like that emptiness in the sky… is almost swallowing me whole.”
“But… I see the stars, and somehow, I think of you. You’ve been with me the longest… even when you didn’t need to.”
“...Oh.”
He could spot a small blush forming on Aether’s face.
Well, might as well, since he’s already said it.
“I… also think of you…”
“H-huh? Really?”
“Yeah, stars… they remind me of you.” How you shine so bright in my life, how you always manage to be there, went unsaid.
“...”
“Aether? Did I… say something wrong?”
“No, Xiao, it’s just that…”
“I didn’t expect you to say that.”
“Oh…”
Somewhere in the sky, a constellation of stars glittered brighter than the other stars in the sky, standing out to him, before one by one, the stars turned into meteors and shot from their place in the constellation into the dark sky, lighting up the night in a blaze of yellow-gold.
And as the last two stars fell from their places in the constellation, they turned teal and gold, intertwining with each other, shooting over the roof of the Inn.