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It was a new moon tonight, which was typically considered the best time to go stargazing.
Touya had been waiting for this day for a while. Every other month, he’d been distracted and forgotten. But not this time. Tonight, he would finally get to watch the stars from an open field. Well. Not a field, per se. An was currently dragging him up a hill, claiming it was clear space at the top, and the height would get them even closer to the sky. Akito and Kohane were in town, having only just reached it after being away for a week at Ken’s request. An escort mission for a little boy being hunted in another town. They’d send their regrets that they hadn’t made it for the trip, too exhausted to continue walking the extra few kilometres to their stargazing spot.
“Touuuya,” An whined, tugging his hand, “no lagging, we’ll miss it!”
“It’s not even dark yet, An. I think we’re fine.” He glanced at the sky, faint yellow and orange steaks beginning to leak across the clouds. He did quicken his pace, though.
She pouted. “But the sunset! I wanna see that properly as well. It’s really clear tonight.”
“Alright, alright,” he laughed, pulling her back into step with him. “We’ll make it.”
The sky truly was pretty at this time of night. Its colours were ever-changing—no two sunsets the same. And it always signalled his slight freedom. He was conditioned to like it—simply because it meant the responsibilities of the daytime would wash away. Of course, it had been a long time since it felt that way. Now it meant quiet moments between the four of them, and the beginning of a new day together.
Tonight, the sky was nearly empty. The few visible clouds faded into wisps on the horizon, burning red and pink from within. They’d be long gone by the time the stars came out, leaving them a clear view for miles. They crested the hill a few minutes before the sun dipped too far out of sight, clambering up a rock for that extra metre of height to savour every second.
“Ahhh, I’ll never get over watching that,” An sighed, jumping down with a knee-shattering crack. He winced—and stepped off much slower.
“It’s breathtaking in different ways each time,” he agreed, surveying their destination.
“Right?”
The hill was, as promised, quite flat. A barren circle some 20 metres wide, surrounded by bushes that gradually morphed into the trees that guided them up the hill. He could spot some flowers dotted around in the fading light, but for the most part, it was just grass.
An skipped over to roughly the middle of the clearing and flopped to the ground, rubbing her face into the cold grass. “You should try this. It’s nice and cool after walking.”
He joined her, sitting down before lying back and turning his cheek to the ground, the blades tickling him gently. “…Not really.”
“It’s not nice?” An rolled over to shoot him a flabbergasted look, and he rushed to shake his head.
“It’s not cold.”
An blinked. “In what world is this not—wait.” She poked the cheek not smushed into the grass. “Right. You’re colder than everything else. I forgot.”
“You forgot… Did me passing out for a week mean nothing to you?”
She snorted. “You’re not allowed to joke about that. I guess I just got used to you being that…temperature. Hey, does this mean if you get sick the ‘danger temperature’ is lower than normal?”
He sat up to stare incredulously at her. “What in Miku’s name are you talking about?”
“Hey!” She shot up to join him. “Don’t bring Miku into this. It’s a legit question!”
“What?” He was thoroughly confused. “I have no idea what you mean. What is the danger temperature?”
She glared. “Have you… ever gotten sick before?”
“I don’t think so? Why?”
“I—How. If someone gets sick and their temperature goes above a certain number, that’s when you know it’s serious. But if your base temperature is several degrees lower than normal. Then the danger temperature is probably lower as well.”
“I…see.”
“Do you?”
“No. How did we end up talking about this?”
“I have no clue.”
He snorted into his knees, An laughing beside him. It was well and truly dark now. A few stars making themselves known. He said as much, pointing An’s attention upwards. They sparkled, filling every blank space between them and turning the inky black into a canvas of white and blue. You couldn’t escape them, and they had nothing to hide behind; laid bare in front of the two of them. He couldn’t help but gape, eyes opening wider as if it would let him see more at once. The grass around them lit up, the sky so bright it felt like midday. An was similarly speechless beside him, turning this way and that to stare at every individual star. The light had turned her hair nearly silver, and the fake stars she used seemed real, glowing and reflecting the starlight. It fell around her in a halo, framing her perfectly.
He dragged his eyes from her to the countless stars, and he could see how far he’d come.
“For some reason, I thought they’d be different,” he admitted. “It’s not logical, I know. We’re not that far from the castle. But they felt so far away from me; how could they be the same stars everyone else was looking at?”
An didn’t say anything, and he continued on.
“I’m glad I get to fix that notion. That they’re still here for me.”
“I get it,” she said quietly. “It’s not quite the same. But I used to look at them a lot too. I really only had one friend before Akito and Kohane, and I rarely got to see her, but we’d pretend the stars were sending messages for us. Or I’d look at them and imagine all the cool ass-kicking I’d do with my magic,” she laughed.
“We’ve always been looking at the same stars… It’s nice.”
He pointed out the constellations slowly from left to right, An making up new ones between his explanations and renaming several of the ones he’d presented. He’d answer any question she asked, and the ones she didn’t.
It took her longer than he expected to ask.
“Why do you know so much about the stars? I can’t imagine this was ‘important for the prince to know.’”
He looked at her when she asked, but as she went on diverted his gaze upwards. He let the silence stretch, not quite willing to answer, despite knowing it had been coming. They gave him too much pity as it was, and it felt like with every new thing he said, that pile only grew.
After a minute he sighed, avoidance was pointless. “They were the only thing I could see. They were always there—one of my only constants. I’ve lost track of how many nights I spent on my balcony, simply looking up.”
An bit her lip and looked away. That familiar pity already burning in her eyes.
“I stumbled across the astronomy section of the library and quietly took a few books. Then I’d sit outside for hours, comparing what I could see to the illustrations on the pages.”
“Good. I’m…glad you had some things.”
“It wasn’t all bad,” he defended. “I know it looks bad when I say it—and it is, I concede on that. But I feel like you all only see the worst sides.”
“Alright…” An said hesitantly, “I don’t know if I agree, but if that’s what you believe then…alright.”
“It wasn’t!” He turned to face her fully. He had to make them see. “I had Tsukasa and Saki. My mother was always nice. They never hurt me and—I don’t know if this makes it any better, but. I truly didn’t notice anything was wrong until I was about 11.”
“It. Sort of makes it worse. But it’s understandable. And yeah.” She shrugged him off, picking up one of his hands to show it to him. “They never hurt you. But we’ve all seen the way you hold your hands when it rains. And you’ve said before they would hurt after being pushed to play for too long. That’s sort of the same thing, even if it wasn’t on purpose.”
She faded out of view as he focused on his hand. It was always one of the excuses used against him. ‘You can’t climb a tree; you might hurt your hands.’ ‘What if you broke your arm? The horses are far too dangerous.’ Things like that at every turn. They had hurt when playing the piano and violin. Countless hours of being forced to go on longer than he could handle. Too-small hands stretched across octaves he could barely reach. His hands were far from weak—thick callouses from the violin strings, but at the same time, so delicate. They’d hurt in a different way when he first left—unused to the constant hard work or extreme temperature changes. And like An said, when the rain got too heavy, or he was reminded of playing, he could feel the phantom pain of overuse in his fingers.
His hands, once uncracked porcelain, now marred with burn marks and faded cuts, stared back at him.
He liked them more like this.
“Alright… I promise I understand. I’m not trying to downplay what happened. I just—” He curled his hands around her fingers, her warmth seeping into him. “I hate the way you all pity me. It truly wasn’t the worst it could have been, which!”—he continued before she could interrupt—“doesn’t make it okay, I know. But. Try to see it from my perspective.”
An squeezed his hand, silent. “Sorry…If we made you feel bad, we just don’t like seeing you suffer.”
“And I’m grateful for that.”
She sighed, pulling their intertwined hands to lay on the grass and shifting to lie down, dragging him with her to look up once again. “From our point of view, yeah, it was…horrible…from relatively normal lives, and mostly normal parents, it’s hard not to see yours as anything but ‘good.’”
“We just…want you to be happy.” She forged on before he could say he already was. “We can still see that shadow behind you, y’know. It’s been fading for a while, but every now and again it’ll come back. And yeah, we can’t help but feel sorry for you. That you had to go through all that just to—to what? To be yourself? It’s insane.” She was breathing heavily, talking almost too fast to catch. “We all think you’re insanely strong to be standing after everything. I would have run off years earlier.”
“That was just cowardice,” he whispered.
“Maybe…But you can be a coward and strong at the same time. I’m sorry. For everything you went through. I just want you to be as happy as possible, but if we messed up or made you feel worse or cornered or something, you can tell us. Please.”
He blinked. He certainly hadn’t been expecting this tonight. “You haven’t. You’ve all been nothing but kind. I couldn’t ask for better partners.”
“You sure?” she pressed. “Absolutely nothing wrong? Despite what you said two minutes ago?”
“Okay, maybe that.” He winced. “It’s not anyone’s fault, though.”
“But we can still try to fix it. We will.”
He turned to look at her. “Alright. Thank you for understanding.”
She stared back. “We’ll always be here. We’ll always do anything we can for you—for each other. But if we felt like overbearing parents instead of partners, that’s on us. We just need you to tell us.”
“…I’ll try.”
An smiled softly, the stars reflected in her eyes. “Good, so will we.”
She rolled over to gesture at the sky with one arm. “We’re like the stars. We’ll always be together forever, watching over each other.”