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Chapter Text

A supernova is formed when the pressure of a star runs low enough that gravity takes over. In doing so, it causes a rapid collapse that lasts merely a few seconds at most. Said collapse creates the iconic massive explosion that we all associate with the word ‘supernova.’ How did it get to this point, you may ask? Well, when a massive star can no longer undergo nuclear fusion against its own gravity, that’s when the ball starts rolling, where the first link of the chain is formed up to the rapid burst of heat and energy boiling and simmering tightly coiled suddenly exploding.

Ai Hoshino is a star, and this is a truth. It’s like claiming the sky is vast or that grass is green or that the ocean is deep, it is merely something that is. Ai Hoshino is a star. She is captivating and bright and warm and nobody can ever look away even when their eyes are scorched, because stars are beautiful and so are Ai Hoshino’s lies. 

Lies are beautiful, and lies are love. Ai Hoshino is a liar, and this is a truth. She smiles and sparkles and burns so brightly and says “I love you” in nearly ever performance she’s in and has eyes that captivate a heart in seconds and all of it is a lie, because that is all an idol could ever be. Idols are lies and liars, after all. No matter how beautiful or how captivating a lie is, a lie is all it ever will be. But that’s also a lie, isn’t it?

A lie, if told often enough, if told well enough, will eventually become the truth. “I love you” will one day stop being acid on her tongue and poison in her veins, “I love you” will one day stop being thorns binding her arms, “I love you” will one day become the rose without the thorns and water rushing down her throat after a tiring day. One day, Ai Hoshino will say “I love you” and it will not be a lie, and this is a truth.

When Aqua and Ruby Hoshino were brought into this world crying and squealing, Ai finally thought that this would be it.

“This time, it definitely won’t be a lie.”  

Aqua is surprisingly smart and emotionally mature for his age, and Ruby knows a lot of words a two year old really shouldn’t, but they are her children, after all! It’s only natural they’re prodigies, Ai jokingly muses at herself. 

She never says it to them. Even after Aqua’s amazing job acting in that movie, even after Ruby’s absolutely beautiful dance performance, even after she notices the warmth bubbling in her chest everytime her kids beam at her or look at her as if she hung the stars on the night sky, as if she was the most beautiful person ever in their eyes. And just the thought of it brought a beaming smile onto Ai’s face, this has to be love, isn’t it?

But what if it isn’t? What if it’s something uglier? What if it’s her mind tricking this disgusting self of hers into believing she’s finally had everything she wanted before ripping the floor out from underneath her feet and sending her spiraling into the deep abyss? Ai Hoshino may be an idol, but she’s first and foremost a mother. What kind of mother never tells her children ‘I love you’? What kind of mother would she be if she said those words and caught herself in a lie?

What are lies, to Ai? They are love. They are weapons. They are pieces of the armor she wears around herself. They are the organs of an idol, the blood that runs through her veins and the vomit that bubbles in her throat and everything AI Hoshino is is a lie. A lie, a beautiful lie, a wonderful lie, a loving lie, but a lie nonetheless. What is the truth about Ai Hoshino? 

Ai Hoshino is happy when her children smile. Ai Hoshino feels warmth in her chest when her children laugh. Ai Hoshino feels worry when her children get hurt. Ai Hoshino is a shattered pot of porcelain that is barely held together by golden lies in the world’s spiciest act of kintsugi. Ai Hoshino is someone who has never felt love before. Ai Hoshino has never been loved before. 

Ai Hoshino loves her children and they love her back.  

Ai Hoshino dances and smiles and sings and says “I love you,” and she does it again and again and again and bottles the truth in her heart. She lies and lies and lies and lies again and the number of people who adore her grows and her children smile at her like she’s the sun and she keeps lying and lying and lying, because lies are love and Ai Hoshino is the best at lying there is. 

Ai gets more movie deals after the success of her first movie with the Director who liked Aqua (Gokanda? Golanda?). She gets more idol gigs, more job opportunities. Ai even got to star in a TV Drama! Talk about making it big, right? There’s also those variety TV shows that are all the rage in Japan right now, and sometimes there’s even the occasional modeling gig that pops up here and there. The group of stars known as B-Komachi is shining brighter than ever nowadays, and Ai Hoshino shines the brightest out of all the stars in her constellation. 

The lies have become the truth. 

It’s a shame it took too long for Ai Hoshino to realize it.

Nuclear fusion fails, the star falls apart, and gravity takes over. The fate of the Hoshino family is falling, falling, falling. It’s only a matter of seconds before the explosion starts.

There is a knife embedded in Ai Hoshino’s abdomen, and a blooming sensation of pain, pain,pain echoes relentlessly inside her head. It gets pulled out as quickly as it entered. Ai feels nauseous. She wants to throw up, she wants it to stop, why does it hurt so much, stop stop stop-

“Ai?”  

Aqua…? When did he..? Her hand instinctively reaches out and stops him from moving closer. Right. Aqua is here. Right. RIght. Right. Ai needs to buy time, she needs to stop this man from getting closer, she needs to stop this man from getting to her children. An ugly, metallic pressure bubbles up in her throat at the mere thought alone, and Ai desperately wrangles her throat to swallow back down the disgusting taste of blood, but it’s laughably futile. Ai hopes Aqua would grow up and not feel faint or disgust at the sight of blood, some movies really can’t ask for a squeamish actor. 

Ah, the man is still there.

Ai Hoshino is a disgusting, hopeless individual who can only ever sing and dance and lie and never love, because love does not come for people like her. Ai Hoshino is greedy, she wants it all! She wants to be an idol and a mother, she wants to be successful and support her kids, she wants to love and be loved and-

Ai Hoshino is an idol. To Ai, idols used to be pure creatures, who smiled and laughed and danced and sung and said “I love you” as if it was the truth, and Ai Hoshino could never be like that. She is not innocent, she is dirty, she is made of such filth that not even her own biological mother could love her. The closest person to a father she has is Saitou-kun, and what does that even say about her?

“You disrespected us! Bet you were ridiculing us behind our backs, you damned liar! ”

Ah, so that’s how he saw it?

An idol’s job is to sell dreams. She’s always cute, pure, innocent, and sings about honest love. Ai Hoshino is someone who can only describe herself as cute, out of all of these. For someone who is only cute and for someone who has never loved and never been loved, how else would she show love other than lies? Lying is love, because everyone wants to be lied to. An idol’s job is to sell dreams, but that’s not it.

 An idol’s real job is to sell a lie.

And Ai Hoshino is done with lying.

So Ai Hoshino does what a real idol does, and pulls out a smile more honest than she thought she could ever dream of doing, and speaks from the bottom of her heart for the few beats that remain for itself. 

“I have always been irresponsible,” she starts with a trembling voice, body shuddering and trembling and failing, but Ai smiles shakily all the same. “I’m such a hopeless human, I don’t even know how to properly love someone.”

Ai vaguely hears the sound of Aqua fumbling at something on the desk. Her phone, maybe? Ah, he’s calling for help… Her kids are so smart, after all.

“So instead,” Ai continues, desperately clinging to the hope that if there is some god out there, some deity watching over her for their sick and twisted version of amusement, that this man would not lay a finger on her kids, “I’ve been spitting out lies that would make everyone else happy, hoping that someday, the lies would become the truth. ” 

Ai Hoshino is an idol. She is captivating. She is a star. One can’t help but be caught in her gravitational pull, heavenly celestial body that she is. After all, do we blame the moth for burning itself in fire? For seeking to reach what it could never hope to attain and dream, for just a little bit, that it’s something you can tangibly reach for and something you can hold with your own hands? Ai Hoshino is an idol, and she will captivate this man, she will hold his attention and leave him breathless and he will stare only at her for she is a star and all of him is for her to hold. Let this be enough, please.

Ai Hoshino will be the brightest star in the world until her dying breath, if that’s what it takes for her children to live.

Her body screams at her. She is talking and talking and it takes all she has to even reach out her hand and call out to the man who she now notices is Ryosuke from her old fan handshake events, and how he ended up like this didn’t matter because right now he was threatening her children and she needs to make him go away.  

Ryosuke reacts to his name, and about the star sand in her living room. He runs screaming and with tears bubbling in his eyes as his knife clatters on the ground. Ai’s back meets the door with a thud before she even realizes it, her legs failing her already. 

Her mouth is still moving, her voice still reaches her ears, Ai belatedly notices. Ah, Aqua, she thinks, pulling him into her arms. Relief seeps into Ai’s bones and thrives in her veins, because Aqua and Ruby are safe and the danger has passed and suddenly everything hurts-

In Ai Hoshino’s final moments, she couldn’t even hear what she was saying. All she knows is that Aqua is in her arms and crying and she needs to comfort him and Ruby is on the other side of the door, and everything is a blur. 

In Ai Hoshino’s final moments, she tells her children “I love you,” and for the first time in her life, it isn’t a lie.

In Ai Hoshino’s final moments, her lie finally became the truth.

When a star dies, it generally takes a couple of centuries or up to more than a couple of thousands of years for it to disappear from the night sky, due to the distance between Earth and other celestial bodies alongside the limitations of the speed of light.

Aqua Hoshino did not have this luxury. Ai Hoshino’s light vanished from her eyes instantly the moment her heart stopped beating. Aqua Hoshino saw it. Aqua Hoshino felt every moment of his mother dying as she held him in her bloody arms. The scent of iron filled his lungs and his body memorized every single molecule. The sensation of something warm turning cold will etch itself in his brain and it will haunt his mind for years to come. The sight of Ai Hoshino’s smiling corpse burns itself in his soul, and he can’t help but laugh humorlessly.

Ai Hoshino was the most beautiful woman in the world, even in death, even with vacant eyes that used to glow brighter than supernovas.

Chapter Text

When a star dies, its gravitational pull is, naturally, disturbed significantly. The objects in orbit are thrown in disarray. Irreversible, unstoppable, inevitable. Even in its absence, the significance of a star is felt. 

Aqua Hoshino is not his mother, and this is the truth. He is not someone who matches her sheer charisma and talent, and he will never be like her for as long as he lives. But that’s fine. Aqua doesn’t need to be his mother. He is not a star, nor will he ever be one. Aqua Hoshino is someone who is cold and calculating and someone who could never smile like Ai, could never captivate so easily, so effortlessly.

But as long as it’s a lie, Aqua can pretend. Aqua Hoshino is, after all, a liar, and he is the best at lying there is. 

Ruby is a star, just like Ai was. Aqua can see it clear as the light of the sun, and she will surely reach the same heights their mother got to, and she will surely shine brighter than Ai one day, and Aqua hopes that when that day comes, Ai Hoshino will be proud of her, wherever she is. He’s not someone she would ever be proud of. He knows that. He understands that. He knows this is toxic, knows this is wrong in all the right ways, knows that he should stop and think to himself this isn’t what Ai would have wanted, but Aqua Hoshino does not have such a noble goal as fulfilling Ai Hoshino’s dreams. 

He is here to kill her murderer, and whether she would have wanted that or not is out of the question. It is a selfish, terrible goal, and Aqua knows that. But he can’t quit, because what else can he do?  

He will lie and he will cheat and he will exploit and he will use everything and everyone he can, and he will kill every part of himself that will stop him from achieving his goal. Anything less would kill him, after all. The only ties keeping him in this world were Ruby Hoshino and, in an ironic twist of fate, his own father. He cannot die until Ruby is safe, until his father is either rotting in a cell or rotting six feet beneath the dirt, and he will bloody his hands as many times as he needs to for it to happen.

He doesn’t need love for that, doesn’t need anyone to love him, for he can only barely remember what love feels like. For all intents and purposes, Aqua Hoshino is merely a dead man walking, living on borrowed time until his ends are met. 

So, why? Why is it that Kana Arima so easily slips inside his walls, so easily kicks off his mask and so easily rests in his heart as if she always belonged, daring him to confront it, daring him to look at her in the eye and tell her she didn’t belong in his chest, daring him to look at her.

Kana Arima is an anomaly. She shines so brightly and so brilliantly and her smile glitters with the light of a thousand constellations. The image of bright red hair and eyes as scarlet as the sky painted by sunset burns stubbornly in his mind, and Aqua Hoshino immediately knows he has foolishly, stupidly, hopelessly fallen. Kana Arima is not just a star, she is the Sun itself, and Aqua is uselessly captivated.

Her light is dimmer than it should be, her smile filled with more lies than when he last saw it a hundred lifetimes ago, but she is the Sun all the same. And like a moth to the flame, Aqua will burn, burn, burn in her gaze, burn in her warmth, and he will never want to let go, because he is weak and hopeless and this is love, and Kana Arima is smiling at him while laughing under the stars and suddenly he is lost, foolishly, inevitably lost, and he doesn’t even put up a fight.

Aqua Hoshino will see to it that her light will never dim again, see to it her warmth will burn him and leave no trace behind. Kana Arima deserves nothing less than to be brighter than the Sun itself, and he will be every shadow she casts with her flame until she glimmers brighter than the graveyard of stars he calls a night sky, until she burns hotter than the magma that thrives in the Earth’s veins, until the entirety of Japan- no, the World is caught in her gravity.

And maybe, just maybe, he can think of the future a little more hopefully, a little brighter than before. Maybe, just maybe, Aqua Hoshino wants to be the planet Mercury, to be Icarus, to be the fool who flew closer and closer to the Sun and burned for his complacency, for daring to dream. But there’s something infectious about Kana Arima, in her smile and her eyes and her vicious tongue and how easy it is to tease her, and how effortless it is to be honest with her, in how useless he is to her charm, in how hopelessly her eyes captivate him, in how foolish he is for loving her voice and her laughter that sounded like the ringing of silver bells, in how easily she makes him act so irrationally, in how Kana Arima dares him to dream.

I am a fool. A useless, dreaming fool. But as you are hopelessly my Sun, I will hopelessly be your Moon.

Aqua Hoshino is not a star, knows he will never be one, but even so, he yearns for the light of the Sun.

When two celestial bodies of comparable mass interact gravitationally, both orbit about a fixed point. This point lies between the bodies on the line joining them at a position such that the products of the distance to each body with the mass of each body are equal. 

Akane Kurokawa is not a star, even if everyone claims she is. This is a fact. Akane knows this, and she thinks it doesn’t really matter. She is the Moon, a starlit presence, not overwhelming, not too bright, and neither too overbearing. Akane Kurokawa is the largest light in a sky contested by millions of other glittering stars that blink and wink and are seen millions of years later even after they disappear but never thought of again. She doesn’t resent it.

Akane Kurokawa is captivating, her azure eyes glimmering like moonlight in the middle of the spotlight and her voice carrying a strength that feels as if it was her who was the divine incarnation of a legendary actor of days gone past, but that would be doing her a disservice. Akane Kurokawa puts all of those actors to shame. Just more and more stars piling on each other in the graveyard we know as the night sky, outshined by the brilliance of the pale white Moon.

Akane Kurokawa is beautiful, her ocean hair reaching just above her shoulders, her smile carrying a force to shift tides, this is a fact. As the world is vast and as the abyss above is as unknown as the abyss below, Akane Kurokawa is breathtakingly, stunningly, utterly beautiful . You’d be hard pressed to find anyone who could hope to even match her luminescence in the concrete sidewalks of Tokyo, much less the rest of Japan. Truly, Akane Kurokawa is beautiful, and Aqua Hoshino is hopeless once more.

Akane Kurokawa, above all, is a genius. With an intellect to put the minds of Poirot and Holmes to shame, Akane Kurokawa has piercing eyes that stab through your heart and tear at your flesh and bones until no chunk of you remains unsolved. Her tongue can be as sharp as her mind should it ever come to it, and hers is a reminder that even if society is so fixated on Stars and their heat and warmth and captivating gravity, and Suns and their scorching rays and overwhelming presence, the Moon is what controls our tides, the Moon is what regulates the gravity of the Earth, the Moon is responsible for keeping humanity standing on its own two feet, and you would do good to remember that.

Aqua Hoshino did not expect to care for Akane Kurokawa. Frankly, Aqua didn’t expect anything of Akane Kurokawa at all. But suddenly she has eyes like Ai and a smile as captivating as Kana’s and he is hopeless, and suddenly Lalalie is at the forefront of his investigation and suddenly Akane Kurokawa knows, knows Ai Hoshino in an intrinsic sense, in a way Aqua Hoshino could never hope to achieve. In a way, he’s a little envious of her for that, but in the way an actor would lament their colleague being far better at something than they were. 

Fellow moons they may be, their acting were as far apart as can be. Akane Kurokawa is moonlight herself, illuminating the sky and overpowering every other competing light, captivating even without the charm of the Sun, for she is its reflection, a mirror that shines even brighter than even the light it reflects, that is Akane Kurokawa. Aqua Hoshino is the dark side of the Moon, the side with no light reflected on it, the bloody shades that the Sun casts and should pay no heed, for it is his darkness and his alone, his burden, his alone.

In comes Akane Kurokawa, and suddenly they are two satellites orbiting the other, changing in gravity and distance, and the tides of Aqua Hoshino’s life shift so easily. She fits snugly in his chest in a way Kana Arima never could because she is Akane Kurokawa and she is someone so similar yet so different from him, someone who could see his filth and darkness and would tell him: “I would hold your hand in mine no matter how bloody it becomes. I have seen your sins and seen everything you are and seen you, and I love you not in spite of it, but because of it, because it is you.”

Akane Kurokawa would paint the sky a bloody red if that’s what it takes for Aqua Hoshino to clean his hands of the color, and he understands, because Akane gets it. She understands him, in a fundamental way, that no matter how many lies he puts up between them, no matter how many lies he spouts that she hopelessly believes, in the end, she would still see him. Not past his lies, but through his lies. Aqua Hoshino can lie to Akane Kurokawa all he wants, and maybe she will believe it for a moment, but moments are as fleeting as the light of a star. Inevitably, utterly, completely, Akane Kurokawa will see the truth of everything Aqua Hoshino is and was and ever will be and still decide to love him because she is who she is and he is who he is, and in every other lifetime that wasn’t theirs he would love her back. 

As he is, Aqua Hoshino can never love Akane Kurokawa in the way she wants. In a way, he feels guilty about that. But Akane deserves better than his guilt, better than pitying words and half-hearted apologies. And in a way, it was also a lie. Aqua Hoshino does love Akane Kurokawa, could have loved Akane Kurokawa, could have fallen for her as easily and utterly as he did for Kana Arima, but that was another lie that wilted before it could bloom into the truth, another flower he snipped before it could grow because she was too close, too involved, too important. But it’s too late for that, too late for could-haves and should-haves and if-onlys and maybes, because that was that and this is this.

Akane Kurokawa is the Moon and Kana Arima is the Sun, and Aqua Hoshino’s weak, useless heart has passed its judgment, and that was that.

“I would go through hell for you if you had said the word,” Akane told him once, on that fateful day where their tainted souls (caught in webs of strings of attachment and intimacy too complex to be labeled love but too deep to be considered anything less) would separate, two satellites wrenched from each other’s orbit for the sake of the other. 

I know, Aqua didn’t say. I understand. 

And I would never want you to.

(Gravity fails, and Akane is falling, falling, falling once more. Her heart falls further than her tears, but Akane is not someone so easily broken. She gets back up, smiles sadly at Aqua with a sense of bitter relief akin to when someone lost in the vast abyss above finally feels their oxygen tank drop empty, and its all finally, finally over.)

Aqua Hoshino has already lost enough, and he can’t really lose anything else. He refuses to. He rejects that very notion, and he will bloody his hands again and again and even if Akane would bloody her hands redder than his if he said the word, even if Akane would hold his knife in his stead, Aqua Hoshino has ruined her enough already, bloodied her hands already with what she has done for his sake. 

Aqua Hoshino walks his road to hell alone, with only the captivating warmth of the Sun and the calming gleam of Moonlight to keep him sane.

Chapter Text

A black hole is a region in space where the pulling force of gravity is so strong that light is not able to escape. The strong gravity occurs because matter has been pressed into a tiny space. This compression can take place at the end of a star's life. Some black holes are a result of dying stars.

Most black holes are what remains at the wake of a supernova. This process could take a long time, maybe a million years or more depending on how quickly it accretes the material. Once the neutron star is over the mass limit, which is at a mass of about 3 solar masses, the collapse to a black hole occurs in less than a second. 

Overpowering, overwhelming, all consuming. Such is a black hole, where no shout can ever escape and no light will ever bounce back, where all sanity is left at the door and where space warps and twists and bends in such a way that should anything ever make it out, it will never be truly alive again.

There are many facts known about the Hoshino family. 

The Hoshino family is captivating, with a mother formerly known as a legendary idol and twins who have the entirety of Japan eating at the palms of their hands.

The Hoshino family is made up of three turned to two. 

The Hoshino family is cursed to live a life of lies.

And in the middle of it all, at the center of this galaxy of lies they have created amongst themselves is a black hole. All consuming, overpowering, overwhelming. It is hate. It is spite. It is pure, concentrated rage. At the world, at the industry, at Hikaru Kamiki, at this cruel universe for murdering the star at the center of it all, for ending the life of Ai Hoshino. 

Twin stars where one isn’t even a star at all and the other burns so, so brightly, twin stars orbiting the galaxy of lies that is this cruel industry of illusions and masks, twin stars who loved the same mother and loved each other and are hopelessly, terribly, out of orbit. This malicious celestial darkness only takes and takes and takes and does not give and does not leave a trace, this corruption that has already taken one and is pulling in the other, this darkness that has consumed the Hoshino family.

The Hoshino twins are cursed to live in a world that would have hated their mother for having them, loving them.

When one thinks of a star, the name of Ruby Hoshino would pop up for anyone who keeps even a single eye open when it comes to the state of the entertainment industry. And frankly, who could blame them? With a brilliant smile, eyes that gleam with the luster of space and a charm so captivating and so, so radiant. Ruby Hoshino is radiance incarnate, and this is a fact. With blonde hair reminiscent of the sun and eyes that overpowered sunsets, it wasn’t even a wonder that she is so captivating.

She has that same charm Ai had, that same beautiful smile. When Aqua looks at Ruby’s grin and her ditzy persona and how her eyes are perfectly calculated to be as expressive as possible yet hiding so much, all he sees is Ai Hoshino and everything that is beautiful. Ruby is, undoubtedly, beautiful, and she is a star in the exact same way her mother was, in the exact same way that Ai Hoshino had captured the hearts of Japan, Ruby Hoshino would come along over a decade later and do exactly as her mother did with a cheeky smile on her face and with eyes that glitter like stars. 

Ruby Hoshino is the brightest star in the world, brighter than even Alpha Centauri, and Aqua Hoshino had taken it upon itself that her light would never dim. He will bask in her light and her warmth and her love and raise her higher than even Ai, and raise her until nobody can reach her in the sky for she will be the heavens itself, and she will not need him, and she will not look back. Ruby deserves it, for all of what Aqua’s done and all he’s lied for, it’s the least that he owes his sister.

Ruby Hoshino is talented, charming, and calculating. Calculating in a way not even Aqua would realize until it was too late, until he realizes she knows more than she’s supposed to, until he realizes the light he was so intent on never dimming has been replaced by the luster of the abyss, by the gleam of void itself. The same abyss that has claimed his heart has claimed Ruby’s, and Aqua does not know what to do. She schemes and plots and lies and she is still Aqua Hoshino’s little sister who smiles and cheers for him on stage and looks warmly at him every time his palm rubs her hair and calls him ‘onii-chan’ in that Ruby-Hoshino tone of way, and he can never stop caring for her even when she calls him a liar and breaks his heart into pieces, for he has no need for one anyway.

Aqua Hoshino will rip his heart and tear his throat and pierce his lungs and puncture every nerve of flesh and bone in his body if that was what it would take to finish his mission. If going down this path would be what Ruby Hoshino desired, then he would never accept that. He alone will walk through hell, he alone would suffer this burden, he alone would bear this pain and nobody else. Aqua will kill his own father with his bare hands before Ruby would ever get a chance to see even a strand of his hair.

He refuses to let Hikaru Kamiki, this all consuming void taking and taking and taking from their family even after his presence disappeared from their lives, take anything else from him ever again. He will etch this man’s grave into stone with his nails and dig his coffin with his bones and bury him so deep the world will never think of him again, and Aqua Hoshino will be gone with him. Aqua Hoshino is a greedy man, after all. He will kill his father and get the sendoff he deserves all in one go, who would he be to ever refuse such an opportunity? 

All-consuming, overpowering, overwhelming. The presence of Hikaru Kamiki was a black hole, a dark void hellbent on taking and taking and taking until nothing remained but hatred and spite and rage, and Ruby Hoshino felt it in her bones and in her blood and in her lies and in her heart, and Aqua Hoshino knows it down to the very last molecule in his soul. Hikaru Kamiki is their father, and there is no question about it. The lies and the plotting and the scheming and the luster of void is more than enough evidence, so much so that Aqua barely considers the need for a DNA test. That man is their father, and the murderer of Ai Hoshino, and the man who will die by Aqua Hoshino’s hand. This, he swears. 

Aqua Hoshino has broken promises before. Ai’s, Sarina’s, Akane’s. This one, he can’t afford to break.

A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby obscuring the view of the Sun from a small part of the Earth, totally or partially. That we often get such impressive solar eclipses on Earth is a lucky chance for nature. The Sun is vastly larger than the Moon ― it’s diameter is about 400 times the Moon’s. But the Moon is roughly 400 times closer to Earth. This makes it possible for the Moon to almost perfectly block out the Sun when everything aligns..

When the lie is told often enough, well enough, it will become the truth. So, what then, of the lies unspoken for? What then, of the truth hidden by layers upon layers of lies never told? 

It begins with this: 

Aqua Hoshino is sitting on a bench, staring up at the sky with an unreadable expression. Perhaps he sees something Ruby doesn’t; some profound, deeper connotations that completely recontextualize this meeting. Perhaps it’s some weird philosophical quote he probably got from a Self Help book, or maybe Aqua just likes stars. Knowing him? It could be all three. 

She clears her throat, just enough to get his attention. His face turns its way to meet hers, pale white and sickly and it looks so wrong, as if what she’s staring at is not the body of her twin, but something else entirely- some one else entirely. His eyes that used to shine with the illusion of stillwater, the illusion of apathy and gloominess hiding something so much more, more , hiding riptides and torrents and everything that would rip and tear and shred within its depths, his eyes that used to shine with so much more life before the death of Mama, his eyes that used to burn with the flames of hell, his eyes that looked so, so..

Empty.

Something is wrong. The wind blows slightly wrong, the humidity slightly twisted, the sheen of the starlit sky growing skewed and uncanny. Aqua Hoshino looks like a corpse living on borrowed time, like a demon from hell only in the Mortal Coil due to a pact with the Devil to kill another demon, and maybe that’s who Aqua is. Maybe that’s who Aqua always has been. Maybe he’s finally just dropped the pretenses, maybe he’s finally just gotten tired and showed Ruby the truth, un-eclipsed by his lies, shining and brilliant and fake, the ‘true self’ that he’s been burying upon layers of layers of sins and filth and masks; someone who died a long time ago, inhabiting a body of a dead man walking. 

“Not even going to greet your adorable sister, onii-chan ?” Ruby teases humorlessly, plopping herself down on the bench next to her brother.

Aqua stays silent, but nods his head in her direction, as if acknowledging the fact that she exists in his general vicinity. Her mood sours, and she’s instantly reminded of how much she wants to punch that gloomy face of his, but she’s a patient girl, she has restraint . Let it be known that Ruby Hoshino did not punch her brother the one time he really deserved it, because she is a good sibling. Unlike some asshole she knows. Or doesn’t know. Really, that was the whole point of this meeting.

Ruby Hoshino is tired, so, so, tired of not knowing. Aqua’s plans, the entire search he’s apparently been conducting for their father, the man who killed her Sensei and Mama, the movie script being a rotten, despicable form of his vengeance against him? Ruby is tired of being a chess piece. 

“So,” Ruby tries to start a conversation again, “I got the role for Ai in that movie you were planning.” 

Aqua’s eyes widen, and his mouth parts slightly, as if all wind was forcefully shoved out of his lungs with ease, and he looks at his sister again, opening his mouth- probably to dissuade her, make her reconsider taking the role or something.

Ruby beats him to the punch.

“Sarina Tendoji.” She quietly states without a shred of emotion. Aqua somehow looked worse than how he did when she told him about her role, his skin colored a sickly, twisted white, but his eyes. His eyes looked more alive than she’d seen them in weeks . “That was my name in my past life.”

An unreadable expression settles on her brother’s face after cycling through a million emotions at once. 

“I lived most of my life in a hospital room because of ast- a cancer, unable to even walk properly, much less consider dancing. It’s why I hated it so much when we had to dance when we were kids. Kinda funny looking back on it now, seeing where I’m at, isn’t it?” Ruby continues, staring up at the sky. If she looks at her brother’s expression now, looks at how he’d react, she doesn’t think she would be able to keep going. “I was into idol culture a lot, because they could sing and dance and smile so prettily and I wanted to be like them. It was a childish dream from a childish life that doesn’t matter anymore. That’s why I liked Mama so much.”

There’s tears forming in the corners of her eyes. Ruby ignores it exactly how she ignored it a million starlit nights ago.

“I was there, you know? When B-Komachi debuted. I watched every single one of their CDs, every single album they released, I watched it all a thousand- no, a million times. I’ve memorized every bit of choreography, every lyric, everything. Mama- Ai was everything to me. But she wasn’t really- there, you get me?” 

Her throat feels raw. Her veins are pulsing, burning, screaming at her that she shouldn’t do this, shouldn’t let her guard down around this husk of a corpse pretending to be anything close to human, shouldn’t be this vulnerable in front of a liar like him. But Ruby is done with lying, done with pretending, done with leaving so many things left unsaid. They both owe this to the other, after all that’s happened, after all that’s been done.

“There was… someone else. I don’t even think he was a doctor who dealt with my kind of sickness- he was a… uh..”

“A gynecologist.” Aqua’s voice interrupts her, brimming with an emotion that Ruby couldn’t put a label on.

Aqua’s stare burns through Ruby’s body, piercing through flesh and blood and bone and all the way into her soul.

“His name was Gorou Amamiya, and he was a Gynecologist. Someone who worked with the reproductive systems of women, and also helped facilitate childbirths if they were also a trained Obstetrician.”

A deafening silence shrouds the twins for only a moment. Only a moment, but in that moment, a hundred lifetimes passed by, and it felt as if they were back in a hospital room in MIyazaki, cold and barren and sterile, filled with the scent of antiseptic.

“Have you ever wondered how it would be like to be born as the child of an idol?” 

The innocent question of a dying girl echoes through the wind like a siren’s song, entrancing all who had heard it.

“How do you…?”

“I’m sorry we had to reunite like this, Sarina-chan.” 

Gorou Amamiya and Sarina Tendoji died a hundred lifetimes ago. Now, all that remained were Aqua and Ruby Hoshino. But that was fine, they could make do with just that. 

And on a starlit night without the glimmer of the Moon, twin stars would begin to find their orbit once more.

And on a starlit sky without the cruel judgment of moonlight, Aquamarine Hoshino found another reason to live.

And on a starlit void with only the company of glittering lights, twin stars that shone so brightly shed their masks and for the first time in their life, spoke the truth and only the truth , crying and holding onto each other as if it were naught but a dream, an illusion cast by the shadows of an eclipse.

The Sun, like all stars, is a huge, burning ball of gas that gives off both warmth and light. The Sun has a gravitational pull 27.9 times stronger than that of Earth’s. The Sun is at the very center of the Solar System, orbited by satellites and planets that bask in its warmth and scorch in its blinding rays, captivated by its gravity. The Sun is a star, and Aquamarine Hoshino has never been able to look away from the beauty of stars. This is no exception.

The news broke on a Tuesday afternoon, when the sunset burned a beautiful crimson rose, shades of blood dotting the Tokyo skyline in a picture perfect kaleidoscope of scarlet hues and orange warmth in a backdrop of stale snowfall. 

Hikaru Kamiki is missing. Suspected suicide , the news anchor methodically spoke out, a droning voice from Aqua’s phone, as he watched Kana ravenously devouring her instant noodles across him. Police couldn’t find the body. A wicked, malicious voice passes through his mind in an instant, before disappearing as if it never occurred: They never will. Exiting the site, Aqua opens LINE and sends the link to Ruby. Aqua Hoshino looks down at his shaking hands, hiding how the stars in his eyes skew and twist mercilessly. The void in his heart shudders, trembling violently. He feels it in the creak of his bones, in the sudden rush of air escaping his lungs, in the whirring cogworks of his mind. 

And the void shudders again, and whispers to him in a twisted, cruel voice, more Gorou Amamiya than Aquamarine Hoshino: “Do you think you deserve this? Do you think you deserve to be happy, after what you’ve done? Do you think-”

And here is a truth: Aquamarine Hoshino is tired. So, so tired, of revenge, of hatred, of living a life dictated by a dead who never moved on, of living a life dictated by an angry child who looked the corpse of his mother in the eye and held her corpse as it turned cold and lifeless like the void of night, tired of lying. So, Aqua looks at the gnawing abyss that has consumed so much of his life, that has taken and taken and taken too much already, and tells it: “No.”

And the void screams tempestuously, the storm of raging winds howling across his mind, whispering and whispering, reminding him of all he is not and all he has done wrong, of how human he is not and of how his hands resemble that of a corpse more than a person. Aqua knows this. Truly, inarguably, knows it. He sees it in his gaze, sees it in his lifeless voice, sees it in his heart, knows it to be the truth.

And truly, as lies can become reality, then reality can be a lie. Aqua Hoshino knows he is merely a husk, a shamble of a man barely held together by the strings of hatred and vitriolic anger it spits from every orifice, for it is the truth. But Aqua, first and foremost, is the son of Ai Hoshino, the most beautiful liar who had ever lived. Aqua, first and foremost, knows how to turn lies into reality. 

And so he says to the void: “I don’t deserve every kiss my mother has given my forehead, nor do I deserve every molecule of warmth my sister has shared with me through her embrace. I don’t deserve the stares they give me, the ones that say you are special, you are loved. But-” 

And his voice quiets down to barely a whisper, softer than silk, yet carrying the gravity of a thousand stars.

“I will not die now. My sister is waiting for me at home, after all.”  

Aqua couldn’t die now, not when Ruby needed him most. Couldn’t die now, when he hasn’t given Akane Kurokawa the kindness she deserves. Couldn’t die now, when that would mean to look away from the brilliance of the Sun.

So, to answer the void: Did Aquamarine Hoshino deserve to live? Maybe not. Maybe he deserved to be somewhere far from here, succumbing to rot and festering filth in a grave where nobody would visit and a funeral where nobody would cry. Certainly, however, if he died now, Ruby would kill him, backed by Kana Arima and Akane Kurokawa, and he couldn’t have that happening on his watch.

And that was that.

Kana Arima is beautiful. This is a fact. She is captivating and you can never look away from her. Kana is the Sun, and Aqua wants to be her Icarus. Even slurping down noodles with the grace of a toddler and yelling at him about how haughty he’s being about how she ate, even pouting at him when he snorts condescendingly at her.

She throws him a middle finger, and goes back to intently eating her noodles. Aqua can’t help but laugh helplessly, lips curling at the edges as he stares and stares, and he can’t look away.

“Are you okay?” Kana asks him concerningly, eyes wide in unhidden surprise. “Did you hit your head somewhere, A-kun? Was my dazzling beauty too much for you to handle and your gloomy brain fried?”

Aqua laughs, and laughs some more, laughs until tears bubble in the corner of his eyes. He’s free to laugh like that now, he realizes. Then, he smiles, and he finds no lie in it.

“I’m okay,” he says, and for once, it’s starting to become the truth.

And then he points below the table and says:

“You dropped your chopsticks, by the way.” 

Kana’s brain visibly stutters, her face visibly red, lips letting out a quiet murmur about “Unfair smiles and unfair assholes” and maybe this time Aqua won’t pretend to mishear it. For now, he picks up her chopsticks and throws them in the trash to an audible whine from the girl. He grabs another pair from a cupboard, before separating them down the middle.

Aqua hums, taking the seat beside Kana, chopsticks in hand, before he reaches out with them and grabs a few noodles, holding his hand out to the girl’s face.

“Well?”   Aqua asks smugly. “Open wide.”

“Fuck you,” the girl replies, face burning redder, before slurping on the noodles. 

Aqua laughs again, and it is a beautiful sound. 

“Stop messing with me, damnit,” Kana whines petulantly, pouting in a way that would murder his weak heart a million times over if not for his fortitude. 

Of course, he can’t have her thinking like that.

So Aqua leans closer, grabbing hold of another few strands of noodles with his chopsticks, and says:

“And, pray tell, Kana Arima,” he whispers and it is so, so loud, louder than any thunderbolt by the Gods and yet Kana can barely hear it over her own heartbeat, “Who told you I wasn’t being serious with you right now?”

“A-ah.” Kana’s voice stutters melodically, and it is a beautiful sound. Aqua wants to hear it again. Kana looks at the bowl of noodles in front of her as if it was the most mesmerizing constellation in the sky, face burning redder than before.

Aqua smiles helplessly, and holds her hand in his and Kana Arima’s eyes go wider than her lungs (breathless and void of oxygen). And then, she squeezes his hand and smiles at him like the Sun. 

Aqua squeezes her hand back, and feeds her more noodles.

Maybe he’s not okay yet, maybe he won’t be okay for a while, and maybe he and Ruby need some actual therapists for this, but that could wait for a little longer, could wait until after the snow on the Tokyo sidewalks melted under the light of the Sun.

Right now, Aqua Hoshino is content with holding Kana Arima’s hand and feeding her noodles from a bowl in her apartment.

Right now, Kana Arima was the brightest sun in the whole world, staring and smiling at him so sincerely and so warmly that Aqua knew his heart would burst from his veins if he stared back for too long, but-

Aqua Hoshino looks at Arima Kana and he smiles, full of warmth and promise and everything he has ever wanted. Aqua looks at the Sun, finds it staring back at him with that encompassing warmth, and for now, he lets himself burn . To his hair, to his skin, to his blood, to his bones. Aqua burns in the light of the Sun, and he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

Kana Arima was the most beautiful woman in the world, even in wrinkled pajamas and unruly bed hair, even as she ungracefully slurped instant noodles from his hand, even as Aqua Hoshino melted foolishly, helplessly, inevitably, at the sight of her gaze, at the image of her smile, like snow on Tokyo sidewalks.