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The stars in the vacuum of space are ever-changing. Blinking and exploding and being born and turning into black holes or white dwarves.
Light from distant, dying stars takes a long time to fizzle out. If you're too far from the star, you wouldn't know that it has died until a long, long time later.
Dan Heng likes to catalogue the stars of the planetary systems they visit. Their age, their average temperature, number of planets in its orbit, their color and size, etcetera. As he enters such numbers into the Archive, he can't help but wonder about how little of the universe he's actually managed to archive.
Even the biggest stars are so, so tiny when compared to the rest of the universe. Even if everyone in the universe was trying to catalogue every star in the sky, would they manage to succeed? Stars are fizzling out and being born every day— how would such fickle things stay still long enough for them to be recorded?
Today, Dan Heng is again fumbling over one very specific entry in the Archive. He's been having trouble over this particular entry since he's started to archive people— a while ago. All of the acquaintances, friends, and even enemies they've met on their journeys have been entered into the Archive. But how is Dan Heng even supposed to start his own entry?
He doesn't remember anything about himself before the Shackling Prison. He can tell that something must've happened before— nobody ever just popped into the world like that, fully formed and clothed with horns on his head and chains around his body, carrying the title and crimes of a dead man like the world on his shoulders.
But since he can't remember anything, he doesn't try to explain that part about himself when telling others about him. He's always told everyone and himself that that place, that exact time, was when he was born, even though something in the back of his mind tells him that it wasn't.
Dan Heng cannot lie in the Archives— it would destroy the entire purpose of the thing. So, which version of the tale is he supposed to tell?
He writes a single sentence into the Archives, and immediately deletes it. A few words, deleted again.
Dan Heng closes his eyes and grabs a fistful of his own hair, trying his best to just remember. What had happened to him? What was wrong with him?
The stars outside the walls of the Express change and change. For some strange reason, thinking about them gives him a vague feeling of loss.
"Yingxing."
The false moon of the Luofu hangs lazily in the sky, dousing the Luofu in a soft blue light. Stars wink all across the dark sky, like they're privy to the secrets of the heavens.
A jade-eyed man with glimmering azure horns leaps onto a roof with the grace of a dragon, his robes flowing behind him in the wind. A white-haired swordsman is already sitting there on the roof, a jug of wine by his side.
The swordsman smiles, and lifts the jug of wine. "Dan Feng, you're on time. For that, you get to have one more cup of wine tonight."
The horned man snorts, a rare break in his cool High Elder facade. "Don't reward me like I'm a toddler, Yingxing. You always end up letting me have extra once you're drunk."
Yingxing laughs. "I don't remember doing that."
"It's because your alcohol tolerance is absurdly low."
"Not my fault you long-life species can drink until half your blood is alcohol."
Dan Feng flicks him on the forehead, and Yingxing laughs louder. Almost subconsciously, Dan Feng cracks a smile as well.
The swordsman notices immediately, smile turning into a grin. "Dan Feng, you're smiling."
The corner of Dan Feng's mouth twitches. "I'm not."
Yingxing surges forwards and grabs Dan Feng's face, fingers working to pry at the corners of Dan Feng's mouth until he's coerced into a lopsided semismile. "See, you are!"
Dan Feng reaches out to grab Yingxing's face as well in retaliation. He delights himself at the giggles he gets out of Yingxing as he pulls at the other's face, stretching and squishing as if Yingxing were a soft steamed bun.
Eventually, both of them realize the position they're in, half-sprawled across the roof with both of their hands on the other's face. Before Dan Feng could even get a word out, Yingxing was leaning forwards to kiss him.
"Yingxing!" Dan Feng sputters, face so hot he resists the urge to conjure and splash water over himself.
Yingxing begins laughing again as he starts peppering even more kisses across Dan Feng's face, ending with one right on the nose. "What, don't you like kisses? I guess I will have to stop them, then." His face is full of mirth.
"No, I like them..." Dan Feng is sure his face is hilariously red right now, and tries not to think about his shattered image as the cold and lofty High Elder.
Yingxing giggles, eyes twinkling brighter than the stars behind him. "What was that? I couldn't hear you."
"I like the kisses," Dan Feng mumbles, almost wishing that Yingxing's hold on his face wasn't so tight so he could hide his face in the other's shoulder.
"Then this one shall have to give them to you," Yingxing whispers.
They kiss again, again, and again, until the false moon disappears to make way for the false sun. The stars, the only real things in the sky, keep them company, even as the false sun turns on and blots out their light. Even then, they keep shining, still thinly visible in the sky of the Luofu.
Dan Heng jolts awake and peels his face from the screen of the Archive, having fallen asleep as he tried to recall his past memories. A strange warmth had engulfed his body, despite not having been sleeping in his bed, which was warmed up by the Archives' monitors.
He swears he remembered something in his dreams— a memory from long ago, underneath the blue light of the Luofu's moon and the gazes of a thousand stars.
There was a man— white hair and wine— whom he'd felt warm and fuzzy inside at the sight of, a feeling the present Dan Heng has never recalled experiencing. His name, the name of that man— it's right at the tip of his tongue.
Something something stars, it had been. Those deep red eyes had twinkled like the stars in his name.
Dan Heng puts a hand to his forehead. That man, whom he'd possibly felt love for in the past, whose name just slips from memory whenever Dan Heng tries to find it— why, why did he feel so wrong? Why, even though his past self had felt safe and happy with him in that dream, did the present him felt a sense of... danger?
And those twinkling, blood red eyes— why did they feel so familiar?
Before Dan Heng could slip further down his pit of lost memories, a knock at the door makes him jump. "Passenger Dan Heng, you've been late to breakfast lots of times these past few months, and Pom-Pom won't have it! Get up now before I feed you the leftovers from yesterday!"
"Coming," Dan Heng calls, scrambling to make himself look like he hadn't fallen asleep with his face pressed to the Archives, before hurrying out into the corridor.
The vast expanse of stars greet him from beyond the windows of the Express. They're not on a planet, so they don't twinkle— but they're all still changing anyway; blinking and exploding and being born and turning into black holes or white dwarves.
Dan Heng wonders about that white-haired man, the one with stars in his name. Is he still alive, somewhere out there? Or had he died and became something else, joining the stars up there in the galaxy?
Dan Heng hopes that even if he died, his death was peaceful. After all, nobody wants to explode into a black hole.