Work Text:
Early December of 2017
In the old wisdom of the stars, Saturn rules over both Capricorn and Aquarius—two faces of time, two echoes of restraint.
Capricorn, the keeper of walls, Saturn’s yin. It builds within the lines, carving stone from discipline, forging permanence from patience. It is the weight of what lasts, the silent architecture of endurance.
Aquarius, the wanderer beyond, Saturn’s yang. It stands at the edge of the known, pressing against the seams of order, unraveling the threads to weave something new. It is the vision beyond the structure, the dream that dares to break free.
Saturn is the great divide—what is built, what is broken, and the endless turning of both.
Satoru pulls up his natal chart to determine where his Saturn sits, tracing the planets as they aligned on the day he was born. His Saturn fixed in Capricorn—rooted, unyielding, carved from time itself.
He scrunches his nose in distaste. He thinks his Saturn belongs in Aquarius. But he proceeds to read.
The interpretations tell him he is scrupulous, honest, a man of precision and purpose. A force that endures, that bends but never breaks.
He scoffs at it. Yet, he continues.
It says he knows how to rise, how to hold his ground. Perseverance is his language, ambition his silent vow. He moves measuredly, methodically, but the end is inevitable—he always reaches it, always victorious.
Satoru guffaws and wonders: is that power, or just another kind of prison?
Because buried beneath all that strength is something else. A shadow in the corners of his being—melancholy, disappointment, bitterness. A heart walled off by time, by duty, by things he cannot name.
He may act like he resists all that is expected of him on the basis of his strength, him being the strongest, but he relents, succumbs nonetheless.
Still, he reassures himself: it’s all for the future, for his students, for the ones he couldn't save. Or maybe, if he’s honest, for just one person.
Perhaps, astrology makes sense somehow as it calls Saturn the strict teacher, the ruthless examiner of one's growth. It is the weight of time, the cold hand of discipline, the force that demands maturity before reward. Satoru’s Saturn in Capricorn whispers: Look here. This is where you must grow. This is what you must endure.
It is the price of being the strongest—to stand alone, to endure in solitude. But he remembers a time when he wasn’t. When strength was not a burden he carried alone. When someone stood beside him, shoulder to shoulder, sharing the weight, sharing the world.
Before he lets himself sink into the pit of memory, he turns to another article in a different field.
In the language of the cosmos, Saturn is a jewel adorned with celestial rings—vast, luminous, and eternal in their dance. A giant of gas and shadow, woven from hydrogen and helium, light as a whisper yet heavy with time. Other planets bear rings, but none as radiant, none as intricate as Saturn’s.
Saturn alone wears its crown of ice and dust, a masterpiece carved by the universe itself.
Though Saturn’s rings are fragments of comets, asteroids, and shattered moons—celestial bodies torn apart by the planet’s persistent gravity. Yet, in their ruin, they form something spectacular, a mosaic of destruction turned into art.
Satoru keeps reading. Science holds his interest more than astrology’s celestial guesswork.
Saturn spins swiftly, chasing the dark, outrunning the dawn—its days fleeting, gone in the span of 10.7 hours. Yet, its orbit around the Sun, it lingers, tracing slow, deliberate arcs through time. A single year stretches across 29.4 Earthly cycles, a quiet testament to patience, to the weight of eternity measured in 10,756 days.
Satoru doesn’t know why he keeps reading about these things. Lately, it has become an obsession—a necessary distraction when he is alone, when the missions are over, when the weight of saving humanity is no longer pressing against his back. But in the quiet, he feels it—the hollow space in his chest, the ache of something missing.
Maybe, he thinks, his heart is like Saturn. A world too vast, too cold, too volatile for life to take root.
They say Saturn’s storms rage for years, its rings are made of shattered remnants, and its atmosphere, pressurized and cruel, could never sustain breath. It exists, beautiful yet uninhabitable, spinning endlessly in the void.
And perhaps his heart, no matter how vital, is the same. A machine of arteries and chambers, of veins and ventricles, clenched tight like a fist. It beats, it survives—but does it feel?
Maybe it does feel. But when it does, it is only yearning, a hollow longing that forms craters into his being, deep and limitless.
The feeling is akin to his Unlimited Void—endless, all-consuming.
His Domain Expansion traps its victims within the vastness of the Limitless itself, an expanse resembling outer space, where a great black hole looms, galaxies drift like distant ghosts, and white specks flicker like dying stars. Boundless raw information floods the mind, drowning thought, paralyzing will.
But this time, there is no opponent, no curse—only him, lost inside his own immeasurable feelings, petrifying him in its enormity.
As his feelings begin to drown him, Satoru wonders if Saturn is him. A planet adorned with 146 moons and counting, each one an isolated world, carrying its own quiet story. From the haze-veiled Titan to the scarred face of Phoebe, they orbit, bound by gravity yet distant, unreachable.
He thinks of the unnamed ones—scattered, drifting, nameless like his emotions. If he worked at the International Astronomical Union, he’d name them all the same: Suguru, Suguru, Suguru, Suguru, Suguru.
Because when the weight of longing pulls him under, when he sinks too deep to resurface, every thought, every feeling, every aching, desperate thing collapses into one name.
Suguru.
Since he already thinks he is Saturn, he imagines Suguru as his rings—glorious, breathtaking, cradling him in a halo of light. But then he remembers: Saturn’s rings stretch 282,000 kilometers away, a shimmering illusion of closeness, never truly within reach.
Maybe it makes sense. If Suguru were his rings, then of course, he couldn’t touch him. Couldn’t hold him. He would always be there, circling around but never close enough. Never his to keep.
Suguru is somewhere distant, far from where Satoru is, leading a cult. He feels worlds apart, even though they breathe the same city air, even though he could close the distance in an instant—just one step, one thought, and he’d be there. Yet, some distances can’t be crossed. Not by teleportation. Not by power.
Satoru shuts his phone and turns to the sunset. He’s had enough of reading about Saturn. Now, it’s time to let himself wallow as he stares at the picturesque hues of orange and clementine spilling across the Tokyo sky.
Perhaps they’re watching the same sunset. Satoru doesn’t know if that thought soothes him or breaks his uninhabitable heart further. Either way, he finally lets himself cry in the silence that’s too deafening—he hears echoes of Suguru’s laughter in that classroom, memories reverberating through time. And the happiest ones hurt the most.