Chapter Text
Five,
four,
three,
two…
one!
Kohane jumped onto a star with a crash, and peered down from the skies to the border.
(Well, border is an exaggeration—the faint line she saw that glimmered between the twinkling skies above and vast undergrounds below could barely be called a “proper” one.)
Not many knew how the border worked, or even that it existed—content to live simply in whatever place people materialized in without a second thought. And why not? Each separate land was ruled by whatever higher powers governed the place, and they did a well enough job of stopping people from slipping through the cracks.
But slip she did—her in her lopsided pigtails, oversized jacket and wire-framed glasses. Something heavy, twinkling in her chest, guided Kohane away from heaven and higher into the sky as her shoes sunk into nebuli, hands grasped on the smooth edges of stars, and arms pushed up and away from the gaping maw of black holes and universes—her, a traveler through a millennia of galaxies. Voices moved in her head—taking on the sounds of her family and her friends, encouraging and urging her to the border. That’s where you’ll find the truth, they murmured. And you’ll be safe—safe and away. Kohane kept her head down and followed their guidance.
Space was cold.
This place is so—lonely.
At the edge of the sky, five massive pillars of gold colored stardust came into view—stretching from where she was to all seeable space above. Kohane looked down and saw the faint glow of something beneath her feet, pulsating thinly through clouds of dust. “The border is real, after all," she whispered.
Kohane had never been tempted to leap from the skies, even as a lone wanderer in a sea of stars—but she had come so far, what’s really the worst that could happen?
A lot, she mused from her position on the last star between the rest of the universe and the pillars—then nimbly hopped down into nothingness.
*
Falling is like flying—
—said absolutely no one ever.
Kohane raced down from above, razing planets, shooting past galaxies, body heating up with every inch spent soaring down from the heavens. The glasses she carried around on her person were gone, lost from outstretched fingers as she whistled through the air. Kohane streaked through space at speeds that could put the fastest of rockets to shame; if someone looked up at just the right time, all they could see would be a white blink through the sky.
Unfortunately, the unorthodox method of traveling came at a cost—pain seared through her body like no other, and Kohane screamed as flames crept up her legs, arms, head, encroaching into her brain and hissing into her ears. Air pushed past her writhing form, forcing the girl to even greater velocities. Voices shouted, worrying, in her head:
At this rate, she’ll burn before she makes it to the border, her best friend choked out.
But she’s so close! An uncle yelled.
She’s not ready. The waiting room is closest—someone there will help her.
Move left, her mother whispered in her ear. Kohane clawed at nothing, blindly pushing out in midair and angling herself just a bit to the side.
A single flickering flame slashed at her soul—
then nothing.
*
"—awake? Akito, she fell out of the sky! No, I—"
Kohane slowly came to her senses. The hard ground (hard? ground?) scratched at her trembling body as she slowly pushed herself up, groaning as bones creaked. She looked down at her body, dreading the image of charred bones and rotting flesh that was sure to greet her after her fall—yet Kohane was unblemished, save for an odd pulsating feeling in her chest and a slight ringing in her ears. She lifted her hands to her face; they looked the exact same as they were before her tumble, save for a few stars and planets that twinkled in the outskirts of her translucent body.
Wait, translucent?
With a start, she picked herself up—staring at her legs and looking not just at them, but through them to the concrete-like floor she had fallen on. Near the outlines of her clothes, stars glittered and shined, and as Kohane raised her hands above her head to stretch, she could've sworn she saw them twinkle. She was no longer the ghostly white form she perceived herself as before she fell from the heavens—now, she was a walking, talking, constellation.
In contrast to the rest of her body, blinking gently with light, there was an empty stretch of space where her chest was. Kohane poked at it and stiffened at the sudden hot flashes of pain behind her eyes.
The voices were gone.
"—Okay, she's cute, but it's not like I can do anything about it! They'll come looking for her eventually, I mean—" The voice of someone behind her weakened to a whisper. “Is she a...Helper?”
Kohane rubbed her eyes. She stood on a massive, flat, gray expanse—nothing but dull-colored plains as far as the eye could see. Not a drop of life was in this wretched place—except for the increasingly-charged conversation happening behind her.
Wherever this border was, I must've missed it by a few... billion galaxies, she thought.
A twinge of disappointment ran down her spine.
“You don’t recognize her? I guess I’ll keep an eye then—see how she acts, and if she’s—well…I hope not. She’s really pretty."
Kohane turned around—finding a girl, turned with her back to Kohane’s face, in the flat space. She was moderately tall, with jet-black hair that faded into light blue, accessorized with tiny stars that seemed to swirl around her figure.
She wore a dark bomber, black and cerulean with metal accents—with two odd attachments protruding out from the jacket like flags—and black shorts with hanging chains. A silver earring in the shape of a raven’s wing hung from her right ear, her left hidden by the... thing she clasped to her head. It was—a phone? A buzz of noise certainly came out of it (to which she squawked a string of light-hearted comments), but it was nothing like the regular rectangular box shape one would expect.
No, it was a shard of glass, irregularly shaped and sharp as a spear. The only difference between it and normal glass was what it reflected: instead of the drab land Kohane and this mysterious other traveler was in, the face of an orange-haired boy gleamed up from the screen, scowling at every joke the girl made at his expense.
His olive-green eyes (with the pupils of quasars) focused blankly in front of him.
Before Kohane could run far away from this odd person, the orange boy blinked, his irises settling slowly on her. Kohane froze. The boy stared at her for a moment, scrutinizing her frozen form—then let out a bark of laughter. This time, Kohane could hear his voice from the mirror:
"An, your ‘shining star’ has arisen!"
The girl—An—gasped and jibed back at him mockingly— ”hey, she’s shining and made of stars, way cuter than how you looked when I first met you, splayed out on the floor and snoring” —before spinning around to face Kohane.
An had vibrant golden eyes, swirling with flecks of orange and dewy amber. Kohane, she had seen a lifetime of suns and moons that stood out against all other space and light in the sky—but nothing compared to the energy that danced behind this girl’s eyes.
She's so…
A tinny snicker came out of the glass.
"Looks like someone's got a—"
And with a crack, An dropped the boy onto the floor.