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Parting with his final compatriot, Gubo, was the hardest choice Yi Sang can ever remember making.
Though that’s not saying much, considering he doesn’t have any emotional memories coming from before the League’s fall. The memories of the distant past arrive in snapshots, with feelings coming from them akin to one’s reaction to a play or movie more than actual psychological attachment.
Yi Sang thinks that he died facing that Mirror, pondering if skipping out on taking his medication was the right choice after a day of the sobriety that would eventually bring the door to his gaze. Sang Yi comforted him as his ego finally grew beautiful wings and flew away from his body, far beyond N Corp, past the Stars of the City, and into the heavens. He can’t remember much from those agonizing hours other than sobbing until he could hardly breathe. The exact words of Sang Yi elude him now, lost in the thick mist, and he can’t remember anything other than his calm eyes and reassuring smile.
Perhaps he was never a crow at all, but a moth. A lowly, worthless moth. The moth lives in the constant shadow of the butterfly, despite them being the same type of vermin. The butterfly feeds on tears, carcasses, and waste from animals. It has wings just as the moth does, but with a shimmering beauty that is held as a marvel — a sign of intelligent design. Despite its diet of rot, it outperforms the moth in every way in the eyes of mankind.
The old Yi Sang had been stuck in the shadow of the “ideal”, the immortal butterfly that could never be caught.
The new Yi Sang that stands in this wide stretch of beach is nothing but an empty husk.
In that sense, he’s not even a moth.
He’s a pupa.
He’s the cocoon left behind by the insect that crawled out of his mind and off to the sun.
…
Ah, the sun.
The sun on N Corp’s beach is said to be stronger here than in any other place in the City. The golden heat dances across Yi Sang’s body. The bright yellow glow is giving a warmth to his soul that lifts him up, dragging his soul back into his body just as he believed it was beginning to drift once more, and he’s stuck in a trance.
He had no idea how badly he missed this.
How much he needed this.
Even a bat would yearn for the sun if it had been caged in white light.
And a moth is always drawn to the flame, isn’t it?
The weak tides brush against the shore, the sounds of its ripples meshing with the stench of salt and seagulls. He can’t stare directly at the sun in the moment, so he sits down by the rocks, arms wrapping around his knees, jaw tilted towards the sky. He takes off his socks and shoes and rests his feet in the water. The waves and sand cradle his skin within the earth.
He brings in a deep breath and exhales slowly. For so long, Yi Sang could only stand still. He believed himself to have been a crow in the process of being taxidermied. Looking back on it here, he can only see a moth in the middle of its life cycle, sheltered in its cocoon.
Now that insect has joined its brethren in the heavens, forever in the company of the sun, moon, and stars.
There’s a tingling sensation in Yi Sang’s nose, traveling upwards until it reaches each retina, and for the first time since leaving that stark white building, he’s crying again. He’s not even certain why he’s crying, but just like the night where the cocoon burst, he can’t stop.
But it’s freedom. It’s where the moth and crow meet.
It’s sinking.
It’s falling to the earth after failing to fly.
Back in the research facility, his whimpers echoed throughout the room, caged and enclosed. Now he’s sobbing by the sea, where all life once came from, which in itself comes from sun, stars, and space dust. All of this planet goes back to the sun, and once it expands, it shall return.
As the sun expands and begins to swallow the Earth, what once was the City will go up in flames that not even N Corp’s finest could copy. Even Yi Sang himself, the taxidermied genius that Gubo kept locked and caged up for his intelligence, could never replicate the sun. He’s content with that.
Even when humanity can create portals through the mirror, it cannot recreate the power of the sun. A man can have anything he ever dreamt of. He can live with infinite food, water, sex, camaraderie, and trophies that attest to his brilliance. Yet without the sun, he will surely go mad. Artificial light can sustain a plant, but not a person. There’s something specific to the sun. Something special.
Science can never grasp it wholly.
Yi Sang thinks he’s alright with that.
Eventually, the sun begins to flow into the depths across the clouds, setting to create a dreamy orange hue, disappearing to bring wake to nocturnal birds and beasts.
And as the sky darkens and the moon begins to come into faint visibility, Yi Sang is back on his way to find somewhere else to rest for the night.
He hopes he can find a new home soon.
But for now, he’s found comfort in the stars.