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The sunlight seeping faintly through her shut eyelids stings. The capillaries inside her eyes waver like a phantom. Am I dead, Stelle thinks. Surely it must be this blinding because she has arrived somewhere like the ｢Paradise｣ or the ｢Heaven｣ that Mr. Sunday so fervently insists upon. And if you add in the faint crying of birds on top of that, the conceptual image of ｢Heaven｣ draws itself out nicely.
......Except that the sensation beneath her hands is a long way off from ｢Paradise｣. Small grains of dirt and gravel, lukewarm from the sun, press up against her palms. Well, in a world where everyone was happy, they would surely have laid out fluffy clouds or soft carpets or something of the sort. Which means Stelle is not dead yet. It is time to open her eyes and ｢Trailblaze｣. All right. Let's get up.
"You're awake. ......A-are you all right, ma'am?"
The moment she opens her eyes and pushes herself upright, Stelle discovers a boy standing over her, peering down in an awkward hover. White hair not yet old enough, a face of graceful lines, golden eyes of a shade curiously unlike her own, and the teardrop mole beneath them. The boy — who is hiding not one bit of his startled expression, no, who cannot hide it — holds a wooden sword.
A man with this exact same face, only far more seasoned than this — Stelle knows him.
......So how, then, did she come flying into his past? To understand that, we have to go back a few hours.
The renowned Trailblazer Stelle would often drop into the Simulated Universe on purpose. Not because she was short on Stellar Jade, nor because Herta's nagging frightened her. It was because, in order to be together with Jing Yuan — her lover — there was no better excuse than that.
Jing Yuan. The Dozing General; the Divine Foresight. A long-lived being versed in both letters and arms, who carried the Xianzhou ｢Luofu｣ on his back like Atlas and yet feigned perfect composure while unfolding his stratagems. He was busy, as befits a famous man, and to be with Stelle he had no choice but to disguise it as ｢a favor the Trailblazer asked of him｣. And nothing fit that purpose quite like Simulated Universe testing.
If she took his big hand tightly in hers and let herself be escorted in, the scenery of the Xianzhou ｢Luofu｣ — clumsily rendered by so-so data — would unfold before them. Let Herta nag all she liked; wandering around pressed close together, trading talk meant only for the two of them── that, without question, was their rest and their affection both.
Of course, there was no chance Herta would sit back and watch them play hooky.
──If all you're going to do in the Simulated Universe today is that idiotic romance nonsense again, I'll force-log you out, see if I don't!
Having received that shrill warning, Stelle had no choice but to start going through the motions of exploring. Blessings from the Path of ｢Remembrance｣ kept coming up, so she picked mostly those, and killed monsters, and stopped by the shop for curios, and traded the odd joke with Jing Yuan in between......
"Shall we move on to the next domain?"
"Let us do that. Now then — go on ahead of me."
Jing Yuan, having politely sent Stelle in first, followed after her. The two of them, turned into soft little lumps of data, soon came face to face with an Aeon made manifest within the Simulated Universe...... Fuli of ｢Remembrance｣.
──See? This is what happens when you explore properly. Results.
Listening to Herta's triumphant declaration like so much background music, Stelle tilted her head. Normally, once that much time has passed, a simulated Aeon ought to show some sort of reaction. So why was this one so utterly silent? Meeting the eyes — assuming, roughly, that such things existed — of an Aeon made of data inside a simulation, brazen as you please, Stelle felt something strange. A sound like ice cubes swirling and clinking in a glass came to her on the wind.
Standing so close to him
why is it that his old wounds
you have never once noticed?
A transparent, chilly voice, one that called to mind March 7th of the Astral Express...... and it was rebuking Stelle for her ignorance. But what is it that I don't know? — and before she could get the protest out, everything around her froze over. When a lake freezes in winter, they say the fish do not know they are being frozen; they only feel that their bodies have gotten a little sluggish. Stelle's condition just then was much the same. As the ice went on coating the world in clarity, her hearing, and then her sight, and finally Stelle's own thoughts froze solid.
And then what began was the breaking of the ice. The ice split open with one person at its center and dropped her into the fathomless dark below. Down, and further down, and as she fell she reached out a hand, and what reached her, distant and blurred, was one person's cry.
──Stelle!
The hand that commands the whole Xianzhou ｢Luofu｣ at will stretched toward one person and one person only. But it could not reach her. The tide of remembrance had swallowed the star, and so she would have no way back until she had understood something within it.
And so the place Stelle is headed now is where Jing Yuan is, very long ago.
The training ground of a young Cloud Knight recruit, laid bare beneath the stinging sun.
And that is how her meeting with the young Jing Yuan comes to pass.
The boy, who has been agonizing over what he ought to ask a stranger fallen out of the sky, soon hears a sound like thunder rumble out of her stomach and leads her to the mess hall. It happens to be lunchtime, and Jingliu has always said to eat well before training, so she surely will not be angry with him for stepping away from practice to eat. ......Probably.
Once the food is laid out in abundance, Stelle makes her eyes go round and gives him a look that seems to ask whether she is allowed to eat. Jing Yuan nods readily. Stranger or friend, it is against all etiquette not to feed a person who says they are hungry. Overcome with enormous emotion, Stelle (there's a Xianzhou proverb about how the tree that will grow tall looks different from its very first leaves — of course, of course, General Jing Yuan was big-hearted even as a child!) takes up her chopsticks instead of demonstrating the virtue of modesty. When the lid of the bamboo steamer comes off, past the steam billowing up, she can glimpse the boy's face still stealing curious looks in her direction.
Dumplings brimming with hot broth. Noodles heaped modestly in a clear soup simmered for hours. Chrysanthemum tea to finish. Thanks to the conversation they have over the meal — though it consists entirely of Jing Yuan asking questions one-sidedly while Stelle nods or shakes her head around a full mouth — he manages to fish out a few pieces of information. That this woman's name is Stelle, for instance; and that this is what those beyond the heavens call the character for star; and above all, that she...... is looking at Jing Yuan as though she finds him rather endearing, rather dear.
Where on earth does goodwill like that come from? To have that much lovely, kind warmth in your eyes while looking at a Cloud Knight recruit you have only just met — what sort of person must she be, to be able to hand out affection in those quantities? For the young and high-spirited Cloud Knight recruit Jing Yuan, such people are rare. Not his own master, closest to him of all; not his fellow soldiers; not even the one among them he can just barely call a friend......
"By the way, how long are you going to keep 'ma'am'-ing me? Talk to me however you like."
......Right. Exactly like this. To be granted the courtesy of dropping formalities within half a shichen. Inside the Cloud Knights, where rank is rank, such a thing is impossible. Because she is a strange person, she is hard to predict. Because she is hard to predict, he does not understand her. And the less he understands, the more he wants to know. He wants to get at what's underneath, and if it is pure goodwill, he wants to repay it. And if it is a stratagem wearing goodwill's face, he wants to sneer at her — did you really think I'd fall for that — and learn from it all the same. A feeling not yet in focus begins to sketch its outline.
"Do you have somewhere to stay?"
But this is all that comes out of his mouth, and the foreign star fallen out of the sky answers as though it were nothing at all.
"There'll be an inn somewhere, right? I can stay at one of those for a while."
A perfectly natural answer. But Jing Yuan, unable to hold back the feeling racing ahead of him, ends up asking a rather odd question. Perhaps it is the starting point of the Divine Foresight's signature method — casting the board wide, then narrowing it in, slowly.
"It's hard to get a room at an inn these days. Last time I checked there was nothing available. So — do you want to stay with me? Just for one day."
Ah. Was that too impulsive? However full of goodwill she might be, no stranger wants to share a room with a member of the opposite sex she has known for all of an afternoon. The image this would distort; the reputation it would collapse. Jing Yuan is a clever enough boy to fear that instinctively, and he regrets the words the instant they leave him.
But this world is as much a mass of variables as the existence of the woman who has dropped out of its sky. To Stelle, the boy is her lover in the past, and someone deserving of unstinting goodwill, and someone she wants to spend a long, long time beside inside this memory, and even a question that might sound impertinent is endearing coming from him, and therefore the answer is......
"Sure!"
The boy's room is small. Poorly ventilated, and the bedding is nothing to speak of. Many men live in rooms like this for decades, for centuries, and then degenerate into mara-struck bodies. They are found writhing feebly on a mat marked with round cigarette burns, scattering ginkgo leaves as they go. Many more die on the battlefield before that, or vanish without leaving so much as a trace. As for those who meet ends worse than death, your mouth would tire before you finished counting them. He may have enlisted of his own free will, but it would be a lie to say Jing Yuan has never regretted it.
And yet Jing Yuan thinks: if his joining the Cloud Knights was so that he could meet this gray-haired stranger and sleep in the same room as her, then he regrets nothing at all. That this little room — sweltering in summer, freezing in winter — is if anything a delight. Because it is precisely this cramped that he gets to taste the chance of a forearm brushing hers, of his back grazing hers, she who carries such warmth about her.
Person who fell from the sky like a shooting star, where did you come from, what did you come to my side for? Jing Yuan, murmuring it inwardly like a song, thinks about what to do tomorrow. Passing Jingliu's merciless inspection of his form is no easy thing, but if he grits his teeth and manages it, he can secure a little free time. She seems like a woman who likes good food, so he'll take her to Aurum Alley. If he loads her arms up with skewers and sweet tea she'll laugh like sunlight. And the sea at Starskiff Haven for the view, and near the Seat of Divine Foresight to whisper his own secret ambition to her......
Drifting into sleep, thinking of this and that, he suddenly notices that the space beside him has gone cold. Jing Yuan bolts upright in shock and pats the mat. Nothing. She isn't there. He never heard so much as the sound of her leaving — did she shoot up into the sky, did she sink into the ground? Looking around in confusion, Jing Yuan strokes the bedding in blank despair.
As though the warmth of a person had never once been there at all, what remains is nothing but a chill resembling fickle ｢Remembrance｣.
Stelle, ejected the very instant she thinks can I really sleep soundly next to the boy version of the man I love, cannot hold back the swearing. Excuse me, if you're going to hand me an opportunity like that, shouldn't you at least provide the falling-asleep-together episode too? The injustice! The shooting star, having fallen and fallen endlessly through a space of finely shredded glass, lands lightly at some point. When she opens her eyes after keeping them shut a long moment to let the dizziness settle, in front of her is──
"──Stelle?"
Jing Yuan, grown about a hand's breadth taller than the last time she saw him, is standing there. Against a night sky where the full moon has swollen round and huge, he is holding a lantern, so apparently he has been making some sort of wish. Stelle, feeling a little sheepish, greets him.
"Yeah, it's me. Have you been well?"
"Even if you ask me that...... several winters have gone by in the meantime."
The voice, considerably more mellow now, marks his growth unmistakably. How many years since the last time they met — no, he's a long-lived being, so how many decades? It's only natural that Jing Yuan would be at a loss. A woman he parted with in his boyhood has suddenly reappeared looking exactly the same. I've been bounced around inside the Simulated Universe, skipping over great stretches of time. You must have waited so long for me. Doing her best to hide her sheepishness, Stelle smiles.
"What were you doing?"
"......"
Jing Yuan does not answer easily. On the lantern in his hand, at an angle where Stelle cannot see it, there is a faint line of fine brushwork. I want to see that star again.
"......I was making a wish. It's a ｢Luofu｣ custom."
"What kind of wish?"
"Hmm."
Jing Yuan, having pondered it, smiles sweetly.
"But I don't need it anymore."
You've appeared again, haven't you? The hand he extends as he says it has far harder calluses than the last time she saw it. The bearing of the general she knows is written right there in that hand. Stelle looks back and forth between Jing Yuan's hand and his face, and laughs. And takes it.
They roam the streets, glittering with festival spirit, to their hearts' content. Just as Jing Yuan planned all that time ago, they go to Aurum Alley, and to the sea at Starskiff Haven, and near the Seat of Divine Foresight. They make a racket of it, as though the world belonged to the two of them alone. Jing Yuan has rather overextended himself in order to have this day — and on top of that, a vicious chill is working its way into even the thick bones of a long-lived being — but scraping the bottom of his stamina and spending it on Stelle is a pleasure.
Of course, there is no helping it when he collapses into bed on their return.
For a long-lived being — who will get back up shamelessly no matter how many times you beat him down or lock him behind iron bars — to be unable to hold himself upright because of illness is, in fact, rather serious. Being sturdy by nature, they do not tend to worry over one another's health, and because of that it is common for someone in a small room to turn into a mara-struck body without anyone noticing for a very long time.
The weight of watching your own kind turn into a monster is something Stelle cannot know, but seeing the general — who has never once shown her a moment of unsteadiness — suddenly groaning and laid out flat does make her uneasy. White hair scattered across the shabby mat, eyes squeezed shut with effort, skin fine and soft and hot enough to seem it might dissolve. Stelle, faltering for a moment, gets up to at least soak a cloth in cold water.
"Stelle......"
"Hang on a second, I'll get you something."
"Stelle."
At the moment Stelle turns back toward the name being called again and again, she loses her words. Petulance? Sleep-talking? It is too much to be explained away so simply...... an ache so acute it stops the breath. The sort of look you would find on a man about to drown, gazing at the person he draws and redraws in the flash of his life before his eyes. Those yellow, yellow eyes regard Stelle languidly.
"I always wondered......"
Whether you were nothing but a dream. Whether I was seeing things because I wanted so badly to live alongside someone. But I couldn't bring myself to call you a delusion. You, kept, appearing, and you glittered as though to take my soul out of me. Once a heart has been pulled toward something, of course it wants to know — of course it will grieve if that something disappears...... so answer me──
Jing Yuan reaches out. A palm packed hard with wanting comes near, as though it will seize the Nameless's slender wrist at any moment.
"──Don't go."
The hand that reached out spins in empty air. What is left in the air is a familiar, unfeeling chill. A scent that would vanish if you so much as stirred it. It plays back inside a head wrecked by fever...... her lips, parting to say something in answer, wavering and gone.
He wants to ask, even knowing no answer will come
Will I get to see you again?
How many more times do I have to feel the floor drop out from under me before I can meet the real you again? Falling and falling among fragments of memory that break apart blue and bitter and blurred, Stelle closes her eyes. The one saving grace is that she is moving in the right direction. From Jing Yuan as a child toward the Jing Yuan on his way to becoming a man.
When she comes to at some point, she has her feet on the ground. Around her is a scene straight out of hell. She has to place each step carefully on a floor frozen slick with ice just to make out his back. Armor worn ragged in a very short span, hair in disarray, air crackling with static as though power has only just been used. Is that man really the man I know?
Is that Jing Yuan?
Sensing someone's approach, the man tightens his grip on his weapon. But there is no menace in his bearing. It is the movement of someone who has felt this sort of presence so many times that he has grown used to it. Only, he does not call her name first. He cannot come at her forcefully, cheerfully naming his star.
Onto those broad shoulders, the weight of the Cloud Knights frozen dead and the ruined space and his master who is not here seems to have been loaded all at once, and so Stelle
like fog lifting
like a dawn breaking white
comes to understand something
Carrying an ache like a hole bored clean through the middle of her chest, she takes one more step toward Jing Yuan, and he laughs quietly. The voice that says Stelle without turning around has none of a boy's freshness left in it. It has fermented into the deep register of a grown man, and it goes on speaking as though nothing were the matter at all.
"So — will you have vanished again by the time I turn around?"
No. It isn't that I wanted to disappear. I don't understand all of your wounds. And I only ever met the real you after all of this was over and done with. But now that I've come to know it, even as a ｢fake｣, I found myself daring to think that I want a future with you.
Though no voice comes out, Stelle reaches out her hand. He came to her first every time until now, so this time it is her turn to close the distance.
When Jing Yuan, after a long silence, finally turns around, there is no one there.
She has done it so many times that she is close to getting used to falling. She has faced him so many times — so where does she go now? Can she really get back to the real him? Won't she plunge into the middle of the broken data and shatter to pieces? Stray thoughts like these fall over her like shadows, but Stelle can tell.
That right now she is not falling. She is being pulled.
Even with an unknowable future spread out ahead of her, Stelle still likes him. The boy with his eyes gone round beneath the sun; the young man who wrote a wish on a lantern and led her by the hand; the man who could sit down in the middle of hopelessness and still, in the end, come into his own as the ｢Divine Foresight｣. Wrapped in all those sweet ｢memories｣──
──she comes bursting out of the Simulated Universe. Fragments of data, made substance in the shape of ice, scatter everywhere, but the man who has been waiting does not close his eyes. He catches his lover falling out of the sky like a bouquet and holds her tight.
"I've missed you."
Two shadows steeped in warmth melt into one.
"......So have I."