The Romance of the Seventh Star

Preface

To the each person who reads this manuscript, I must thank you. For every Reader has become one to whom I can share the profound devastation of my being. I beseech that, before you continue on to the content proper, you first spare a little moment in this preface to understand the whole purpose of my pen.

The celestial plane is nothing but prosperous. Unlike the overwhelming unequal distribution of wealth besmirching the Realm Below, we eternal beings have enjoyed uninterrupted material comfort even further back than our heavenly libraries could date. Such perfection of economics is likely a result afforded by the circumstance of timelessness.

I also cannot deny that the beings of our Realm Above enjoy a far superior state of corporeal existence compared to the creatures of the Realm Below. Even the lowest of our society could easily claim an exceeding advantage over the most exalted earthling. By extension, such supremacy exacts a responsibility of our celestial rule to keep the balance of the universe in continuum. Needless to say, this position accords immense power. In fact, this is the exact genetics of divinity.

Ironically, this blessed subsistence has become our curse.

For all our eminence do not give license to elevate ourselves to a pedestal where we re-defined the welfare of the universe by what is to our whim and fancy. Yet, this has been proven the case. Lulled into complacency by our seemingly superior existence, we have forgotten one crucial issue that we share with any person of our neighbouring world; a thing which so many of us have sneered as inferior.

I refer to the matter of the heart.

Despite popular belief, we are not above the emotive variety that the beings of the Realm Below display with such dizzy rigor and regularity; a trait that many among us regarded as a flaw. Our denial of our state of heart – or heartlessness – has rendered our society handicapped. In the best scenario, we simply operate in endless ennui through false security in the unquestioned laze of pampering. In the worst scenario, we become oblivious to the danger of malignancy that lies dormant in any heart but easily festers in a flash of a deviant thought. It is to the latter that Li Touten and his co-conspirators have – to our detriment – managed to prove.

And it has taken an unlikely band of four to expose this weakness.

Many have labelled the events surrounding Kanzon Douji, Tenkai Seihougun Tenpou Gensui(1) and Kenren Taishou(2), and the heretic being Goku, as a catastrophe in which the celestial realm has suffered unjustly. So great is the upheaval of which they play the protagonists that they have successfully ruptured the assumed permanence of the divine society.

It is true that the collateral damage wrought by these Four have been staggering, especially when compared to the prior state of invariable order and particularly since our Emperor was even taken as a casualty. But perhaps, the depth of our sin has so required an equal depth of tragedy before we could at all stir an iota from the stupor of our self-bestowed arrogance. Yet, beyond the lamented losses calculated through sheaves of accounting reports, how many are awakened to the true weight of this historical landmark those Four has left as their legacy?

This is not a recount of how the Four managed to turn the Realm Above upside down. I believe the chronicle penned by Seikai Ryuu Ou Goujun(3) as a close witness and even player to the development of the whole gripping story serves as a reliable and sufficient read for such a purpose.

No.

My purpose… the purpose for this manuscript is to serve as testimony to the sacrifice of the Four towards a courage and cause they had not bothered to, and certainly now could not, articulate. I write as one who has been ineluctably drawn into the orbit of their story, of which I played a satellite to their central position as the sun. I write as one who will ever remain breathless in the wake of their meteoritic imprint and, like Goujun, lingers in the complicated ache of being their abandoned survivor. I write as one whose rationale for and understanding of this seemingly superior existence – so easily taken for granted – has been utterly undone.

I write so that the heart of the Four, beyond their deeds, will be acknowledged; to provide a glimpse of an inner strength that has shattered a supposedly unshakable world.

To these ends I shall now present to you – 'The Romance of the Seventh Star'.

by Seishin no Goten Nana-Hime

Hikari(4)

Footnotes:

1) Heaven's Western Army Marshall Tenpou

2) [Heaven's Western Army] General Kenren

3) Western Sea Dragon King Goujun

4) Court of the Celestial Bodies 7th Princess Hikari

Disclaimer:

This fanfiction is based on the fictitious Saiyuki universe drawn by manga artist Minekura Kazuya. Its conception is entirely a product of fancy and does not stake a claim on any profit.