I stare into the sky and imagine I see you, some nights as I work in the observatory.
Through the clouds and fog, the stars shine down on this planet, as they do at home. Somehow, through the endless sea of night, those bodies send their glow all the way here. Faced with infinity itself, they persevere. Still, they reach this strange world on which I stand.
And so I must imagine you, dearest Miku, are the same. I know the memories of your smile and the sound of your song have reached through the infinite cosmos to arrive at my little blue and green land of exile. From millions of worlds away—perhaps out into the beyond, at the universe's edge—you started this journey. All that distance, all that vast space, and still you reach me in the end.
It is all I can do to trace that journey back, to return myself to you; it is the turn of love you deserve, my darling.
Surely back home, others must think of me also—right? I must imagine some ask whatever became of Luka, the aloof member of the choir. The one always out and about with Miku.
If this message—any part of it—reaches you, I'd ask you tell them all that I am well now. Though, I must say it has not been easy acclimating to my banishment. A different place, with such different rules, is on its own a troublesome thing. It seems each day I have had to relearn the ways of the universe itself.
Here one must eat often, obey one's earthly ties always. Here, we have no choice; the body is a shackle in this realm, weighed down with painful desires. To ignore them for time's sake is to perish.
Sleep, too, tugs at me more often here. What's more, time itself marches at such a different rhythm. I yearn to move ahead, and yet these physical bindings shackle every step I wish to take.
What makes it all the harder to bear is how far I am from you. Every night, I look up into the dark sky and grieve at the vast emptiness that separates us.
It feels so long ago since I first arrived here—so long that I first lost you.
And yet still I remember it so vividly.
It happened in an instant, with a blinding flash of light and a clap of thunder. Gone were the castle, the guards, and even you. I was alone, flat on my face, still trying to figure out where I was and how I got here. I struggled to my feet and felt humid air flow over my skin.
Trees towered overhead, framing the vast black of night. Stars twinkled against the dark.
Seeing them, I knew at once: they were not our stars.
No, none of their patterns sat together the same. On and on I looked for Tigress, the Roamer, Cevio's Sisters—not a one could I see. It was the same time of year, I was sure, for the air felt the same, if warmer from the breath of the forest.
Which forest it was, I could not say. This one, I had never set foot in.
As I walked, I realized this would pose a problem as to how I would find a way out.
Without stars or memory to guide me, I simply picked a direction and walked. No part of the woods felt familiar. None of them felt real. In the dark, moss crept up bark, and leaves shook and rattled, and all around a faint groan echoed.
For much of the walk, I went slowly, groping as I stepped. I could hardly see a few inches in front of me.
Suddenly, the dark dissipated. First slowly, then all at once, light spread along the sky—orange, then blue. Even as far as I'd walked in panic and fear, the night had been over in an actual flash.
How could that have been, I wondered to myself? How far could I have even walked in such a short time?
I paced, examining the trees around me. They looked much like the ones before—but no, they were surely from further ahead than where I'd been. The ground here was much rockier and its slope steeper.
But then, as I came to another clearing in the sea of trees, night fell. Dark swept over the bushes lining most of the floor, and their needles were set aglow in moonlight.
It had fallen oh so very quickly, too. As if I had lost track of my steps, as if I had simply ended up in a darker version of the woods.
How could the sun rise and set this way, I wondered? But this was a whole different world. Maybe that was part of this plane: time passing by at such a different pace.
I would have given anything for even a hint of a path at that moment. Just the barest sign someone else was out here.
With that thought, exhaustion hit me in a sudden, towering wave. My knees gave out, and I collapsed down to them. I settled up against the bark of a tree and pulled my knees in.
It finally occurred to me I was still in just my thin choral robes. Branches must have torn into them as I walked, battering the skin beneath. Cold didn't seem an issue on this world, for now. If nothing else, the threadbare protection didn't leave me frozen that night.
I'm sure the sun had already spent hours shining on my hands as I awoke on the forest floor, because they felt comfortably warm from the beams peering through the treetops. I turned my head up, and just from looking skyward, my face warmed to the sunlight. If one day had passed or several, I couldn't tell.
I soon realized that the sunlight itself hadn't awoken me. It had been a noise: soft, but somehow still enough to perk my ears up.
A kind of singing, I soon figured out.
Your singing.
I arose with a jolt and took off with a start. It was a sign, it was something out there—and more than that it was you, you here, you ready to embrace me.
Yes, it had to have been you. Because there was no other reason why, running in the direction of your song, I would have found a path—a dirt path at last, finally a sign of civilization. No, no other reason why in following that melody I continued down that walkway, and in following it the trees thinned, and dashing along the sky emerged again, its blue now covered with clouds.
I saw all of that, yes, only because it was your song, you singing to me then. Never have I been surer of anything, dear.
But as I ran, as I came out into the open—you were nowhere to be seen, even out here in a full clearing of grass, where a hill rose up the middle of the space.
From there, I'd be able to see out farther, I thought. If you weren't here, well, from the hill I'd be able to see where you were.
Maybe that was your idea in bringing me there.
Though, I doubt it was your idea for me to have kept running full speed up the hill—or to realize, before I had a chance to stop, that the "hill" was actually the edge of a ravine.
No, dear, I know you didn't think I'd approach quite like that, because if anyone's to blame for my falling down that ravine, it's me.
When I saw the pit before me, I stumbled. My arms flailed automatically and to no avail. At once I toppled forward—rolling at first, then changing to a free fall.
In less than a blink, the ground had rushed up to meet me.
Might I reminisce, a moment?
There's a picture of you that, even so many years later, I can't get out of my head. It's of you shuffling after me, in those flat choir shoes, your white robe motionless over your legs. I always it looked as if you were a walking candle: your still, cylindrical dress the wax body, your flowing hair a brilliant teal flame.
And yes, you did shuffle, you know. Much as you won't admit it, you had quite the funny way of walking after me back then. You took such fast, small steps—never moving much more than an inch at a time, but taking them so quickly over the castle's stones that you kept my pace. Always you held at a distance, though. You were still quite awkward about approaching anyone.
But how could I blame you? Then, you had only a few millennia worth of experience with song—so few, compared to me.
I often caught you staring, too, from across the choir stands. Without fail, the conductor would notice you, yell for you to turn back to the music. And the sopranos beside you would giggle, and elbows would nudge your dress and the friends like those twins your age would murmur jokes I tried to ignore because I knew I was privy to none of their humor.
I had no idea of the truth, you see. Do I have to remind you how oblivious I was?
But one day later, our voices harmonized. There were some absences in the choir that day, if I remember; the stands were sparser, and our voices thinner as they echoed within the castle chamber. And there was a moment, in our rehearsing the song, that all your fellow sopranos, all my fellow altos, happened to drop out. There was a moment, then, where it was only our voices that rang.
Yes, it was only for a moment. But that was all the time I needed to realize it.
For your voice wrapped along mine like the vine's embrace of a trellis. It reverberated through my chest, and it made the very skin on my legs tingle with electric joy. Never had I soared like this, I thought, not on choral stands or on currents of wind. Never had my very soul felt so alive and so much a part of a greater universe.
The resonance rang so that, even as the mass of the choir's voices raised themselves again, I felt only you echo alongside my voice.
We sang the last notes of the song. And you smiled after that. Only it wasn't at me—it was at a friend, who praised your singing in that last bar.
It was only then, after that smile, after that song, that I realized what it was everyone giggled at:
You had fallen in love with me.
And the next practice we met, I realized why I had understood this only now: because, in that moment our voices met, I had fallen just as much in love with you.
"Oh my god, call an ambulance!"
That other voice was what woke me up next. Definitely not yours—I'd know the difference miles away.
"They can't get an ambulance out here! Call a ranger. You got that number, right?"
There was no telling how long I'd been out. I woke up to aches in my limbs, the smell of iron in my nose. Rocks lay under my chest and pierced into my shoulders—past the skin, I think. It would have explained the scent, the stickiness along my face.
No, I couldn't say exactly how much time had passed. But it must have been a while. Bit by bit, my shattered bones had been knitting back together, reverting back to normal.
"Wait, ranger? No, I didn't get the ranger's…"
The voices kept on talking this whole time. It had taken a while for them to even register, I was still barely conscious, groggy with pain. But they were voices. There were people in this world, after all.
What's more, you had brought me to them.
I groaned. Wobbly in the knees, I rose on regenerated legs.
The voices were shouting and panicking still, but as I turned toward them, they suddenly fell silent.
Three women stood slack-jawed before me, there at the bottom of the ravine. They were dressed athletically, in shorts and bright, oddly patterned tops. The one with the brunette bob stepped toward me.
"Listen, just stay where you are," she said, reassuringly. "We're calling for help. Don't move."
"Help?" I repeated—dumbfounded, I must admit.
"Please, you might make it worse." Another woman stepped forward, this one with a cascade of silver hair, a black rectangle in her hand.
"Worse?" I said. "But I…"
"Ia, I got this," the brunette said. "Just call the ranger already."
I laughed—and instantly, the three recoiled. Still, I walked forward a few steps, opening up one of the holes punched open in my robe.
"You don't have to worry," I said, showing the patch of bruised skin. "I'm regenerating already. I'll be fine."
I'd hoped that would reassure the three. They seemed so ill at ease from the fall—I was willing to risk a breach of custom to put their minds at rest.
Instead, they gaped in perplexed silence. Breathlessly they kept eyes locked on my bit of exposed skin as the wound closed up.
"How did you…" the brunette said.
The third one—a blonde—shook her head, her jaw still open. "She shouldn't even be walking. Like, she shouldn't be, right?"
"No, I swear, I'm fine," I said. "I'm very sorry to trouble you, I just…"
A clap overhead stunned me into silence alongside the three before me. In a gushing burst, rain poured out from the mass of gray clouds. I stumbled closer to them, out from the ravine, lifting the edge of my robe off the grass as I went.
Even with the pouring rain, though, the other three didn't move.
"I don't suppose you remember the way out of this forest?" I asked. "I'm a little lost."
For what (at long last) seemed a long stretch of time, only the thunder, the pitter patter or rain filled the space between us.
Eventually, the blonde pointed down the path behind her.
"That way should do it," she said.
"Just that way?" I asked.
The three looked at one another in shifting glances.
"How about we show you?" the brunette asked.
My darling, I dreamed I saw you the other night. It must have been the clear skies then—your voice, your being must have shone through them and reached me.
Within that dream, my mind generated a conscious me, who was flying alongside a conscious you. We soared over the west woods and their towering forests, where the trees grow so tall that from above their trunks seem to descend down to another side of reality. You swooped down one sticking out, apart from the others, and snatched a fruit from its branches.
We sat together on that branch and shared it. I fed you, and you fed me.
I know you sent me this vision, for you and I both remember it happening.
It was one of our earlier trysts, I believe—perhaps I have lost the sense of that time from being here. You told me you had never been to the forests west of the castle, never soared along the branches.
"It's such a dark place," you said. "Wouldn't you get lost?"
"Only part of the day," I replied. "In the light, it's all wondrous. All you need to experience joy is a shift in perspective."
Into those woods we ventured, staying on the ground for some time. I greeted the trees, and many—even the young ones—said their hellos back. For all your time singing at the castle, you had never heard a tree answer a song before. We laughed together, and our joined harmonies swept through the leaves alongside a gentle wind.
You fell asleep in my arms, some hours before nightfall. I slept, too, under the protection of an ancient oak.
Though the trees here do not speak, do not respond to song—still I believe they are not ordinary. Still they have a certain vivacity within, and in the light of the sun they each have their own glow.
The one part of them that saddens me is how I shall never be able to enjoy their shade and splendor with you.
The four of us followed the trail back out of the forest, and this world to which I'd been banished unfolded, gray and vast. Out from the trees, towering buildings sprawled, as tall as you and I might fly. Between the buildings ran iron tracks, which were sped over by self-propelled iron beasts.
The women led me aboard one of these. Through gates that opened on their own, flung wide by the touch of a flat key to their exterior, my guides ushered me toward one of these enormous serpentine trams. The doors on its outside opened all their own, too. Behind the other three, I hesitated going aboard, unsure of how to handle wandering into such a leviathan's belly.
The brunette stared at me from aboard the vehicle. Gently, the one with silver hair reached out her hand and led me inside.
"Come on, it's fine," she said to me. "See? That's it."
The doors closed themselves. I jumped, but had to steady myself as the machine accelerated into motion, rocking us as we stood. Fortunately, the train, as this thing is known, wasn't without comforts. Seats lined the inner sides of it, where the four of us sat atop red padding. They were hard, their cushioning thin, but I was glad to be sitting down. Even with the mending my flesh was undergoing (and had been performing for some time) I felt all in aches.
"How the hell did that happen, anyway?" the blonde one asked.
The others gaped in shock. I found that odd, for then, because I hadn't quite put this place together yet. Too fixed on the thought of hearing you again, I suppose.
I answered, "I just fell off that cliff. It seems I wasn't looking where I was going."
"No, I mean," the blonde stammered. "How are you walking after that? Your skin, it literally…"
By now the others were glancing around us at the other seats. They all sat quite empty now. It occurred to me how much fuller this vehicle must get, with the dozens of seats that sat open.
That was when it finally hit me: what it was like to live in this world.
They saw something odd about regeneration—about healing, of all things. Yes, really, it's something they can't experience here. They lack it, simply by being finite beings, fixed in energy and in such little time.
"Oh," I said. Because all that had just hit me then, in that expected shame, that bewilderment. "My apologies. I didn't realize that your seeing that would…"
"Please, just tell us what that was," the blonde said.
I sighed, wondering just how much they could understand right then. If they didn't know regeneration, well, what did they know?
To clarify, I decided to start with the very basics.
"I came here from another world," I said.
Riding to our stop took long enough for me to tell them the essentials. Only the essentials, of course. There was no point going into detail.
For one thing, I wasn't sure how much they'd understand. They were living in such a small place, such a small state of mind—what they would accept from me, believe from me, was anyone's guess.
For another thing, I wasn't sure these three wouldn't feel too comfortable knowing the woman they were traveling with was banished—which, we must face it, I technically was.
Not to mention I was still trying to process everything that had happened myself.
Still, it seemed they understood how I was not mortal; how I was from another universe; how all I needed now was to make the jump back over, and my being here shouldn't have happened.
They didn't ask why it shouldn't have. Thankfully.
It isn't that I regret it, my dearest. I must insist that. But I still hope you realize, it would take some sunsets here still before I could put that pain behind me.
In what I hoped was a demonstration of good faith, I told them my name, too.
"I'm Luka," I said, so they would at least know my identity.
In turn, they told me theirs: the blonde woman was called Lily; the brunette, Meiko; the one with silver hair, Ia.
"It's, uh, quite a story you're telling," Meiko said.
"It is," said Lily. "But, you know, I have to believe it."
The brunette spun in her seat, clearly shocked.
"Hey, look," Lily said, "she literally fixed up her wounds in real time. That's pretty out there already."
"Don't encourage this," Meiko muttered, close to the blonde's ear. Perhaps she thought I wouldn't hear it. Were they used to such weaker senses of hearing, that she would expect I wouldn't pick up on the words?
No, more than that—did they have such weaker ways of thinking, that they were unwilling to imagine places outside their backyard?
But Lily spoke up: "She's clearly not just some addict. I don't see marks on her arms, do you?"
"For all we know, she's some asylum escapee," Meiko said. "She's literally wearing a torn white gown."
Yes, that was really what she said, dear: an asylum, a place of healing and rest, as if it were a place to escape from. It seemed that was their expectation here.
I didn't ask for explanation, though. The ground I was treading was precarious enough already.
"Well, what other explanation is there for…" Lily gestured vaguely at my direction. "You know, for what she did? You saw it too, right?"
Meiko started, "I'm just saying, it could have been…"
"I believe her."
Both turned to Ia. She was staring right on at me, with eyes shimmering with light.
"I do," Ia said. "She's lost and helpless. She could have told us anything. But she told us something so unusual as that. Plus, she just…"
The other two kept silent as the train kept rolling, as it slowed to a stop under pouring rain. Like the other times we stopped, the doors outside opened, then closed on their own. No one else entered.
"She just needs help," Ia finished. "Even if it's a crazy story, should we really not give her that?"
Rain pitter-pattered on the metal roof of our segment as we coasted along, and the bouncing of the metal beast's run clacked along off its timing. Lily smiled at Meiko—expectantly, I'm inclined to say. It was the sort of smile a person puts on knowing full well its results.
"All right," Meiko finally said, letting out a sigh. "Fine. Let's be good people about this, I guess."
You were half-asleep beside me one night, under glowing moons and ringed stars, and sighing that contented way you do. Your chest swelled, fell, and I traced tumbling journeys down the slope of your breast.
After the sigh, mumbling. Words caught under your breath, as if flowing forth from a dream.
"He's making me so tired," you murmured out.
"I know," I said. My spirits all at once dropped. To hear such warm words from you carry such a heavy message—it left a weight pulling on my heart.
"If only the king could see," you said, "how I can't just sing on and on."
"I'll tell him," I said.
Your eyes snapped open then, the dreams gone from your voice.
"You couldn't. He'll be furious."
"He just needs reminding. Surely he can't be so unreasonable. And you can't keep going on like this."
I had noticed your condition when we met that night, you know. Your sagging shoulders, your coughing. Small wonder we sat so much, doing less flying, less melding.
Worry ran through me at all ends, and fear licked at me like a flame. You must understand, it was all me who owned things from there. All you did was inform me. I simply took the step forward.
Even though you had warned me.
I promise, my darling, I've learned to listen more seriously to you now.
The three led me off the train, walking through the still-pouring rain, down smooth stone roads and past more towering buildings. They had come to some unspoken agreement, it seemed, given how they led me. For I had already told them there was no place for me to go.
Still, as we came to rows of houses, a pang of guilt stirred in me.
I asked, "You wouldn't happen to just have a way back for me, would you?"
They all stopped in their tracks. Meiko first turned and stared at me.
"What?" she asked.
"You've been awfully kind leading me this far," I said, "but, perhaps you just have some portal back to my home? I'd hate to put you out further."
One after another they looked at each other, confused again.
"That's not exactly…" Ia stammered.
"We don't have that," Meiko cut in. "They don't exist."
"Not here, anyway," said Lily.
"They. Don't. Exist," Meiko said.
They kept eyes locked on one another for a good while, there, at the step of one house from the row. Had I walked closer to them, I fear I'd have sank into a wall of tension the way a fly sinks into sap.
I tell you all this, dear, to point out just how dire things were. Of course they weren't quick to believe; they hadn't even tread out from their own backyard. This was them, and this was their planet, lonely and solipsistic. They knew just this one plane, and on this dimension alone could they stay.
In that instant, their fighting made so much more sense. They had no perspective. No way of knowing how to truly help.
They had the kindness to give me trust, but not the knowledge to give me true help.
Realizing that, I imagined none of them would be much help in bringing me back to you, my Miku.
"Thank you all the same," I said as I prepared to return to the watery streets.
But at once I heard a shout: "Wait!"
When I turned back, the three of them were all looking toward me from the steps. The brown-haired one had an umbrella over me as she continued, "I hope this isn't strange but, maybe you should come inside? This rain doesn't look like it's letting up."
I pulled my arms away from myself, and the shivering only grew worse. The sting of that cold—I hope you never experience it. Here, the water freezes, and at once it grows into a kind of blade slicing through your senses. Just from letting it cling to you, it turns painful, even deadly.
Another chill hissed through me, then. So much so, I sneezed. A stream of filth flew right near the brown-haired one, and even so she stood dutifully over me with that umbrella.
"It's really all right?" I asked.
The three, each in her own way, shrugged, motioned toward the house. I followed them inside, to where for a moment, coming in from the rain, I saw a door blazing with pure light, almost enough to blind mortal eyes.
The last time I saw you, it had gotten to the point that you weren't even allowed out of the castle. Is it the same now, my dear? How securely under lock and key are you kept?
The life-stones of that castle grew in such marvelous, florid shapes once. How those rocks flowed with life, truly grown from the living earth itself, raw and powerful.
Yet King Kaito had changed all that. The stones had come to flow in such a different way: their forms became so lifeless, so still and controlled under his new rule. Once they grew their own way, for art's sake and for desire. Last I saw them, the stones formed towers, tall and foreboding.
I had seen him whispering to those walls, between rehearsals, as I walked through the halls. He would lean over to the stones, murmuring strange words of power, wealth, odd wisdoms which he said had been "opened" to him.
And now the castle twists to his design, not to the living-stone's own thought. Now his family's banner came to cover the hallways, and his emblem sits displayed over dark, hardened stones where once we could see the life of the Realm course.
I wonder—is that the kind of dwelling he keeps you in, my dear?
Are you left trapped in so cold a room? So lifeless, so subject to his own permanent design?
Here, they only build with dead things. Cut stones, flesh of felled trees—there is a horror in inhabiting these corpses. But at least there is heart in how they are crafted. They have not the tools here, but they have the artistry.
It must be so much worse for you, how you are confined. How you, like the life-stone, must be subject to his molding, his cutting and shaping.
I think of this, and it keeps me up at night, working and working away more.
The girls let me use their shower, and even their towels and a change of clothes that Meiko had to offer. They hung strangely over me but kept me warm all the same.
The house they called home was a two-story sort of cottage, its walls slathered in plaster to camouflage its skeleton of dead wood, and it was so cramped I wondered how the three had managed to live there without tripping over each other.. They kept chairs, sofas, beds and other furniture tightly packed within what room they had, all with so little open room compared to the castles of home, so little space to assemble a choir or even to spread out and breathe on one's own.
My clothes, dripping and useless, hung over a rod they set atop an open air vent. I stayed beside them quietly, patiently. Though I think, being out in their common room, this caused some discomfort.
"I'm just keeping an eye on them," I explained. "As soon as they're dry, I'll be gone."
"You do realize how long that'll take, though," Lily said over an open book. She and the others shared the same look of consternation from across the room.
"Only a few hours," I replied.
"Yeah, uh," Meiko said from her reclined position on the sofa, "that's our point."
"Patience is a virtue, you know," Ia said as she readjusted herself in the armchair. The book she had open, I now noticed, was the same the others had. The title mentioned physics, the front sporting a photo of waves and strange symbols over the night sky.
"Yeah, but just waiting is a waste," Lily said from the floor, where she sat with her books and papers strewn around her.
I frowned and hummed, because I wasn't sure I'd thought about things that way.
Perhaps you said the same thing to me once, my darling. Or tried to, from the other side of the choir all those eons ago.
They were buried again in books for a long while after that, and despite their advice, I was content merely to wait there, for the house was so warm and the rain still falling so heavily outside.
The quiet broke at last as Lily asked, "Okay, so I'm stuck on this one: 'A spherical planet orbits a star. Assuming the planet absorbs, then radiates as a blackbody 80 percent of its light, at what wavelength does it emit this radiation?'"
"Problem 15, right?" Meiko said.
They exchanged a list of complicated numbers. I can't recall their specifics—but they were authoritative, clicking in my head at once in alignment with how such planets worked back home, alongside their stars.
"I think Hiyama said not to bother with that one," Ia said.
"Sure," Lily said, "but I'd just like to have done it, y'know?"
Her friends sat in silence, humming and mulling over it.
I thought, here was a way to repay them in some small part for their kindness.
So I said, "I believe the wavelength would be just within the near infrared stage."
I'd expected to get a word of thanks, then to go back to my self-imposed, clothes-drying silence. But that didn't happen. Instead, the three stared long and hard at me, their faces twisted back to confusion.
"What was that, again?" Meiko asked.
"The near infrared stage. I would think that's about the wavelength."
Lily flipped through her book, and on landing at her stopping page, looked even more bewildered.
"Answer sheet says 11 micrometers," she said. "So she's right."
"How did you know that?" Meiko asked me.
"That?" I said. "But it's so simple."
"The hell it is," Lily said. "Are you a physics student where you come from or something?"
"I'm not," I answered. "I only sing, honestly."
None of them were having it. On and on they inquired, wanting to know how I came up with that answer so easily.
"I suppose I just know it," I said.
And truly, I did; it was one of those answers that just comes to you. A thing you simply know. Surely you know what I mean, dearest: like what harmony to bring to a lone note, or which way a river is flowing. It was so straightforward, so simple an answer.
"Okay, but do you not get what that means?" Lily said.
"She's right," Ia said. "Usually, people have to study years to understand what you just said."
"And you know this," Meiko asked, "how, exactly?"
I shrugged. "It just seemed obvious."
It so amazed them, my response, that they merely stared at one another slack-jawed, clearly unsure what even to think, much less what to ask next.
Until at last Meiko said, "So, Luka… None of us are going to tell you what to do or anything…"
"But you could absolutely kill it in our field if you went into school with us," Lily cut in.
Meiko glared at her, but continued unperturbed.
"Luka, I know you do want to go back to where you came from, but just imagine what you could do with what you just know. I mean, you could achieve so much if you just…"
I blinked in confusion. "If I just what?"
But I felt calmed, instantly, as Ia smiled at me.
"…if you just come with us tomorrow," she said, "and have a talk with Professor Hiyama at our department."
Would you permit me to share a regret, Miku?
I cannot say I would have changed things. Day after day, that encounter haunts me. I've played it in my head so many times I fear it's left me mad. But even so, I cannot bring myself to promise I would do differently, had I the chance to go back. You know you are the world to me, the stars and all the distance between them. So to leave you to suffer, well, that is beyond what I can promise.
Still, I regret and simmer. When I remember that day, I grow heavy and cold, stiff as a poor dog left in the cold to starve.
Because, you see, I realize the last I saw of you was your face streaked with tears.
The halls of education they have in this place—I think you should like to see them. If the one Meiko, Lily, and Ia took me to is any indication, these sites stand hallowed and bold as any hall of music. The building they took me to towered not only in size but in presence: ivory carved pillars, long front steps that led to a carpeted and painting-decorated hallway where flowing sunlight abounded.
The three must have noticed my awe, for how they grinned at me, to one another. That I could give them some satisfaction, well, that put me more at ease from the burden of debt I still felt.
Their proposition that I come along struck me as odd. Yes, surely this group wanted more knowledge, more understanding for their planet, but it seemed strange that I would be the one to provide it. I had no real reason for being here, after all. And in being here, my biggest desire was simply to leave.
But as I thought on their offer to meet their Professor Hiyama and join their school—well, dearest, it occurred to me it was only because of you that my path crossed with these three. Your song had led me to them, and they had led me out of limbo. What choice did I have but to trust that somehow, someway, this purpose connecting us was why you had guided me to them at all?
It was why I trusted them enough to come along to this sprawling place of learning and the massive hall its doors revealed.
And it was at the end of the hall that this Hiyama's chambers lay. The walls were crammed with frames, the desk littered with clippings and papers. They all gave off an aura of importance, but I never got the chance to get a good look at any of them.
This professor himself contrasted oddly with his disheveled office, tall in his seat and brown hair just reaching the nape of his neck. I'd venture that with his elegant appearance and snappy accouterments, he wouldn't have looked out of place in the king's court.
That left me wary, but luckily my new friends did the talking anyway.
"Yes, yes, lovely to see you all as well, but perhaps you can introduce me to this companion you've brought?" the professor asked once the trio had said their hellos.
They glanced at one another, and I wondered if they had this part as thought out as they promised.
"Her name is Luka," Meiko said.
"Luka Megurine," Ia clarified.
"Right. And, well, she isn't exactly a student here…"
"'Isn't exactly'?" Hiyama repeated, frowning.
Lily sighed. "As in, she's not at all. Actually, she's got, uh, zero academic record."
I felt I should say something at that point, that it was my turn in the song, but all I could manage was a smile and nod. You'd have to have been there to get it, dearest, but the way she said "academic record"—apparently such a thing is kept here—made it seem quite shameful to lack one.
Rather than pity, what Hiyama showed was no change at all—which is to say, a stone frown to match his firmly steepled fingers over the desk.
"I have a premonition you're going to ask me something insane," he said.
Meiko gulped. "Well…"
"Except it's not insane!" Ia cut in. Suddenly, she stood taller, firmer. "Professor Hiyama, you wouldn't guess it, but Luka is downright brilliant! No, she doesn't have any coursework, but she knows just as much about astrophysics as any one of us."
"And because of that," Hiyama said, his eyebrow raised, "you'd like me to have her enrolled. Is that it?"
"Enrolled, sitting in on classes, whatever," Lily said.
"It's just the right thing to do," Meiko went on. "Seriously, you'd know it if you'd just see…"
"And how do you feel about this, Ms. Megurine?" Hiyama suddenly asked. Through the praises, he'd snapped his neck toward me like a mature hawk, and stared into me as if I was a stunned mouse. "I can't help but notice your friends are doing all the talking."
Still, the one thing I could get out was a smile. My mouth had gone dry, and so I thought of song, of melody, to finally urge my voice back out.
"I'd very much like to learn," I said. "You see, I'm not sure I can have it make sense to you. But I believe learning, and doing it here, is a way of fulfilling myself."
The frown didn't reshape on the professor's face. His sharp eyes stayed fixed on me, nailing me in place. His was a stare more powerful, incredibly, than the king could manage.
"Fulfilling yourself," he repeated.
It was quiet. But I knew I heard delight in those two words.
"Well." The professor stretched his arms from across the table above his head, nearly yawning as he did so. "As noble as your intentions are, ladies, there are only so many strings I can pull."
Lily clicked her tongue. "Okay, but if you would seriously just see what Luka can—"
"I'm willing to believe she's every bit the savant you say," Hiyama interrupted. "However, these decisions simply aren't up to me. I can't just help a prospect cut in line because it suits my department. Even if that kind of favoritism didn't put my job in danger, there are far too many people who can overrule me."
"But can't you at least get a good word in?" Meiko said. "Or just, I don't know, something?"
"She deserves it," Ia murmured, sadly.
What I saw on the professor was a strange thing. When a long-standing wall eventually crumbles, even if just a piece, or when you return to a river to find the earth around it more eroded—as much as you know such was bound to happen, you cannot help but feel surprised. It was the sort of moment we had together, actually, when we flew over the Iced Mountains to find the crags had smoothed, their sharpest points dulled, and we lighted upon one to rest and love.
As strange a change as any of those, Miku, was to see this Hiyama's mouth lift into a smile.
"I'll give her a placement test, first," he said, looking at me the whole while. "That is, if you find that agreeable, Ms. Megurine."
"If you find it so, yes," I quickly responded.
"Fine. I'll start by scheduling you for that." The professor stretched, nearly yawned again as he smiled that same smile to the dumbfounded trio. "Now, I can't do much about fast tracking her, no matter what she scores. But, assuming I can win over some other staff, perhaps I could have her sit in on my class."
The housemates silently buzzed with excitement, beamed with joy. I could hardly keep my feet still. The meager possibility, the crack of an opening in the door, was all enough to make me want to burst out in dance.
"She might need a job, in the meantime," Lily said, seemingly as an offer.
"Perhaps," Hiyama said as he looked back toward me, "you could apply to the library here? Depending on what your test brings in, you might serve well as a tutor."
More confidently this time, I gave a smile and nod. "That seems a wise path."
"Fine. Well, I suppose that's about settled then, surely." The professor's eyes jumped to the papers sprawled over his desk, his hand aloft again, now in a dismissive wave. "Good talk, everyone. Make sure your labs are done for next week, please."
The buzz from the three stuck with them from the office, back down the steps. Outside, Lily cheered and jumped, as Ia clutched my hands in glee.
"Congratulations, Luka!" she said. "You're nearly in now!"
"It's all thanks to you three," I said. "This is a true blessing. Thank you."
"Well, don't thank us till it's over," Meiko said.
Lily nodded. "She's right. You still have that placement test to get through."
"Actually," I said, "I meant to ask: what, pray tell, is this 'placement test'?"
As the other two looked utterly perplexed, Lily let out a guttural laugh that twisted my stomach.
"It's Hell itself, that's what it is," she said.
The open halls of the king's concert wing always entranced me. I remember when we first stood in them together, walking in as the full choir, eager to hear our voices echo amid the perfectly sculpted marble.
It is shameful to linger on regret, I know, but had I figured as much out, it would have meant that much more time with you.
The more shameful thing still was how tainted those halls had become to me. I saw you stand in the center podium so often—more often than you were with me, it came to be in time. To hear your voice strain and grate, grow raspy in just a day, that alone tore me to pieces.
The beauty of your song, gone, shredded up like a flower eaten by a blind animal.
It was all the worse to see King Kaito sitting so calmly as he heard it. He had a way of leaning across the concert wing's throne: a lazy slouch that left one leg on the floor, the other on an armrest.
He barely even looked at you as you sang—as you strained to keep him amused with hours and days of work.
You finished with a soaring high note. The king tapped his hands together in vague applause, all the while only looking at his surrounding consorts.
"Now, now, onto the next one," he said. I could scarcely believe it—but yes, that really was what he said.
Can you understand, then, why I stepped onto the dais after he spoke?
I ignored the king's disgusted scowl as he snapped his head toward me at last. All I had in my head was to say to him what I'd told you I'd say:
"Allow me to take Miku's place, my lord."
Ah, how I wanted to laugh as he finally rose from his slouch at that. I swear, a vein was about to pop on that wide forehead of his as he stood, as he swayed to balance himself on feet that didn't seem to know how to hold any weight at all.
"I did not call for you," he barked at us. "I have called for Miku. You, girl, are nowhere near her equal."
"That may be," I said, "but my lord, Miku is tired. Do you not hear her voice straining?"
The eyes you stared at me with—the aqua turned so sorrowful, so full of fear—they cut me deep. I had a thought to end my protest there. You didn't have to say a word to tell me how desperately you wanted that.
But I'm prepared to tell you again, I had no choice but to ignore your plea. This time, I could not let you continue to put me first.
I continued, "Please, my lord. Let my humble voice serve for now."
The king stumbled forward. It was so unusual that the consorts around him rose, too. They stared on with fear at first, then turned to me with anger to match their king's.
I had never in my life seen such fire before me. To think, this what you were on the precipice of facing should you have given one word of defiance—in that instant, I understood the caution you urged me to take.
But I thought of you, your pain, your exhaustion. And so I stood.
"You are dismissed," the king said. "Do not try me, girl."
"I simply ask that…"
Yet I could barely get the words through. For the king uttered a scream—a piercing shriek which echoed through the castle with tremor enough to shake the very living-stones.
"The quiet!" he shrieked. "It creeps in! Even as you speak! The quiet!"
At once the consorts tried to clap, to sing, to make merry. Their music rang so poorly, so unpracticed and discordant. Yet it was so desperate that, in that moment, I pitied them.
The king gave no such leniency, and he shrieked again.
"Remove her!" he screamed. "Send her away! Yes, away from this realm, even!"
The crowd of servants started toward me, though I tried to move. You were there, in that confusion of grabbing and pulling, somewhere in that sea of hands reaching and prying at me. I saw your own hand outstretched, felt your fingers briefly brush against mine.
I heard your strained voice cry out in pain.
All until they dragged me out from the concert wing, when I knew, with panic buzzing within me, it would be to the banishment machine next.
I had never seen it before. I had only heard rumors of its horror: the cage surrounding a pedestal, framed by a menacing and crooked stone arch, and all around it gems harnessing magics from this universe and ones beyond.
It had not been used in millennia—there had been no need, for no criminal had arose to warrant its operation.
But there I was, being shoved into the cage as you pushed through the guards, tears streaking your face.
"Luka!" you cried. "Luka, no!"
They shut the door, and they threw switches built into the stone arch towering above. Sparks arced across the foggy glass of the gemstones as a bright, terrible magic swirled around me.
It was then and there that the light flashed over me and sent me through the cosmos, so many stars away from you.
It was at that moment that I last saw your face, filled with a pain I knew I must remedy.
A/N: As always, an enormous thank you to Can't Catch Rabbit for editing, advice, and a bottomless well of support in creating this story.
This one has been in the pipeline for a while—probably too long, all things considered, but I'm very eager that it's seeing the light of day now. It's been an idea very dear to me, so I hope you all enjoy.
Updates will be posted weekly. Stay tuned!