Seren

  How would she use this information? Such… bizarre and absurd hypothesis, she knew that some people in scholarly circles were bold yet structured with their claims. Tavia wasn’t like that, but Suiming used to be rather bold. Though she couldn’t imagine a nightingale-like girl like Silvia would come to this kind of conclusion, she could imagine a nightingale feasting on butterflies.

  Thinking about that, Seren finished her bowl of noodles as she glared at Suiming; his face still had a tint of blue. She couldn’t read his expression, which had been rare. Suiming always wore his heart on his face. His purple eyes looked tired, yet something was fueling him. A faint light was behind those keyhole-shaped pupils.

  The dinner proceeded in a strange silence. Ferr washed the dishes right after he prepared some dough for tomorrow. Seren guessed that he was making them out of fun or trying out new recipes.

  The sound of water flushing down the drain was the only thing that made sound in the room. Slowly, Ferr and Silvia left the kitchen, leaving only Seren and Suiming in the cold-light-beamed room. Suiming wasn’t looking in her direction, only staring out the window. The light of other apartments shone through the thin curtain. They were like stars, only that they were on the land rather than far away and beyond the sky. No bird stood on the twigs when she looked out. It looked like winter for her.

  “It’s not too nice not to start a conversation with a lady when she obviously wants to talk to you,” Seren said, combing her hair behind her ear.

  “I’ve been told that it isn’t proper to bother a fine dame if she doesn’t speak with me first,” Suiming answered in the accent of upper-class Euthian.

  “Arbitrarily social norms don’t apply to us…Suiming.”

  “Ah, but it applied to me when I don’t want to talk to you,” he answered.

  “Listen, Suiming, it’s time to put down your arbitrary ethics on me. We don’t know what Kaspar is cooking up while we are here, arguing.”

  “And speaking of your standards, why did you hurt yourself like that? Is this some sort of complexion? Like you are being a penance?”

  “I can’t lose you, Seren…” Suiming cried. He poured a glass of fizzy drink. Slightly blue-tinted against the light, outlining the bubbles in it, while the smell of citrus emanated from it.

  “…No loss I witnessed was worth it, Seren…” Suiming said quietly.

  “But what is the meaning of my loss if it didn’t pave a way to a future where the stars shine brighter?” Seren asked, grabbing the bottle and pouring herself a glass. The bubbles sizzled, vaporing away.

  “…Why do you keep thinking like a Messenger? Can’t you be selfish once?” Suiming asked. Tinkering with the glass as he inspected the drink with a smile. A smile of tired worker, forcing it before his customer.

  “I am very selfish. Do you think all I did was for the greater good? Nay, it was always for my dreams, my ideals,” Seren answered as she stood up and leaned her shoulder against the kitchen window. Feeling the cold of the night on her skin while her eyes stared into the city asleep. She held the glass in her hand and took a sip. It was sweet with a hint of sour. Just the way she preferred her drinks. Perhaps that might be the reason she fancied those supplements sold at the drugstores.

  “And your ideal is the greater good,” Suiming said; Seren heard a thump, probably him putting the glass onto the table.

  “Suiming, please, let me be your subject.”

  “…The blood of an Existence does not provide a reliable result, Seren.”

  “Then why don’t you think otherwise? Don’t you want to see how the Starseeker reacts when an alien body is in it?” Seren declared, turning her head toward Suiming. He looked surprised as he blinked. She hadn’t seen him like that before.

  “You liked that, didn’t you?” Seren giggled.

  And the rest went like a strange dream. Suiming waited for Sliva and Ferr to go to sleep while he and Seren were in the kitchen.

  “Y’know, we should’ve done this earlier,” Seren joked, her legs crossed as she leaned on the wall. Her eyes were closing as she fought her sleepiness. She could hear Suiming preparing the make-shift experiment. The sound of knife sharpening, the chiseling of the key.

  Interestingly enough, this reminded her of the succession of Letter-Writers. And the reason why it was so difficult. The implant for the Letter-Writers must be implanted on the nodes, changing the Realm-art on purpose. The process could take an extremely long time, with the best of the best implanters working together to ensure the Letter-Writer stays unharmed from the procedure. Not even considering the preparation before the implant ritual…it was quite unbearable.

  This felt just like that waiting when she had lain on the surgery table like a subject to an anatomy study.

  “Wakey, wakey,” Suiming said as Seren opened her eyes. He was all geared up, a towel covering his mouth as he wore goggles that he most likely ‘borrowed’ from Ferr, wearing gloves, while the scent of alcohol was in the air.

  “Unlicensed surgery, huh? I’d arrest you if we were back in Euth,” Seren said.

  “Go on, turn around,” Suiming disregarded what Seren said.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Seren was ready for the pain. The metallic cold of the knife slid over her skin as she felt warmth escaping her. Pain followed soon after. It felt more like having her blood extracted for an analysis rather than the troublesome and time-consuming process of the Realm-art implant. Pain still lingered while Suiming carefully put the chiseled piece of the key.

  “Y’sure you can regenerate that?” Suiming asked.

  Seren wasn’t sure. If it were usual, she’d confidently say yes, though this was an experiment to see how her body would react.

  “I guess?” she answered.

  “Eh, I’ll get you something to stop the bleeding,” Suiming said as Seren felt a stinging pain of disinfectant spreading with a cold sensation.

  “I don’t need antiseptics.”

  “Just making sure, alright, you should’ve consulted your doctor beforehand,” Suiming said, pressing a dry cloth over her wound.

  She crossed her fingers to make different hand shadows on the wall, as if entertaining a child while she waited for anything to happen. The light wasn’t concentrated enough for her hands to drop a sharp silhouette of the rabbit that was hopping around, but it did kill her boredom.

  “Hey, Suiming, what if that key is some kind of material that can be used for any wound?” she asked.

  “I’d find a way to produce that thing and make a ton of money selling it to doctors and hospitals.”

  “Or I would sell the patent for like…I don’t know, an apple and two mushrooms,” he added as Seren saw his shadow shrug.

  “And what if the mushrooms were poisonous?”

  “Doesn’t bother me, I still have an apple.”

  While Seren was thinking of an answer, her back started to hurt. The agony pierced into her bones as she saw the shadows before her twist and deform. Seren gasped, groaning, yet no voice came from her. The shadow’s edges and silhouette quenched into something shapeless, something unbound by its own form. Hues beyond the color spectrum flashed before her as she curled from the pain. Air left and reentered her lungs while she felt her body had become distant, dissociated from her mind, as if she were a puppet tied on strings.

  The colors beyond the skies and This World twirled into a foul and savage dance.

  Breaking, collapsing, quenching before her, Seren couldn’t tell what was dismembering into uncountable pieces, pieces akin to the stars reflected in seawater, falling apart into dust while the tides devour them. As her dissociated mind drifted deeper into the abyss beyond her, Seren whispered in her mind.

  Starseeker…my origin…my creator

  May you light the night with your great flare

  May you forsake me not

  May you forget me not

  If I were to die now…let me die in freedom

  And amongst the chaos before her, Seren saw it. A glimmer of light, along faintly glowing in the hueless shades. The light seemed lonely to her, a kind of loneliness unable to be uttered by language, but something deeper that connected her to that thing. It flickered as it struggled to hold its own form, pushed away while sparkles of it died in the colorless tide.

  You must be horribly lonely…as if…you were the last of your kind.

  Seren felt its despair; it was strange, but she was sure that the desperate reach for something while their hands held onto nothing belonged to that faint light. The pain and sorrow it felt was not comparable to anything Seren had felt. The weight of immense and utterly profound anguish tore that thing’s tiny heart while the desolation flooded out. It flowed onwards, sinking everything in its way while Seren felt a gaze. Perhaps not even a gaze, but only a glare in passing. Like the one who saw the thing’s unbound pain and agony did not care much, nevertheless, the ignorance and indifference still haunted her while the faint light changed.

  It grew as its sorrow returned to its fragile heart. A heart so desperate to stop beating, a being so desperate to return to the haven of death while reunited with its kin.

  Seren did not understand why she comprehended the being’s situation, though she couldn’t doubt the unquestionable connection between her and that thing. She wanted to cry, but her depersonalized body could not squeeze out a single droplet of tears. The only thing she could do was to watch the wordless tragedy before her.

  As she struggled to bear the pain and desolation, the faint light grew stronger. It was no longer the squirming, frail sparkle in the infinite dark, but its form changed to something great, something as infinite as the void itself. Whispers rose as it rose, chants echoed as it moved. It reached for the places beyond, touching the sky beyond the skies with its appendage in a way that Seren could not comprehend.

  I will die here, Seren thought.

  While Seren searched for escapes, she heard the words between words in the whispers and chants. It was the language she used to speak when she belonged to the greater glory, when she did not have freedom. She could understand it…the ebb of flow that could not be put into human words, the red and blue that bled on the night she was freed from it.

  And among the whispers, one sentence, if that could be called, echoed louder than the others:

  “Endling. The last one of a world…crowned by sorrow, throned by despair…”

  Seren closed her eyes. She could not witness anymore, she could not bear anymore. There was nothing more for her to see, nothing more for her to feel but the infinite, boundless form of what once was a flicker of light. She understood it, yet she couldn’t put it into words that she could speak now.

  Starseeker…my origin…my creator

  Abadon me

  Forget me

  Free me

  If I were to live, let me live under the stars, you couldn’t move…

  …

  “Seren?”

  “Seren!”

  “*Siyuense vulgary*, do abnormalities get allergies?”

  “…No…” Seren answered while she opened her eyes. The light overhead felt like the sun blazing down at her. She raised her hand to block the light; her Realm-art felt full again. The clock had been rewound. The whispers were back, this time they felt even quieter than before.

  “How long has it been?” she asked.

  “Two minutes, give or take,” Suiming said as he helped Seren get up.

  “Your body reacted to the key, really, I mean, really bad,” Suiming continued.

  Two minutes. That scene felt like eternity. She looked at Suiming, whose face was covered with the cloth, but his eyes were filled with worry. Seren reached her back to feel the wound. She could feel the site was healing up, issues stretching to each other as the site returned to what it was before. As nothing had happened, her agony was never there.

  “…Suiming…I saw things while I passed out.”

  “…I saw…the birth of the Starseeker…”