The night in Hoshifuri would not let me sleep. What tumbled from the sky were not stars, but fragments of names—those that had failed to freeze. They flickered, fell, and vanished upon the cobblestones. Every time one went out, I felt as though I heard the faint, sharp intake of a breath somewhere in town.
Koyoi sat beneath the eaves of the station, his drawstring pouch resting on his lap. The droplets inside were quiet. Quiet, yet not cold. Since they held no heat, he felt that if he strained his eyes, he might just be able to see the shapes of the words within.
“I wonder if dawn will ever come,” Koyoi murmured.
Kuon answered without looking away from the marks where the wall's brackets used to be. “It will. But it isn’t like a southern dawn. Here, dawn isn’t an increase in light... it’s a decrease in the number of falling names.”
The blue light of his prosthetic eye swept across the sky once.
“What happens when they stop falling?”
“It becomes quiet. And from that silence, we can draw the next map. That is why dawn is... convenient.”
Asahi leaned against a station pillar, flicking the scabbard of his sword with his thumb. “If it’s convenient, then tell it to get here. If it won’t, I’ll drag it out myself.”
Koyoi gave a small, tired smile at his bluntness.
Immediately after, the sky paled. It wasn’t that the mist had thinned; rather, the light that had been falling simply... stopped. The cold glimmers remaining on the cobblestones sank away all at once, and the town shed its mask of the "ordinary night." In its place, a distant lantern shifted its hue. Its white flame took on a faint, delicate tinge of orange.
Koyoi breathed in. “...This is dawn.”
Kuon gave a slight nod. “We can move now. While the boundaries are still firm.”
Asahi started walking first. Koyoi checked the warmth of his pouch and stood up. The dawn of Hoshifuri wasn’t blinding. It was merely the cessation of things falling. That silence was the signal for the next step.
The three of them headed for the northern edge of town. The cobblestones ended, and the path turned to earth. The black stone town receded behind them, and ahead, nothing but mist stretched out.
The Sea of Oblivion.
But as the dawn light pierced the fog, its color changed. The grey took on a pale, shimmering gold. Koyoi had never seen the mists of the Sea of Oblivion hold any color before.
“It’s... gold,” he whispered.
“Because it is morning,” Kuon said, noting something in his ledger. “There are moments when the control of the World’s Laws loosens. Through those cracks, the original light leaks out.”
The blue glow of his artificial eye mixed with the golden mist, creating an ethereal, impossible hue. Asahi narrowed his eyes. Far off—beyond the mist—something was visible.
“Hey. Look.”
Koyoi followed his finger. It was a rift in the fog. A single ray of golden light slanted in at a low angle, and at its end—there was color. A color that was neither grey nor white.
It was green.
A deep, rich, living green.
“...A tree?” Koyoi’s voice was raspy.
Kuon focused his artificial eye, the blue beam narrowing and stretching into the distance. “Trees. A grove of conifers. There is a forest on the northern shore of the Sea of Oblivion.”
Koyoi’s chest tightened. How long had it been since they had seen a living plant? They had walked through a world of white mist, white sand, and bleached records for so long. And now, there was green right before them.
“Is it close?” Asahi asked, his voice lower than usual.
“Close. But only during the dawn. Once the sun rises, the mist will return and hide it.” There was a slight edge of intensity in Kuon’s voice as well.
Koyoi took a step forward. The golden mist flowed around his feet, washing over the toes of his boots. It was warm. For the first time, the mist of the Sea of Oblivion felt warm.
The green was still far away. But it was definitely there.
Inside his pouch, a single droplet pulsed. Strongly. Almost happily.
The three of them walked north into the golden light of dawn.