The Boy Who Gazes at the Stars
Most people never truly realize it.
The word war.
Just how much crushing weight that single short sound carries.
To most it was nothing more than a fleeting phrase, but for those directly involved it signified the absolute end of their lives.
Scars that could never be erased.
Was it a holy crusade to realize justice?
Or merely a tool for the greed of adults?
It was a meaningless question.
It felt absurd to examine justifications now.
What mattered was that war had broken out, and that so many children had screamed until their throats gave out.
The world was painted in the light of despair.
Even after the ceasefire, the war lingered on.
The dead received life’s pardon through death, but the survivors had no choice but to pay the price in full.
The dripping pus only pretended to heal beneath the words “war’s end,” while everyone turned a blind eye to the rotting wounds beneath.
The boy was no exception.
One day, the letter arrived.
Cruel reality did not discriminate.
When he carefully unfolded the neatly folded paper, the solid hopes he had clung to shattered into pieces.
Unbelievable sentences filled the letter one after another.
The village has been annihilated.
The cold sentence.
The hometown the boy had left with lingering attachment had been utterly razed by the enemy nation’s annihilation magic.
Driven into a corner, they had finally resorted to forbidden spells.
Overnight the village became a land where no one could live.
The aftermath of the magic had turned it into a desert, and monsters born from the twisted mana roamed freely.
People died one by one as if stricken by plague.
A city that had met total destruction.
This was the true identity of the desert we had wandered through for days.
The old man smiled bitterly.
“I never meant to deceive you.”
The deep wrinkles carried the weight of years.
After gently stroking the tombstone for a moment, the old man looked at us standing there in a daze.
“From the very beginning. I started this journey to meet Rosalind.”
“......”
“......”
We could not easily speak and simply remained silent.
Rosalind Meryard, Resting Here.
A single tombstone stood before our eyes.
The reunion two people had waited for their entire lives ended in the very sorrow they had least wished for.
The old man continued calmly.
“Isn’t it strange? A lone tombstone standing on this remote hill.”
His hazy eyes sank briefly into memory.
It was a memory from childhood.
“If we ever part ways, let’s meet again at the brightest star in the night sky!”
“You mean that blue star over there?”
“How about it? It’s clearly visible, so it’s fine, right?”
“But… how do we get to a star…?”
“I don’t know either! But by the time we’re adults, surely we’ll know how, won’t we?”
“That’s surprisingly plausible.”
“Then it’s a promise, okay?”
“Yes…!”
It was a promise made right here on this hill.
Lying side by side among the bushes, counting the brilliant stars that seemed ready to pour down.
It was a moment the boy had never forgotten in all his life.
And.
“She asked that when she died… she be buried on this hill.”
The girl was no different.
Until the very moment her life ended, she had lived reflecting on the fifteen years she spent with the boy.
Neither of them had ever forgotten the other even once.
“What fools.”
He should have forgotten a promise like that.
He should have left that wretched village behind, found a handsome partner, married, and lived happily surrounded by blessings.
Was it even believable that she had never met a man until that age?
If only he had known it would come to this.
“……If I had known, I would have at least smiled when we parted.”
The last scene he remembered.
The moment they turned their backs on each other in anger.
It had not even been important, yet they had wasted their final farewell on a petty emotional fight.
The old man gently stroked the tombstone.
“Is there any life without regrets?”
Summarizing a life comes down to a single sentence.
The old man, who had been lost in thought for a while, soon regained his senses and turned his gaze toward us.
“Please don’t think ill of me.”
“Old sir.”
“My offer to guide you to the nearest city was sincere. Walk in this direction for a few hours and you’ll reach a new village.”
“You’re not coming with us?”
“I have somewhere else I must go.”
“Somewhere else…?”
“I have to keep my promise.”
He smiled along with the cryptic words.
As he stood there stiffly, the old man soon began to cough violently.
Bright red blood spilled onto the ground.
“Cough, cough…!”
It had happened several times before, but this time his condition was visibly worse.
His legs staggered as though dizzy.
The old man leaned against the tombstone and slid down.
His figure collapsed in a pitiful heap.
“Old sir!”
We reached out to support him, but he firmly refused.
He simply kept coughing and muttering.
“Cough! I’m… fine.”
“You’ve clearly reached your limit. What do we do? We need to get you to a village for treatment…!”
“In any case… I received a terminal diagnosis… At most, a month.”
The old man showed not the slightest disturbance.
His voice rang out calmly.
It was an ending he had long prepared for, over and over.
Legia, realizing the meaning of his words belatedly, stared blankly with tears brimming in her eyes.
The old man smiled.
“Why such sad faces?”
“......”
“Old sir…”
“Cough… It would be nice if you smiled for me.”
His eyes remained transparently clear.
Carried on the gentle dawn breeze, his soft voice spread calmly.
“It may look like I’m dying, but that isn’t the case.”
“......”
“As you know, stars are quite far away. This body is too heavy to take there.”
The star where they had promised to meet.
The old man—no, the boy—was finally going to meet the girl.
The single rose he had loved so dearly.
“So won’t you congratulate me?”
It would be a magnificent sight.
Whenever the old man looked at the stars, every one of them would appear like a well with a pulley.
Because every star would offer him water to drink.
This was not death.
It was merely preparation for a distant journey.
Now the boy from fifty years ago would gain new wings and set off toward the most brilliant star floating in the night sky.
Just imagining it was a beautiful page from a fairy tale.
“Thank you for accompanying me on this long journey.”
“The honor was mine.”
“Old sir… hic.”
We exchanged our farewells.
As the coughing continued, a faint light suddenly began to swirl from the old man’s body.
It was a mysterious hue.
Crackle—.
The diseased flesh gradually turned transparent, then slowly crumbled into pure white light, like dust scattering on the wind.
The old man was becoming remnants of the desert and dispersing.
“Ah.”
A faint exclamation escaped.
The old eyes gazed blankly at the sky.
They were watching the stars just as they had in the old days.
Whiiiish—.
Above the jet-black canvas painted with darkness, countless sparkling dots were embedded.
A cluster of stars sweeping away the deep veil of night.
A million embroidered stars erasing loneliness with a million beams of light.
Perhaps it was an axis of time representing an entire lifetime.
The old man reached toward the sky.
His trembling hand pointed to the single brightest star in the night sky.
He murmured faintly.
“I’m coming to meet you, Rosalind.”
The old man closed his eyelids.
Afterward, his completely crumbled body soared freely into the sky.
Toward the star where the girl would be waiting.
We stood in place for a long time.
The old man who had left on a distant journey.
Legia was shedding tears drop by drop.
Having built a bond over the past ten days, the sorrow of parting was enough to make the girl cry.
Even these fleeting moments would become fertilizer for the protagonist’s growth.
“Sniff… hic…”
For some it was the dawn of a long journey’s beginning; for others, the morning that ended a long journey.
We had finally escorted the old man safely to his destination.
The episode’s clear condition was achieved.
At the same time, the signal announcing its end rang in our ears.
Creeeeak—!
A sound like a rusted hinge echoed.
When we looked up, a small door stood wide open in the sky.
A door attached to an otherwise ordinary sky.
It was a bizarre yet mystical sight.
It was time to leave this world.
I took the sobbing girl’s hand and carefully led the way.
Step. Step.
Stairs that seemed folded from the night sky itself.
As we climbed through the empty air, the door opening in the heavens welcomed us.
Beyond it, pure white light swirled.
“It’s all over now.”
After hesitating with one last look back, we stepped toward the light.
The view blazed brilliantly, then faded to black.
How to Cross the Desert
— The Door That Opens in the Sky, The Boy Who Gazes at the Stars —
When we opened our eyes again, we stood in an empty alleyway.
“Hmm.”
“Wh-where are we…?”
We quietly looked around.
The familiar scenery that greeted us.
We had returned to the academy.
Unlike the ten days we spent inside the book, barely any time seemed to have passed in reality.
At most, two hours.
“......”
I scanned the surroundings.
We had definitely been inside an old shop before we left, yet the building had vanished without a trace.
Only a hollow empty lot remained to welcome us.
As if such a shop had never existed here from the beginning.
It followed the original story after all.
Once an episode ended, the shop was cleanly erased from the field.
All that remained for the player were the reward items.
And the strange book I had picked up at the start.
“Young master… what just happened?”
“Who knows.”
I picked up the book lying on the ground.
It was bound in old leather.
On the cover, the title How to Cross the Desert sparkled in golden lettering.
I gently turned the pages.
Flip.
At the very end was an illustration.
A picture of a boy and a girl.
Below it was a simple title.
Josh and Rosalind
The two were embracing each other with dazzling smiles in a world as beautiful as the night sky.
They looked as if they had only just reunited.
A faint smile rose to my lips.
I, who had been touching the page, answered the girl standing beside me.
My voice gently warmed the dark surroundings.
“It was simply the end of one fairy tale.”
I closed the book.
Before I knew it, the original title had been replaced by a new sentence written in a single line.
It had changed the moment I looked away.
I murmured the words inside my heart.
Thank you.
A greeting left by someone whose name we did not know.
For a long time we simply stared down at those letters in silence.