The stars had never felt so far away as when Haruto looked upon them from his school observatory. Many times, he found comfort in the quiet of night: the world falling silent down below him and the stars above, holding secrets with them that only he could understand. In the stillness, he could almost forget.

He could almost forget the weight of his sister's absence.

That lake near her school had taken her life two years ago, just before her tenth birthday. It was a summer evening; the breeze was light, and in that one split second of carelessness. He remembered his sister's face, the terror in her eyes, while tugs from the water struggled to overtake them, and how he could still hear, even now, the frantic splash of desperation and the scream of a lost soul. Sometimes, it seemed as though the water had not only stolen her but had also stolen a part of him.

Haruto leaned his palm against the cool glass of the observatory window and began to trace the constellations: Orion, Lyra, Cassiopeia. Still there, constant, no different-they were the reminder perhaps that the world could be so much greater than the pain he dragged with him. Still, no matter how he tried to draw comfort in their steady glow, it couldn't fill the void inside.

His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he pulled it out with a sigh. It was a text from Sakura, his childhood friend and the only one still trying to pull him from the depth of his isolation.

"You still coming over later? We're making cookies!"

Haruto's fingers hovered over the screen and hovered longer. He was most definitely not in a state of baking cookies or even laughing or pretending things would be just fine. But Sakura wouldn't let go. Never did.

He typed out a word, one only: "Yeah."

He jammed his phone back into his pocket and turned down again to the lake one final time before he turned away. For tonight at least, the cold, calculated beauty of the stars could wait. He had a promise to keep.

---

He let out a soft sigh and stepped into the morning sun pouring through the high-set classroom windows, casting diffused beams of light over desks. It was the soft start of a day; he wasn't going to expect that to last. He hadn't expected it to, anyway.

Sakura waved from her seat, with her usual bright smile alight in her face, as though nothing in this world could make her drop. Bright, cheerful, eager to make everyone's day at least that much better-especially his-it wasn't possible not to be weighed by her care and not give in to drawing away.

"Morning!" Sakura chirped, her eyes shining bright. "Did you sleep well? I made more cookies for you!"

Sakura got only a small, noncommittal smile from Haruto. "Thanks. I'll eat them later."

Lighting up with the effort, one could tell he was distracted. "We're going to the lake after school today! We need more time for stargazing! Maybe we'll even spot a shooting star tonight!"

Nodding but already lost to where such a thought took him: in the classroom.

"The class has another transfer student. The name Miyuki Tachibana. From tomorrow, that is, she joins the fray, he said in as unexcited a way possible."

"Mysterious, isn't it?" she whispered and leaned further with a sparkle of excitement to Haruto.

Haruto nodded absent-mindedly, his mind somewhere else. There was something in her name that unsettled him, but which he couldn't quite put a finger on.

School bell sounded, and instantly, the classroom was filled with chatter and noise, like every other day.

The day in class drug along, it seemed, as Haruto lounged around the door and gathered things together. Already, Sakura was with most of their other classmates, whose total attention seemed utterly entreated by excitement for the days to follow, but deep within, something sat low in his stomach-like everything was somehow going to flip. Without knowing how and why, for the very first time in a pretty long time, something made him stay alert.

The moment he was out of the building and turned toward the lake, he saw somebody.

She was standing right by the water's edge, her back to him, peering out over its surface as if waiting for something-or someone-to appear. Stillness she was, in such a contemplative stance; and yet, in that said posture, there was a vulnerability that seemed to radiate from her person that struck him as wrong.

And, before he knew it, he was walking towards her.

"Hey," he called out in a tentative voice, scrounging for words.

She didn't immediately turn, just a little, almost imperceptible tilt of the head to indicate that she had acknowledged him without facing him.

"Is it always this quiet here?" she asked, the softness laced with some sadness in her tone.

Haruto stood next to her, his brain faltering for a reply. "It's peaceful. Not many people come here."

She nodded, her eyes never leaving the horizon. "I like that, though. The peace, I mean."

Haruto opened his mouth to say something more, but the words caught in his throat. There was something about her quiet sadness that rang a bell, like the pull of gravity. Something in him wanted to understand her, to reach her, but the same part of him that recoiled from his own grief also pulled him back.

For a moment, they just stood there in silence, the ripples of the water mirroring the beginning of the setting sun.

And then, before Haruto turned to go, she spoke again, barely above a whisper.

"Sometimes it feels like everything beautiful is just passing through. Like the stars-do they even stay long enough to matter?"

Haruto's heart skipped a beat. It was a question that lingered in the air, an echo so easily broken. And he had no answer, yet somehow, he felt she knew the truth.

And that was one truth he wasn't certain he could live with.