Foreword

Since the age of four, I have been in love with the tales of the Three Kingdoms. Names like Cao Cao, Zhuge Liang, and Liu Bei felt so alive—as if they were spirits that never truly left this world. But among all those names, one figure came to me… not from books, not from films, but from a dream. He was Prince Xi, Han Zhi.

I was still a teenager then—only thirteen—and it was in that dream that I first saw him. Alongside someone else who was no stranger to me: Wang Yuanji. But not as written in official history. In that dream, she stood behind a curtain, gazing far into the distance, and said:

“I am now the wife of a tyrant. But my heart… has been a widow since that day.”

Those words pierced me, leaving a mark that never faded. From that moment on, I could no longer see Wang Yuanji merely as the “wise lady” in history books. I began to wonder—what if her first love was not for a dynasty, but for someone she never had the chance to save?

Han Zhi is not part of the history we know. But sometimes history is not about what is written—it is about what is hidden. And Hanasaku Hoshi is my small attempt to write back the page that was never read.

This is not a story of victory. Nor is it a happy fairy tale. It is a story of love sacrificed for power, of two souls who could never be together in the real world—yet found each other again in every rebirth.

Like fallen blossoms carried by the wind, their love drifted freely… far into a sky that never recorded their names. But the stars knew. They were silent witnesses to it all.

Hanasaku Hoshi is not history, but neither is it a lie. It is a voice born from the quiet of the author’s dreams—and if you listen closely, perhaps you will understand: some loves are destined to last forever… precisely because they never end.

I have written and woven this tale from fragments of dreams… and if you feel you have known this story before, then you know—it was meant for you.

—Kamiya Kei