Chapter 56: The Lady of the Earth — Ancient Dragon’s Awakening

Chapter 56: The Lady of the Earth — Ancient Dragon’s Awakening

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“I don't want to be anyone else; I just want to be the Yukifuyu who loves him.”

The morning light filtered through the office windows, but to me, it felt like cold, artificial neon. My name is Hayashi Yukifuyu. My surname, Hayashi, means "forest," and lately, that is exactly where I’ve been—wandering deeper into a dense, sunless thicket where the path has been swallowed by thorns and silence.

I’ve spent so much of my life reaching for things that seemed just a breath away, only to find that every step forward somehow pushed the goal two steps back. Perhaps I am simply a fool. Perhaps I am someone who lacks the map to navigate her own heart. Or perhaps, more cruelly, the universe never intended for me to find a way out of these woods.

The atmosphere in the office was stifling. Every click of a keyboard and every hushed conversation felt like it was draining the oxygen from the room. I needed to breathe. I needed to be somewhere where the sky didn't feel like a ceiling.

I made my way to the rooftop, hoping the biting autumn wind of Kobe would sweep away the suffocating weight in my chest. But as the heavy steel door groaned open, I realized I wasn't the only soul seeking refuge in the heights.

Mitsuki was there.

He was perched in a corner, his silhouette small against the vast, sprawling horizon of the city and the sea. He was uncharacteristically still. The Mitsuki I knew was a creature of kinetic energy—a whirlwind of jokes, dramatic gestures, and a confidence that bordered on the divine. But today, he looked empty. It wasn't just a lack of energy; it was as if the core of him had been hollowed out, leaving only a porcelain shell behind.

I approached him quietly, my boots scraping softly against the concrete. I sat beside him, the silence between us heavy with things we both knew but didn't want to name. Finally, the question that had been eating at my soul for weeks escaped my lips—a fragile, desperate thing.

“Mitsuki… can you still see it? Can you still see the red thread of fate?”

He didn't move. He continued to stare at the horizon, where the gray clouds of autumn were beginning to gather like an approaching army. Once, Mitsuki was Getsurou, the deity of the Moon, the one who wove the destinies of men with unbreakable crimson silk. But the man sitting next to me didn't look like a god.

“Ever since I… and Kazuaki… lost our memories back then…” his voice was a whisper, burdened by a weight that made my own heart ache. “It changed everything. Perhaps, as a consequence of that loss, we also lost our divinity. I’m not even sure if I can see the threads anymore, Yukifuyu. The world just looks… blurry.”

A bitter chill ran through me. It was like swallowing a stone—heavy, cold, and impossible to digest. If Mitsuki, the very architect of destiny, was blind, then what hope did I have? I felt like a leaf that had finally lost its grip on the branch, spinning aimlessly in a wind that didn't care where I landed.

“You know, Mitsuki…” I said, my voice trembling as I looked down at my pale, trembling hands. “All I ever wanted… was him. All I ever wanted was Kazuaki.”

Mitsuki let out a long, shuddering sigh. I caught a glimpse of his profile—he looked guilty. It was the look of a man who held the blueprints to a collapsed bridge and didn't know how to tell the travelers.

“Yukifuyu,” he said, his voice soft yet piercing. “The thread was never meant to be between you and Kazuaki. I am the one who tied it. I am the one who bound Kazuaki’s fate… to Chinatsu’s.”

The words felt like a physical blow. It was one thing to suspect it, to see the way Chinatsu looked at him with that desperate, fraying hope. It was another to hear this Man under the Moon admit that the tragedy was by design. I felt like the world was swallowing me whole, a cold darkness rising up to meet me.

“Think of it this way,” Mitsuki continued, his eyes reflecting the fading light. “When the Sun and the Moon meet in the sky, an eclipse occurs. It is a moment of total union, a celestial event that stops time. But the Earth… the Earth can only watch from a distance. It is always there, always supporting them, but it can never be part of that alignment.”

Sun and Moon. Kazuaki and Chinatsu.

And I was the Earth.

I was the ground beneath their feet, the stable observer who circled them in an eternal, lonely orbit. I was the one who provided the stage for their drama, but I was never meant to be the lead. I was the one who stayed behind while they chased the horizon.

“I… I wanted to be his everything, Mitsuki,” I whispered, the words catching in my throat. But even as I said it, they sounded hollow, like a prayer whispered into a graveyard.

Mitsuki turned to me and gave me a faint, sad smile—a look that was more an apology than a comfort. He looked away again, his eyes narrowing as they flickered toward the distance. He didn't tell me what he saw. He didn't tell me that when he looked at Chinatsu now, he felt a cold dread, a sensation that the thread he had tied was thinning, vibrating with a tension that threatened to snap.

He didn't give me hope. He didn't tell me that if their thread broke, I might have a chance. He remained silent, his power gone, his wisdom reduced to riddles. He was protecting me from a future he couldn't guarantee, or perhaps he was simply mourning the fact that he had become as human and as helpless as the rest of us.

“Yukifuyu,” he said finally, “Destiny is rarely about what we want. It’s about the balance the world demands.”

We sat there for a long time, two broken observers on a cold rooftop. The wind howled around us, a mournful sound that seemed to echo the unspoken farewells in my heart. I wasn't just saying goodbye to Kazuaki in that moment; I was saying goodbye to the version of myself that believed she could change the stars.

I looked at my hands again. They were empty. No red thread. No warmth. Just the cold, hard reality of the Earth.

Until when, I wondered, staring at the darkening sky, will I continue to be the Earth that only revolves around the Sun and the Moon?