The world above was nothing but a lie painted in watercolor. Stars smeared across the surface like someone had taken a brush to reality and decided to fuck with the composition. Sora watched them shimmer and distort, his body drifting deeper into the lake's embrace.
Cold wasn't the right word for what he felt. Cold implied something sharp, something you could recoil from. This was different. This was velvet pulled tight around every inch of skin, a weight that crushed the air from his lungs while promising something sweeter than oxygen. Peace, maybe. An ending, certainly.
His limbs hung useless in the water, lead anchors tied to strings that no longer mattered. The burning in his chest—that animal panic screaming breathe, breathe, BREATHE—had faded to a dull pulse. Just background noise to his final thoughts.
Seventeen years.
The number tasted bitter even in his mind. Seventeen years of being the perfect tool, sharp enough to use but never worth keeping. The orphanage aunties with their soft voices and softer hands that wandered where hands shouldn't. The way they'd smile when he sang for them, when he moved how they wanted, when he was good and didn't make a fuss.
What a sick fucking joke.
His body had been currency before he understood what money was. His voice had bought him scraps of affection that evaporated the moment someone shinier came along. And Tokyo, that neon-soaked promised land, had chewed him up and spat him out onto the streets where he'd busked for coins tossed with pity instead of admiration.
A flower plucked before it bloomed. That's what some poetry-addled idiot would call it. Sora had a different phrase.
Seventeen years of being everyone's favorite disposable lighter.
The stars above twisted into fractals. Pretty, in a distant sort of way. At least the universe bothered to put on a show for his exit. That was more courtesy than most people had given him.
His eyelids grew heavy. The burn in his lungs quieted to a whisper.
At least... I can finally rest.
Then the darkness below him began to glow.
It wasn't sunlight breaking through the murk. Sunlight was honest, brutal in its clarity. This light bloomed from nothing like someone had cracked open the lake bed and let moonbeams spill out. Pearlescent. Otherworldly. The kind of glow that didn't belong in any reality Sora had experienced.
His dying brain tried to make sense of it. Hallucination, probably. The final gasp of neurons firing random patterns before everything shut down for good. But the light grew stronger, more defined, and then he saw it.
The fish.
No. Not a fish. That word was too mundane for what circled him now.
Its scales weren't scales at all but liquid moonlight that rippled with each graceful sweep of its fins. Those fins trailed behind like nebula clouds, cosmic dust caught in water that shouldn't exist. The creature was massive, easily longer than Sora was tall, moving through the dark water with a majesty that made the cold feel intentional. Purposeful.
Its eyes found his. Ancient pearls set in that luminous face, older than the stars blurring above, watching him with something that might have been recognition.
The Koi circled once. Just once. A slow, deliberate revolution around his sinking body that felt less like observation and more like judgment.
Then it spoke.
Not with words. Not with sound. The voice resonated directly into Sora's skull, vibrating through water and bone until his dying thoughts scattered like startled birds.
A flower plucked before it could bloom.
The lake disappeared.
He was six again, huddled in the corner of the orphanage common room. Grey walls. Grey floor. Grey future stretching out in every direction. The cheap mp3 player clutched to his chest was the only splash of color in the whole damn building, bright red plastic that he'd found in a donation box.
Someone's voice poured through the tinny headphones. A stranger singing about dreams and tomorrow and all those pretty lies adults told children. But for six-year-old Sora, freezing in hand-me-down pajamas while the other kids slept, that voice was the only warmth he'd ever known.
The memory shattered.
Your life was an unjust game, the chances doomed from the start.
He was fourteen. Taller now, leaner, standing on a street corner in Shibuya with his guitar case open at his feet. His voice soared over the crowd, hitting notes that should have stopped traffic. Should have made people turn and stare and realize they were witnessing something extraordinary.
A salaryman tossed a hundred-yen coin without looking. The metal clinked against the others, a pitiful collection that wouldn't buy dinner. The man's face never changed. Didn't even slow his stride.
Sora had smiled anyway. Kept singing. Kept being grateful for scraps because that's what tools did. They didn't complain about how they were used.
The potential of a sun, smothered before it could shine.
Sixteen. The orphanage rooftop at midnight because sleeping meant dreams and dreams meant remembering. He danced alone under a full moon, body moving through choreography he'd taught himself from bootleg videos and obsessive practice.
Every step was perfect. Every turn, every leap, every fucking gesture dripped with the kind of raw talent that should have launched a thousand careers. His silhouette cut sharp against the Tokyo skyline, a lone figure performing for an audience of neon signs and indifferent skyscrapers.
No one watched. No one cared. No one would ever know this moment existed.
Just Sora and the moon and the certainty that he'd die before anyone bothered to look.
The visions dissolved. The lake rushed back in, colder than before, or maybe he'd just lost the last of his body heat. Sora's consciousness flickered like a candle in wind, guttering toward nothing.
This was it. The actual end. The Koi had shown him his life's highlight reel and found it wanting. Fair enough. So had everyone else.
Let go. Just let go.
But if my voice is reaching you now, there may be a possibility open to you.
The Koi moved directly into his line of sight. Those pearl eyes filled his entire world, ancient and knowing and utterly alien. The water itself seemed to hold its breath.
Sora Amamoto. His name in that resonant not-voice felt like hearing a secret no one should know. If you could have another chance at life, a life where your full potential was not a burden, but a weapon... what would you want to do?
Something sparked in the dying embers of Sora's mind. Not hope. Hope was for people who still believed the world might be kind. This was different. Sharper. It tasted like rage distilled into fuel, like every ignored performance and pitying glance and wandering hand condensed into pure defiant heat.
The memories replayed. Not gentle this time. Not bittersweet. They crashed through him like waves against rocks, each one building the foundation of something new.
Ignored.
Six-year-old Sora in grey walls, invisible unless someone wanted something from him.
Disposable.
Fourteen-year-old Sora getting coins tossed at his feet like he was a performing monkey instead of a person.
Unseen.
Sixteen-year-old Sora dancing masterpieces for absolutely no one.
His thoughts crystallized into something sharp enough to cut reality.
I want to be so famous my name becomes a prayer on their lips. Not a request. Not a hope. A desperate fucking prayer.
I want to burn so bright they have to shield their eyes or go blind trying to look away.
I want to be so desired, so valuable, so absolutely irreplaceable that throwing me away becomes impossible.
I want them all to look. Every single one of them. And I want them to know they'll never, ever have all of me no matter how much they beg.
The answer screamed through the water silent as death and twice as final. Not spoken aloud because Sora's lungs were full of lake and his lips wouldn't move. But projected with every scrap of will his dying body could muster, a declaration carved from seventeen years of being nothing to anyone.
The Lunar Koi's light shifted. Pearlescent white bled into gold, warm and alive and utterly at odds with the cold trying to claim him. The velvet weight crushing his chest lifted. The darkness scattered.
A desperate, beautiful ambition.So be it. Live this next life to the fullest, Sora Amamoto.
The gold intensified, swallowing the lake, the cold, the bitter memories, everything.
Make them all look.