“We’ve got about half an hour until daybreak. The light panel is up and running, so you can begin, lightbringer!”
Kenta closed his eyes to the stars and breathed in through his nose before exhaling sharply out of his mouth. His hands were trembling. When he breathed in next, the stars came with it, pinpricks of light jumping to his fingers, toes, arms, legs, and even his face and hair. Every part of his body seemed to be engulfed in blue light, except his closed eyes. Once the light had gathered, he exhaled through his mouth once again, and the light throughout his body shifted to his left arm until it was contained between his fingertips and his elbow. When he opened his eyes, the sky was only slightly darker than it had been. He did not look at his left arm.
Turning away from the stars, he faced a small white pedestal that came up to his waist. On the top of the pedestal was a small black panel, and he placed his left hand on it, closing his eyes and breathing out. As he exhaled, the light passed from his fingertips to the panel. The panel immediately started to shine the same blue that was clinging to Kenta’s arm, and the light slowly drained from his arm until he stood in the dim light of the stars. He opened his eyes, inhaled, and looked at the panel before removing his fingers. Its surface went dark, then flashed white once before going dark and staying dark. Kenta exhaled and placed his fingers on his forehead, then looked up at the sky again. A small bit of light leftover in his fingers jumped to his forehead and moved to the tips of his spiky hair, his head becoming its own small, fuzzy star.
“Kenta reporting. The light has been transferred to the panel, and I’m on standby should any light have leaked.”
“No need, Lightbringer Kenta. It’s already being shifted to the display’s power source. You’re free to go when the system signals you.”
“Understood. And you can just call me Kenta, you know.”
Kenta turned to look at the sky once more. Though it was dark, his eyes could sense light beyond the smallest visible stars, and he wanted to reach his hand out to that invisible light and call it to his fingers. It was something he knew not to do, but no matter how much he took from the stars, he always felt the pulse of that invisible light just beyond them, crawling towards him, calling for him.
Behind him, two pieces of metal scraped gently against one another. Kenta sighed before turning to face the now open door. He glanced over his shoulder to take one last look at the stars before stepping around the pedestal and walking through the doorway. The door slid shut, leaving Kenta in a long hallway, both walls lined with lights. To Kenta it was more dark in the hallway than it had been outside.
He walked down the hall quickly and quietly, reaching the door on the other end in less than a minute. When he reached the door it slid open, and as soon as he stepped through the doorway and onto the Lightbringer’s Balcony, the lights in the hall behind him vanished. The door shut quietly behind him and he looked forward, taking in the gradual rise of the sun in front of him. He frowned when the yellow-white light reached his face, and he stared directly into it, unflinching. The tip of his black hair was still tinged blue.
“Well done as always, Lightbringer Kenta.”
Kenta looked away from the artificial sun to acknowledge the woman speaking. She was smiling brightly at him. “Sunrise is lovely, isn’t it?”
“If you mean that, not really.” He turned back to the sun and looked over the balcony’s edge, staring down into the oblong cup that was the Onizuka colony. From the roof of the Colonial Museum, known as the Lightbringer’s Balcony, the entire sloping city of Onizuka could be seen, as well as a fair amount of the outskirts on the far end of the city leading to the grasslands and rural areas of the colony.
“I don’t understand why you lightbringers hate the sun display so much.” She had joined him at the edge of the roof, taking it in turns to look at the city and then at him. He made no motion of noticing this.
“I don’t hate it.” Kenta’s response was quiet, timid. His eyes remained fixed on the city beneath him, darting about as slowly waking noises carried to the rooftop. “It’s impossible to like that after feeling and seeing the light of the universe, though.”
“Fair enough.” She looked down at the city as well, then turned her head to look at him, the blue light in his hair catching her attention. “You’re going to stain it if you keep doing that.”
“It’s already stained.” Kenta ran his left hand through his hair, pulling the light from it. The tip of every strand of hair was tinted dark blue. “There’s nowhere else to keep it, though. Leave it in your hands too long and you’ll get skin diseases.” He reached his left hand back up, and the light jumped from his fingers to his hair. “I’m needed somewhere else, then?”
She rested her hand on his left forearm. “You never like the answer to that question.”
Kenta shifted away from her and closed his eyes, a sort of tension pulling at his forehead and cheeks. The darkness and blue light outside were pulsing. “I’m not asking to hear something good.”
Somewhere below them, a door slammed, and, just further, another opened.
“They want you to go to the school.”
The streets became a slow trickle of life, a person here, a couple there, a small child accompanied by her parents, a construction worker holding a thermos full of either coffee or soup. Kenta walked along the roof to the door leading into the museum, silent. His hands, in the pockets of his pants, were trembling.
The walk from Lightbringer’s Balcony to the school was a short, quiet one. The school, a few buildings down the road from the museum, was a relatively modest building. Long and made of steel—though painted to look as though it was made of bricks of various shades of red and brown—it was one of the few surviving buildings from the colony’s original launch, and was sized accordingly. The building was large enough to contain 500 students at a time, though on average there were only 300 students each year.
Kenta quietly made his way to and through the front door of the building, going largely if not entirely unnoticed. It was still early enough that most of the students were not present, and so Kenta headed to his right and toward a door at the far end of the hall, hands still tucked inside his jacket pockets. Some of the classroom and office doors he passed were open, but he made no effort to look inside them. He had made it halfway down the hall when a voice called from the open doorway he had passed a moment earlier.
“Lightbringer Kenta!”
Kenta’s hands clenched in his pockets, but he turned around and moved to the open doorway, standing in the frame without stepping inside. “H-hello.”
“Thank you for filling in on such short notice, Arn’s been sick for days now, but he didn’t say anything until yesterday afternoon!”
Kenta nodded his head. “Oh, I-I see.” Unsure of why he was stuttering, he quickly added, “It’s no trouble.” He didn’t know who he was speaking to, eyes focused on the carpeted floor, head locked in place from the neck.
“Hopefully this won’t be a long-term change, it all depends on how quickly Arn recovers.”
It was brown and soft on his feet, the felt slipping between his toes. It was at that moment Kenta realized that he had made it several hours into his day without having put on shoes. He briefly wondered if that was why he had been stuttering, but tried to play it off as though his being barefoot was normal. “Do you know what Arn is sick with? It’s not like him to call out without prior warning, especially if he already knew he was sick.”
“He didn’t say, but it’s not like Arn to call in sick in the first place, so I’d bet it’s something pretty serious.”
The lock on Kenta’s neck was loosening, and he felt his head slowly rising from its half-bowed state. As the face slid into his line of sight, Kenta came to the conclusion that he did not actually have any idea who the man was, though he knew he had met him before. “That’s true.” He took a deep breath that felt more like swallowing spit than anything else. “Does Arn still teach in the room at the end of the hall?”
“Yes, Arn’s still off in the corner. I hate that we have to put him there, and now you too, but it’s the only room without a window, you know. I hope…”
Kenta nodded. Tucked off in the corner of his mind—an appropriate place for it to be located, he thought to himself—was the memory of an important moment within that room, and the image of the red-brown bricks tinted blue while in the process of being light-stained briefly moved to the forefront of his head until he blinked and realized that the man was waiting for a reply from him. “Oh, no, that’s no trouble at all. I’d prefer that room to any other, anyway. I’m still not sure what I should cover today, though. I don’t know what Arn was teaching them.”
“That one I can’t help you with,” the man replied. “Arn…well, he’s not gotten used to keeping a syllabus or course schedule yet, I don’t think.”
Kenta’s eyes returned to the carpet. Still brown. Still barefoot. “Nicky left him big shoes to fill.” Though he felt the words leaving his mouth and knew they would be followed by silence, Kenta made no attempt to stop them. He watched as his toes shifted in the carpet one by one, until he’d had more than enough. “I should go, then. I need to come up with something to talk about for the class.”
“Yes, good luck. From my understanding, Arn doesn’t have much hope for this year’s Lightbringer Studies class, though, so don’t be too discouraged if there isn’t anyone interested in there!”
Kenta had already left the office and was a quarter of the way to the room in the corner by the time the words settled on his ears. A shadow of a sigh slipped from his mouth. Somewhere behind his head the space outside was still pulsing, still calling, and he could see the small blue lights flickering one by one, or several at a time, until it seemed that all the lights were flickering at once. He considered reaching out, to pull them all toward him at once.
A bell rang, and Kenta found himself standing at the desk in the front of the windowless classroom. He blinked twice to bring his focus away from the stars, then scanned the room, noticing first that one glowing cube standing on a stool by the closed door functioned as the only light source for the room. Several seats were empty, and a small notebook sat on the desk that Kenta stood behind. He took a deep breath in before speaking.
“Hello, everyone. Arn is out sick, so I’ll be filling in until he’s recovered. My name is Kenta—”
“Kenta?”
“Lightbringer Kenta?”
“Yeah, sure you are!”
“You look like you’re only a year out of school!”
“No way he’s the lightbringer!”
The voices came at once from practically everyone in the room, and Kenta’s eyes didn’t move quickly enough to pinpoint each of the voices. Surprised, Kenta waited for the voices to die down before speaking again. As he waited, he realized that inside his pockets, his hands were trembling.
“Y-yes, I am that Kenta.” Stuttering again. His feet were cold bricks, taking their cold from the tiled floor, but he ignored it, attempting to focus on the class. “I finished school twenty months ago and have been working as one of Onizuka’s lightbringers since.”
Kenta saw the same smirk on 23 faces, the same set of eyebrows raised to the same degree, the same slight crinkle of skin at the corners of the eyes. None spoke. Tentatively—so much so that the hand that slowly left his pocket shook as it moved toward the desk—Kenta opened the notebook sitting on the desk to find a class roster, and was surprised to find a list of not 23 but 27 students. He looked back up, unsure. The same 23 smirks and eyebrows faced him, and one other head he hadn’t noticed, with a face that seemed familiar, though it was one he was certain he hadn’t seen before. There were still three missing, and so a second shaky hand left his second shaking pocket and pointed at the first name on the list.
“Alright, I’ll take attendance now. Akron, Cerb.” Kenta’s eyes scanned the room until they settled on a smirk with a hand raised. He returned to the roster and repeated the action 12 more times with the same result, but the fourteenth time came differently.
“Metz, Nora.”
The familiar face he’d never seen before raised a petite, trembling hand. Her face was not smirking, her eyebrows not raised, the corners of her eyes not crinkled. Her hair was long and dark, and for a moment Kenta felt the invisible light from space pulsing in his head again. He moved to the next name on the list, then the next and so on. Nadal, Colin was absent, as was Nadal, Raymond. Twins being absent seemed reasonable enough to Kenta, and he moved along the list without much thought on the matter. Peregrino, Ash wore the smirk and raised the eyebrows, and from there Kenta’s hands returned to shaking. He hoped the students wouldn’t notice, but he was sure they already had.
“Pirashi, Arman.” Smirk.
“Rodriguez, Daniel.” Absent.
“Saunders, Philip.” Smirk.
Then, quite as suddenly as his arrival to the classroom, Kenta was done taking attendance. He found himself frowning, unsure of where to start. The notebook told him nothing but the roster, and he was sure that even if it had told him Arn’s class plans, he wouldn’t be able to follow them very well.
“So tell me, what do you all know about us lightbringers?” The question had passed his lips before he had thought to ask it in the first place, but by the time Kenta realized he said it he didn’t think it would be worth the effort to try taking it back.
“You’re anti-social.”
“You’re weird.”
“You’re always working.”
“None of you have lives.”
“You’re all miserable.”
Kenta was thoroughly aware of his eyelids closing and opening, the gap between his lips, the dryness of his mouth, the air catching in his clenching and unclenching throat. His hands, behind the desk, were shaking like an earthquake, and he felt the shaking move to his neck, head turning left and right. “But, but that’s not true at all! I mean, there’s a lot of work to be done, sure, but—”
“When was the last time you went to a party?”
Kenta met the question with confusion. “Party? What does that have to do with—oh! Well, it wasn’t that long ago! I went to…” He tapped his fingers on the desk, trying to recall the last party he attended. “Oh! I was at the mayor’s son’s school completion party, that wasn’t too long ago.” He smiled and nodded. “See, it’s not like we’re hermits or something—”
“The mayor’s son’s party was 16 months ago.”
The voice rung in Kenta’s ears like a gong. Thinking on it, he couldn’t disagree. The mayor’s son was in Kenta’s class, and Kenta had completed school 4 months in advance—20 months prior—so he could begin work as a lightbringer. The mayor’s son’s party was, therefore, 16 months ago. Air was once again catching in his throat, which was once again clenching and unclenching.
“When was the last time you hung out with friends?”
“I-I-I’m not a good example.” The excuse that slipped between his teeth made his hands tremble even more than they had been. “Truth-truthfully, I was never a…well, I was never very popular. Look, that’s not important! That’s not what makes us lightbringers who we are.” Somewhere in the midst of forcing air out of his throat, Kenta found his voice. His hands, curled into gentle fists on the desk, had stopped shaking.
“Then what does?”
“What we do! We keep the colony running smoothly!” Kenta’s fists uncurled and his hands pressed, palms down, on the desk. “Every day you wake up to the sun display, right?” He didn’t wait for a response before continuing. “I do that. Every morning, I’m the one that powers the display. Whenever you turn on a light, that’s lightbringer work—”
“So what?”
Kenta’s mouth hung open. “W-what do you mean, so what?”
“I mean ‘so what?’, that’s what I mean.” It was Pirashi, Arman speaking, eyebrows raised. “So you do some fancy tricks with light. You’re all still weird—”
“Fancy tricks?” Kenta’s hands left the desk and re-settled at his sides, and he took a level breath before speaking again. “What makes you think that lightbringing is just some fancy tricks? Do any of you even know what it is we do, or do you all assume that we just stand around doing tricks all day?”
Kenta expected to be met with smirks. When he noticed the frowns, 23 similar frowns—and that familiar face that he still hadn’t placed—he knew to continue. “None of you know what lightbringing actually is…do you?”
Met with more silence and frowning, Kenta tried to formulate an explanation. Behind the desk, his hands were nervously tapping his sides, and one of his feet was slowly jittering. Nora Metz raised her hand slowly and—Kenta noticed, slightly bemused and slightly caught off guard—her hand trembled with a familiar pattern, one Kenta felt in a small corner in the back of his mind. Blind to the rest of the room, Kenta found his breath stuttering once again, tongue on the brink of his teeth on the brink of his lips on the brink of his mind. “Y-yes?”
“A-Arn said…Arn said we,”—her words a quiet stammer, Kenta felt himself leaning over his desk to hear her—“we should learn history b-before we learn…about l-l-li-”
Someone started laughing, then another someone, and another. Kenta wasn’t sure who it was, could not look away from Nora Metz, who was shaking, eyes wide and damp with shine; and then Kenta knew why that face was so familiar, and he closed his eyes and breathed in, raising his left hand just above the desk. When he opened his eyes again, the room was quiet and dark. His left arm, which had absorbed the light into itself, was warm. In that moment, Kenta had finally reached a comfort zone. “Out of curiosity, how many of you can see me right now? Can all of you see me?”
For a long moment there was silence, and Kenta wasn’t sure if the moment before had actually stopped. He felt the pulse of light at the back of his head, slow and steady in its motion—until a quiet, stable voice met the silence.
“Your hair is glowing blue. It’s a bit faint, but it is.”
“Are you crazy, Nora? There’s not—”
“Very good, Nora.” The room went silent once again. Kenta held his left arm above his desk, palm facing up, and he exhaled; the light stored in his arm jumped from it and hovered in a small white ball a few inches above his left hand. “This is artificial light, the light that came from the cube lamp over there. The cube lamp is designed to make the light create more of itself for as much light as it releases, but it can only hold artificial light because—”
“It’s so bright! Can’t you tone it down or something?”
Kenta continued to hold the light above his hand, frowning at Saunders, Philip’s comment. “You’re all used to this light, so I suppose it makes sense that you would find it bright, but…” Kenta took his right hand and ran it through his hair, pulling the leftover starlight from it and forcing the light to jump from his hand and into a small blue ball hovering inches above his right hand. The room brightened and tinted blue, and the invisible light just beyond his reach began to pulse in his mind. For a moment, Kenta was 46 months younger in his mind, seeing that blue light for the first time. Blinking, he pulled himself out of his own memory to return to the class, noticing first that the majority of the class had shielded their eyes with their hands, and noticing second that Nora Metz seemed to be taking part in his own memory, though 46 months later. Her hand was not raised to block the light.
“This…this is natural light. This light comes from the stars, and as you’ve noticed, it’s much brighter than the light you’re used to. This light is what powers Onizuka.” Kenta shifted his body to the left, and the artificial light jumped back to the cube by the door. He held the blue light in front of him, and it hovered a bit further away from his hand, suspended in the gap between Kenta’s hand and the ceiling. “This is what we do as lightbringers. We gather light from the stars, and we use it to power the machines that keep the colony running smoothly.”
The blue light sank back to Kenta’s hand, and he returned the light to his hair—moving it to the tips—before placing his hands gently on the desk. The class remained quiet, and Kenta was mildly pleased that no one was smirking. Nora Metz was still in the moment, eyes wide and jaw slightly unhinged. Kenta briefly considered passing the rest of his memory off to her as well, but decided without much thought that it was a bad idea, and dismissed it.
“That…that was really cool.” Kenta’s eyes slid from Nora Metz to Akron, Cerb, who looked eager. “How did you do that, making the light jump at you like that? And then making it move back too! That was great!”
Kenta opened his mouth to speak, but instead found himself smiling. “That was lightbringing. It’s a matter of pulling light toward you, catching it, and storing it inside yourself to use later. That’s why the room went dark. My arm absorbed the light. You see, we can store a certain amount of light inside our bodies at any given time, but only up to a certain amount before it starts to show through the skin. Because the cube lamp holds a small amount of light, I can store it all inside myself without it seeping through.”
He went on this way for some time, covering details about lightbringing one at a time, so entirely absorbed in his own lecture that he was quite certain he found it more fascinating now than when he had first learned it himself. More importantly, he felt that the students were starting to understand it as well, and he was entirely certain his words were coming out so quickly that he would inevitably need to stop before he outraced his own brain. Nonetheless, he was met with eager faces (and that of Nora Metz, still caught in the moment of the blue light all its own), and so he continued accordingly. Before he knew it, an internal bell was ringing. Surprised, he turned his head to look at the door as though it could explain the sudden interruption.
“I-it seems that class is over already! I hope that I haven’t bored you all. Have a good day, and I will likely see you all tomorrow.”
Kenta opened the door for the students, then sat back down at the desk, smiling as each one left—until he felt pressure on the back of his head, the invisible light pulsing in his mind every second like a metronome. Scratching at the back of his head with his left hand, he looked up; Nora Metz was still in her seat, hands folded on top of her desk, eyes focused on her hands. She was muttering something to herself, something he knew she didn’t want him hearing. He smiled and stood up. “Nora, you’re going to be late for your next class if you don’t go soon.”
She looked up from her desk, wide eyed. “I-I’m sorry! A-am I keeping you? I didn’t mean to—!”
“It’s no trouble, really.” Shaking his head, Kenta placed a hand gently on the desk in front of him. “This is the only class I’m here to teach, and since your grade is the only one that takes this class, I’m not in any hurry.” He scratched the back of his head with his other hand, keeping his glance on Nora as he did. “Truthfully, I was probably just going to go back to sleep for a bit. But I’m keeping you now! You really ought to go before you’re late! Are high second years still in room 17?”
“Oh dear!” Nora grabbed her bag, fumbling it between her hands before finally catching it and slinging it over her shoulder. “Yes, we are! History is next, but it’s nothing new. We’re reviewing the mid 2100s for our test on Friday. I think that’s why the others hate this class, because it means we have more history classes all in a row. Anyway, I’m sorry for keeping you, Lightbringer Kenta!” Moving toward the door, she nearly tripped on a desk, though she caught herself before she fell too far. She looked down to his feet, then her eyes jumped back to his face. He looked at her, eyebrows raised in question, mouth open in surprise.
“W-why are you barefoot?” Both voices echoed, and the room went silent before both faces flushed red.
“I-I couldn’t remember where I left mine.”
“I-I was in a rush to get to work on time. I didn’t notice I was barefoot until I got here, actually.”
“D-did you really?” Nora’s eyes shone for a moment, and Kenta’s hands curled slightly, quietly. “I-I thought that I—I mean, I thought that people didn’t do things like that!”
“If you don’t focus on it too often, your feet won’t feel so cold. Try to keep your mind on other things,” Kenta said, nodding. “And be sure to wash your feet when you get home. Now go, before I make you any later!”
Nora nodded and turned on her bare heel, walking in a hurry out the door. Kenta put his hands on the desk, then noticed the notebook still sitting there. He closed it and put it inside one of the desk drawers before leaving the room, closing the door behind him as the light cube continued to flicker and glow.
The hallway passed in a blur as Kenta moved down it, inattentively looking at the doors as he passed them, just long enough to see a teacher’s head here or there, and perhaps a student’s hand raised. Further down the hall, he saw the door to room 17 close behind Nora Metz. He walked along, pausing just past the door he had stopped at on the way in, and decided to go back into that office once more. Knocking on the door frame, he peeked his head in.
“Hello again, Lightbringer! Thank you for filling in on such short notice—”
“It’s no trouble at all. Listen, I was wondering if I could take a student out of class for a while?”
The man looked at him oddly. “Have you seen something…? Do you think—”
“I don’t really know. But I think it would be good for her to see something.”
From the hall, Kenta could hear the click of a door, and the footsteps of someone small walking, tap by tap.
“I’ll need a name and a room number.”
Relieved, Kenta nodded. “Nora Metz, room 17. She won’t be gone very long, I promise.” Aware that the man was writing down the name and room, Kenta left the office and all but jogged to the door of room 17 before opening it slowly and leaning his head in. The class gave him a collective look of surprise, and the teacher turned to him. “Lightbringer Kenta! Welcome! How may I help you?”
“Hello, I’m here to accompany Nora Metz…t-to the office. She won’t be gone too long.” Looking at Nora, Kenta added, “you can leave your bag here, and it’s nothing bad.”
The collective look of surprise shifted from Kenta to Nora, who wore the same look of surprise. However, she stood up a moment later and walked to and out the door, and Kenta clicked the door shut behind her.
“We’re not going to the office, just so that’s clear,” Kenta said quietly, pointing to the door leading outside. “I checked with the principal and he said it would be fine for me to take you, so…I-I’d like to show you what the stars look like. I-If you want, of course.”
She looked at him, and her mouth opened slightly, but nothing came out but a breath. Kenta bit his lower lip and took a breath in, losing his nerve, and he turned away from her, walking to the door without saying a word. When he noticed, fifteen feet outside of the school, that she was still following him, he smiled.
The walk to the Lightbringer’s Balcony from the school was a short, quiet one. Nora said nothing, and Kenta wasn’t sure what there was to be said—that is, until he came to a sudden halt six feet away from the door in the back of the balcony. He turned to her, hands clenching and unclenching gently. “Listen. While we don’t have any policy saying civilians can’t see this, we’re not really supposed to have people going to see the stars, as we need the areas leading outside the colony to be clear so that work can be done. I hate to ask this of you, but please don’t tell anyone about this, okay?”
Nora nodded, but was otherwise quiet. Turning away from her again, Kenta stepped to the door, and quickly walked down the hall, not waiting for the lights, or even for Nora, though he knew she was right behind him, perhaps even more so than she knew, as he moved faster to avoid her foot scraping the back of his heel. When they reached the door at the end of the hall, Kenta moved to one side, gesturing at the door. Nora nodded tentatively and stepped toward the door.
The next moment was spent facing the sky, for minutes or perhaps hours—or even days, for all Kenta knew—learning small secrets one at a time, Nora with her eyes wide and absorbing the dark and blue light; and Kenta, hands pressed to one another in front of him, staring out into the dark, sinking into the cold and reaching—with his mind, at least—to the light beyond the light, to that continued pulse just beyond the stars that he knew he needed to find, knew he’d never go looking for.
“You…you get to see this every day?”
Kenta felt the moment being broken, and he let out a small breath, shaking off the invisible light. “Yes.” He closed his eyes and placed his hands in his pockets, the blue light attached to his hair glowing slightly, as though signaling for other stars. “This…is what I live for. I want to help the people of Onizuka, I really do. But truthfully, I do it for this.” He looked at her, and he saw that familiar face once again, felt that energy and that sense of awe, and he wondered, as he turned back to the stars, if she could feel that invisible light too.
The rest of the day passed in a blur, returning Nora to school, walking to the other end of the colony, checking on the water-producing machinery, checking on the air-circulating machinery, walking to a different end of the colony—stepping outside the colony to observe the stars and pull light from them—returning to the air and water machines to be sure they were powered, walking to the city’s power panels and adding light to them to keep the city running smoothly for the rest of the day hours, checking on the machines that kept the atmosphere outside of the colony stable—until, finally, it was sunset on the light panel, and Kenta stepped outside the colony once more to observe the stars. He felt the invisible light pulsing behind the stars once again, as he stood with his hands at his sides, but instead he closed his eyes and exhaled before taking one small breath in. Light jumped to him, congregating on his left hand until his entire hand was covered in a light blue. He opened his eyes and put his hand in his pocket before returning to the colony.
By the time he stepped back out onto the Lightbringer’s Balcony, sunset had already passed, and the colony was submerged in darkness. A small amount of cube lamp light shone from some homes, but they were few and dim at best. However, Kenta closed his eyes to this and imagined the stars he had just seen. Reaching his left hand out over the edge of the balcony, Kenta took a deep breath in before smiling and breathing out sharply. The light from his hand scattered into hundreds of smaller points of light, all jumping to the domed roof of the colony and stopping at various points. Kenta’s hands were suspended in the air, his eyes darting from one point to the next, until finally, he stopped, lowered his hands, and waited.
Below, he could hear the shuffling of feet, hands, blinds and doors as the light suspended above the colony sunk slowly into their vision, illuminating empty streets and brightening window frames. Soon enough, the streets were crowded as the colony stood staring up in awe. From his vantage point at the edge of the balcony, all Kenta could do was smile.