Chapter 43 : Shooting Star

The lights went out.

In the deep darkness, a small light slowly rose.

It was a soft glow, like the moon or a star.

A gentle light that flickered but didn’t disappear.

A dreamlike atmosphere enveloped the stage.

The light spread, filling the space.

Like a shooting star in the night sky, or moonlight reflected on a lake.

At its center, Jian Lee moved.

Soft gestures drew in the light, and the lines of her body created a flow.

Her performance was literally flowing.

Light and movement became one, traversing the space and conveying emotion.

But…

Within that flow, there was a momentary feeling of losing focus.

The light spread beautifully, but it was hard to know where to look.

Everything flowed smoothly and naturally, but conversely, there seemed to be a lack of any strong center.

When the performance ended, the lights came back on. Silence fell, and the judges’ eyes turned to Jian Lee. The judges quietly flipped through their notes.

One of them said in a low voice.

“Your sense of handling the flow of the stage is excellent. Your compositional sense is quite good.”

“But this feels more like stage direction than lighting art.”

“The stage was great, but it felt like there was no protagonist.”

“The light is too faint and unclear. It’s like looking at the moon instead of the sun.”

The murmurs were quiet, but they were heard with uncanny clarity.

As if an observer’s perspective was in progress.

The evaluations weren’t wrong.

The entire stage was beautiful. But within that flow, Jian Lee herself failed to become the center.

And-

“She needs to shine herself, but she’s illuminating something else.”

The only use of informal speech.

I turned my head.

One person sitting in the judge’s seat caught my eye.

Silver hair, with a faint blue tinge within it.

A familiar appearance. I felt like I’d seen her somewhere before.

It was that cosplayer from back then.

She was flipping through the evaluation form with an indifferent expression, but she didn’t take her eyes off Jian Lee until the very end, watching her intently.

As if this evaluation wasn’t the end.

She slightly lowered her head and closed her notebook.

Then she turned her head and met my eyes.

A moment of silence.

She lightly raised one corner of her mouth.

And quietly, formed the words with her lips.

“This is just the beginning.”

Her lips moved slowly. There was no sound.

But the meaning was clear.

I stared at her blankly, not understanding what she meant.

Then she chuckled, averted her gaze, and stood up.

And casually, she left the judge’s seat.

I stared in the direction she had disappeared for a long time.

“…The beginning?”

What on earth does that mean?

And why did she leave those words for me?

But what’s important now isn’t that.

I saw Jian Lee walking down the stage.

Her expression was indifferent at first.

As if erasing her emotions, she walked straight ahead without any movement.

But the moment her footsteps stopped, a slight tremor passed over her.

It seemed like she herself had noticed something strange. I could see her mulling over what was lacking.

Her lips tightened as if stuck together, and her slender eyelashes slowly lowered.

Her fingertips twitched slightly, and her shoulders drooped almost imperceptibly.

She lowered her head slightly as if trying to take a deep breath, but her breathing was shallow.

The air she inhaled wasn’t deep.

It was as if the air that remained on the stage was still holding her back.

When she closed her eyes and opened them, she had her usual expression again.

As if the tremor from just now had been a figment of my imagination. But I could tell.

That her fingertips kept trying to clench into a fist and failing.

That the corners of her lips were trembling slightly.

That her gaze, following the stairs she was descending, was no longer directed at the stage.

…I was worried.

And she didn’t win an award at the regional competition.

There was a possibility of being accepted as an alternate, but it didn’t seem like she was counting on that possibility.

I stared at the lights passing by outside the car window.

Soft music was playing in the car, but it was somehow quiet.

“It happens,”

Jian Lee said.

“It was my first competition. It’s not easy for a freshman to go to the national competition anyway.”

Her voice was light, and her tone was calm. As if she hadn’t expected much from the start, as if she was stating an obvious fact.

There wasn’t an unusual amount of strength in those words. It was such a natural and obvious tone. As if those words were the ‘right answer’.

So I felt like that’s how it should be.

Not because she really thought so, but because she had to think so.

She smiled.

A soft and natural smile. A very familiar expression.

As if it was nothing, as if this kind of thing wasn’t a big deal.

The passing streetlights were briefly reflected in her eyes as she looked out the window, then disappeared.

In that short moment, a shadow covered her face.

She was smiling.

But she wasn’t really smiling.

As soon as we arrived home, a familiar routine unfolded.

Warm rice and soup, neatly arranged side dishes. The quiet sound of spoons clinking, the small friction of spoons scraping against the rice bowl, conversations exchanged at a moderate pace.

Everything was the same as usual.

Jian Lee also picked up her chopsticks as usual, and picked up food as usual.

And she exchanged words with Jihae noona as usual. Everyday stories. Nothing special about the conversation.

Everything was natural without any awkwardness.

But…

She smiled more than usual.

Brighter and bigger than usual.

She made sure to react even to words that could be easily brushed off, and she deliberately added laughter even to meaningless jokes.

Like someone who was ready to laugh from the moment she inhaled, she drew a big smile even at small things.

Her laughter was bright. It was cheerful.

But it was strange.

Too big, too bright, it seemed somehow empty.

As if she was forcibly moving her facial muscles.

Every time she laughed, it felt like even the air was slightly out of sync with the sound.

As if she had adjusted the settings to fit this place.

She was like an actress. It was like she was still standing on stage.

Even though she was pretending to have come down from the stage faster than anyone else, she still couldn’t escape that stage.

As the meal was coming to an end, she quietly put down her spoon.

“I’m going to go for a walk for a bit.”

It was an ordinary remark. A smooth and natural flow.

But at that moment-

Her fingertips hesitated slightly.

The corners of her lips were still maintaining a smile, but her gaze momentarily wandered in the air.

And the next moment, she got up from her seat and opened the door as if nothing had happened.

I quietly watched her retreating figure.

It was as if she, who had been here until just now, and she, who was opening the door and leaving, were completely different people.

Like an actress stepping out of a role.

She was throwing away the mask she had been wearing as she opened the door.

“I’m not digesting well either. I’m going to go for a walk for a bit too.”

I got up from my seat, pretending to be natural and indifferent.

The moment I was about to open the door and leave, a voice came from behind.

“Dohyun.”

Jihae noona’s voice quietly caught me.

When I turned my head, she was looking at me without any particular change in expression.

“Please take care of Jian.”

It was as if she already knew everything.

A look in her eyes that knew everything, without needing to explain.

I nodded briefly.

“Okay.”

I opened the door.

The stuffy night air immediately covered my face. The humid and saturated air wrapped around my arms.

The unique humidity of a hot summer stuck to my body.

A subtle unpleasantness. The air wasn’t refreshing even when I inhaled.

I slowly moved my feet.

I thought as I walked.

If you don’t try to fly, you won’t fall.

If you try to climb high, you will inevitably fall. From the moment you try to fly high, the fear of falling follows you like a shadow.

Even so, why is she trying to go so high?

Even knowing that, people continue to look to higher places.

They run towards their dreams, and burn themselves out in the process.

If you burn your own body, will what’s left be ashes? Or light?

If you burn, burn, and continue to consume yourself, you may end up with nothing left.

Or, thanks to burning like that, will you be able to shine until the very end?

I had never worried about such things.

Because I don’t have a dream. Not in the past, not now.

But Jian Lee is different.

She dreams, and she suffers while chasing that dream.

I thought it was foolish, but I also thought it was enviable.

I had never wanted something so desperately.

I had never wanted, obsessed, or yearned so much.

If I had something like that, what kind of person would I have become?

…Then suddenly, a thought flashed through my mind.

Just one thing.

There was one thing I wanted.

“To stay here. And to watch over you.”

The moment I uttered those words,

A shooting star fell from the night sky.

A small light that seemed like it would disappear at any moment, flowed down through the black sky.

I stared at that light.

“Should I say I made a wish?”

But in the end, is that also a fall?

Does that star, disappearing through the sky, also just end up falling?

If so, where are the fallen stars going?

Do they all crash into the ground and disappear, or does some light eventually reach someone’s hand?

I looked up at the sky until the afterimage of the shooting star faded.

And I slowly moved my feet.

As I walked, a small playground suddenly came into view.

There, I saw Jian Lee swinging on a swing that was making a creaking sound.

In the silent darkness, a small shadow.

Long hair that shone faintly in the moonlight. Every time the swing moved back and forth, her hair moved along with it, drawing short curves.

It was a night without wind.

But her hair was swaying slightly.

I stared at her blankly.

Perhaps the reason she had bothered me so much while reading the original work was because she was somehow similar to me?

A gaze that seemed to be watching reality from a step behind.

Acting like she knew everything, but unable to reach the important things.

We were alike.

But… what changed you?

The

you in the original work seemed like someone who was just running away one step ahead.

But the you now was trying to get up and move forward again even while falling.

If so, can I change as much as you have?

The swing was slowly coming to a stop.

I smiled slightly.

And quietly, I moved my steps towards her.