“Why meet here? Why not go home?”

Her frustration came first, sharp as a thorn. She took small steps along the gravel path, brows knit like a storm-cloud, complaining at her companion.

On her twelve-layered junihitoe, a single red plum bled bright on a field of white. The flat embroidery looked alive, a plum tree that spread and grew with each of her swaying steps.

Five inner robes braided a river of color. At the cuffs and collar, uneven slivers flashed, gilding the junihitoe’s lavish weight.

Her long outer robe dragged like a pale tide. It didn’t suit a path of teeth-like gravel.

It wasn’t because she was some cloud-fed heiress beyond human dust. The real reason was simple—it was a uniform.

The Time-Space Management Bureau, one of its four Seats, the Chronarch Office. Their standard dress was the junihitoe.

“I shouldn’t go back,” he said, voice quiet as ash. “In the Bureau’s records, I’m permanently absent. I chose absence. I shouldn’t cling to the past. I should carry my resolve to the end—something like that.”

They walked side by side. She kept her gaze down, fingers tight around her own hand. He lifted his chin and drank the boundless starfield like a clear well.

This wasn’t a mortal night sky. It hung high beyond the world, a balcony that watched stars, fate, and worlds rise and fall like waves that form and break.

The Time-Space Management Bureau, outer grounds.

Supernovae, white dwarfs, red giants—real stars shifting like molten metal—blazed in naked sight.

The boy wore a long coat cut for width over speed. The cuffs were raw, sleeves severed like frayed banners. The collar was plain, stripped of frills.

Full-finger gloves kept iron studs at each knuckle, adding weight to every hit. A simple navy cap sat like a silent stone—no words, no badge.

His shoulders had places for epaulets, but they lay empty as a winter field. His chest had room for a crest, but it was a hollow that made you uneasy.

On his coat’s back, the Bureau’s mark had been struck through with three bold bars, ink like bruises that marred the whole.

He wore the Undertaker uniform of the Bureau, yet he had torn off every medal, smeared every word, and erased his belonging like wiping blood from steel.

He was a traitor—or at least, he believed he was one.

“This time you came back, and you’re leaving again?”

He nodded, silent as frost.

She knew her friend, her lover, her confidant. He wouldn’t lightly set foot on the soil he felt he’d betrayed.

He was the great hero who had saved countless worlds, a fist that beat back the firmament, a blade that split the blue sea. Again and again he broke demon armies. Again and again he crushed the plots that would end worlds.

People called him the Savior Saint, the saint who saves. He was one of the Bureau’s ten Saints. Each Saint embodied a way to save the world. The Savior Saint was the chief of chiefs, the first among firsts.

No one knew he was still only human. He’d stepped beyond, yet he couldn’t change the human truth—he grew tired, and his heart grew heavy.

He’d run until his lungs were embers. He’d come back from death’s edge more times than stars in a river. Blood and poison clung to him like shadow.

When body and mind couldn’t carry alone, he returned. He sat with his friend, his lover, his confidant, traded news, swapped sorrow and joy.

Then he plunged again, without looking back, into the work of saving worlds.

“Shindai-sama doesn’t oppose what you’re doing,” she said, tone soft with hope like silk. “The Bureau isn’t some fortress that bans the idle. Even if you’re no longer an Undertaker, you can come anytime.”

“That would shake my resolve.” He sighed, like a wind through reeds. “Forget it. We argued so long without an answer. This time… it’s different.”

They reached the end of the gravel path. A round, tall rock rose like a moon-faded whale. Back when they were still colleagues, if there wasn’t a mission, they often met here.

They climbed the stone with practiced ease and sat shoulder to shoulder, eyes on the endless stars like sailors reading a map of fire.

“I’m going to a—how to say it…” He scratched his head; he’d always fought better than he spoke. “I’m going to, uh, an era with no stars.”

“No stars? The underground? The world’s dark side?” Her confusion flickered like moth-wings.

“Not a world,” he said, voice steady as iron. “An era. Back then the stars were the dwellings of gods. The demon horde burrowed below and rose at times to the human realm. Maybe the Demon King’s invasion was too fierce. The ancient gods are calling for a hero, and I… answered.”

“That’s…”

“Right. An ancient era. A history forgotten. A past so old even time has rotted.”

A sharp crack split the air. Her anger burst like a red plum in snow. She slapped him hard, eyes hot as embers.

He rubbed his reddened cheek and could only give a bitter smile, a thin crescent of apology.

“Idiot! You’ll die! Those are ancient gods and a whole tide of demons! You’ll die!”

“I believe—”

“I believe, I feel, I think! You say that every time! When have you come back without being cut to ribbons?! You’ll die, idiot! You can’t fight the world’s inevitable authority! You won’t win! Fists don’t solve everything! Even if you can shatter a world, it won’t save you!”

“Some things you don’t skip just because you know you can’t do them.”

Another slap. Then another. Then another. She cried as she struck, tears falling like rain on stone.

“Don’t go, don’t go, don’t go! If you die there, even Shindai-sama can’t save you! Don’t go… idiot!”

“This is my will,” he said, eyes quiet like deep water. “I’ll save the world. I’ll sacrifice everything to save it. It isn’t a vow against my heart, and I’m not forcing myself forward. It’s my wish. If a world needs saving, no matter how many times, no matter how hard, I’ll throw myself back into the field. That’s my will.”

A faint glow rose from him like dawn through fog. He gazed at the girl straddling him, fists falling like small hammers, and his bitter smile held apology, reluctance, and a mercy that felt like a bandage.

In truth, beyond that bitter smile—woven with human feelings like knots in cord—he had only one other face left. When saving worlds, he shelved personal likes and hates, traded cost for speed and sacrifice, and wore a cold blank face like a mask of iron.

The will of the Old Gods drew near this starfield. The materialized sky began to tremble like glass under thunder. The thought and presence of a Divine Being were too great. Even a glance could crush what humans called common sense and the laws of physics into sand.

Thankfully, those great Old Gods had been buried with their age, laid in a history that can’t be traced, their thoughts, names, and languages rotting like leaves, forgotten by the living.

His strong body broke apart piece by piece, like plates falling from an armory shelf. The power that could shatter the blue sea and tear the crust was nothing before the old. He knew the kind of existence that faced him.

He let himself fragment. He borrowed the Divine Being’s hand and reassembled, not as flesh, but as concept—a being made of meaning—to fit the rules of the old era.

Next, he would return to the past.

“Come back alive.”

She was the Weaver Saint, one of the Bureau’s ten Saints. She pressed her lips tight as a pale blade.

The Old God’s summons had already begun. Even a Saint walking the human world couldn’t stop it.

She could only rise, lift the lavish junihitoe like a flowing banner, and give her friend, her lover, her confidant, a final farewell—graceful, solemn, beautiful, and pure.

“Well…” He scratched his head with his only remaining left hand, a gesture tired as a worn glove.

“Every time you’re like this—hemming and hawing! Just once, can’t you tell me straight, ‘I’ll come back,’ and let me breathe?”

“You know I’m a pessimistic bastard,” he said, voice brittle as thin ice. “I can’t promise anything. I never could…”

“Come back alive!”

“That’s the distant Silver Era. You’re asking a lot.”

“You must come back alive! As long as you’re breathing, no matter how broken you are, I can pull you back together! If you die, then—even if I have to beg that bastard Genesis Saint—I’ll drag you back!”

“Life and death sit on a blade. Don’t keep chewing it. Back when we were partners, you taught me—don’t overthink. If I live, we’ll solve what you’re worried about. If I die… then talk about me after I’m gone.”

That bitter smile—one she was sick of seeing, one that would gouge her heart if it vanished—thinned as light swallowed him.

She pressed her lips again, hard enough to stop her cry, like sealing a jar of grief.

The starfield kept trembling, lamps shivering on a river in wind.

“Will he come back? Can he come back?” she asked the Divine Being, voice small as a reed’s shadow.

“No. He’ll die there.”

The answer came quickly, cool as mountain water.

The Divine Being lowered itself like a cloud sinking to a lake. It spoke in gentle whispers, using humanity’s clumsy language, laying out what it foresaw of past and future.

Even that whisper shook space like a plucked wire. Far off, the Bureau’s main hall warped in her sight, twisting like a ribbon in heat. Even after the Divine Being left, it didn’t settle. Looks like the Tuner will be busy.

She suddenly didn’t want to cry. A Divine Being doesn’t lie, disdains lying, refuses to lie. It doesn’t offer promises or trades to mortals. It states its need, then waits for the answer it foresees.

That is a Divine Being’s cruelty. It is also its tenderness.

Somewhere in her chest, understanding bloomed like a small plum in snow. What the Divine Being said was true.

Surely the Divine Being had told the boy as well. Her friend, her lover, her confidant—the Savior Saint—was the kind who would charge upward even knowing he’d die—

—idiot.

“We each have our own resolve,” came the distant voices of the two Shindai priestesses, leaders of the Bureau. They linked the Bureau’s staff as “people” to the “gods.” Their voices drifted from afar like bells under mist. “Each of us is the protagonist of our own page. Everyone thinks what they want is the whole—”

“—Humans are like this, always. They won’t change. And toward others, all we can do is understand.”

It was comfort, soft as a shawl.

“Only… maybe…”

“What?!”

Like a murmur from a deep cave, a tiny yet clear voice sprang in her ear.

It wasn’t a god. It wasn’t a Shindai priestess.

“…Hope. Wait. Try to hold hope.”

The whisper carried an ancient breath, weary as old sand. Then it fell silent.