I never felt lonely while painting.
Maybe that was why I never thought I needed many friends.
For as long as I could remember, my father had told me the same thing.
"Friends are fragile things."
So, little by little, I gave up on the dream of making friends.
Whenever loneliness crept into my heart, my mother would tell me to lift my eyes towards the sky.
"Look at the stars," she would say. "—and dream."
But whenever I asked her what she meant by stars, her answer always seemed to disappear somewhere behind her eyes.
The next day, I found my father's old brush in the attic.
My mother never told me what stars are in truth, but she said they are something I should look toward whenever I felt lonely.
In other words, "stars" should be shiny and fragile things that maintain people's hopes.
However, the sky was already bright, so there was no way for me to see the stars.
I painted the sky black, yet colorful as space.
After all, hope is something bright that cannot be seen in light. It has to be in the dark so its shine can be found.
Then, I scattered those shiny, strange shapes all across the night sky.
I couldn't find the right words to describe what I felt when I saw that beautiful sight.
I could only hold my breath.
I looked at my mother. She gently ran her fingers through my hair.
"Never give up on dreaming," she said. "No one deserves to be alone — even if they don't belong there."
Never give up on dreaming...
What did she mean?
If no one deserves to be alone even if they don't belong there... are they still allowed to dream about something?
Then what exactly would be their star of hope——
█
People loved me.
Whenever I was with them, smiles never left their faces.
As if, as long as I was smiling, everyone was happy, too.
Their happiness... became mine.
When I laughed with them...
When I missed them...
When I imagined our next meeting...
That day never came.
My father had said, "Friends are fragile things."
But if that were truly the case, then I wouldn't feel this unbearable emptiness inside me.
Fragile——they were not the ones who were breaking.
It was me.
I was the fragile one who couldn't accept their absence.
I realized the sky I painted for myself had already bled out.
All those bright rays of hope watching me from above... vanished one by one before my eyes.
Maybe it all had been nothing more than a dream from the very beginning.
I hope I can see those stars again somewhere.
Even if they lasted only as long as a dream today, those stars would always be more beautiful than the real ones I might see tomorrow.
Even if I can no longer remember it, I want to find back my own happiness in this town. There is one thing only I can do.
If I want to find the reason why I'm still going this far, even though I lost my stars of hope...
I must bring the only star down from the sky.
The sky and stars were nothing more than a simple dream I painted to finally have somewhere I can belong.
But this one is different.
What right does that star have to make me cling this tightly onto a life that I don't even want?
Because I believe in something more than that.