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Hitori Gotoh had been tossing and turning in bed.
Roll. Turn. Flip.
They were the only movements occupying her anxious body during yet another sleepless night. The mattress creaked softly, as if it too were tired of watching her try—and fail—to fall asleep. Each new position seemed to promise rest; none delivered.
The reason?
Simple, if anyone were to ask: it was all due to an alcoholic bassist with issues —in her own words— with society’s rules.
It had all started that very night.
After a successful concert, Kessoku Band was invited to a small nearby izakaya. The coincidence didn’t go unnoticed: that day also marked the twenty-second birthday of their lead guitarist, Hitori Gotoh.
The place was filled with warm lights and gentle noise. Overlapping laughter, clinking plates, steam from the food rising like a domestic haze. Everything seemed to move at a different pace, as if time inside had grown thicker, more indulgent.
They ate and drank —non-alcoholic drinks, at Nijika and Seika’s strict request— while chatting without too many worries. Hitori ordered karaage and a Coca-Cola; nothing more. She observed more than she spoke, letting herself be carried by that strange sensation of celebrating something she still didn’t quite understand.
Time passed quickly, or perhaps the noise pushed it forward. Before Hitori could realize it, everyone was already standing, gathering coats, saying goodbye amid vague promises to meet again soon.
Everyone… except her.
For a reason never spoken aloud, Hitori stayed behind at the bar with her onee-san. Over the months, and after more than one celebration that had drifted off course, they had reached a silent agreement: whenever Hiroi drank too much, Hitori would make sure she got home safe and sound.
The plan was usually simple.
They celebrated. They talked. They congratulated each other on whatever achievement the day had brought. Then, one by one, the others left, leaving behind a pink-haired guitarist and a bassist whose laughter was always a bit louder than necessary, whose balance seemed borrowed.
Hitori waited patiently for Hiroi to finish whatever drinks remained, paid the bill, and—through learned familiarity—took her by the arm. Together, they left the izakaya, as if that small ritual were part of the night’s closing.
Or at least, that was how it usually went.
That night was different.
After wishing her a happy birthday one last time, Nijika, Ryo, and Kita said their goodbyes and left the izakaya. When silence settled over the table, Hitori noticed that, for the first time, there wasn’t a single drop of alcohol left in front of Hiroi. Before she could order another round, Hitori hurried to pay the bill. Alcohol had never really interested her. Even having reached the legal drinking age, even celebrating her birthday, it wasn’t strange that she had ordered only karaage and a Coca-Cola.
With everything paid, Hitori picked up her guitar and Hiroi’s bass. They left the small bar together, the bassist leaning clumsily against the already well-trained shoulder of Kessoku Band’s lead guitarist.
They walked in silence—a silence broken only by Hiroi’s long sighs or slurred words. Before, that kind of silence used to make Hitori uncomfortable. Now, she appreciated it. It allowed her to observe the night sky, breathe calmly, and organize thoughts that usually slipped away from her.
The city lights couldn’t completely hide the stars. Hitori always found herself staring at them, trying to recognize constellations she had seen so many times in books and videos. She liked to think that, even from different places, everyone was looking at the same sky.
"Hitori-chan…" Hiroi murmured, interrupting her train of thought. She received a soft hum in response. "It sounds kind of cliché, but… have you ever thought about death?"
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The question was enough.
Enough that, hours later, Hitori Gotoh couldn’t fall asleep.
Turn.
Lying on her back, staring at her bedroom ceiling, she felt her mind spinning out of control, like a planet that had lost its center. Ideas appeared and disappeared, collided with one another, attracted and repelled each other, obeying invisible rules.
It reminded her of space.
Of the astral charts she loved to look at late at night. Of the idea that everything had an exact position, a transit, an inevitable moment. That even chaos followed a pattern, even if she couldn’t always understand it.
To answer the question that determined an ending, Hitori thought, we first had to analyze one of the questions that determined the beginning.
Why do we cry when we’re born?
The question floated in her mind like a distant star. It wasn’t new, but that night she decided to dismantle it fiber by fiber. Or at least until her brain collapsed.
Do we cry because, for a brief moment, we are aware of something we later forget? Of that prior space where everything and nothing coexist at the same time? Like the sky before someone draws constellations and gives them names.
Or maybe it was simpler.
Maybe we cry because we abandon our first refuge. Our first home. Like a celestial body expelled from its system, thrown into a universe too large, too loud. Perhaps that was our first transit. The first inevitable change.
So… is that why we fear death so much?
Hitori turned her head slightly toward the window. A few stars could be made out.
She thought yes. That it was normal. As normal as stars being born and dying. And yet, humans looked at the sky with fear, as if dreading the exact moment when one of them would stop shining.
Maybe we don’t fear death for what it is, but because we don’t know which orbit comes next.
She remembered a video she had watched a few days earlier, during one of those sleepless early mornings, just like now. It had appeared among random recommendations: Heidegger and Death (explained simply). She hadn’t understood everything. Her head hurt; she paused, rewound. Still, something had stuck with her.
We live in order to die. There is no death if there is no life first. Death is that cruel reminder that nothing is eternal.
Thoughts, desires, memories. Everything disappears when death knocks on the door.
We live avoiding it, closing our eyes to the inevitable. Conscious or not of our finitude, we let the only chance to live slip by and end up condemned to merely existing. Until, without realizing it, time catches up to us without having truly lived.
Living while knowing we are going to die changes the way we exist. Death doesn’t appear at the end of the road; it walks beside us, silently, reminding us that time is limited—like a star whose light you know will not last forever.
And still, Hitori thought, there were lights worth looking at even if they hurt.
Unwillingly, her mind drifted.
Ikuyo Kita had always been described the same way: bright. The band’s vocalist was like a young star. Alive, impossible to ignore. Someone who entered a room and illuminated it effortlessly, as if she didn’t know darkness… or as if she simply wasn’t afraid of it.
Sometimes, that brightness blinded her. Other times, it burned.
Hitori tightened her grip on the sheets. She thought about the way Kita smiled without realizing it. About how she talked about simple things as if they mattered. About how she looked toward the future without seeming terrified of its end.
She enjoyed living, despite being aware of her finitude. And maybe that was why it hurt.
It hurt because Kita’s brightness didn’t deny death—it challenged it.
Kita wanted to shine now, not only at the end.
And maybe there lay the answer she hadn’t found among stars, philosophers, and astral maps; living while knowing we are going to die didn’t mean living in fear. It simply meant living.
Maybe the fear of death wasn’t born from the selfish desire to keep existing, but from empathy. From watching others fade. From feeling how their absence alters our own orbit—like when a star dies and generates an explosion so intense that its light continues traveling for years.
But Kita…
Kita was a living star, one that burned now.
Maybe dying wasn’t so frightening. Maybe what was truly terrifying was living while turning your back on what made you feel alive.
Thinking that made her chest feel strange… aware. Maybe.
Hitori closed her eyes.
Sleep didn’t come immediately, but for the first time, years of confused, desperate, frantic feelings blended together to form a single desire.
Ikuyo Kita… no matter how much your brightness burns me, no matter how scared I am to get too close, I’d rather burn a little now than spend my entire life staring at the sky from the darkness.
Hitori let herself be carried into sleep with the sensation that, this time,
consciously, she was living.