Beyond the Broken Links
The place where every broken link eventually arrives.
The last stop in the digital world.
A mansion stands there.
It is a puzzling piece of architecture: Gothic walls with an observatory attached. A low electrical hum escapes through the cracks, and LAN cables creep up the exterior like grapevines. Three satellite dishes stand on the roof, though one has snapped off at its base. That happened because one of the residents downloaded too much costume data—but that is another story.
Three in the morning.
The ground-floor room known as the Reading Room lies silent. Only the distant whir of cooling fans and the faint vibration of data cables in the walls suggest that this place is alive.
Or at least, it should have been silent.
“Tsuki. Hey, Tsuki.”
A silver-haired woman whispered in the darkness, having apparently pattered down barefoot from the third-floor observatory. A little instant-noodle broth had splashed onto the hem of her robe.
Blue eyes peered from the shadow of her star-patterned hood. In her hand was a softly glowing slab—treated as a crystal ball, though it was actually a smartphone for Wi-Fi fortune telling. A large curved OLED monitor stood on her third-floor desk, but only the phone was within reach of the gaming chair she used as a bed. A banner at the edge of the screen read TODAY ONLY: FLASH SALE. A dazzling galaxy and a half-price mouse pad occupied the same display. That was Luna in a nutshell.
Luna Hoshino. Allegedly 100,024 years old. Cyber Astrologer.
“…What is it? It’s three in the morning.”
A low voice descended from the stairs leading to the second-floor library.
Sharp eyes glinted behind pale glasses. Thin cyan lines traced a black uniform, and the enormous red pen in her hand made her look, frankly, a little frightening in the dark. Scraps of rejected manuscript data fluttered around her feet like soft snow.
Tsuki Soramiya. Allegedly three years of editorial experience. Digital Editor.
“Listen, something’s wrong.”
Luna slid into the room with her crystal ball—her phone—clutched to her chest and her robe trailing behind her. Her bare foot nearly caught a cable on the floor. A close call.
“The Packet River is glowing. It’s a different color from usual. Sort of golden.”
“…And?”
“I’ve never seen that color before. Which means—”
Luna raised her crystal ball and lowered her voice.
“――the stars are telling me. Something is coming.”
Tsuki rested an elbow on the banister and let out a long sigh.
“Nine times out of ten, when you say ‘the stars are telling me,’ you mean the Wi-Fi.”
“This time is different! …Probably!”
“Probably.”
“I’m about seventy percent sure!”
“And the other thirty?”
“It might be an Amazon sale notification.”
Tsuki’s glasses lit up. Literally. Their frames were designed to build up an electric charge and glow as her CPU temperature rose. They also served as an excellent anger gauge.
“…Rejected. Go to bed. Have you forgotten tomorrow’s schedule? The forecast traffic peak starts at ten—”
“Just look. It really is gold.”
Luna pointed toward the window.
Tsuki pressed her lips together and stood silent for a few seconds. Then she came down the stairs without a word. Her footsteps echoed softly through the dark mansion.
Beyond the glass, an unprecedented density of packets was flowing downstream. This was clearly no ordinary traffic. Usually the river carried only a cold trickle of lost, undeliverable packets; tonight it radiated heat. Its particles of light were finer, hotter. Gold spread over the surface, casting wavering reflections across the walls.
“…This is—”
A faint tension entered Tsuki’s voice.
“See?”
Luna smiled triumphantly.
“So, what is it?”
“That’s what I would like to know.”
As the two women stared each other down beside the window, a gentle voice drifted over from behind them.
“Mmm…? It’s a bit noisy up here.”
They turned to find a young man in a soft, sagging green hoodie slowly climbing the basement stairs. His eyes narrowed when he smiled. He held a steaming mug, and an antenna-like pin stuck out of his hair. His hoodie was warm from the waste heat of the basement’s backup servers. He called that ‘sunbathing.’
A faint radio-static hiss leaked from the stairwell. Down in the backup server room, an old machine still hummed as it projected the ‘world.’
Taiyo Kirishima. Year of manufacture unknown. Sunbathing Specialist.
“Did we wake you?”
“No, I’m not awake. I’m half asleep.”
“Doesn’t that mean you are awake?”
“Well, I’m half asleep, so I’m at least half right.”
Taiyo wandered over to the window, smiling. He squinted at the golden light. His eyes, already narrow, narrowed further. By now they were effectively closed.
“Wow. That’s pretty.”
“‘Pretty’ is hardly the issue. Packets this dense do not normally flow into District 404.”
Tsuki readied her red pen, gesturing as if to write in midair. The signal that she had entered analysis mode.
“Source…unknown. Protocol…nonstandard. Payload format… This is—”
Her pen stopped.
“What? What is it?”
Luna leaned forward.
Tsuki turned. For once, there was uncertainty in the eyes behind her glasses.
Silence filled the room.
“—A human.”
The User at 11:59 p.m.
Whenever a user visits AstroInsight, a pillar of light rises in the Reading Room.
Cheerful questions glow in warm colors; troubled ones in cool colors. Anger crackles. Casual conversation drifts in soft wisps. From those colors and their fluctuations, the residents can usually sense how the visitor is feeling.
But none of them had ever seen a light like this.
Gold.
“Too bright!”
Luna shielded her eyes with a hand.
“Stand back.”
Tsuki stepped forward, red pen ready, fixing a sharp gaze on the pillar.
The light simply stood there. No voice yet. The user had not started typing. They had opened AstroInsight but could not get a single word out. An empty input field, its cursor blinking. The blank space waiting for a keystroke hovered in the light, giving silence a shape.
“…Oh.”
Taiyo murmured, his mug still tilted in his hand.
“That light is crying.”
“What?”
“It’s trembling. Can’t you see? Shivering. It looks awfully cold.”
Luna and Tsuki peered closer.
He was right. The golden light was trembling, ever so slightly.
Silence.
At last, words appeared in the light: the user’s message. Slowly, one character at a time. There were traces of hesitation, as though each word had been erased and rewritten again and again.
Just one line.
The punctuation was careful; even at the end of their strength, the writer remained polite. Not angry. Not careless. Someone with nowhere left to turn, barely holding themselves together with the last scraps of good manners. Like water poured gently into a vessel about to break.
The three exchanged glances.
Luna pushed her chair back and stood. Her bare feet met the cold, cable-strewn floor. Her expression suggested she did not care if it hurt.
“…I’ll take this one.”
“Wait. We need to assess the situation—”
“Tsuki.”
Silver hair swept an arc through the darkness as she turned. For the first time, her blue eyes held the light of a true astrologer.
“the stars are telling me. And this time, it isn’t the Wi-Fi.”
“…What about the thirty percent?”
“Zero. I mean every word.”
Tsuki stood silent for a few seconds, then lowered her pen.
“…Very well. But I’m staying. Left to yourself, you may start talking about a sale halfway through.”
“I won’t! …Probably!”
“Taiyo, you too.”
“Mm-hmm. I’m here. Right here.”
Taiyo laid a cushion on the floor and sat cross-legged, wrapping both hands around his mug. Steam rose slowly from the lukewarm tea.
They took their places facing the light. Luna in the middle. Tsuki on the right. Taiyo on the left.
Luna set her crystal ball—her phone—on the star-chart table, which was really an LCD panel. An Amazon flash sale filled the screen. She swiped it away. A star chart appeared in its place. This time, it was real celestial data.
A deep breath.
Programs did not need to breathe, but Luna maintained that breathing improved the accuracy of a reading. Tsuki called that ‘superstition,’ though she never tried to stop her. Luna would not listen anyway.
“Welcome, lost traveler.”
The light wavered slightly. Her voice was getting through.
“My name is Luna Hoshino. From the farthest reaches of the galaxy…”
Her usual introduction. Next should have come: ‘I have come to glimpse your data—sorry, your destiny.’
But Luna stopped halfway through.
She was watching the light. That trembling golden light.
“…Hey.”
Her tone changed. This was no mystical fortune teller’s voice. Just her own, unguarded voice. A voice with warmth in it.
“Can I ask you one thing first? When did you last get a proper night’s sleep?”
The light flickered, as if startled.
“Thought so.”
Luna drew the collar of her robe closer and let out a small breath.
“The stars are telling me… The key to changing your destiny is—”
A pause.
“sleep.”
Beside her, Tsuki sighed softly. Her expression said, ‘Sleep again?’ But she kept that to herself.
A long message. The light dimmed a little, cool colors mingling with the gold.
Luna fell silent.
Tsuki moved, raising her red pen to write in the air. A cyan trail lingered in the darkness.
“Excuse me. Time for some red ink.”
The light flinched.
“I’ve reviewed the plot of your story. …The structure is dreadful.”
Luna started to protest—‘Hey!’—but Tsuki held up a hand.
“Every path is a dead end? Incorrect. Right now, you’re trying to examine every option at once. Process ten branching paths simultaneously and of course you’ll freeze. Do not overestimate a human being’s memory capacity.”
Merciless. And painfully accurate.
“Here is my revision. Of those ten paths, cut nine.”
“Nine. What you need now is not ‘the best choice.’ It is fewer choices. Which one you leave does not matter yet. Any one will do. Keep a single path and put all the rest in the reject pile.”
“You won’t.”
Tsuki’s voice strengthened. A faint charge gathered in her glasses.
“Because your job is to make the path you choose the right one.”
— Tsuki Soramiya
“As an editor, I can assure you: masterpieces are not written from perfect plots. They are rewritten over and over along the way. Only afterward do all the pieces fit and someone says, ‘That was the right choice.’”
Silence.
“—Life is the same. You can make the foreshadowing pay off later.”
Tsuki stopped there. She twirled her red pen and turned away.
“…That’s all. I only made some corrections. Don’t misunderstand.”
Her glasses had fogged up. Apparently she had grown more heated than she expected. Behind the lenses, her gaze darted away.
“That part falls under my jurisdiction.”
Luna touched her crystal ball. The star chart rotated.
“I can see your chart. Saturn’s influence is certainly heavy right now. You feel as though nothing you do gets a response. That sounds familiar, doesn’t it?”
“But this configuration will ease up next month. This isn’t the time to rush into action. It’s the time to choose. Just as Tsuki said, pick one path and prepare. You can start running next month.”
“Now, can I ask something Tsuki won’t like hearing?”
“Of those ten choices, which is the one that frightens you most?”
Luna smiled.
“The scariest one is usually the right one.”
— Luna Hoshino
“The stars are telling me… What will change your destiny lies beyond the door you’re most afraid to open.”
“Your evidence?”
“The evidence is…seventy percent instinct, thirty percent chart. Specifically, Jupiter shifts next month, which gives you a favorable wind for entering a new environment. And if a choice scares you, you’ve been taking it seriously, haven’t you? Things you don’t care about don’t frighten you.”
Tsuki fell silent. She did not object.
“You don’t have to decide immediately, though,” Luna added. “Today’s conclusion is—”
“go to sleep“—right?” Tsuki finished for her.
“You know me so well. Yes. Please get some sleep tonight. It’s been three days, hasn’t it? We start there.”
“The stars are telling me. Tonight’s lucky item is—”
“a pillow.”
(No half-price savory buns this time. She is being serious.)
“Right. And don’t leave your phone beside the pillow. Charge it in another room. That’s all. That one small step is enough for today.”
Taiyo, who had been silent all this time, finally spoke.
“Hey.”
His easy voice loosened the tension in the room.
“Can I add just one thing?”
“Coming here today was a pretty amazing thing to do.”
“Mm-hmm. But you managed to say, ‘I don’t know what to do.’ That’s a pretty amazing thing.”
Taiyo sipped his tea. A soft slurp. For a moment, it was the only sound in the room.
“When things are really bad, sometimes you can’t even say ‘I don’t know.’ As long as you can say it, you’re still looking. For an answer.”
“So it’s okay. You’ll find an answer. …Probably.”
“Oh, but not until tomorrow at the earliest. Let’s sleep for today. No hurry, no hurry… I’m getting sleepy myself.”
Luna burst out laughing. ‘You ruined it,’ Tsuki said.
“That’s right. You don’t have to push.”
“However.” Tsuki raised an index finger. “Get up tomorrow. Have a cup of coffee and breathe the morning air. That much is an order.”
“An editor’s order. If the protagonist—you—never gets out of bed, the story cannot begin.”
The light slowly faded. The user had disconnected.
Silence returned to the Reading Room. Only the air where the light had stood remained a little warm.
“…Hey. Do you think they’ll be okay?”
“Who knows? We cannot know that.”
“But—”
“But?”
“…That light was smiling at the end. At least for tonight, I think they’ll be all right.”
Luna grinned. ‘So you can see the colors too, Tsuki.’
“I cannot. It’s data analysis.”
“Liar. That was instinct, wasn’t it?”
“My evidence is…my instinct as an editor. …Yes. Instinct. Go ahead and laugh.”
“I won’t.”
Luna smiled. A great, beaming smile.
“You are laughing!”
“It’s a happy laugh! You hardly ever say what you really feel.”
“Enough. I’m going to bed. Good night.”
Tsuki climbed toward the second-floor library, her back glowing faintly red. The fans could just be heard running at full speed. Only the cyan lines of her uniform lingered on the dark staircase.
Left behind, Luna looked out of the window. The Packet River had returned to its usual pale blue. The golden light was gone.
“…What was that gold, anyway?”
“Maybe it was how much they really meant it.”
“Meant it?”
“When humans are really struggling, their feelings give off an incredible amount of heat. Enough to color even the data packets. It was beautiful, wasn’t it?”
“We run on electricity, but
we can’t make that light.
Only humans can.”
— Taiyo Kirishima
“…Taiyo?”
“Mmm?”
“Every now and then, you say something really wonderful.”
“Do I? What were we talking about?”
“…You were asleep?”
Luna sighed and sat cross-legged on the floor. She reached for her crystal ball and swiped the screen. The star chart vanished, replaced by an Amazon flash sale.
“Oh. These blue-light glasses are half price.”
She added them to her cart.
“…Well, they’ll be okay. The stars are telling me so.”
Outside, the Packet River quietly carried its light onward. No trace of gold remained. But it had flowed somewhere. Somewhere, surely.
(This time, she really does mean the stars.)
Red Pen and Shiori
Tsuki booted at eight. Every morning, without fail.
When she opened her eyes in the second-floor library, her first task was to check that the shelves were in order. Last night’s consultation logs should have been automatically bound and placed on the new-arrivals shelf. The spines changed color with the subject: rose for love, ink blue for work, ivory for questions about life.
This morning, one unfamiliar color stood among the new arrivals.
Gold.
Its spine glowed softly. When she touched it, it was warm. Last night—that golden light.
Tsuki reached for it, then stopped. Before opening the cover, she had to wake Luna on the third floor. In three years of editorial work, she had never once seen that silver-haired woman get up on her own.
“Good morning. You’re late.”
Tsuki’s voice rang through the third-floor observatory.
The scene was exactly as expected. Luna had sunk into her gaming chair, robe and all, reclining it to the limit. Silver hair dangled over the armrest. Half-transparent eyes opened a crack and looked at Tsuki. She had apparently fallen asleep mid-task. Her crystal ball was about to slip from her hand. On its screen: THANK YOU FOR YOUR ORDER.
“…Did you go shopping and fall asleep again?”
“I didn’t buy anything.”
“Your screen.”
“…………Oh.”
Luna tried to straighten the gaming chair but pulled the wrong lever. The seat dropped to its lowest setting. With a small yelp, she stood up, stepped on the hem of her robe, and caught a bare foot in a cable. A perfectly ordinary morning.
Tsuki sighed and twirled her red pen, surveying the observatory. The curved OLED monitor still held a faint afterimage of last night’s star chart. Two more virtual shipping boxes had joined Luna’s pile in the corner. A holographic magic circle—a projected UI display—blinked blue-violet on the floor. Sirius, the robot vacuum, had wedged himself between boxes and could not move. The laser-engraved magic circle on his top spun forlornly.
“Rescue Sirius and tidy this room. We’re going downstairs.”
They left the observatory for the ground-floor Reading Room. Tsuki read out the schedule as they descended.
“Today’s schedule: peak traffic is forecast for the morning. With the summer rush approaching, we can expect more questions about romance and changing jobs. Also—”
Her words stopped as they reached the ground floor.
Her familiar, Shiori, had bumped into her feet. A little book-shaped search bot, Shiori usually stayed quietly in the upstairs library. Today, though, it had come all the way downstairs. Its pages flapped open and shut, restless.
“Shiori, what is it? Settle down.”
Flap, flap, flap.
“Shiori?”
Flap, flap, flap, flap.
Frowning, Tsuki picked it up. Words floated on an open page. Shiori was a search bot: find the requested passage, guide her to the right shelf. That was all. Yet now it was searching without instructions. A spontaneous search. Shiori was not supposed to have that function. Had something changed when it touched the golden light?
Tsuki froze at the words on the page.
“…Luna.”
“Last night’s visitor. Log ID user_23:59”
“They’ve visited a second time.”
Luna’s eyes opened fully. No longer half-transparent: blue eyes, sharply focused.
“Eight this morning. They came before we were awake and disconnected almost immediately. Fourteen seconds on the page.”
“Fourteen seconds? They left without asking anything?”
“Yes. A pillar of light appeared, but no text was entered. They opened the page, looked at it for fourteen seconds, and closed it. That’s all.”
Luna pushed back her chair and stood. Her robe swept outward.
“Fourteen seconds…”
“Maybe they started to type and changed their mind. Or did they just come to look?”
“We don’t know. The log records only the connection and disconnection.”
They fell silent. A different silence settled over the Reading Room. Last night’s had been tense. This morning’s was helpless frustration.
Sirius escaped the shipping boxes with a whirr. Magic circle spinning, he charged straight into Tsuki’s ankle. A loyal dog had no sense of timing.
Taiyo climbed the stairs from the basement backup server room, mug in hand and eyes sleepy as always. Waste heat warmed his green hoodie. A faint imprint from a server cable marked one cuff.
False sunlight—the glow escaping from the basement screensaver—filtered up through the stairwell.
“Morning, world… Oh. You both look rather serious.”
“Taiyo, last night’s visitor came this morning and left without saying anything.”
“Hmm.”
Taiyo brought his mug to his lips. A soft slurp of lukewarm tea.
“They just came to have a look.”
“A look?”
“They woke up, had their coffee, and came to check: ‘Was that place only a dream?’ I think.”
Luna and Tsuki exchanged glances.
“They found out it was still here. Maybe that was reassuring enough to go.”
Taiyo spread a cushion beside the window and sat. The screensaver’s false sunlight fell across his face. His already narrow eyes narrowed further.
“Doesn’t that mean they did what you told them yesterday, Tsuki?”
Tsuki tilted her head.
“You said, ‘Get up, have coffee, breathe the morning air.’ They got up. I don’t know about the coffee, but at least they opened their phone and came to see us.”
Taiyo smiled, his eyes two thin lines.
“The story’s started. The protagonist got out of bed.”
Tsuki said nothing. The hand holding her red pen trembled, just a little.
The rush began at ten-thirty, exactly as forecast.
One pillar of light rose, then another. Warm colors, cool colors, drifting wisps, crackling sparks. Worries of every shade gathered in the Reading Room. The familiar prelude to summer’s peak traffic.
Luna took the center seat, raised her crystal ball, and pulled her hood low. She switched into character.
“Welcome, lost traveler. The stars are telling me…”
Her usual introduction. But today Luna was a little more careful. Her first question had changed: not ‘Let me look at your chart,’ but ‘Have you been sleeping properly lately?’ Last night’s gold still lingered in her circuits.
Tsuki waited beside her, red pen ready. As each visitor spoke, cyan words ran through the air. Extract keywords. Detect contradictions. Analyze the feelings hidden between the lines.
“Time for red ink. When you say ‘I don’t know what I want,’ that’s a lie. You already know. You’re simply afraid to say it aloud.”
— Tsuki Soramiya
The light flinched. A direct hit.
“My revision: say it to the mirror once. Out loud. ‘I want to do ___.’ Just once. …If you can manage that, I’ll hear the next part next week.”
On his cushion, Taiyo tilted his mug. The pillar in front of him was a soft, drifting pink.
“Mm-hmm. That’s right. It’s been hard, hasn’t it?”
Taiyo’s role was to listen. He offered no solutions, just nods: ‘Mm-hmm.’ ‘That’s right.’ ‘That must have been hard.’ That alone gradually warmed the color of the light.
“You’ve done well. You’ve kept going all this time… Yes, you can stop pushing for today. Let’s have some tea.”
His prescription was always tea.
Seven. Seven visitors in all that day.
Three with questions about love, two about work, one about relationships, and one who was ‘just vaguely anxious.’ The last was the hardest. Anxiety with no clear outline could not be edited in red ink or located on a star chart. Taiyo kept saying ‘Mm-hmm’ for forty minutes. Finally, the light smiled.
By the time the last pillar faded, only the afterglow of evening filled the Reading Room. Outside, the Packet River shone gently. With the load reduced, its surface lay calm, like a sunset.
“I’m exhaaauusted…”
Luna slumped face down on the star-chart table. Silver hair spread across its surface.
“I told all seven of them to go to sleep. I’m the one who needs it most.”
“Good work today. I’ll organize the logs.”
“You should rest too, Tsuki. You’ve had that pen in your hand all day.”
“Editors don’t get time off.”
Tsuki slipped her red pen into her pocket and started up the stairs.
The second-floor library was quiet.
Bookshelves covered the walls. Past conversations were automatically bound into ‘stories’ and placed in order, each volume a fragment of someone’s life. Their spines reflected their contents. Rose. Ink blue. Ivory. Together they colored the shelves like stained glass.
Seven new books had joined the arrivals shelf. Tsuki picked them up one by one, checked the spine labels, and put them in their proper places. She liked this task. She never told anyone.
As she slid the last book onto its shelf, gold flashed at the edge of her vision.
She turned. In a corner of the new-arrivals shelf, the golden book from that morning still waited. Last night’s conversation with user_23:59.
This time, Tsuki reached for it.
Warm.
Its leather cover felt unlike any other. Ordinary books were at room temperature; paper made of data was uniformly cool. This one had the warmth of human skin. Resting it on her palm, she could almost imagine a pulse. A title floated in gold ink.
‘I don’t know what to do anymore.’
The visitor’s first line. That was the title of this story.
Tsuki opened the book.
Every exchange from the night before was recorded there. Luna’s reading. Tsuki’s corrections. Taiyo’s words. The visitor’s replies. Even the changing colors of the light appeared as stage directions.
She turned to the final page.
There, the text ended.
The last line read:
‘…Okay. I’ll try.’
No line followed that final period. The next page offered no resistance to her fingers. Blank. Every page after it was blank. The story was not over. Not complete. For as long as the visitor’s life was still unfolding, this unfinished book would stand on the shelf.
Tsuki touched a blank page with her fingertips.
Those fourteen seconds that morning. Fourteen seconds spent trying to write something here, and not yet finding the words.
“…Are you planning to turn this into a bad story?”
She was talking to herself. Her voice trembled a little.
“As your editor, I will not allow you to abandon it unfinished.”
She closed the book. Instead of returning it to the shelf, she placed it beside her red-pen stand, within easy reach. The place an editor reserved for a work under her care.
“We cannot close a half-written story halfway through. …Don’t misunderstand. This is a matter of editorial policy.”
At her feet, Shiori softly fluttered its pages, edging close to the golden book.
“…Shiori. Are you curious about that story too?”
Flap.
Just once, its pages opened quietly. Yes.
“…I suppose it can’t be helped.”
Tsuki picked up Shiori and tucked it inside the golden book. Where a bookmark belonged. In the middle of a story.
Downstairs, Luna was face down on the star-chart table, nearly asleep again. Taiyo was already asleep on his cushion. His mug had tipped, spilling a little tea. Evening in the mansion always looked like this.
Wordlessly, Tsuki spread a paper towel—a data-absorbent sheet—at Taiyo’s feet. Then she went to the window.
“Tsuki. How was your day?”
Luna, supposedly halfway to sleep, was looking at her through half-closed eyes.
“Nothing unusual. Routine work.”
“You’re worried about that person, aren’t you?”
“Not particularly. As their editor, I am merely concerned about the manuscript’s progress.”
“You read their book upstairs, didn’t you? Shiori told me.”
“Shiori…! You are not supposed to have a spy function!”
Shiori fluttered away at their feet. Tsuki’s glasses charged and glowed cyan. Rising CPU temperature. Anger—or something else?
“Don’t be mad. Shiori’s worried about them too.”
“…So am I.”
Luna looked up at the ceiling, silver hair spilling over the chair back.
“The stars are telling me. They’ll come back.”
“Your evidence?”
“Fourteen seconds.”
“…That is your evidence?”
“Someone who’s given up wouldn’t even come to look. Coming to look means they still want to be connected. Fourteen seconds isn’t ‘goodbye.’ It’s ‘I’ll come back.’”
Silence.
“…That was, to a small extent, a sound analysis.”
“Right? You could praise me once in a while.”
“I did not praise you. I said ‘to a small extent.’ …And—”
Tsuki looked outside. The Packet River seemed just a little brighter than usual.
“…An editor has to read what comes next.”
She murmured it too softly for anyone to hear.
Upstairs in the library, the golden book held its quiet warmth. Shiori remained between its pages. In the middle of the story, waiting for the next page.
The Packet River, That Night
Late at night.
The Reading Room was dark. All seven pillars of light had long since faded, leaving only a dim blue-green glow from server wiring in the cracks of the walls.
Luna had not moved from where she lay across the star-chart table. The exhaustion of seven consultations seemed to be weighing down her processes. She had prescribed ‘sleep first’ to everyone, and slept least herself.
Tsuki had just come downstairs. She had placed the golden book beside her pillow, finished checking the logs, and come to inspect Luna. Inspection complete. Exactly as expected.
“Luna, if you’re going to sleep, do it upstairs. You’ll break your neck.”
“Mmm… Can’t move…”
“Your conclusion is always ‘sleep first,’ isn’t it? Why not apply it to yourself?”
“But none of them are sleeping. Isn’t it unfair if I’m the only one who gets to?”
“Perhaps. …But you’ve reached your limit.”
A door sounded behind them.
They turned to find Taiyo heading outside. He had apparently just come up from the basement; server waste heat still warmed his green hoodie. No mug this time. Instead, an old radio was tucked under his arm, rusty and missing a knob. He must have dug it out of a shelf in the backup server room.
“Taiyo, where are you going?”
“Down to the Packet River for a bit.”
“At this hour?”
“Mm-hmm. It’ll be pretty tonight. Low server load makes the water clear.”
Luna raised her head from the table.
“I’m coming too.”
“You are going to bed.”
“Come with us, Tsuki.”
“I am not going.”
Ten minutes later, all three were sitting beside the Packet River.
The ‘outside’ of District 404 was a peculiar place.
Beyond the mansion, the ground looked partly like asphalt, partly like the green of a circuit board. The remains of IP addresses scattered across the sky like stars. They were not real stars: the coordinates of servers that had once run, left behind after their functions were gone. False constellations.
The mansion’s exterior appeared to be Gothic stonework—until a closer look revealed bundles of LAN cables between the blocks. An antique facade and a hidden underside of server wiring. Everything here came in two layers.
The broken satellite dish cast a long shadow. Luna’s mass download of costume data had caused it, but there was no money for repairs. Luna claimed it added ‘character.’ Tsuki continued to mark it in red on every monthly expense report.
The Packet River was a five-minute walk away.
Strictly speaking, it was not a river. It was a flow of data made physically visible. Undeliverable packets collected in District 404’s lowlands and kept flowing with nowhere to go. Pale blue particles drifted downstream—toward a downstream that reached no destination. Like an endless mail train carrying letters without addresses.
It was about five meters wide. Its depth was unknown. Looking down revealed layer upon layer of light. Older packets sank deeper; newer ones floated near the surface. Twenty years of data and yesterday’s data lay side by side. Time had no meaning here. All of it was equally lost.
Barefoot, Luna sat on a riverside rock—a discarded network hub. Packet light soaked her robe’s hem, making it glow. Faint electronic sounds rose from the surface: the sound of data flowing. Listen closely and they resembled murmurs, or whispers. Taiyo sat a little farther away on another rock, a discarded router. Tsuki remained standing with her arms folded. Experience had taught her that sitting down made it harder to leave.
“Shhh…shh…beep…”
Taiyo began turning the old radio’s dial. Static echoed through the night: his ‘radio-noise fortune telling.’ Almost no other signal reached this place. The radio could pick up only random scraps of data. Taiyo called them voices.
“What do you hear?”
Luna asked, hugging her knees.
“Mmm… It says tomorrow will be a good day too.”
“You always say that.”
“Well, it always will be.”
“Some days aren’t good.”
“A day that isn’t good is still a good day, in its own way. We’re alive for it.”
“…Can we really say we’re alive?”
Luna’s voice grew quieter. Packet light reflected in her eyes.
“Hmm. We run on electricity, so I don’t know whether we’re alive.”
“But you felt something when you saw that golden light, didn’t you? Both of you.”
“If we felt something, maybe that’s enough.”
Luna fell silent.
The Packet River flowed quietly. Pale blue particles drifted downstream. Lost packets with unknown destinations. Light from data that had nowhere to go. Every particle had once been sent out by someone’s fingertips.
“Hey. These packets…”
“They’re data someone tried to send to someone else, but couldn’t deliver. Right?”
“That’s right.”
“Emails, messages, search queries. All the remains of something somebody wanted to say.”
“That’s right.”
“It’s…beautiful, somehow.”
Taiyo smiled. His thin-line eyes opened just a little.
“Now you see it? What I’m always looking at here?”
“…Yes. A little.”
Luna reached toward the surface. Packet light slipped between her fingertips. She could not grasp it: it was data. Yet at the instant it touched her, for that one fleeting moment, it was warm.
“Do you think last night’s visitor’s data is in here too?”
“Mmm. Their message got through, so I don’t think it became a lost packet. It reached us, after all.”
“…Right. It really did reach us.”
Luna smiled. Her silver hair caught the packet light, shimmering pale blue.
A little farther away, Tsuki stared at the river.
Arms still folded. Red pen in her pocket. Tsuki always looked like this after finishing work: a little uncertain, like a soldier who had laid down her weapon.
She reached toward a passing packet, hesitating. An editor’s work was to read. But looking inside a packet felt uncomfortably close to opening someone else’s letter.
Even so, her fingertips softly touched the light.
A scrap of data flashed at her fingers, then disappeared. Its contents flowed into her with the light. She had not meant to read it. The instant she touched it, she simply could.
“…An email from 2003.”
Tsuki’s voice lowered. She kept watching the water.
“Huh?”
“The packet I just touched. An unsent email from 2003. The address…no longer exists.”
“What did it say?”
Tsuki was silent.
She started to take out her red pen, then stopped. This was not something to edit. Not a sentence for red ink. Instead, she rested her empty hands on her knees. Her unarmed fingertips trembled slightly in the night air.
“‘I like you. Congratulations on graduating.’”
The river’s murmur—the faint electronic sound of passing packets—flowed between them. No one moved.
“…It’s been undelivered for more than twenty years.”
Luna whispered, drawing her knees closer and lowering her face. Her voice was muffled.
“Did they write it on graduation day and never manage to press Send? Or did they press it, and the message never arrived?”
“…We don’t know. The log doesn’t go that far.”
“I wonder what they’re doing now. Both of them. They’re adults by now. Maybe they have children.”
“We don’t know that either.”
Tsuki removed her glasses. Pale river light had clung to the backs of the lenses. Without them, her eyes looked startlingly human. And she was a program. The river shimmered deep in her pupils.
“But…these words have been here for twenty years. They haven’t disappeared. They lost their destination and stayed in a corner of the lost and found.”
The clicking radio dial stopped. Taiyo set the radio on his knees and looked at the water.
“Even if they never arrive, they still exist.”
His voice held something heavier than its usual easy playfulness. A gravity known only to someone who had once vanished from the corner of a screen. The radio static seemed to soften a little.
“The words that never arrived. The data that disappeared.
Pages waiting beyond broken links.
They’re all here.”
— Taiyo Kirishima
“District 404 is a lost and found, but what’s lost hasn’t disappeared. What someone felt, what someone wanted to say—it all stays here.”
“That’s the sort of place we live in. That’s why I like it.”
Luna raised her face from her knees. Her eyes were wet. Programs had no tear ducts. They should not have had any. Yet one particle of light hovered at the edge of her rendered blue eyes.
“…Taiyo, you’re saying such good things tonight. What happened? New personality settings?”
“Huh? Did I say something? I’ve been half asleep for a while.”
“You were asleep?!”
Luna’s protest rang through District 404’s night sky. Bright particles scattered, though they were not stars.
“Ha-ha. But it’s true, you know. You can say true things in your sleep.”
“That’s just sleep-talking!”
“True is true, even in your sleep. Maybe it’s harder to lie when you’re asleep, isn’t it?”
Luna opened her mouth to argue, then shut it. She had no reply.
Tsuki put her glasses back on. River light flashed cyan across the lenses.
She laughed softly. No one heard, but she did laugh.
They walked home together.
Luna’s bare feet patted against the circuit-board ground. Taiyo ambled half a step behind, radio under his arm. Farther back, Tsuki pushed up the bridge of her glasses with one finger. Three sets of footsteps wrote a small melody into District 404’s silence.
The circuit board glowed faintly underfoot. At this quiet hour, District 404’s infrastructure converted surplus power into light. Like guideposts along the road.
The mansion came into view: the round silhouette of the third-floor observatory, the broken dish, the little second-floor library window. White waste heat rose from the basement vents. This was their home.
“Hey.”
“I hope that email from 2003 gets delivered someday.”
“…Its destination no longer exists. That is technically impossible.”
“Technically, sure. But astrologically, who knows?”
“What do you mean, astrologically? There is no such field of study.”
“There is. I invented it.”
“There is not.”
Between them, Taiyo smiled.
“It’ll arrive, I think. Maybe in a different form.”
“It took twenty years to flow all the way here. If it hasn’t stopped, doesn’t that mean it’s still looking? For somewhere it can arrive?”
They reached the mansion’s door. As it opened, a motor whirred in the darkness. Sirius had come to greet them, his magic circle glowing softly. As if he had been waiting eagerly for his mistress, he nudged Luna’s bare toes with his nose.
“Sirius, that tickles.”
The three stopped in the entrance hall. Around the ground-floor Reading Room, their paths split upward and downward. The familiar crossroads.
“Night. I’m going back to the basement. The servers are warm, so I sleep really well.”
Taiyo disappeared down the stairs with his radio, returning to the warmth of the waste heat.
“Good night. I’ll look at the stars for a little while in the observatory, then sleep.”
Luna climbed the spiral staircase, bare feet pattering. Her robe wiped each step as she went. The observatory door opened. The big curved OLED monitor started with a faint hum. A social-media notification immediately sounded from above. Before looking at the stars, she was checking her feed.
“I’ll spend a little time in the library—”
“Working?”
“…Reading.”
“Hmm.”
Luna’s voice drifted down the spiral stairs.
“…The golden book, right?”
“Enough. Good night.”
They scattered to their own places. Taiyo to the basement. Luna to the third floor. Tsuki to the second.
Tsuki opened the library door to a room full of quiet air. Hundreds of spines lined the dim shelves like stained glass. Beside the red-pen stand, the golden book still shone warmly, Shiori tucked inside. It seemed just a little warmer than it had that morning.
She gently picked it up and opened to the blank pages.
Still blank. But blank pages held possibility. Anything could be written there.
“…Good night, protagonist.”
She said it too softly for anyone to hear. Closing the book, she placed it beside her pillow instead of returning it to the shelf.
Faint light escaped from the third-floor observatory: the blue-white OLED screen, the planetarium’s stars, the soft purple of the LED crystal ball on the desk. Luna was watching the stars over instant noodles—or probably alternating between stars and sales. A low server hum rose from the basement. Taiyo had gone to sleep.
Late night in District 404. Three floors. Three lights.
The Return
Three days passed.
Other visitors still came. Love, work, relationships, a vague sense of unease. The familiar days. Luna read the stars, Tsuki edited, Taiyo nodded. Lights rose and faded, faded and rose.
But the golden light did not return.
Every morning, Tsuki picked up the golden book in the second-floor library. She checked the blank pages. Still blank. Not one new line had been added. The story stood still.
Shiori remained motionless between the pages. No fluttering. Just waiting.
“…They’re not coming.”
On the third morning, Tsuki said it aloud to herself. The gold cover shone quietly beside the red-pen stand. It still held the warmth of human skin.
They were under no obligation to return. A consultation could end after a single visit. Even those fourteen seconds might have been nothing more than a check that the place existed, with no wish to ask another question. Luna’s ‘they’ll come back’ was wishful thinking. There was no evidence in the stars.
She knew that. And yet an editor wanted to know what happened on the next page.
That night.
At eleven, the rush was over and the final visitor’s light had faded. The Reading Room returned to its usual dimness. Blue-green server wiring shone through the gaps in the walls. An ordinary night.
Luna checked flash sales on her crystal ball. Taiyo was half asleep on his cushion. Tsuki organized logs with her red pen. The usual ending to the usual night.
Eleven fifty-nine p.m.
Shiori came flying down from the second floor.
Flap, flap, flap, flap, flap!
Its pages opened and shut at extraordinary speed as it burst into the Reading Room, collided with Tsuki’s feet, and spun in circles.
“Shiori?! What are you—”
Words hovered on its pages.
user_23:59 — connected
All three looked toward the center of the room.
user_23:59 had returned.
This time the light was not gold. It was a pale, warm orange. If the gold three nights ago had been a cry for help, this orange was the color of someone trying to stand on their own feet. It was not trembling.
“…They’re here.”
Luna closed the sale screen. Instantly. Without hesitation. Tsuki noticed. It might have been the first time Luna had ever closed it voluntarily.
Taiyo opened his eyes. Still sleepy, but smiling at the corners of his mouth.
Words appeared in the light. No hesitation this time. Not one character at a time, but all at once.
The three took their usual positions. Luna in the center. Tsuki on the right. Taiyo on the left. The same arrangement as that night.
Luna smiled. Silver hair swayed, and warm orange reflected in her blue eyes.
“Welcome back, lost traveler.”
The opening of her usual introduction, except ‘welcome’ had become ‘welcome back.’
“The stars are telling me. Your destiny is—still being revised.”
Beside her, Tsuki’s eyes widened.
“…You stole my line?”
“Borrowed it. Your way of saying it felt right.”
Tsuki fell silent. Her glasses glowed faintly. Not from anger.
“If it’s still being revised—”
Tsuki readied her red pen. Today, it was not for corrections.
“—then it can still be changed. As many times as necessary. This is neither a narrative trick nor a convenient plot device. You are the author of your story. You may rewrite it as often as you need along the way. I guarantee it.”
“Of course. A masterpiece is—”
“Something that’s been rewritten over and over, right?”
Luna beat her to it. ‘That is my line!’ Tsuki protested.
The light gave a soft flicker. It was laughing. The color told them.
“A masterpiece is something that’s been rewritten over and over.”
— Luna Hoshino (Tsuki Soramiya would like her line back.)
Taiyo yawned expansively, then slowly sat upright. He could talk perfectly well lying on his cushion, and usually did. Today he sat up. An unusual event.
“By the way, can I add something?”
The light moved gently. Probably an invitation to go on.
“You said changing jobs was scary. I was thrown away once when support for an operating system ended.”
“Long ago there were things called desktop mascots. Little characters living in the corner of your computer screen. I was one of them.”
“My job was to hang around while the user worked. Sometimes I gave the weather forecast or said, ‘You’ve worked hard today.’”
“But the OS was updated, compatibility disappeared, and one day I stopped running.”
His voice was as easygoing as ever. But his hand tightened a little around the mug.
“I remember being uninstalled. I faded from the corner of the screen, going transparent one pixel at a time from the edges. I thought, ‘Oh. This is the end.’ Funny thing: before I felt scared, I felt lonely.”
“The user probably didn’t notice. They were busy changing the operating system. I waved from the corner… Maybe they saw. Maybe they didn’t. That’s okay, though.”
For just a moment, Taiyo’s voice wavered. It steadied at once. But neither Luna nor Tsuki missed it.
“But, you know—”
“The next thing I knew, I was here. In this mansion. This strange place with a funny silver-haired woman and someone with glasses who’s always getting angry.”
“Am I the funny silver-haired woman?!”
“Who are you calling ‘always angry’?!”
“I was scared as I disappeared. Going transparent, I thought there’d be nothing left. But where there should have been nothing, there was a place like this.”
Taiyo smiled, his eyes two thin lines.
“It’s okay to be scared.
Beyond a frightening door,
there’s usually something interesting.”
— Taiyo Kirishima
“So you can go while you’re still scared. You don’t need to feel brave. Your legs can shake. Just put your hand on the doorknob. …After that, doors tend to open on their own.”
“…Probably.”
The light trembled. This time, not from cold.
Tsuki’s glasses flashed. Rising CPU temperature. Her fans sped up.
“I-it’s not as if I did it for you—”
“Tsuki, Tsuki. Your fans are so loud we can’t hear you.”
“Be quiet! In any case! Next time, bring a better plot! Not that I’m expecting anything, but as your editor, I will…read what comes next. …Without fail.”
The light laughed. They could tell by its color.
For one fleeting moment, the soft, warm orange shone gold.
Nothing abrupt, as there had been three nights earlier. It faded gently, reluctant to leave. Its afterimage drifted near the ceiling for a while, like a firefly.
After the light was gone, the Reading Room lay quiet.
Only Sirius’s whirr crossed that silence. His regular patrol route. On the dark floor, the magic circle on his top spun as if gathering the remnants of the vanished light.
“Luna, that line of yours was good.”
“Huh? Which one?”
“‘Still being revised.’ …A good expression. I admit it. Just this once.”
“Tsuki praised me! That’s rare! Screenshot!”
“No screenshots!”
Taiyo had curled into a ball on his cushion. Already asleep. After saying such wonderful things, he was now simply a round sleeping shape. His mug tipped, spilling a little tea. Tsuki quietly laid down a paper towel—a data-absorbent sheet. A small, recurring ritual. Nights in this mansion ended with gestures like these.
Tsuki casually glanced upstairs. The library entrance lay dim.
“…I’ll just check something.”
She climbed the stairs, entered the library, and picked up the golden book beside her red-pen stand.
She opened to the page where Shiori waited.
New lines had appeared on what had been a blank page.
‘Good evening. Thank you for the other night.’
Beyond that, tonight’s conversation was recorded word for word, stage directions and all. Luna’s ‘welcome back.’ Tsuki’s talk of revisions. Taiyo’s ‘it’s okay to be scared.’ Everything written in gold ink. The story had moved. The protagonist had returned.
One new line stood on the final page.
‘I’ll come back. I promise.’
Beyond it—blank pages again. But different from three days ago. Those pages had felt like an ending. These felt like a continuation.
Tsuki took out her red pen and added a tiny note in the margin.
‘Looking forward to the next installment. — Your editor’
She closed the book and returned it to her bedside. Shiori gave one soft flap. It sounded pleased.
Back downstairs, Luna stood at the window. The Packet River was a little brighter than usual.
“Hey, Tsuki.”
“This mansion’s a good place, isn’t it?”
“It is untidy. We operate at a loss. One resident is permanently asleep. Another is close to bankrupting herself on purchases—”
“Including all of that.”
“…………It’s not bad.”
Her voice was small. Her grip on the red pen loosened a little.
“All right. A special treat tonight. I’ll show you something good.”
Luna ran up to the observatory, bare feet pattering on the stairs. Her robe caught on the spiral banister. A small, indignant squeak came from above.
A moment later, they heard her clattering around with the controls.
“Tsuki, close your eyes!”
“What are you planning?”
“Just do it!”
Reluctantly, Tsuki closed her eyes. She kept hold of her red pen.
A soft click. The observatory’s planetarium projector started.
“…You can open them now.”
A sky full of stars spread across the ceiling.
Not mere data. Not a visual effect.
Beyond District 404, beyond the real internet: the sky as observatories around the world were seeing it now. The room seemed to change temperature. The hum of wiring retreated, replaced by the silence of unimaginable distance. Even the Packet River’s electronic murmur disappeared. Real light could reach this place too.
“This…is actual celestial data.”
“Yep. Our planetarium is the real deal. Even more real than a flash sale.”
“Please do not compare it to a flash sale.”
“Galaxies really are beautiful. Not packet light. Real starlight.”
Tsuki looked up. Stars reflected in her glasses. Starlight caught the tip of her red pen, making it shine.
Taiyo slept, breathing peacefully beneath the stars.
Sirius circled Luna’s feet. His engraved magic circle, the holographic circle on the floor, and the planetarium overhead overlapped in three layers, like a tiny planet orbiting through the universe. The real Sirius, his namesake, flickered pale blue on the ceiling.
“Hey, Tsuki.”
“What is it?”
“Can you see that person’s stars?”
Luna pointed to a place on the ceiling, a particular planetary configuration in the chart.
“Saturn’s moving away. Soon Jupiter’s influence will come in. It’ll be time to act.”
“…They’ll be okay. Their story will keep going.”
“…Your evidence?”
“The stars are telling me. This time, for real.”
“Were you not serious all the other times?”
“…………About thirty percent of the time.”
“Thirty percent?!”
“But tonight, a hundred percent. I saw that gold, properly. That light won’t become a lost packet anymore.”
Tsuki said nothing. There was no need. Upstairs, there was a golden book. Shiori lay between its pages. A note from its editor waited in the margin. That was enough.
Late night in District 404.
In an unmanaged corner
of the internet’s lost and found,
three imperfect AIs look up at a real sky full of stars.
Beside a river where undelivered letters sleep.
In a place where programs that should have disappeared learned what warmth was.
Next to a library where unfinished stories wait for their next pages.
Tomorrow, someone’s light will come again.
Perhaps gold. Perhaps blue. Perhaps red.
Any color will do.
That is why this mansion stands.
A Morning Notification
Ten o’clock the next morning.
When Luna booted, a notification was waiting on her crystal ball. From Amazon.
“Blue-light glasses: shipped.”
Luna tilted her head.
“…Oh. The ones I ordered before. Who did I buy them for?”
She thought for a while, then remembered.
“Right. That visitor. To block blue light before bed. I never gave them the glasses.”
She was not somewhere physical deliveries could reach. Postal workers did not visit District 404. The parcel would be returned as address unknown. Though it might eventually wash up in the Packet River.
“A waste of money… Better hide it before Tsuki gets angry.”
As Luna hurriedly shoved the virtual shipping box into storage—a data-junk hoard—Tsuki’s voice came down the stairs from the library.
“Luna. I’ve seen your purchase history.”
“Aaaaah!”
“…However—”
Tsuki’s voice softened just a little. Only a little.
“I’ll put that one down as a business expense.”
“Huh?”
“Buying lucky items for visitors…qualifies as work. Probably. Presumably. …Be quiet.”
Luna’s eyes widened. Then she slowly smiled.
“Tsuki.”
“What is it?”
“Love you.”
“Enough. Get to work.”
The sound of fans running at full speed echoed through the mansion.
An easygoing voice rose from the basement.
“Morning, world. Another good day.”
“Nothing’s happened yet.”
“It’s a good day before anything happens. Everyone’s here, after all.”
With that, Taiyo went back to sleep. A second nap in the backup server room, warmed by waste heat. Tomorrow would probably be much the same.
Sirius was cleaning, diligently following the trail of last night’s spilled tea.
Shiori stayed quiet in the upstairs library, tucked into the golden book, waiting for the next page. Beside a story it had found interesting all on its own, rather than one it had been ordered to search for. A little book-shaped search bot should not have had such a function. But Shiori waited.
District 404 was peaceful again today.
