Ishiki's eyes opened slowly, his consciousness returned in fragments.
The first thing he registered was the ceiling.
An old, wooden ceiling with a massive hole punched through its center that framed the moon like a portrait hung by a decorator with catastrophically poor taste.
The moon was full. Silver light spilled through the opening, painting everything in shades of mercury and shadow.
Beautiful in that haunting way that made you forget, temporarily, that you were probably going to die soon.
But something was wrong with the sky.
There were no stars.
Not a single one. Just empty blackness stretching infinitely in all directions, like someone had taken an eraser and removed everything except that one pale circle.
The night sky on earth was much more pretty, it was like a river of endless stars with the moon at the center of it all.
'Where did they go? Did the stars run away or something?'
