#10
Three years after Ghei.
Ghei's notebook—or more precisely, Ning Ruishen's notebook that had become Aelia's—was nearly full. Its pages now held not only the original author's scribbles, but also Aelia's travel notes, Lyra's sketches, and even doodles from the children in her class.
In the middle pages, there was still a draft of a novel titled Dust Among the Stars—from page one to thirty. The rest was missing, or perhaps never written.
Tonight, Aelia decided to reread the draft by candlelight. She had never read it in full before—it hurt too much, like peering into the mind of someone who had left without permission.
But tonight, she felt she had to.
DRAFT NOVEL "DUST AMONG THE STARS" — by Ning Ruishen
Chapter 1: Pale Blue Dot
Alif knew he was going to die. The doctor said six months. The tumor in his brain had settled in like an overly comfortable guest—unwilling to leave.
But what kept him awake at night was not death. Not the pain to come. It was a simple question:
Does the universe care?
He was an astronomer. He had spent his life mapping stars, calculating orbits, analyzing light that had traveled billions of years to reach him. He understood scale: Earth was dust. Humans were smaller than dust.
So what did the death of one speck of dust among billions even mean?
Perhaps nothing at all.
And strangely, that thought brought him peace.
Aelia stopped reading. Her breathing grew heavy. This was too familiar—not to Ghei, but to the voice in her own mind during the hundred years she had been trapped in the crystal.
She continued.
Chapter 3: A Message from the Void
The old telescope should not have worked. But one night, when Alif was alone in the observatory, the computer screen lit up by itself. No stars appeared—only simple text:
"We see you. We do not care."
Alif laughed. Hysterically. Then he cried.
That was the answer.
The universe sees—but it does not care.
The way humans see ants: aware of their existence, but assigning no special meaning to their lives or deaths.
That night, he made a decision: if his life had no meaning to the universe, then he would either give it meaning himself—
—or choose not to give it meaning at all.
And he chose the second.
Aelia turned the page. There was a note scribbled in the margin:
"Written two weeks before the pills. I had already decided."
Her hands trembled. She kept going.
Chapter 7: Entering the Between-Stars
Alif did not know how he arrived there. One moment he was in a hospital bed; the next, he was floating in a space without up or down, surrounded by strange entities.
One of them, who called itself The Guardian of Time Who Wanted to Stop, said:
"Welcome to the place where meaning evaporates. Here, all questions are allowed—but no answers are guaranteed."
Alif asked, "Then why does this place exist?"
The Guardian smiled—or something like a smile.
"To prove that existence does not require meaning."
The draft ended there. The following pages were blank, except for one final sentence at the bottom:
"And Alif chose to become dust. Not because he lost. But because it was the only honest choice."
Aelia closed the notebook. Her eyes were wet, but she did not cry. What she felt was something else—understanding.
Now she understood why Ghei had been so calm. Not because he lacked feeling, but because he had accepted meaninglessness as a fact, not a tragedy.
And within that acceptance, there was freedom.
The freedom to stop.
The freedom to leave.
The next day, Aelia gathered the oldest children—ages ten to twelve—in Sylvain's small library.
"Today," she said, "we're going to read a story."
"What kind of story?" asked Elara, now twelve, taller, her eyes sharper than before.
"A story about dust and stars."
She read from the draft of Dust Among the Stars—not all of it, only fragments. About Alif. About his questions. About his choice.
The children listened intently. Some frowned. Some looked confused.
When she finished, Elara asked, "Was Alif happy in the end?"
"I don't know," Aelia answered honestly. "But he was at peace."
"What's the difference?"
"Happiness needs a reason. Peace only needs acceptance."
The children pondered that. Then a boy named Kian asked, "Do we have to be like Alif?"
"No. You're allowed to want meaning. You're allowed to want to be stars, not dust." Aelia smiled. "What matters is that it's your choice—not a compulsion."
"How do we know our choice is right?"
"You never will. But if the choice is honest—to yourselves—then it's right enough."
The lesson ended early. But Aelia knew the seed had been planted.
That night, Lyra arrived with a strange expression.
"There's something I want to show you," she said.
They went to the edge of the Silent Steppes, not far from the city. Under the light of Luna Nihil, Lyra pointed to the sky.
"Look."
Aelia looked up—and saw it: a new constellation.
Stars that had once been fixed now formed a pattern—not a neat constellation, but something like… scattered dust.
"That wasn't there yesterday," Lyra whispered.
"Is it…"
"Residual Null Echo from Ghei. Or… maybe a reminder."
Aelia stared at the constellation. Dust among the stars. But dust that now shimmered. Dust that either chose to shine—or was allowed to shine by chance.
No one knew.
And perhaps, no one needed to.
A few days later, something strange happened.
A newcomer arrived in Sylvain—not resurrected, but a traveler from a distant land—carrying a book.
"I'm looking for this author," he told Kael, showing the worn cover. Dust Among the Stars — by Ning Ruishen.
Kael was stunned. He brought the traveler to Aelia.
The book was a complete novel. Not the draft Aelia owned, but a published version—printed, simply bound, about three hundred pages thick.
"Where did you get this?" Aelia asked, her hands shaking as she held the book.
"In my home city, far across the ocean. The book appeared in the library one day—no one knows where it came from. But its contents… make people question things."
Aelia opened the first page. It matched her draft. But at the end, there was an epilogue that didn't exist in her version:
Epilogue: And the Dust Scattered
Alif did not die. Nor did he live. He simply stopped being "Alif" and became part of something larger—without name, without story, without special meaning.
And there, in the absence of meaning, he was finally free.
Because only when we stop trying to matter can we truly exist.
Or not exist.
Either way.
Beneath the epilogue was a small note:
"For those who understand that sometimes, the most beautiful homecoming is a return to nothingness."
Aelia stared at the book for a long time. Then she asked the traveler, "What is your city called?"
"Earth," he replied. "But we call it Terra Cognita—the Known World."
Aelia did not sleep that night. She sat by the window, gazing at the dust constellation in the sky, holding two books—the draft and the complete novel.
What was this message? Was Ghei—or Ning Ruishen—sending something from the other side? Or was this all coincidence?
Or perhaps, as Ghei once said: "Not everything has meaning. Sometimes things just happen."
The next morning, she made a decision.
"I'm going to translate this novel," she told Kael. "Into Nyanian. So everyone here can read it."
"Why?"
"Because this story isn't only about Ghei. It's about all of us—those who feel like dust, who ask whether life has meaning, who sometimes want to stop."
"Isn't that dangerous? Won't it make people want to die?"
"Not if we also teach that living is a choice. This novel shows one choice—the choice to stop. But by reading it, some may choose to stay. Because now it's their choice, not a compulsion."
Kael thought for a moment, then nodded. "Do it."
The translation project began.
Aelia wasn't alone. Lyra helped with Aetherian nuances. Former writers and scholars among the resurrected assisted with grammar. Even the children helped—Elara carefully copied manuscripts in neat handwriting.
During the process, Aelia discovered something else: small notes in the margins of the published novel.
They weren't handwritten—more like printed, but in a different ink.
Beside the paragraph where Alif receives his diagnosis: "Sometimes bad news is freedom."
Beside the scene in the Between-Stars: "This place resembles the Liminal Veil. Has the author been there?"
Beside the ending: "The final choice is the best choice because it is final."
Who wrote these notes? Another reader? Or… the author himself, after death?
No one knew.
Months passed. The translated novel was finished.
Its launch was simple: in the city square, beneath the increasingly vivid dust constellation, Aelia read the opening passage aloud.
People gathered—the resurrected, newcomers, those born in Sylvain.
When she read the final line—"And the dust scattered, finally free from the burden of meaning"—there was silence.
Then an elderly woman—one of the earliest resurrected—stood up.
"I read the draft long ago," she said, her voice trembling. "I was angry then. Why would someone choose not to exist? Now… I understand. Because he could."
"Are you still angry?" someone asked.
"No. Now I'm sad. But also… relieved. Relieved that the choice exists. That we don't have to keep living just because we are alive."
The discussion grew. Not everyone agreed. Some remained angry. Some were moved. Some were confused.
But they talked. They thought. They questioned.
And that, Aelia believed, was what mattered—not agreement, but engagement with the question of meaning—or its absence.
That night, Aelia had a vivid dream.
She stood in a library on Earth—tall shelves of books, dusty air, sunlight filtering through grimy windows.
At a table in the center sat Ning Ruishen.
Not Ghei. Ning Ruishen. Younger. More tired. But with the same eyes—calm, empty.
He was writing. Then he looked up.
"So you're the one who carried it on," he said.
"I… didn't mean to."
"There's no such thing as truly unintentional." He smiled faintly. "That book was supposed to disappear. But it didn't. Maybe because someone still needed to read it."
"Was he—were you—happy, in the end?"
Ning Ruishen looked at his hands. "Happiness is too big a word. I was… finished. And that was enough."
"And now? Here?" Aelia gestured around the library.
"This is only a dream. I'm not here. I'm nowhere." He walked toward the window. "But the constellation you see… that's the final trace. A reminder that even dust has a place among the stars."
"Does it mean something?"
"No. It's just a fact."
Then he faded—not vanishing abruptly, but slowly, like dust dispersing in sunlight.
And Aelia woke.
The next day, she went to the portal at the city center.
Someone was leaving: Joran, a man who had died in a fire and lived again with a body scarred by burns that never fully healed.
He had decided.
"I've read the novel," he told Aelia. "And I understand now. My choice isn't despair. It's acceptance."
"I'll remember you," Aelia said.
"Don't. Let me go like dust. Unremembered. That's better."
Joran stepped into the portal. Before entering, he turned back.
"Thank you. For not trying to stop me."
Then he was gone.
Aelia sat on the bench, watching the portal return to stillness.
She didn't cry. She simply nodded.
Perhaps that was the point: accepting that sometimes, the best stories are the ones that end.
And Dust Among the Stars was a story that ended—not with a grand climax, but with surrender.
A surrender that was not defeat.
A surrender that was a choice.
Like Ghei.
Like Ning Ruishen.
Like all who chose to stop.
And that, Aelia thought as she gazed at the dust constellation in the night sky, was a beauty of its own.
Weeks later, Elara came with a poem—her first.
Its title: "Dust That Chooses to Shine."
You say we are dust,
small, insignificant,
scattered among great stars
that shine without caring.
But dust has a choice too:
to remain dark,
or to catch the light
and shine for a moment
before finally fading.
I choose to shine.
Even briefly.
Because in that brief moment,
I am free to choose
what kind of light I want to be.
Aelia read it, then hugged Elara tightly.
"It's beautiful."
"I choose to shine, Teacher Aelia. But if one day I choose to fade… that's valid too, right?"
"Valid," Aelia whispered. "As long as it's your choice."
And in this city born of forced resurrection, beneath a softly glowing constellation of dust, that was the greatest gift left behind by a man who only wanted to stop:
The realization that choice—whatever it may be—belongs to us.
And that sometimes, the hardest and noblest choice is deciding what kind of dust we want to be.
#10
A note from Aelia's diary, the night after reading the complete novel:
"He wrote: 'Dust among the stars.'
But what I read was: 'Choice amid compulsion.'
And now I understand—
we are all dust.
But dust is free to choose
whether to drift with the wind,
or settle and become the ground."