The wilderness was no different from infinite emptiness.
Could it truly be called the ‘future’? Because it had yet to come, a world overflowing with possibilities had no choice but to remain empty. It was the exact opposite of when I traveled toward the ‘past.’
Back then, at least I had possessed something resembling a signpost.
That made this journey all the more daunting. The farther I advanced, the less I could know whether this was the correct direction. I had wandered countless times before reaching this place.
Surely I was not alone.
Everyone stumbled and reached life’s foremost edge after anguish and failure.
The light seen from its end was indescribably beautiful.
So much so that I forgot even the pain of having been reduced to a wreck countless times.
My eyes blankly swept the letter upon which nothing had been written. No—the aching confession only now beginning to fill it.
The first sentence always began this way.
[To my beloved Ian Percus.]
Lights appeared in the air like lamps along a road after nightfall.
Their sources were shards of glass suspended in the void. The unidentified fractures resembling broken mirrors slowly turned incandescent and began reflecting scenes both unfamiliar and familiar.
The first…