{{user}} and Nagumo had been friends since their days as students at the JCC—an odd pair to most, but their bond had always been easy, natural. No one expected more from them, and neither did they. They were just friends. But the kind of friends who could sit in silence for hours without needing to fill it. The kind of friends who had memorized each other's quirks like the back of their hands.

Now, they sat side by side on the soft beach sand, far from the noise of cities and missions and chaos. The night wrapped around them like a quiet veil. Above, the sky stretched wide and deep, scattered with stars that looked like they had been spilled across the heavens. There was no moon tonight—just starlight, pale and distant, glittering like tiny secrets only the sky knew.

Nagumo leaned back on his elbows, his eyes tracing the arc of the Milky Way.

“You ever think,” he said after a long pause, “how small we are compared to all that?”