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The Lantern Festival (10) : Scientists have been hard at work trying to understand the strange, glowing qualities of the luminescent caterpillars found in the caves by the reservoir. The caterpillars still shrivel up if they are taken out of the caves but their glowing secretions have been processed into an organic paste that can withstand the outside world. The city is selling paper lanterns infused with various seeds. The glow paste is full of minerals to support healthy plant growth without risking damage to the environment; all lantern purchases come with a small packet of activating power that will heat the paste up enough to mimic the effects of a candle without the concerns of flammability. When the glow paste loses its heat, the lantern will return to the Earth and upon the first rain (or any contact with water) the paper will dissolve and the seeds may begin to grow. All proceeds from the lanterns are put right back into the community to support local conservation and environmental protection efforts.
Yukio loved the Lantern Festival. Not only was it for a good cause, it was beautiful to watch and participate in. He knew there was more to it beyond just that, though. His Japanese mother had told him of sky lantern festivals back home, and other countries had similar festivals. In Japan they were flown for luck, and that was what he needed right now – a little bit of luck.
He stood in the queue to purchase a lantern at the city's booth, thinking about his future. In theory, he would be in his final year at DCU and preparing for graduation. Except he had dropped out, and for reasons that in retrospect were really stupid. Not long after he started university at 17, left to his own devices by his parents, Yukio fell in love. She was a girl he met one night at a club who, it turned out, was also a student at DCU, though a year ahead of him. She was friendly and flirtatious and gorgeous, and when she kissed him, he was hopelessly smitten. Yukio bent over backwards for her; he got her into the clubs he was DJ-ing at, he helped her with school assignments, he gave her the sun and moon and stars and whatever she asked for. He believed that she loved him like he loved her, fool that he was, because she told him so. She dumped him a couple of months later after hooking up with a club promoter who could get her into after-parties.
Heartbroken and absolutely devastated, Yukio quickly spiraled down into a spectacular, if private, mope; he stopped going to classes, stopped going to clubs, stopped DJ-ing, stopped doing much of anything, really. Yeah, his reaction was slightly excessive and melodramatic, but she had betrayed his trust, and that to teenage Yukio was like a knife to the heart. He wallowed in a weeks-long pity party of one, living on tears and venom and clove cigarettes. It wasn't until that phone call from his parents that set the entire cycle of lies into motion two years later that he got over it. Now he needed the luck to figure out a way to extricate himself from the Big Lie that he was still happily at DCU before graduation time came. Because that would undoubtedly reveal the truth. And he wasn't quite ready to fess up to it.
A nudge from behind broke Yukio out of his reverie, and he moved up to take his turn at the booth. Purchasing a single lantern, he was handed the paper balloon infused with seeds, a packet of starter powder to ignite the glow paste, and a small sheet of instructions. He nodded his thanks and set off to find a good spot to send it into the evening sky.
There were already a number of sky lanterns floating above the park, glowing like small suns come down to Earth. Yukio didn't want to be around crowds and families and children to light his lantern; he needed a bit of quiet to concentrate his thoughts on his dilemma and his wish for luck, much like he had done at the Wishing Tree. In a way, this would augment the wish he'd buried near the roots of the tree, wishing for a way to gracefully resolve the Big Lie – even if it meant another lie. He didn't believe in much, but he believed in luck, in love, and in hope. The latter was why he had been chosen by the Code to become a Moon Knight, which was further complicating the situation. He didn't want to rescind the vow he'd made to the Code, and that made it even more imperative that he find a way to prevent his parents from coming out for a fake "graduation."
He knew of a small clearing that was slightly off of the path through the park, and he made his way there. Not too many people had taken to the clearing to light their lanterns, a few couples and that was about it. Maybe they were sending the lanterns up for luck as well, he pondered. He wasn't partnered with anyone, and that made his heart ache a little bit. Sure, he had a crush on Abbey, a rather sizable one in fact. And who wouldn't? Abbey was cute and flirty and warm and friendly and she really seemed to like him, but he didn't know how much or to what degree. So far he had managed to keep his cool around her, mostly (a skill he'd learned in the aftermath of the breakup that led to the Big Lie). Still, he liked her a lot, and she reciprocated in a way that made him feel warm and fuzzy inside.
But again, he couldn't tell her the entire truth. Sure, he'd confided in her about the Big Lie, but there was the whole Moon Knight thing he couldn't share with her. Not without putting himself at risk for betrayal – what if she was actually a Chaos agent?
Heaving a deep sigh, he pushed that line of thought out of his mind. He needed to focus on the immediate need of wishing for luck in resolving his primary problem.
Yukio walked through the quiet clearing to the center and looked up at the sky, the stars beginning to appear as evening slipped into night. This was the perfect time and place to send up his sky lantern. Kneeling on the grass, he tore open a corner of the packet of starter powder and sprinkled it on the glow paste at the center of the cross piece which held the lantern open. Within short order the paste ignited, not like a flame, but in the same way as those weird glow worms in the caves around the reservoir glowed. He stood again and held the lantern so that the heat from the glow paste filled the lantern, waiting for the air to heat up enough that he could release it. At last he felt it tug at his fingers as the hot air inside it produced sufficient lift to get it airborne, and he carefully let it go.
He watched it float gently into the sky, taking his wishes and hopes for luck with it, and smiled.
(wc: 1057)
