“What do you mean by that?” Quin asked confused.

“Well, I’ve told you that my family isn’t from Crows’ Road,” she said a bit weakly, “But what I haven’t told you is that we aren’t from Ade Lai either but from the Heavenly Crane Empire. We’ve left it-- No, to be honest, we had to flee the country when I was only four years old.” Leyn paused for a bit and Quin tried to guess why they had to flee the Heavenly Crane Empire. “The reason was due to the internal struggles for the inheritance of the throne. My father was the Emperor but he was assassinated, and there were a lot of claimants to the throne. Furthermore, although as his only child I had one of the strongest claims, I was just a child. I didn’t have many supporters and my mother didn’t have much political power either. She had hoped that there wouldn’t be any problems, but just in the first week there was another assassination attempt on us. It was unsuccessful, but my mother didn’t want to risk her and especially my life, so we secretly escaped the very next day.

“You know that the Heavenly Crane Empire and the Duchy of Ade Lai have quite an antagonistic relationship, so my mother thought that Ade Lai would be the best place to start a new life. Though Crows’ Road was indeed safe for us, life here wasn’t as easy as my mother had believed. She barely had enough money to buy a small house and had to work hard physical labour to earn money. At the first year, school was actually quite good, I had made some friends and they were nice to me overall. However, in my second-year things have changed and for some time I didn’t understand the reason behind this but then I found out that some of my classmates discovered that we were from the Heavenly Crane Empire.

“I don’t know how they came to know of this fact, but it changed everything. All my friends left me and my previous classmates became mean to me; then they even started to bully me quite soon. Long story short, none of my classmates wanted to be friends with me and I had not the courage to try and befriend someone else after all of this. Honestly, if that day you didn’t injure your leg, I probably would have no friends to this day.” She let out a sorrowful sigh.

“Why haven’t you told me this before?” Quin asked.

Leyn sat up and said, “I... I was afraid that it’d change everything... For years I was really scared that one of my classmates would tell you this, but for some reason they didn’t.” She could barely finish her last sentence as she was fighting her tears.

“Hey,” Quin said. He sat up as well and then hugged her. “I’m sorry, but everything is alright now. Don’t worry, I won’t stop being your friend just because you’re from another country.” He started to caress her back and at that point, Leyn was not able to hold back her tears anymore and began to cry loudly. They stayed like that for a long time until Leyn managed to calm down. Damn, she also had such a difficult life yet this is the first time I’ve seen her crying. Quin felt even more guilty about what he did in the past, now that he had heard Leyn’s story. It does make a lot more sense now, he thought. She was so persistent about us making up because I was her only friend. Still, I think I’d have long given up on me if I were in her place.

“I...” Quin looked at her and began to speak. “I’ve been trying to tell you this since you’ve arrived in Hounxi, but I just couldn’t get to it. I didn’t know what to say and to be honest, it’s something that is really difficult for me to say even though it was me who was in the wrong... Well, I guess I really shouldn’t draw this out any longer.” Quin paused to gather his courage and said, “I’m sorry about the things I’ve done and said to you back in Crow’s Road. I had a lot of time to think during my journey to Hounxi and since I’ve been here. I’ve told you that a lot of things happened, and those also made me realize my past mistakes.

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“You know, I didn’t have the best childhood either. I’ve told you already about my father a few times, so you know how he is and well, you can see that he left us right after my injury. My mother told me that he only went to another city for some kind of top secret work, but it’s not that hard to realize what the truth is behind it all.

“The Shrieker’s attack back in first grade wasn’t something that I could easily get over, but you were there for me the whole time and meant a lot to me. Still, after gaining my lightning element, the strength just got to my head and it doesn’t matter that almost everyone was constantly saying how unique and special I am, I know that it was still my fault. I’m not trying to say these just as excuses, because it was still me who did all of those things and those are my fault; I just want to tell you the whole story behind it.

“Even thinking back to those times, I simply don’t understand why I became the way I did. The funny thing is that I still remember what I did at the cafeteria -- about which you’ve tried to talk me -- just to impress Aline, and where did all of that led to? She did what my father, and simply abandoned me even though I lost my cultivation to protect her.” Quin snorted. “Yet I still have a mixture of emotions regarding her and I really don’t understand why. I was so sure that I’ve gotten over her, but there are times I still feel a lingering love for her.” He stopped to think for a bit. “Man, sorry, I can’t believe myself,” he said in a self-mocking tone. “I was trying to apologize to you for all of these things, and thank you for not giving up on me despite everything, but in the end it just turned out to be about my self-pity and whining.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Leyn said and tousled his hair smiling. She really has a nice smile, he thought. “Aren’t that what friends are for? It’s true that I was quite shocked back then, and didn’t understand why you were acting like that. Those things you’ve said and did really hurt, but I just knew that you weren’t truly like that... And that you’ll definitely realize those things, so I guess I was right.” She laughed lightly, relieved. “I’m really happy that you apologized to me.

“Quin, you shouldn’t worry about talking to me about things you feel bad about. I’ll be always here to listen to you and help you if you need anything.”

“Thanks,” Quin said, smiling as well, “But it applies to you as well.”

They were sitting there silently for some time and then lay back to continue watching the sky.

“Have you been thinking about the stars?” Leyn asked after some time.

“Not really, why?”

“When I was a kid, we didn’t really have that many toys and I was usually up till late at night. I’ve been the night owl type all my life, and without anything to play with I was often out stargazing. It was something simple but fun. At first I’ve imagined all kinds of characters, creatures and items into them by connecting the stars with lines, then later I began to think a lot about them as well. I’ve always wondered what they are, that maybe there were humans living on them as well. Maybe they had an entirely different culture, or maybe they weren’t humans at all. Maybe they had three legs and eight eyes or maybe they were like the snakes, without legs. You know, these kinds of things.” She let out a small chuckle. “I guess this was just some kind of escape mechanism of mine, but still to this very day I really enjoy it.”

“Honestly, I’ve never been interested in them but I have still read a few things about them, mostly various theories of which there were a lot. Most of them were quite stupid though,” he said with a laugh. “A lot of people say that in truth they are Heavenly Spirits, but because they are too far away and because our eyes wouldn’t able to see their true forms, we see them as stars. Well, it just sounds stupid. I mean, we can see them in almost the same place every night, and it’s been like that for centuries. I really doubt that those Heavenly Spirits if they exist at all, would just stand still during their entire lives.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that before, but I haven’t thought of it like that,” Leyn said with a hint of embarrassment. “And what about the others?” she asked.

“I can only remember a few, but there was one according to which the fabric of the sky has holes in it, and those are the stars. A different one says that they are magical lamps, just like what we have but a lot bigger, and another one says that they are like our sun, just a lot smaller. Hm, that’s all I remember, sorry.”

“Don’t worry,” Leyn said smiling and they kept gazing at the sky like that for a long time.