The “Us” That Were Erased
[Mainline B: The Moonlit Battlefield, Starlight At Fingertips]
“The ‘Us’ That Were Erased”
Cor Hoshino thought she was simply tired from reading.
Intel from Wutai spies hidden in Midgar, internal movements within Shinra, the media once again placing new accusations upon Wutai while glorifying the young new president who had just taken over Shinra… line after line gave her a headache.
She set the documents aside and rubbed her temples, thinking she would only lie down for a moment.
When she opened her eyes again, she was no longer inside her old Wutai residence.
There were no tatami mats beneath her feet, no familiar garden trees or wind chimes outside the window.
Only a vast space suspended somewhere between water and starlight, where streams of luminous green flowed slowly in the distance like traces left behind by countless living beings.
Cor Hoshino fell silent for a moment.
Even after saying it aloud, she herself felt it wasn’t quite right.
Because Sesame Paste was nearby, its black feathers swaying gently within the current of light as it pecked calmly at a nonexistent ground, looking more at ease than she did.
If even chocobos could come along after death, then the planet’s rules were far too casual.
She looked down at herself and realized her clothes had changed.
Not the casual attire she wore before sleeping, nor the crimson garments she once favored.
White fabric fitted close to her figure, gold embroidery extending along the collar and sleeves like ceremonial vestments from some ancient and solemn rite.
The mantle upon her shoulders was light yet carried weight, its golden clasps reflecting the flowing radiance around her.
Then she noticed the weapon in her hand.
Long, balanced, its blade cold white, adorned with elaborate rose engravings far too elegant for a weapon meant merely to kill.
Yet when she held it, it felt completely natural, as though it had always belonged to her.
Ever since Wutai’s defeat, she had not truly wielded a weapon for seven years.
During those years, she thought she had long since become unrelated to battlefields.
She devoted herself to reconstruction, negotiations, calming old clans, maneuvering against the new regime, waiting for opportunities, paving the road for Yuffie… She learned to protect what remained through words, silence, strategy, and thought.
And now, she stood here once more.
A battle could be sensed in the distance.
Not a battlefield of the living world. There was no smoke, yet she could feel beings no longer belonging to the mortal realm fighting some immense existence.
Some presences were gentle, some blazing, some steady, others heavy with guilt and obsession.
Each one felt like someone already dead, yet unwilling to truly leave.
She did not know who she had come for.
Not for Wutai. Not for Yuffie. Not for Cloud and the others. Not even for the Planet.
She had always been someone with clear allegiances, someone who knew exactly where she stood, what she should protect, and what she should abandon.
Wutai, family, war… even love itself. She had never liked being pushed along by others.
Yet this time, something deeper had called her.
Not a summoning circle. Not an order. Not an oath.
Only a pull igniting somewhere deep within her bloodline, at the core of her soul.
Like long ago, when someone else had once heard the same distress signal and crossed distant stars to answer it.
She tightened her grip on the lance.
If she had been called here, then she would simply do what needed to be done first.
When she saw Sephiroth, her first reaction was not shock, but the immediate remark: “What are you even wearing?”
Frowning, her gaze swept from the overly ornate decoration upon his shoulder down to the black feathered pauldrons, cloak, coat, and loose sleeves.
Nothing like the SOLDIER uniform she remembered, nor the silver-haired man standing amidst smoke and fire.
The words left her mouth before she could stop them.
That tone had come too naturally. As though they were still standing at the edge of some battlefield, where she would criticize the enemy’s hero as usual, and he would simply lower his eyes toward her with that faintly helpless yet indulgent expression.
The person she could once pout and mock like that was already gone.
The boy who used to pull her behind him amidst chaos before she even had time to curse at danger.
The young man who celebrated her birthday beneath the ginkgo trees and awkwardly placed a hairpin in her hair.
The lover who held her at night, breathing unevenly as he restrained himself again and again.
That person had died the moment she shouted “monster” at him with reddened eyes before the war ended.
Perhaps… even earlier than that.
Slowly, she withdrew her expression and looked away.
Sephiroth looked at her without surprise or hesitation. Only lingering on her slightly longer than he did on others.
She still had not completely changed.
There was still starlight within those eyes. Once flamboyant, sharp, and too proud to bow, now like embers buried beneath ash.
Within his memory, she remained a precise coordinate.
A coordinate from when he was still human.
Looking at her, his voice was calm, as though discussing an archived record long since filed away.
Then he spoke many things.
The Lifestream. Possibilities. Inheritance of the Planet. A new world.
His words descended like something from another dimension, cold and immense, utterly unlike the language she once knew.
But there were several terms she understood.
Black Materia. Meteor. The Planet. The Lifestream. Dominion. God.
Yuffie, Cloud… the things they had spoken of were not exaggerations.
He truly intended to do it.
He had not merely changed…
He had transformed himself into something from an entirely different plane of existence, far beyond anything she could have imagined.
Pushed himself to a place from which he no longer intended to return.
Sephiroth’s voice remained calm.
“Within the Lifestream, I witnessed many possibilities.”
His eyes rested upon her.
Cor’s shoulders stiffened slightly, her fingers curling instinctively.
“In some possibilities, the war between Shinra and Wutai ended differently. For the sake of a ceasefire agreement, you were sent to Shinra in a political marriage. I volunteered myself as the groom.”
Sephiroth spoke as though recounting history unrelated to himself.
“At the wedding in Junon, I protected you from those who sought to exploit you. Later… you returned my feelings.”
“In another possibility, Wutai was never defeated. After the war ended, I went to the Leviathan Temple as promised, and we married there, under the blessing of warrior Da Chao.”
Cor’s lips parted slightly, but no sound emerged.
“There were other futures. I discovered the truth, yet did not choose this path.”
“With Angeal, Genesis, Zack, and many others, we overthrew Shinra.”
Every sentence pierced her heart like cold blades.
Because those futures were too beautiful. And because he spoke of them too calmly.
Calmly… as though reading reports already deemed unqualified.
Cor looked at him for a long time before finally finding her voice.
Her voice was soft, carrying traces of accusation.
“You knew what kind of lives we could have lived… and you still chose this path.”
Sephiroth did not deny it.
“They were merely possibilities. Possibilities do not inherently deserve to exist.”
Her pupils contracted slightly.
He added: “Those futures were incomplete. Not the optimal solution. Therefore, they will be erased.”
At that instant, something struck Cor head-on.
And still chosen to discard them.
He had witnessed those paths, weighed them carefully, and abandoned them in the end.
Suddenly, a ringing filled her ears, as though every sound in existence had been swallowed by the distant Lifestream.
She could no longer hear whether Sephiroth continued speaking.
Something invisible crushed against her chest, preventing air from entering, preventing her throat from making sound. Her heartbeat pounded heavily against her eardrums, making even her own breathing feel unfamiliar.
For years, she had found excuses for him.
Loneliness consumed him because no one could save him.
He lost his sanity in Nibelheim.
For a very long time, she even feared that perhaps her own word “monster” had pushed him farther away.
If she had not shouted it that day.
If she had not turned away.
If she had not raised her gunlance and charged at him.
If she had looked back at him on that bridge.
If someone else in Nibelheim had managed to reach him.
Perhaps things could have been different.
That thought tormented her for years. She believed all her pain at least had a place to rest.
But now, he personally told her:
Those futures where they did not lose each other.
Those futures where he still chose to live, to love, to remain among humanity.
Those futures she thought existed only inside her regret.
He had seen every single one.
And still chosen this path.
The pain came late, but heavy enough to crush the soul.
In this lifetime… it truly was impossible.
Defeat, Wutai, Shinra, their separation back then… Every reason she had repeatedly used to torture herself suddenly lost all weight.
The Sephiroth standing before her no longer chose that road.
Nor did he choose her, or their future.
She lowered her eyes. After a long while, she forced the pain lodged in her chest down little by little.
The words left her lips slowly, as though she were finally sealing the coffin upon a certain future with her own hands.
When she looked up again, the pain remained, but no longer scattered.
“Then why tell me all this?”
“Because you deserve to witness the new world.”
He raised his hand slightly, and the distant Lifestream surged violently.
“When the Planet is reborn, you may stand beside me.”
Cor looked at him silently. For a very long time.
Then finally tilted her head and laughed softly, as though she had finally seen through something.
“You’re still so self-righteous. You don’t get to decide that for me.”
She tightened her grip on the lance.
At last, she understood why she had been called here.
For the Sephiroths within those timelines who still chose to live.
The Sephiroths who had not abandoned humanity or crushed every future beneath their feet.
And for the Cor Hoshinos who had lived entirely different lives alongside them. Those possibilities where “he and she” continued onward.
She could not reclaim those lives. Nor could she return the man before her to them.
But at the very least, she could not allow him to erase them all like faulty data.
“Those possibilities were real,” She said. “You may destroy them.”
Warmth surged against her eyelids, but she forcibly suppressed it.
When she opened her eyes again, the starlight within them remained brilliant.
From the corner of her vision, she noticed the enormous presence reforming in the distance.
Slowly, she raised the tip of her lance.
“But those possibilities… those ‘us’es. I will protect them.”
For that single moment, he truly paused.
A memory surfaced from a corner long archived away.
That Wutaian girl who once cursed at him while holding a gunlance upon the battlefield had, in the end, still chosen to stand against him.
He lowered his gaze slightly.
The next instant, his figure vanished into the surging Lifestream.
Cor did not watch the direction he disappeared toward.
She turned instead, lance pointed forward.
Her legs tightened against Sesame Paste’s sides as she charged toward the newly reformed Weapon Majeure.
Cor Hoshino abruptly opened her eyes.
Sunlight beyond the paper windows was almost painfully bright, and the house was so quiet she could only hear the wind passing through the chimes beneath the corridor.
She sat upon the tatami, the intelligence reports she had been reading still beside her.
Midgar, Shinra, the media, Wutai… the dense writing remained before her eyes, yet it took a long while before she remembered she had merely intended to rest briefly.
Pressing a hand to her forehead, she tried to recall it, but her mind was completely blank.
No scenery. No voices. No faces.
Only an indescribable aftershock remained, as though something had been left behind somewhere forever beyond her reach.
Suddenly, an uneasy cry from the courtyard chocobo rang out below.
Startled, she immediately stood and went downstairs.
In the courtyard, Karasu had just returned from the workshop and was struggling to calm Sesame Paste while holding a stack of blueprints.
“Sis, you’re awake?” He turned back, frowning. “Sesame Paste suddenly started crying out. Isn’t this usually when he sleeps? Did he have a nightmare or something?”
Sesame Paste shook his black feathers and cried softly again.
He was no longer young. His feathers no longer gleamed with the same youthful brilliance, and there was less arrogance in the way it moved, yet he remained healthy and spirited, still the Sesame Paste she knew.
Cor sat beneath the corridor and gently pressed his head against her shoulder.
“Alright, alright. It’s okay now.” She stroked its feathers gently over and over, her voice quiet. “I’m right here. What are you panicking for?”
As though understanding her, Sesame Paste leaned closer.
As if the two of them had truly experienced something together.
Karasu looked at her with confusion.
“Sis, you look awful. Didn’t sleep well?”
Cor intended to say she was fine, but the words stopped midway.
Because she truly did feel terrible.
Her arms hurt. Her shoulders hurt. Her back hurt.
Especially her right arm – aching as though she had wielded some heavy weapon for a very long time. Even her knuckles felt stiff, as if they had tightly gripped a long polearm.
Her whole body felt like it had fought an enormous battle.
She was already past thirty. It wasn’t as though she had never been exhausted before, but waking from a nap feeling like this was absurd.
She lowered her gaze toward her empty hands.
Yet somehow, it still felt as though she had been holding something.
“…Maybe I slept in a bad position,” She said casually.
Karasu looked unconvinced, muttering a few complaints about her becoming an old granny before carrying the blueprints back inside.
The courtyard fell quiet again.
Only Feimui slowly waddled over, her round pale-brown body accompanied by soft spoiled meows and the constant swaying of her stubby tail.
One hand scratched beneath Feimui’s chin while the other continued brushing through Sesame Paste’s black feathers slowly, over and over, as though soothing them… and herself.
But the place that truly hurt was not her body.
It felt as though a huge piece had been ripped from her chest.
She could not explain what she had lost, could not even remember what she had dreamed, and yet her chest ached with emptiness.
As though some final sliver of hope, some final expectation, had been uprooted completely while she slept.
All these years, she had known she should stop thinking about him.
The war was over. Wutai had surrendered.
And he had long since gone somewhere impossibly distant.
Yet the human heart was ridiculous sometimes. No matter how rational one spoke or how steadily one lived, deep within there always remained a tiny spark.
Maybe one day, he would turn back.
Maybe one day, the truth would have another explanation.
Maybe one day, she would learn he had not entirely chosen that path willingly.
But that spark had always remained.
And now, after one sleep, it was gone.
Extinguished without warning.
Cor lowered her eyes, her chest so heavy she could barely breathe.
Sensing her unease, Sesame Paste gently nudged her hand.
She paused, then forced a small smile.
Her voice was steady enough that she almost believed it herself.
She stroked Sesame Paste’s head again and lifted her eyes toward the sky above the courtyard.
The afternoon light was bright as clouds drifted slowly past the old Wutai rooftops.
Feimui leaned against her thigh and slowly fell asleep, her round body breathing more and more evenly.
She still remembered nothing.
Only that somewhere beyond her awareness, beyond her memory…
Something had completely ended.
Sephiroth’s figure once again disappeared into the Lifestream.
The defeat of Weapon Majeure did not shake him.
Streams of light surged around him as endless memories, deaths, divergences, and possibilities flowed past his sides.
He lowered his lashes, as though gazing down upon a cosmic chart already unfolded to its furthest limit.
Failed branches will be filtered out.
Erroneous possibilities will be discarded.
The current direction only proved one thing more clearly.
The timeline where Cloud existed was the truly correct one.
That was precisely why so many people had gathered here.
Aerith, Zack, Angeal, Glenn’s trio, Rosen… Even Cloud and the others still alive, along with Cor Hoshino who had just appeared…
Everyone who had once crossed paths with him, everyone who had once tried to alter his direction, seemed drawn back onto this road by some invisible force.
And the more this happened, the more valuable this path became – worthy of becoming the axis he would seize with his own hands.
Yet deep within the Lifestream, there remained an emptiness.
That void had existed for a very long time.
Within the Lifestream, Sephiroth had once witnessed the convergence of all life and memories.
He had also seen members of the Hoshino family.
He saw them close their eyes in old age or illness.
Saw their bodies return to the Planet as energy. Saw the memories of their lives dissolve into these streams of light.
Joy, rage, battle, weddings, family, festivals, death… All these traces remained within the Planet.
But the core was missing.
That thing which could be called spirit, will, the essence of the soul, never truly sank into the Lifestream.
It was as though the body and memories were accepted by the Planet, yet the innermost core detached itself from the cycle at the final moment.
More strangely still, it was not only the Hoshino family.
He had seen people with no Hoshino blood at all.
Spouses. Closest companions. Those who had fought beside them until the very end…
Through the memories they left behind, it was clear they had formed profound bonds with certain members of the Hoshino family during life.
After death, they too never fully returned.
The Lifestream accepted only part of them. The deeper core remained disconnected.
In other possibilities he observed, timelines where he and Cor Hoshino loved each other showed the same phenomenon.
Cor’s body returned to the Planet. Her memories remained within the Lifestream’s radiance…
But her core disappeared.
Within those possibilities, he himself was the same.
The Sephiroth who spent a lifetime with her, traveled with children, overthrew Shinra alongside Angeal, Genesis, and Zack… After death, he too never fully returned to the Lifestream.
His body and memories were devoured by the Planet.
But his core vanished from the Planet’s cycle entirely.
This defied reason. And Sephiroth couldn’t bring himself to oversee it.
Long ago, while investigating the secrets within Angeal and Genesis, he had searched every Shinra archive related to human experimentation. Mako, cells, degradation, experimental projects — he read every page.
Within the basement of the Shinra Manor in Nibelheim, he read everything he was and was not supposed to see.
And because of those records, he chose to walk the path that led him here.
Among those files had once been an old document.
It read like ancient myth, recording species originating from beyond the Planet. Some plundered. Some parasitized. Some remained and became residents upon the Planet.
One passage mentioned that around two thousand years ago, a celestial, cosmic race from distant stars responded to the Planet’s distress signal and crossed the sea of stars to arrive here.
The document ended there.
The following pages had been torn away, leaving behind only Hojo’s annotation–
“Groundless. Worthless for research. Deleted.”
At the time, Sephiroth had not lingered long upon that file.
Now, however, those torn-out blank spaces reopened within the Lifestream.
The Hoshino family’s cores, seemingly removed from the Lifestream for two thousand years.
Those who formed deep bonds with them in life, yet likewise vanished from the Lifestream after death.
The Cor Hoshinos of those possibilities.
And the Sephiroths within those same possibilities.
The Lifestream flowed around him, countless memories still revolving according to the Planet’s laws.
Only that emptiness remained unanswered.
Sephiroth raised his eyes.
For the first time, within the depths of those cyan pupils, there reflected a direction beyond the Planet itself.
