We're All Gazing at the Stars

"Do you know what an abyss is?"

"What?"

It was an autumn afternoon, and the desolate Shikkotsu Forest seemed even more bleak. A gentle autumn breeze drifted past as a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old blonde girl sat atop a platform in the stone forest, swinging her legs and turning to look at the girl beside her.

Her youthful face was brimming with vitality and exuberance.

"Is it a bottomless pit?"

"Well, that counts too, but that's not it." Beneath the hood and mask, the girl's voice sounded somewhat ethereal.

The blonde girl thought hard and said, "Then is it an abstract thing that's frightening, terrifying, and painful in the mind? People are always talking about falling into an abyss or something, like when you locked me in that dark room for willpower training."

"No, no, no." The girl waved her hands repeatedly. "Besides, you agreed to that training yourself. You volunteered for it. I didn't force you."

In the acid pool nearby, the Slug Sage sank at the bottom, with one eye poking out as she secretly watched the girls.

When is this woman leaving?

I'm so scared.

"What do you mean?" the blonde girl grumbled petulantly. "Fine, even if I volunteered, what exactly are you trying to say?"

"Do you know? The abyss is in the sky. It's the brightest star in the night sky."

"A star? Shouldn't an abyss be so dark that you can't see anything? The brightest? Is it the sun?"

"Where should I begin?" the girl said. "In the endless universe, there is a kind of celestial body. It is the pitch-black abyss. Anything that passes by it will be captured by its infinitely immense gravity and fall into the abyss. It is called a black hole."

"That sounds terrifying."

"Don't interrupt me."

The blonde girl