Miss Witch Doesn't Want to be a Diva

The train slowly started on the tracks, countless raindrops fell from the sky, striking the window, splashing beads of water, forming streams that blurred the view. The cold wind blew the curtains, bringing in the damp mist from outside.

On the grey-clad earth, a line of vehicles, like tiny ants, moved across the vastness. Cloaked in raincoats, holding umbrellas, people continually moved old things onto trucks during the rainy season, while others stood in the rain, staring blankly at the ruins of the city through the curtain of rain, bidding their final farewell.

The train kept moving, faster and faster, and everything in sight gradually receded, becoming more and more indistinct until it was no longer visible.

Leaning against the window, Hexia quickly wrote black letters on yellowing pages with her pen, stories depicting ancient legends. In the stories, those people, the ancient refugees who lost their homelands, had crossed the dark and empty universe to come to a brand-new world. They came for asylum and finally found a place to live in this remote land.

Small pavilions stood on desolate hills, surrounded by no signs of human life, only desolate grasslands and wilderness. Occasionally, wind fishes rode the cold currents from the north, crossing the sky.

Silver wind fishes in clear weather would refract shimmering scale-light, and when they encountered moist air currents, water droplets would condense on their surfaces and fall, forming continuous curtains of rain.

Wind fishes are Transcendent creatures that love rain. In such seasons, they play and shuttle through the rainwater, touring the sky as if they were in an underwater world.

Gradually, more and more people lived here, and the small pavilions turned into tall buildings built along the mountains. They kept expanding, with some skyscrapers reaching into the clouds. During the rain, one could sit by the window sill and watch the Silver Scale wind fishes swimming past outside.

In mid-July, the heatwave of summer slowly subsided, and the liveliest festival in the city arrived. Children, holding hands with adults, walked among the palace-like buildings, watching performances along the street: generals in bright armors, dancing girls waving long sleeves, and poets playing the lute, recounting stories.

Tall buildings and palaces radiated colorful lights at night, illuminating the dark sky. Flights of aircraft shuttled between these ancient and advanced layers of buildings, as bustling as thousands of birds.

Although it was an age of advanced technology, people still cherished the customs of the past, passing them down from generation to generation.

However, the tide of time also slowly swept over this remote corner of Star Domain.

A prolonged civil war broke out, with an ever-increasing demand for military industries. Countless migrants moved from various parts of the federation, and numerous giant corporations also sent many technicians to this remote planet to help establish Underground Cities. Mines were opened, and the roaring of machines like giant beasts resounded day and night.

These industrial giants were like the steel backbone of the federation, and under their support, one after another Sun-class space warship took off, soaring into the vast universe. Their azure trails, like rising stars, eclipsed the day, no matter how many suns there were in the sky.

Dark raindrops fell from the sky, and birds drowned in the murky waters. Wind fishes no longer visited this city; skyscrapers stood solitary in the rain, and no one was seen on the streets anymore.

The decades-long brutal civil war finally ended, and reform relentlessly advanced throughout the federation. Numerous officials and nobles were sent to the execution grounds, and one after another, once-renowned giant corporations fell. After finally clearing these internal abscesses, the federation slowly welcomed a rebirth.

Gradually, the industrial giants on this planet also came to a halt, the once-ubiquitous industrial groups gradually withdrew, and some buildings left too late or unable to be moved were exposed to the rain, slowly turning into ruins full of wreckage, regrettable yet inevitable.

In the undulating tide of the era, a city, a planet, and even a nation or a civilization seemed so insignificant, stirring feelings of wandering and helplessness.

All that had passed was gone; grievances, incomprehension, doubts, and pessimism, various emotions emerged between the lines of the story. The remaining residents guarded in these increasingly cold high-rises, watching as the deserted ruins spread slowly, until the roof tiles collapsed, revealing corroded beams that once bore the backbone of the structure.

Far from the azure sky, falling into the pitch-black ruins of the underground, the residents who refused to leave wandered through these ancient and stagnant floors, and the struggle began anew with each passing day.

The yellowed edges of the pages were dampened by the rain drifting in from the window, making some of the words blurred. Although it hindered reading, it also lent an air of melancholy and the sense of time's depreciation to the story.

As she neared the end, the young girl's writing slowed, and her pauses grew longer. She pondered how to conclude such a tale.

Was it merely a sad story telling of history, just a melancholic legend mourning what was no more, could there be a happy ending, could it still give people hope...

"In the end, they stood in the pouring rain, letting the cold rain wash over them, and aboard the rocking and jolting vehicle, they slowly left that place,"

"Without the sorrow of parting, without the relief of release, just such a plain forgetting."

"Not everything is worth remembering, nor does all in memory need to be beautified; perhaps forgetting is the best solace, and they will build a small pavilion on a new hillock."

"That pavilion will gradually rise higher, and their children will happily frolic within it, not remembering the distressing past, not burdening their children with heavy loads, letting them grow up happy and free, no longer vexed by the past's array of troubles."

"May we all break free from the shadows of the past and start anew," the writing slowly came to a halt here. Hexia put down her pen, sitting by the window and gazing out at the world through the curtain of rain, no longer able to see the distant tiny dot of the city.

Closing the yellowed notebook, she stared at the still blank page for a long time before Hexia finally wrote one more line.

'Birds drowned in black rain—memories in the tower of a thousand sails.'

This was her seven-colored picture book, as well as the pitch-black memories of her past.

Though her mother, sister, and father had all walked through her life, in the end, they turned into dark sediments, buried deep in her memories. She would remember many words and scenes, and also forget the sorrow and sadness, no longer lingering in this black curtain of rain.

From now on, she would no longer obsess over seeking those past events and memories. Let her immature self tightly seal them in the distant past; perhaps many years later, she would reopen this notebook, flipping through the blurred and wetted script.

Life is still long, and new pages will gradually unfold.