By 4:46 a.m., we were evacuating the estate. Both physically and metaphysically.
The estate we had arrived at less than eight hours earlier.
Staff sprinted through the hallways carrying emergency crystals, ceremonial candles, humidifiers, emotionally stabilizing blankets, and six separate bags labeled L U C I E N — SPIRITUAL RECOVERY ITEMS.
Outside, rain hammered the mountainside while black SUVs lined the driveway once again like we were fleeing an active war zone instead of a wellness retreat.
Honestly, the energy suggested both.
"Careful with the moonwater!" Blaze shouted as two attendants nearly collided near the koi garden. "If it spills now we'll lose the coastal alignment!"
"I don't even know what that means anymore!" Marianne snapped.
She looked catastrophic.
Her hair was partially falling out of its clip, her robe belt was dragging behind her, and at some point she had simply stopped wearing shoes.
Three phones rang simultaneously in her hands.
She ignored all of them.
Meanwhile, inside the estate, Lucien sat motionless beneath blankets while Saturn and the Shinto priest spoke urgently beside the doorway in low, horrified voices.
I approached immediately.
"How bad?"
The priest looked at me with the exhausted thousand-yard stare of a man whose spiritual career had just been permanently altered.
"Dear God," he whispered softly. "I have never seen someone reject the moon in such a way."
I stared at him.
"The moon," he continued gravely, "is fully rejected."
A silence fell over the room so profound it almost became religious.
Blaze covered his mouth.
Saturn looked physically ill.
One of the healers sat directly down on the floor.
Lucien blinked weakly beneath the blankets.
"The moon feels emotionally invasive..."
The priest shut his eyes tightly.
"Oh, this is unprecedented."
"What happens if we don't leave?" I demanded.
Saturn answered immediately.
"He could become permanently terrestrial."
My blood ran cold.
"No."
"Yes."
Lucien looked at me with visible fear.
"What if I lose my sense of wonder?"
"You won't."
"What if I become interested in commercial property development?"
"Lucien," I said firmly, "I would rather dismantle capitalism itself."
Blaze openly burst into tears.
"That," he sobbed, "is the most romantic thing anyone has ever said."
Marianne walked directly into a support beam.
Nobody acknowledged it.
The priest turned sharply toward Saturn.
"How quickly can you reach coastal fog?"
Saturn hesitated.
Then his expression changed.
Slowly.
Terribly.
"Oh no."
Blaze froze.
"What?"
"The jet."
I felt immediate dread.
"What about the jet?"
"It's too slow."
Complete silence.
I stared at him.
"...It's a Gulfstream."
"Yes," Saturn snapped, "but Lucien's energetic field is collapsing faster than anticipated."
The priest nodded gravely.
"The moon damage accelerated the unraveling."
Marianne made a strangled noise somewhere behind me.
Saturn turned toward me with terrifying calm.
"There's only one option."
Five minutes later I found myself standing in the middle of the Hakone driveway authorizing the emergency charter of an experimental supersonic aircraft because Saturn believed Lucien's whimsy was operating on borrowed time.
This is what love does to powerful men.
"Sir," Marianne said blankly, staring at her tablet. "The prototype isn't technically approved for civilian use."
"Can it fly?"
"Yes."
"Then I don't care."
"The company is asking why we need it."
I looked over at Lucien, who was currently wrapped in six alpaca blankets while Blaze held crystals against his temples like defibrillator paddles.
"Tell them it's a medical emergency."
That was not technically false.
The convoy to the private airfield became increasingly deranged.
At one point Saturn demanded all electronic devices be switched to airplane mode because Lucien was "absorbing Bluetooth emotionally."
Blaze spent twenty straight minutes whispering affirmations into Lucien's hair.
The Shinto priest rode beside me in complete stunned silence before finally speaking.
"In all my years," he said quietly, "I have never witnessed a spirit reject celestial observation with such force."
I rubbed my temples.
"Can people even reject the moon?"
The priest looked out the rain-covered window.
"Apparently."
Fair enough.
By the time we reached the airfield, dawn was beginning to stain the horizon pale gray.
And there, illuminated by runway lights and pouring rain, sat the aircraft.
Sleek.
Silver.
Aggressively expensive.
Marianne looked at it with hollow eyes.
"I used to have achievable problems," she whispered.
The cabin had already been modified for emergency spiritual transport.
Of course it had.
Workers rushed onboard carrying:
- emergency salt lamps
- marine-layer humidifiers
- ethically sourced eucalyptus bundles
- and what appeared to be an entire portable sound bath
Meanwhile Lucien had deteriorated further.
He looked heartbreakingly soft beneath the blankets, hair falling into his eyes as he stared vaguely toward the runway.
"The sky feels corporate..."
Saturn inhaled sharply.
"That's a very bad sign."
Blaze knelt beside him instantly.
"Stay with us."
"What if I become emotionally compatible with networking events?"
"You stop that right now."
The priest suddenly stepped back from Lucien with visible alarm.
Everyone froze.
"What?" Blaze demanded.
The priest looked pale.
"...His aura just flickered fluorescent."
Absolute panic exploded across the runway.
One healer fainted directly into a puddle.
Another started chanting.
Marianne finally broke completely.
She looked up at the stormy Japanese sky and screamed:
"HE IS JUST A TWINK."
Silence.
Pure silence.
Lucien looked up weakly from the blankets.
"That felt targeted."
"I'm sorry," Marianne whispered immediately, beginning to cry. "I haven't slept in thirty-six hours."
Honestly?
Reasonable.