[#CreativeAward2026/#AllCategoriesDivision] Entry (Short Story) "Thorns of the Universe"

Thorns of the Universe — Capella, the Lily of the Galaxy.
Once, I was called that for my purity and delicate heart.
However, that whiteness was not a pristine light, but perhaps a crystal I formed to protect myself, frozen from being unable to withstand the pressure of my surroundings.
I have lived my whole life protecting myself from an invisible thorn in my heart called "deprivation," while simultaneously being wounded by it.
I wanted to shine as softly as the Milky Way, but before I knew it, my way of life had become filled with sharp, icy thorns meant to compensate for what I lacked and to defend myself.
The more I tried to be beautiful, the sharper those thorns became, and unknowingly, they were passed down to the next generation — the intergenerational cycle of "poverty."
It is not something special; it might just be a family story found anywhere.

Characters

Capella (Protagonist)

: Raised in her parents' home being indoctrinated with "we have no money" and forced to endure excessive self-denial. As a reaction, she gives too much to her own children, and caught between her husband's debt problems and her children's collapse into dependency, she struggles to break the negative cycle.

Sirius (Ex-husband)

: Vain, repeatedly incurs debt, and neglects his family. Even after the divorce, his shadow looms heavily over the children.

Antares (Father-in-law)

: The root cause of the family's financial problems. With his opaque spending habits, he dragged the entire family into a bottomless swamp.

Vega (Mother-in-law)

: Concerned with appearances, she kept covering up her husband's debts. She would also take advantage of Capella's naivety.

Pollux (Mother)

: Raised in extreme poverty, she indoctrinated Capella with the value that "luxury is the enemy." Consequently, she raised her daughter to be someone who "doesn't know how to doubt others."

Spica (Daughter)

: Has been withdrawing into her room for years. Plagued by lethargy and self-denial, she has lost all connection with society.

Rigel (Son)

: Following in his father's footsteps, he repeatedly engages in extravagant spending and debt beyond his means. He is prone to shifting blame, causing his mother great distress.

Childhood

The star system of my childhood was a quiet stellar system on the outskirts of the galaxy. A home planet with a white surface.
When the spring cycle arrived, the light flowers (Tulip Nebula and Narcissus Nebula) that my father star had painstakingly cultivated would vividly color the orbit, and I could often see the young lives of neighboring planets looking enviously into our gravitational field from over the fence.
From the outside, it was a perfectly normal, medium-sized stellar family.
However, that pristine whiteness was gradually eroded by the shadow of "abnormal gravitational anxiety about the future" that the home planet harbored.
Most of the energy brought by the father star was sucked away by the home planet into a black hole called "savings for the future," which we could never touch.
There were three child stars. Two dog-type satellites and three cat-type satellites as companions.
On the surface, it looked lively and happy.
But once the atmospheric door was closed, the air became heavy and stagnant.
The home planet's voice was always low, tinged with fatigue and irritation.

"Our star system is energy-deficient."
"Other stars are other stars, we are us." These two phrases were the spells that covered the entire star system.

In reality, we should not have had any trouble living on the father star's output.
The home planet was not just stingy.

Thinking back now, even if it took time, the asteroids we had for snacks were mostly naturally formed, and light fruits were always served with dinner's nuclear fusion.
She never made too much, and the education was simply "do not release anything to waste."
It was a thorough self-restraint that not only spared physical resources but also froze even the heat of the heart for the sake of an invisible anxiety called the "future."

At the time, I had no way of knowing the home planet's true intentions.

Even so, the home planet itself grew up in an extremely impoverished nebula,
and the values instilled by the grandmother planet—"luxury is the enemy," "you must endure"—
dominated the star system as an abnormal level of energy thrift.
The planting of the phrase "we are short on energy" and the harsh endurance actually forced upon us.

Objectively speaking, we were never
actually destitute, but
the home planet's words rewritten reality.
Inside the cage of "false poverty gravity" created by Pollux,
an intangible darkness was constructed within my core.

The kitchen was always dim, permeated with the scent of gray soup extracted from silver small fish fossils and seaweed nebulae—
tasteless and bland, meant only to silence hunger.

That liquid, which didn't even feel warm,
was too faint and hollow to warm my core.

As I crushed fragments of a pitch-black comet in a heated mortar,
a small spirit of rebellion sprouted deep in my chest, wanting to repaint this gray.
My stardust garment was made entirely of waste materials released from neighboring planets.

Faded peach-colored stardust, a lattice ring that had become too short.

Every time my friends at the Interstellar Academy showed off their newly forged, shining rings,
I would wear a fake smile, digging sharp claws into my palms out of envy for the brilliance I couldn't reach.
The whiteness that was once called the "Lily of the Galaxy"

was eventually painted over by the gray of waste materials,
and to hide that stain, I thrust even sharper thorns outward.

It was like cold static electricity mixed into the edges of my words,
an invisible barrier that stole the body heat of anyone who tried to get close.

One cold winter cycle, I forgot to tighten the gravity valve a little.

The moment the sound of energy leakage (forgetting to turn off the electricity) echoed through the quiet star system,
the home planet's face twisted in an instant.
"Are you wasting energy again!?"
The home planet grabbed the center of my shoulder with force
and dragged me to the gravity valve.
"Tighten it! Properly, all the way! Do you have any idea how many light-years worth of energy this is!"
That night, I curled up in the depths of my orbit,
trembling for hours under the cold gaze that feared "loss" more than a mother's love.
A single drop of energy felt like a crime that could destroy the star system.

That night, the words "energy shortage" were burned into my core.

Married Life

Marriage mercilessly shattered my optimistic fantasy that "things would work out somehow."
The husband planet, who would take me out of the cage filled with the claustrophobia of my home star system,

looked like a prince planet to me at the time.

If I were with him, I would be freed from that suffocating "endurance gravity"
—a baseless sense of liberation paralyzed my caution.

The husband planet's home star system was a den of debt.

Sirius, too, had been bathed in the "light of vanity" emitted by his father, Antares,
and instead of polishing his own core, he had only been taught to coat his exterior
with fake brilliance.

The wastefulness he repeated might have been the flip side of a sad survival instinct,
trying to fill an empty core.

One night, I finally reached my limit.
In the pitch-black orbit where the energy supply had been cut off,
I was serving plasma droplets to the child stars by the light of a faint glow.
That was when the husband planet returned.

Spraying the scent of thick, perfume-like particles and high-grade fuel.

At that moment, two collection ships approached from the outside,
and when I was hit by warning beams, I raised my voice for the first time.
"Stop it already! The child stars are here! Why are we in such a vortex of debt!"
The husband planet grabbed my outer shell roughly and pushed me against the wall.

"Shut up. It's because you keep saying unnecessary things!"
That night, I resisted the husband planet in earnest for the first time.

Scuffling and colliding, the endurance I had built up came crashing down with a sound.
Amidst intense anger that felt like sparks flying, I realized.

If things continued like this, before the star that was me shattered,
the child stars would cease to exist. With a trembling voice,
I let out from the depths of my core, with a heat that would burn away all the silence until now,
"If you hurt the child stars any more... I will seriously leave it to the laws of the galaxy.

I will leave your side, this very instant!"
I took on three energy mining jobs.
Even when my fingertips wore down and my core screamed,
I was not allowed to stop.

The thorns I emitted were a shield to protect myself from my husband's irresponsibility,
but at the same time, they were a sharp barrier that rejected dialogue with him.

The defensive instinct of "I won't let myself be taken from anymore"
made me excessively sharp. Every time the child stars approached wanting affection,
I would unconsciously turn the shutter of my heart into a sharp blade and bring it down, saying, "I'm busy now" or "That's not my money."
Even knowing that it was cutting into their curiosity and trust,

I couldn't maintain my core otherwise.

And those thorns, without me knowing,
also hurt the soft outer shells of the child stars
who had tried to approach seeking comfort.

The weapon meant to protect myself was turning into a lethal instrument against those I loved.
Even while realizing that cruel transformation,
I writhed in fear that if I retracted the thorns, I would collapse.
But one time, I shuddered when I realized that my reflection in the mirror

completely overlapped with that cold shadow of my mother, Pollux, who once dominated me.
"To break the chain, I must first have the 'courage to be hurt'
and pull these thorns out one by one, even if it means bleeding."

—That painful realization was the first step in changing my orbit.
It was unimaginable agony.
Every time I pulled out a thorn that had assimilated as part of me for years,
hot energy leaked from my core,
and I was struck by a sense of collapse that made my consciousness fade.
"If I let go of this, won't I just return to being defenseless, fragile stardust?"
Trembling with that fear, I continued to pull out the thorns.
With every one I pulled, the faces of the children I had hurt in the past floated up,
and a flare of regret burned my chest.
But where the thorns had been, strangely, a quiet body heat began to dwell, welling up from within myself, something I had never felt before.
Through that pain, my outer shell was gradually reconstructed from prickly ice crystals
into a soft crust capable of reflecting and accepting the light of others.

One night, when I returned home exhausted,
young Rigel came running up to me with a broken toy satellite.

Even that innocent gravity of him clinging to me
felt to me at the time like an invader coming to steal my energy.

"Not now! Handle it yourself!" I said,
releasing a thorn of sharp words and pushing him away.
My emotional surge erupted as an uncontrolled flare,
sharply cutting through Rigel's soft gravity sphere.

The invisible interference of light distorted his young orbit,
flinging him away. Seeing the same cold, unfeeling light in his eyes as he froze in surprise
as my mother planet had,
I realized my thorns had hurt the one I loved,
and I trembled alone in the corner of the nuclear fusion reactor.

My salary mostly disappeared into living expenses and repaying the husband planet's debts.
One night, the husband planet took the money for the child stars' maintenance parts that I was supposed to buy the next morning from my energy storage.
When I cried and clung to him, he pushed me away with cold eyes.

"…Ah, I can't do this anymore." I don't want them to go through the same hardships as my mother planet.
With that single thought, even if it meant cutting my own energy consumption,

I gave the child stars as many light-candies and new rings as I could.
Perhaps it was a reaction.
While inhaling dark particles on the veranda orbit for the first time,

I looked at the galaxy's moon and thought.
"If I'm going to be destroyed, I'll throw this man-planet away and live laughing."
When the divorce was finally finalized,

I believed, "With this, the chains are broken. From here on, it's my turn!"

Present, and to the child stars

However,
the curse had taken root deep in my core.
My adult son-star, Rigel,
suddenly left the company where he had maintained a stable orbit for three light-years.
"It's a black company."
"It's not my fault. If the mother planet had given me a more decent energy education..." he repeated as if spitting it out.

My daughter-star, Spica,
had been shut away in a dim orbit for seven light-years since her middle period.

Afraid of touching the "thorns for survival" that I emitted,
and at the same time unable to withstand the overly powerful gravity emitted by the outer galaxy,
she had closed her observation window herself.

But perhaps it is because I have begun to gradually retract the "thorns"
I had spread to protect myself and have started to focus simply on quietly polishing my own core.
As if invited by that gentle gravity,

the daughter-star rarely came out from her core,
and she began to silently wipe the crust vessel I was washing.
"It's nice weather today, isn't it?" When I said that, the daughter-star nodded slightly.

It was different from the dynamic change of "discarding false light" that Rigel showed;

it was a quiet and certain sign of regeneration,
trying to find her own place within the gravity of daily life.
She was no longer afraid of my thorns.

The light of distant stars shines through the gaps in the closed observation window.
She no longer looked away from that brilliance.
Perhaps she is beginning to understand in her own way that the powerful gravity of the outer galaxy is not meant to crush her,
but is a vast ocean for her to swim out into someday.

Recently, many collection ship postcards have started arriving for my son-star.
On his orbit, the remains of brand-name rings and simple supply satellites,
and red "expired" warning holograms flicker,
and the rusty smell of used-up ion batteries fills the air.

One night, from Rigel when he returned home,
the same thick, perfume-like particle scent that my former husband used to have drifted over. At that moment, my core froze.

What he was wearing was the same shadow as the "dark matter"
that his father, Sirius, once used to put on a brave front.

I sit alone in the kitchen, stunned.

My son-star's debt, wastefulness, and shifting of responsibility.

My daughter-star's withdrawal and lethargy.

Everything overlaps with my past.

From the mother planet to me,
and from me to the child stars

—The intergenerational cycle of poverty continued, changing its form.

It is not just a matter of energy (mental and material resources).
The danger of trusting people too much,
the impulsive waste of energy trying to fill the gaps in one's heart,
and the gravity of resignation that says, "I'm just not worth it anyway."

These are passed down like an invisible baton.
But precisely because I have realized it now,
there is an orbit that can be changed.

I want to search for that quiet light, the one Spica used to wipe away the fragments of the crust,
within Rigel as well.

Right now, to fill the void in his own core,
he is buying up false stars that are beyond his means,
trying to burn himself out with their glare.

The neon light of extreme colors that burns the retina, which I once craved.
He is temporarily numbing the dark anxiety of "having nothing"
by wrapping himself in violently expensive light.

The fact that I kept giving him excessive energy without considering his gravitational balance,
thinking, "I don't want him to drink the same gray soup as my mother,"
may have ironically robbed him of the opportunity to nurture his own light.

Rigel, who became dependent on the artificial brilliance provided to him,
without knowing the pain of generating light on his own.

If that sense of lack is what is causing his current runaway state.

One stormy night, Rigel almost drifted away due to a lack of energy.

The radio waves of demands pouring down and the empty storage tank.
The latest model ring just blinked in vain,
and did not warm his freezing core.

"...Why, even though I'm shining so brightly, am I so cold?"
On the other side of the communication, it was as if he were being confronted with the fact that his vanity
was nothing more than a cold lump of metal.
A few days before that, I had shaken off his clinging hand,
and with a heart feeling as if it were being torn apart, I cut off the communication, saying,
"I don't have a single drop of energy left to share with you."

That cold rejection must have driven him into this vacuum of loneliness,
and forced him to look at himself like a mirror.
I don't know how he remembered the way I used to fix satellites in the middle of the night, hiding my tattered outer shell.
However, in his current silence, there was a heavy stillness,
as if he had stopped chasing the shadow of his father, Sirius,
and had finally begun to recognize me, the mother star who had been whittling herself away,
as a single star.
The fear that the more he dressed himself in false light, the more the void within him would expand.

Perhaps he realized for the first time that the light he was wearing was not meant to make him shine, but was a "burden" to hide himself.
"It's fine now. Something like this..." Beyond the noise of the communication,
I felt like I heard the metallic sound of him disconnecting the ring he was so proud of.
But until he completely sheds that false light
and notices his own faint starlight,
I will stop supplying energy.

It was a heart-wrenching decision,
as if denying my love as a mother.

I will believe in him standing up with his own gravity.
I want to continue to emit a quiet gravity from afar,
like warming the cold vacuum.

Then one day, Rigel appeared in my orbit, which was rare.

On his arm, there was no longer the latest observation ring that emitted excessive light,
which he once boasted, "This is my worth."

"...I sold this. And this. ...I earned it by working a little at that mine over there. It's so little it's laughable, but please use it to pay back the energy." What was bluntly handed to me was a small, mud-stained energy crystal from which he had scraped off the false light.
It was the exact opposite of that "tasteless gray soup" from back then,
emitting a dense, amber glow that seemed to transmit heat from the core.

The cold liquid that couldn't warm my core back then.
But now, this small amount of heat that Rigel offered
was dazzling and warm enough to melt my frozen star system.
It was still too small a light to fill the black hole

of enormous debt,
but it was the first moment he let go of the "false light" of his own will
and lit his own heat.

Even if it is not a perfect galaxy like the Milky Way,
we take root in an orbit full of thorns, and at our own speed,
we create a new star system.

To return this black hole called a cycle to a nebula of light
in my generation.

Even if it is a slightly slow journey through the universe.
In this corner of the galaxy, we start walking again,
lighting our own light.

The sharp defensive thorns that once covered me had eventually lost their edges, transforming into a soft halo of light that quietly enveloped my precious family.

Afterword

***

I will continue to write,

so I would be happy if you could support me!
Actually, I have written several novels so far.

Thank you for reading until the end.