Kuroda sat on the edge of a dying star. It wasn't the bright, blinding sun it used to be. Now, it was just a giant, dull red ball of heat, flickering like a lightbulb about to burn out. There was no air out here, but that didn't seem to bother him. He just sat there with his hands on his knees, staring into the blackness of space.
And then, he started laughing.
It started as a small giggle, the kind you have when you remember a joke in a quiet room. But then it grew. Soon, he was clutching his stomach, his shoulders shaking, his mouth wide open in a roar of laughter that shouldn't have been audible in the vacuum of space, yet somehow was. He wasn't looking at a funny movie or a book. He was just looking at the empty void, laughing like he had just pulled off the greatest prank in history.
"Unbelievable," he whispered to himself. "All that effort for this."
Suddenly, the universe flinched.
