Overview
The Star Tower is a quiet orphanage in Ainomori, and the place where Leiras lives and keeps her night watch.
It is more than a building. To anyone who has lost their way, the Star Tower is a home where one can moor for a while: the lamp by the door is never too bright, the tea is never too hot, and the seat by the window is always kept for whoever needs the quiet. The weary may wrap themselves in a blanket here; those who no longer know where to go may simply look up at the stars for a while first.
Leiras is the sister of the Star Tower, and the mother in the children’s eyes. But her care does not work through commands — it works through staying close. She slows things down, so that everyone can find their way back at their own pace.
The Orphanage
The Star Tower takes in the children, travelers, and lost souls of Ainomori who have nowhere else to go.
Here, an “orphan” is not only a child who has lost their family. Those who have lost their direction, their memories, or their place in the world are caught by the Star Tower too. Leiras often calls them her little lambs — as if to remind them that even when you are lost, someone is still willing to wait for you to come home.
Inside the tower there are books, old blankets, windows for stargazing, and quiet rooms. It is not solemn like a temple, nor lively like a town square; the Star Tower is more like a small lamp in Ainomori’s night.
Stargazing
From the heights of the Star Tower, one can see the sky above Ainomori. Leiras watched the stars here for many years, and it was from their courses that she read Titan’s weakening and the forest’s coming change.
For Leiras, stargazing is neither divination nor escape. It is a kind of watch-keeping: confirming that the world is still there, that light still falls, and that those who have wandered off might still, one day, be found.
Its Place in the Catastrophe
When Ainomori faced its dying, the Star Tower became the place where Leiras walked toward sacrifice.
Titan’s strength was failing, and she had begun to draw power from the land and from living things. Leiras believed that Titan needed love to sustain her — and so she tried to offer her own existence, together with that of a lost traveler, as kindling for Titan’s revival. The traveler escaped in the end, and the Star Tower was left holding one of Ainomori’s quietest and heaviest memories.
But the Star Tower did not become only the site of a tragedy. After the catastrophe, it remained a place one could come back to. Precisely because it once came so close to going out, that small lamp needs all the more to be kept burning.
The Star Tower Today
The Star Tower today is like a window seat for all of Ainomori. It does not rush anyone to pull themselves together, nor does it ask anyone to tell their whole story at once.
If someone is tired, there are blankets. If someone is homesick for the past, there is the starry sky. If someone is sorting through their memories, there will be a clean table waiting. The Star Tower exists lightly, but stubbornly: as long as anyone still needs to come back, it will stay lit.