Distant Thunder — Minos × Albafica
✦ About This Story ✦
Fandom: Saint Seiya – The Lost Canvas
Pairing: Minos (Griffon) × Albafica (Pisces)
Tone: quiet, persistent, post-war romanticism
Themes: distance, longing, devotion without force
Length: short story
Author’s Note:
Originally written in Japanese and translated into English under close author supervision (with the assistance of ChatGPT).
Every passage has been checked for tone, imagery, and emotional resonance to balance the distance between Minos and Albafica with the intimacy that never fully reaches its destination.
This piece takes place three years after the Holy War.
The war has ended, the truce holds, and each visit to the Palace of Pisces arrives like thunder in the distance:
a sound half-remembered, half-feared, yet impossible to ignore.
What remains is the refusal that never bowed,
and the persistence that never bent,
until one day, in the thick heat of early summer,
a door finally opens.
You may now proceed directly to the story.
✦✦✦
Japanese version: 遠雷
Illustration for the original Japanese version: Author’s Note
French translation : Le Tonnerre lointain
Distant Thunder
✦✦
The twelve palaces guarding Athena’s temple lie deep within the Sanctuary, and each Gold Saint can sense which palace has been breached while standing in their own. Thus Albafica, guardian of the final house—the Palace of Pisces—already knew that an intruder had passed through Aquarius.
So when Minos of the Celestial Noble Star, a Specter of the Underworld clad in ink-dark Surplice, appeared before the palace, Albafica was already waiting at the front gate to meet him.
He cast a Crimson Demon Rose toward Minos. Minos slipped aside, catching the flower in his right hand.
“What a dangerous welcome. And here I was thinking I’d come as a guest.”
Albafica gave him a cool, dismissive glance.
“I don’t care. Leave before I dispose of you.”
“I wrote a letter to the Goddess, you know. I’ve received her permission. Were that not the case, do you think a Specter like me could have reached you without a single battle?”
Albafica’s brow tightened.
Sasha’s romanticism again… how troublesome.
He understood the situation all too well. The Holy War had ended, a fragile reconciliation had taken root, and Sanctuary and the Underworld now held a truce. Sasha wished for friendship between both realms. Minos, ever deft, had taken advantage of that wish. First he sought to win Sasha’s favor, pouring out his earnest sentiments for Albafica until she finally sided with him—and only then did he stride here openly.
“Minos says he admires you,” Sasha had told him. “That fighting you was a cleansing experience. His letters kept saying he wished to repent. Please, Albafica—meet with him.”
Even Sasha had pleaded his case.
Yet Albafica found it hard to believe. Minos, who once declared, “The powerless exist only to obey the powerful,” would never have his heart “cleansed” by a mere defeat.
“So you’ve even beguiled Lady Athena. What are you after?”
When Albafica asked, Minos feigned innocence, smiling lightly.
“Beguiled? Hardly. At least not her—and never you. Surely you see that by now. We’ve repeated this exchange a hundred times. Even your fellow Saints in the lower palaces, who once refused to trust me, have begun to pity me. They no longer ask why I come. They simply let me through.”
Albafica met his gaze with sharpened eyes.
“What kind of fool keeps coming back, even after being humiliated this far.”
How long had it been since the Holy War ended? Albafica counted back. Three years, at least.
This man—one of the three Judges of the Underworld, a figure of high authority—had come again and again to the Palace of Pisces. Turned away at the gate, repelled by force, dismissed without mercy. The eleven guardians from Aries onward had once opposed him fiercely; now they no longer even reprimanded him. Albafica knew this well.
Albafica turned his back to Minos, who still lingered at the entrance, and walked silently into the palace. Minos followed. It was the first time he had ever stepped inside.
Deep within the palace, Albafica stopped and faced him. Minos halted as well.
“So? What business do you have with me?”
Minos answered,
“You made me come a hundred times just to speak to you? Your pride is something extraordinary. …But perhaps that is why I don’t begrudge the effort.”
He drew the Crimson Demon Rose closer, as if testing its scent. Albafica asked:
“Does its poison no longer affect you?”
“Who knows? If you were to drive your toxin into my heart again, I imagine I’d be in mortal danger. But for now, this body seems to have gained some resistance.”
Albafica let out a quiet breath.
“You Specters are troublesome. Kill you with poison, and you resurrect with immunity. At this rate, it’ll be your poison that destroys me.”
“How uncharacteristically timid. You, of all people.”
Minos laughed. Then continued:
“These three years, through all your merciless refusals, I kept thinking. Why did I lose to you? Why do I wish—so much—to see you again?”
He spoke to the rose in his hand, as though speaking to Albafica himself.
“No matter how fiercely I sought to impose my will, you never bowed. And I realized—I admired that. Your refusal, your impossibility. That is why you’re beautiful. Like venom devouring venom, desire consuming desire—until, in the end, I found myself lowering my head simply to meet you again.”
“Persistent, aren’t you…”
Albafica turned from him once more. Minos spoke to his back:
“I decided to emulate you. Just this once, to see something through.”
Albafica’s steps faltered for a moment, then resumed. Minos followed again.
“You’ve come this far so many times. If you wished, you could have forced your way in. Yet you never did.”
Albafica said this without turning. Minos replied,
“Because if that were enough to make you look at me, I would have done it.”
Albafica remembered Minos’s former power—how, with unseen threads, he could bind him completely and bend any situation to his will. Yet Minos had done none of that. He had only waited, relentlessly, for Albafica’s consent.
Day after day, night after night, standing before the Palace of Pisces. And upon leaving, always placing a single peony on the palace steps.
Is it just obsession?
Albafica asked himself—and the answer rose within him: No.
He knew now. What had guided this man all this time was something else.
They turned from the main corridor into a side passage, where sunlight spilled through an opening ahead. As they walked toward the light, a garden unfolded before them—filled entirely with blooming peonies.
Minos widened his eyes. Those pale crimson petals were unforgettable.
“These are the peonies you left each time you came. The flowers did no harm, so I planted them here. Before I knew it, they had spread across the whole garden. It used to be nothing but wild grass.”
Albafica said this, then turned to face him.
“Why peonies?”
“Well. When I thought of you—not in battle—I felt this flower suited you better than a rose.”
Minos spoke gently. Albafica turned his gaze aside, faintly embarrassed. Butterflies and bees danced among the blossoms as though competing. In the clouds above, distant thunder murmured. Summer was drawing near.
“You and Lady Athena… you’re both hopeless dreamers. What am I to either of you? All I ever wished was to live as a Saint of Pisces worthy of my late master. I defended Sanctuary from your invasion and protected what I was meant to protect. That should have been enough. I only wished to spend my days looking upon gentle flowers like these.”
Above them, thunder rumbled within the clouds.
Then the rain began.
It grew fierce at once—falling in sheets, turning into a downpour streaked with lightning.
“Stay here until the rain passes.”
Albafica said quietly.
—Until the rain passes.
Even when the rain ceased, the Specter did not leave the Palace of Pisces.
—Until dawn.
Even when dawn broke, the Specter did not emerge.
—Until summer ends.
—…Until this life ends.
✦ ✦ ✦
—The End
✦ End note ✦
This work is part of a growing bilingual collection of Minos × Albafica short stories.
Thank you for reading — your support sustains the quiet storm behind this project.
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