68 pages • 2 hours read
Ryka AokiLight from Uncommon Stars
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “March/April”
Part 2, Chapter 12 Summary
Katrina and Shizuka officially begin their lessons, but Katrina strangely seems to be getting worse. Tremon mocks Shizuka, suggesting that she only chose Katrina to make amends for her past sins.
Shizuka notices Katrina using her computer in an uncomfortable corner of the kitchen and promises to get better Wi-fi. Meanwhile, Lan is having nightmares about the Empire attacking Earth, so Shirley forces her to call Shizuka to relax. In the Matías’ shop, as Lucy works, she muses on the importance of legacy. Spotting Lan and Shizuka on a date, Lucy laughs at the unexpected pairing.
Part 2, Chapter 13 Summary
Lan and Shizuka go to a Chinese Vietnamese noodle house. Shizuka worries about people overhearing their conversation, but Lan explains that her phone is scrambling their words. Shizuka starts sharing her struggles with Katrina, only to notice that the language scrambler is off; Lan turned it off to save power. Annoyed that some nearby music students seem to have heard that she has a new student, Shizuka accuses Lan of viewing this music talk as trivial compared to a galactic war. Though Lan attempts to be polite, she admits as much. Shizuka gets angry but stays because the food comes out. Changing topics, Shizuka asks Lan about Wi-fi, and Lan realizes Shizuka is technologically illiterate.
Lan gives Katrina a cube that provides lightning-speed Wi-fi. She also gives Shizuka a laptop, and Katrina shows her how to use it. Later in her room, Katrina logs onto a porn site to upload a livestream of herself masturbating, her main source of income, but Astrid walks in on her. Katrina assumes that she will be kicked out, but Shizuka merely calls her down to ask about some violin performances Katrina posted. In one video, Katrina plays the soundtrack of a game called NetherTale, where the player must escape from Hell. This concept hits close to home for Shizuka; Katrina explains most people prefer to win the game by taking the “non-killing route” (121), which Shizuka finds charming but naïve. Shizuka spends the night watching more videos of other students and musicians, but of course there are no videos of herself.
Part 2, Chapter 14 Summary
Shizuka finally has a musical breakthrough with Katrina after realizing that Katrina needs someone to follow. As a trans girl, Katrina has learned to be keenly observant, alert to small nuances and good at making predictions. Lan, Markus, and the twins visit to set up a recording studio for Katrina using their advanced technology. The studio can project “virtual matter” to create costumes and backdrops and can even change Katrina’s body. Katrina meets Shirley and, on noticing that Lan seems somewhat ashamed of her daughter, draws a connection to her own parent’s behavior. Later, as Katrina practices in her recording studio, Shizuka realizes that Katrina is playing on her own.
Part 2, Chapter 15 Summary
Shizuka and Tremon Philippe have Hainan chicken in Caputo’s Pizza, a traditionally Italian restaurant that has evolved into an Asian restaurant. Tremon fears that Katrina isn’t progressing fast enough. Shizuka confronts him about Hell’s failure to give victims lasting fame, pointing out that more people know Papa Caputo than the latest winner of a recent violin competition.
Lucy Matía continues working on Katrina’s violin, and Lan keeps having nightmares. Lan dreads that the “Endplague” might reach Earth or even already be there. As customers play the Stargate game, she reflects on it as an “uncanny simulation” (145) of the Endplague. Hoping to help her mother, Shirley tries to look Shizuka up; she’s perplexed to find almost nothing online but a message board of people theorizing that Shizuka sold her previous six students’ souls to the devil. Shirley shows it to her mother.
Part 2, Chapter 16 Summary
In the park, Lan confronts Shizuka about sacrificing children’s souls, referring to music as stupid and useless. They break up, but when Lan gets back, she wonders if there’s more to the situation that Shizuka didn’t share. Lan notes that sales always start to drop if they don’t change up the donuts now and then.
At home, Shizuka tries to get Katrina to sing, but Katrina refuses, fearing her voice is too masculine. They go to the Matía’s shop to pick up Katrina’s violin, which Katrina has decided to name “Aubergine.” On the way there, Shizuka asks Katrina about the YouTube violinist Lindsey Stirling. Katrina explains that Lindsey Stirling is so popular because she tries to be a force for good in the world; Katrina adds that Shizuka is a force for good too. After bringing Aubergine home, Shizuka instructs Katrina to sing through the violin.
Part 2, Chapter 17 Summary
Lan and her family are puzzled by their failing business. They don’t see how humans could notice that the donuts are replicated. However, Aunty Floresta senses that Edwin has a gift for understanding the subtleties of human food. She begins taking him around the city to try different pastries.
In the recording studio, Katrina is hit with a wave of self-doubt. Concerned that Katrina is in distress, Shirley appears and insists that Katrina is under the control of Shizuka. Shirley considers wiping Katrina’s memory to save her, but Shizuka rushes in and stops her. Shirley reveals the theory that Shizuka has been selling her students’ souls to the devil, and Shizuka admits that this is true. Katrina is unshaken—she assumed all along there would be some price to pay. Katrina begins to play without using the projector, and the music takes Shirley back to an early memory of when she was a presentient computer program. Shirley accepts that Katrina is there of her free will and leaves.
Afterward, Katrina and Shizuka discuss Shizuka’s deal, and Katrina confirms that, for now, there’s nothing she wants badly enough for which to trade her soul. Astrid worries that Shizuka will back down on the deal, but Shizuka insists she won’t.
Part 2, Chapter 18 Summary
Lucy Matía reflects on how different things could’ve been if she had been born a boy. Andrew, inspired by her work on Katrina’s violin, asks her to start teaching him the craft. Meanwhile, at Starrgate Donut, Markus nearly pulls a blaster on a teenager who is harassing him. Lan stops him, fearing that he might be infected by the Endplague. Shirley says she has reassessed Shizuka’s character based on new data, and Lan concludes that Shizuka is much more complex than she had given her credit for. Lan goes to Shizuka’s house and apologizes awkwardly, and they go out to eat banh mi. For the first time, Lan really tries to savor the flavors and to listen to what Shizuka says about music.
Katrina begins to get frustrated. The violin wants to say something, but she doesn’t know what. She runs outside and wants to scream, but she doesn’t know what she wants to say. When she comes home, Shizuka tells her that the sound of the violin doesn’t come from the strings, but from the dark hollow inside.
Part 2 Analysis
This section introduces the concept of the “Endplague,” a term that won’t be fully explained until later but is compared to the Stargate game: as the player progresses, eventually the difficulty peaks, and the same levels start repeating over and over. Because the game is infinite, “everyone who played was destined to lose, either from fatigue or resignation” (145). The existential horror of infinitely repeating levels without making any progress is linked to the theme of The Inevitability of Change and Transition. The world of Los Angeles is in a constant state of flux, but civilizations infected by the Endplague have stagnated, which leads to them eventually destroying themselves. Unsurprisingly, civilizations infected by the Endplague have also left behind music, among other things. The motif of music, in this context, represents the power of change, as it is constantly flowing, shifting, and evolving.
The question of whether Markus, and later Lan, have been infected by the Endplague is one that haunts the story. Markus’s anger issues, his resentment at being trapped on Earth, and his despair at leaving behind his home, could be symptoms of the Endplague as easily as they may just be a normal response to trauma. Lan, though she is not yet showing signs of being infected, has not escaped the influence of her Endplague-infested civilization. She cannot appreciate Shizuka’s love of music because her own civilization left music behind long ago. Only after their breakup does Lan rethink her views and start finally trying to listen, a shift that marks The Transformative Power of Music and connects food and music as motifs signifying creativity and change.
The idea of legacy is prevalent throughout this section, tying into the theme of The Influence of Parents on Children. Lucy Matía reflects on a Latin-Fusion bistro that opened up a few years ago only to fail while the old burrito place down the street still remains. She attributes the older place’s survival to its legacy in the community: “Legacy mattered for burritos. For donut shops. For violins” (110). A similar idea emerges in Chapter 15, which opens with the story of how Caputo’s Pizza has evolved from an Italian to an Asian restaurant after being passed from one immigrant family to another. The new family kept the name Caputo because of its legacy. Shizuka points out to Tremon that despite the promise of immortality, Hell seems unable to provide the kind of immortality embodied by Caputo’s Pizza: one based in community and legacy. This realization foreshadows Shizuka’s later conclusion that instead of sacrificing Katrina to save herself, she must sacrifice herself to save Katrina, so that Katrina may carry on the legacy of her music.
Another symbol introduced in this section is the fictional game NetherTale, a reference to the real-life game UnderTale. In both the fictional and real games, players are trapped in a hellish world that they must escape, and they may choose a non-violent route to win. Shizuka finds this a “sweet idea” but believes “that was not how one saved souls, especially when the soul one was saving was one’s own” (124). In Shizuka’s mind, the only option she has is to sacrifice Katrina; any other possibility is a naïve fantasy. However, as Shizuka grows closer to Katrina, she will eventually adopt this ideal of “salvation without killing” as her own.
Katrina’s struggle to find her voice through the violin is an important step in her character growth, connecting to the theme of Identity and the Struggle for Self-Acceptance. In this section, Katrina finally begins to develop a sense of self-worth. While planning her apology for the pornography incident, she thinks, “Don’t I have a right to be who I am?” (120), something that has never occurred to her before. Shizuka realizes that while her former students all “clawed for their musical freedom,” Katrina “had always been free. She had been free of acceptance, free of love, free of trust. So now she clung to anyone who would tell her which way to go, which way was safe” (128). As Katrina explains, “When you’re trans, you’re always looking and listening […] It’s following, but it’s more than that. You need to see what might be coming, hear the next danger ahead” (130). This special kind of awareness reflects the theme of The Struggles of Refugees and Outsiders. Although Shizuka knows Katrina will eventually need to find her own voice, she sees that Katrina must start by following. When Katrina grows frustrated, Shizuka points out that the music of the violin comes from the reverberations inside the hollows. Likewise, Katrina must search inside her “hollows,” her “nothingness” (174), to find what she wants to say.
