—Kids stay behind. Adults go out. Space still doesn’t care.

  With GDC’s white armbands still hanging behind us like a bad omen, we left the dock.

  Rankis’s sky was bright. My chest felt like sandpaper.

  Like—through the cracks of the “reality” I’d carefully arranged in my head, another reality was already peeking in.

  Walking at our usual brisk pace, Ahmad spoke with his usual calm.

  “Mu-Arcium transport. Tight deadline.”

  “Tight how?” I demanded.

  He checked the numbers on his terminal and answered, as casually as if he was reading lunch options.

  “Four hours.”

  “Four hours?! Your ‘tight’ is broken!”

  Miyu sucked in a small breath.

  Genichiro gave a rough snort. “Short half-life. If we’re late, the ‘cargo’ becomes ‘something else.’”

  “Hazmat that turns into ‘something else’ is the worst phrase I’ve ever heard!”

  That was when a set of small footsteps came chasing after us.

  “Wait! Let me come too!”

  Thomas.

  Eyes straight ahead, breath ragged, shoulders bobbing—he’d sprinted to match an adult’s pace even though he was still a kid. That kind of stretching hurt to watch.

  “This time, no,” Ahmad said immediately.

  His voice stayed quiet.

  Which somehow made it impossible to argue with.

  “But—”

  “No,” Ahmad repeated. “On a standard assignment, children don’t go out.”

  It was common sense.

  And still, hearing it made my chest tighten. Space broke common sense so easily that the words meant to protect it felt heavy.

  Thomas’s lips trembled. “I can help. I helped at the graveyard… and in the fight.”

  Genichiro cut in, blunt as ever.

  “Don’t be useful. Stay alive here.”

  “Your wording!” I shot back automatically.

  Genichiro shrugged like he couldn’t be bothered to care. “Living people are the most useful. Dead is zero.”

  Thomas clenched his jaw.

  He looked like he might cry… and then he didn’t.

  That restraint was a child’s restraint, and it hurt anyway.

  I crouched in front of him so our eyes were level. If you “act like an adult” in moments like this, you only make kids bleed more.

  “Thomas. Stay this time. Please.”

  “...‘Please’ is unfair,” he muttered.

  “It is. I know.” I forced myself to keep my voice steady. “But even if it’s unfair, I’m asking.”

  He bit his lip, then finally nodded.

  “...Okay. I’ll wait at base. But you have to contact me. Always.”

  “Always,” I promised.

  “We’ll do scheduled check-ins as well,” Ahmad added.

  That—a system—made Thomas look a little more saved.

  Kids relax when there’s a mechanism in place.

  Honestly, adults do too.

  At Shiratori’s boarding hatch, Thomas looked at Miyu one last time.

  Miyu met his gaze and nodded, small and firm.

  “...We’ll come back,” she said.

  Thomas clenched his fist.

  “Yeah. ...Come back.”

  For a moment, the air before launch softened.

  And because it softened, the hardness coming next felt scarier.

  Inside the ship, the sound changed.

  Not the sound of a city—the sound of a ship.

  Not a living creature’s breathing—mechanical circulation.

  “Ship AI: Shiratori will begin emergency sortie sequence. Authorization: Ahmad.”

  “Authorize,” Ahmad replied.

  Even if an AI piloted the ship, the last responsibility still belonged to a human. When Ahmad said he’d “handle it,” this was what it meant.

  The phrase sounded light.

  The act was closer to offering your throat.

  Genichiro dropped into the auxiliary seat and jabbed at his terminal.

  “Engines, weapons, check. ...Dammit, this wiring’s got a bad habit again.”

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  “A habit?!” I snapped. “What does ‘habit’ mean for wires?!”

  “A habit is a habit. Like verbal tics.”

  “Don’t use my verbal tics as an example!”

  This time, I was covering the role Thomas had been doing—radar, comms, situational awareness, and all the miscellaneous chores.

  “Misc staff” was a very convenient label.

  Convenient labels usually hit you in the stomach.

  “Radar green. External comms—GDC surveillance line is still on…”

  “Can you cut it?” Miyu asked.

  I swallowed the urge to click my tongue.

  Genichiro answered instead. “Cutting it makes trouble multiply. And multiplied trouble becomes their excuse.”

  “Leave it connected this time,” Ahmad said. “If we need to, we cut it from our side.”

  “‘If we need to’ is a terrifying phrase.”

  “That’s reality,” Genichiro said.

  I hated his tone.

  I hated that he was right.

  “Destination: Rangata System, Planet Tyuro. ETA: within sixty minutes. Standard flight will not meet the deadline.”

  The AI’s voice was too calm, which made it worse.

  Ahmad spoke. “We’ll use the Ancients’ reactor in ultra-high-speed inflation pulse mode.”

  My stomach sank.

  The air that had softened earlier snapped hard again.

  “...That’s the ‘my organs slide around’ one, right?”

  Genichiro answered instantly.

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t answer instantly! Deny it!”

  “Can’t.”

  Miyu murmured, almost to herself. “...Inflating space…?”

  “Explanation: During Striped-leap navigation, we maximize the interval of the inflation skid acting on υ-space and use phase differentials to increase velocity. Human effects: disruption of gravity sensation, vestibular confusion, nausea.

  In other words: we grab a shortcut-layer of space, stretch it like elastic, and let the phase slip fling us forward. ”

  Stop. Don’t explain politely. Nausea is nausea.

  “Shiratori, shut up!”

  “A ‘shut up’ function is not installed.”

  “The worst!”

  Normally, a ship AI had the same name as the ship. So yes—the AI was literally “Shiratori.”

  And today it felt like it had gotten more talkative. Had it learned not to “hold back” around me?

  “Begin,” Ahmad ordered.

  No time to think.

  No time to bargain.

  “Ultra-high-speed mode: online. Reconfirm safety restraints.”

  The harness tightened.

  The ship inhaled.

  Then the world stretched.

  The harness bit into my ribs. Somewhere deep in the hull, something whined like metal under teeth.

  Before the stars even became lines, my vision felt like it had turned into a thin plate—paper-thin, but with crushing pressure behind it.

  My body got pushed. My brain wobbled. My stomach got left behind.

  “—Ugh... ueeh…”

  The most pathetic sound escaped me.

  Numbers danced on the radar.

  Don’t. Don’t you dare get motion-sick too.

  “Phase stabilization confirmed. Superluminal pulses in progress.”

  “Ueeeh…”

  Genichiro said, blunt. “Don’t puke. If you puke, the number of cleaning runs goes up.”

  “That’s your concern?!”

  Miyu looked at me, brows knitting slightly. “Nardia…”

  “I’m... f-fine... I’m not fine…”

  “Yeah,” she said softly. “I can tell.”

  “If you can tell, at least hold my hand!”

  She hesitated for a heartbeat—then reached out.

  Her hand was cold.

  But when she gripped mine, it felt like I could turn back into a person.

  Just when my body thought it had caught up, it got left behind again.

  Space was mean.

  I held on and fought it—almost at the point of actually losing it—when the pressure abruptly released.

  My vision regained thickness.

  Stars returned to points.

  “Arrival. Transitioning to Tyuro descent orbit—Rangata System outer edge.”

  The AI sounded normal again.

  I hated how relieved I felt.

  “...I’m gonna die…”

  I rasped it out, and Genichiro immediately rasped back.

  “Don’t die. Watch the radar. Work.”

  “You assign jobs like a demon…”

  “Demon’s fine. This is the field.”

  “Stop saying ‘the field’ like it solves everything…”

  But I looked at the radar anyway.

  And once I was looking at it, I calmed down a little. The nanomachines GDC injected into us apparently had anti-nausea functions too—because the discomfort slid away as if someone had flipped a switch.

  Planet Tyuro looked exhausted from orbit.

  A dull brown surface under thin clouds.

  Near the equator, the scars of mining gaped open in several places—massive artificial valleys dotted with lights, like stitches sewn into the planet’s skin.

  “Descent begins. Atmosphere thin. Dust density: high.”

  Shiratori slipped into the air.

  There was shaking, but the gravity-magnetic barrier’s fluid control was perfect; no plasma formed outside at all. The speed had to be insane—Mach numbers that would’ve been absurd back on my homeworld.

  It made me remember the first time I met Ahmad on my planet.

  Then the dust turned the outside view muddy brown.

  I felt grit in my mouth even though the air was filtered, and it made me want to spit.

  Shiratori braked hard and settled neatly into the mine base’s export port.

  The mining base was a skeleton of metal.

  Scaffolds. Pipes. Containers.

  Unmanned mining machines rushed back and forth in constant motion.

  Inside, there were plenty of people, but everyone’s face looked washed out. Working here had to grind down both body and mind.

  Nobody talked unless they had to. Even the footsteps felt muted, swallowed by dust. A few miners watched us pass with the same expression you’d give a med-evac shuttle—hope mixed with relief that it wasn’t you. When one man’s gaze snagged on the GDC armband, he looked away so fast it was almost a flinch.

  “We’re Team Rashid, here on a GDC request,” Ahmad said.

  They ushered us into a back room immediately.

  “This way.”

  The receipt process was unnervingly fast. Ahmad flashed his terminal; it was done.

  Too fast.

  The clerk slid the approval stamp across the desk like it was on fire. His hands were clean, but his cuticles were chewed raw. He wouldn’t meet Ahmad’s eyes—kept glancing past us, toward the corridor cameras.

  A second later, a supervisor in a dust-stained suit appeared, smile too wide and too practiced.

  “Please proceed directly back to your vessel,” she said, voice bright enough to crack. “For everyone’s safety, we don’t… store that kind of item in the lobby.”

  Genichiro’s stare pinned her. “You’re rushing because you’re scared.”

  Her smile held for half a beat, then twitched. “We’re rushing because of your deadline.”

  “Same thing,” I muttered.

  The supervisor pretended she didn’t hear me and waved at a drone already hovering near the hatch—like it had been waiting the whole time.

  But there was no time to smell the trap.

  Maybe the lack of time was the trap.

  When we returned to Shiratori, a small black container was already being brought out.

  We waited in the hangar as a drone guided it in and secured it.

  The moment the hatch sealed and the container was fixed in place, I stared at it.

  The shielding was thick.

  When I touched it, it was cold.

  Cold—and yet it made the back of my neck feel hot. A cold that carried pressure. A cold that felt like bad intent.

  “...I can feel it,” Miyu said, stopping in front of the box.

  Her eyes weren’t on the surface.

  It felt like she was looking at the shadow inside.

  “You can tell?” I asked.

  She nodded slowly.

  “...This is a shadow-matter crystal.”

  A crystal.

  Solidified shadow substance—solidified danger—and solidified greed.

  Genichiro spat, “Don’t turn it into poetry. Explain it physically.”

  “You can’t pick it up in four-dimensional physics,” Miyu shot back—immediate, rare defiance.

  I couldn’t help it.

  That little rebellion made me weirdly happy.

  A living rebellion.

  Miyu placed her hand on the container.

  “...I can stabilize it.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “Shadow is leaking. The seal is sloppy—too rough. ...I’ll smooth it.”

  She closed her eyes.

  Her inhale looked natural, and it made my chest ache for reasons I didn’t want to unpack.

  A girl who was supposed to be a high school student is smoothing shadow in space.

  Then the world felt like a thin film had been stretched over it.

  A sensation of density changing.

  Faint glowing lines ran across the container’s surface—like equations, like a spell diagram, like something beautiful in a way that scared me.

  “...Done,” Miyu said.

  And the ugly pressure I’d been feeling backed off, just a little.

  Genichiro clicked his tongue. “...Don’t do extra things. But— ...it’s working.”

  “Was that praise?”

  “It’s observation.”

  “Your Observation Doctrine strikes again!”

  Miyu let out a small laugh.

  In the dust-choked star, that laugh looked weirdly bright.

  “Loading complete. Preparing departure. Destination: Rondo System, Space Station ‘Fanark.’”

  Fanark—a research station built like a giant academy city.

  No time.

  The mine’s air was heavy.

  Heavy places had greed sunk into them.

  And greed usually followed later.

  I checked the radar.

  No contacts above—yet.

  But “yet” was the scary word.

  Space always shows its teeth late.