Interstellar Wanderlust

“Hey, you can sleep on the ship.”

I peeked my eyes open, to which I saw Hiro’s cyan antennae as he peered over me, amongst other things. I quickly sat up, headbutting him, and we cursed, clasping our heads.

“Shit! Ow!” He exclaimed as I tried to move his hand.

“I’m sorry! You startled me!” I stared at him harder. “Are you bleeding?!”

I grabbed my phone again, shining the flashlight into his face. He had turquoise blood smeared across the lower half of his face, primarily from his nose, not to mention the rest of the scratches and bruises that covered his hands.

“What the fuck did you do?!” I shrieked while searching for our bags. “Where’s the first-aid kit?! Where are our bags?!”

“Calm down, I packed everything away already.” He pulled his backpack off and handed me the first aid kid, though it was more like a plastic bag filled with tons of band-aids. Who knows where the actual kit was.

I pulled out some alcohol swabs, and he winced as I pressed one against his forehead.

“You said you’d be fine! What happened?!”

“Stop yelling, what if someone finds us?”

I rolled my eyes. “No one’s gonna find us out here, Hiro! We’re in the middle of nowhere!” I grabbed his face, tearing up. “Do you have any idea how worried I was?!”

He gulped. “I-I’m sorry, I was just trying to think ahead…I don’t know.”

I took a deep breath while continuing to patch him up. “What did you do…?”

“I crashed the truck.” The boy muttered under his breath.

“What?!”

“I didn’t mean to, I promise! Truth be told, I’ve never driven my mom’s truck before. I’m only good with small cars, but I got stuck on a hill, and I took too sharp of a turn and, well…I started rolling.” 

The boy managed to laugh, but I had no words. I just cried harder.

“Yuki, it’s fine! I’m okay!”

“No, you’re not! You’re bleeding!” I exclaimed, still wiping his face clean before I could finally return the bandages to his backpack. “God, you shouldn’t be doing this!”

“Doing what?”

“Coming with me! Getting hurt because of my stupid dreams, my stupid choices!” I yelled at the ground.

“What?! We promised we’d go together! They’re my dreams too, Yuki! I just needed you to help me execute it! I couldn’t do this alone!” He whined.

“C’mon,” I sighed and stood up, walking over to the barn doors. I swung them open, revealing the ship. “You have a life worth living. Why throw it away for me? For Earth?”

I caught a tint of cyan covering his cheeks. “Because I love you. Is that a problem?”

We locked eyes, quiet.

When I didn’t respond, Hiro continued. “I know I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer, okay, but we’re lucky we even made it into adulthood. People like us don’t last. We’re disposed of.” He sighed. “If we stay together, we’ll be executed in no time. I’m surprised we’re even still alive.”

The Iinowaen licked some blood off his hand and walked into the barn. “Who cares if I have a life worth living here on this cesspool of a planet? It’s not like I’d be able to live it, you know why?”

He looked over his shoulder at me. “Because I wanna live with you.”

I felt the guilt piling up in my body as I wiped my face. I swore I was gonna be sick.

“Do you want me to leave?” Hiro hissed. “Do you want me to leave you to do this all alone, Fuyuki?”

I quietly shook my head.

“Okay.” He finished softly, climbing into the ship quickly afterward.

I stood in front of the spacecraft for a while. He was right. If either of us stayed, we were bound to die unless we found some chick to marry just to make ourselves look good. Still, all we had to do was get tested, and then we’d be executed. We were doomed either way.

Eventually, I climbed into the ship and sat beside him after making sure everything was in order. I strapped myself in and glanced at Hiro, who was distracted by all the buttons.

I cleared my throat and caught his attention.

“I’m sorry.”

“Huh?”

I tapped my lap. “I’m sorry for what I said—for how I've been acting through all of this. Hell, I’m sorry for my thoughts, even.” I pulled my legs to my chest. “I’m just terrified. I know it’s not a good excuse, I’d just rather have something happen to me than happen to you. Cuz, you know, I love you too and stuff.”

I groaned, hiding my face in my hands. “S-Stop looking at me, I know you’re looking at me. I just don’t want you to be mad!”

Hiro pulled down my hands, and I flinched after seeing how close he had gotten to me. He smiled.

“Yuki, it’s okay. I’m not mad at you, hell, I’m scared out of my mind too. Despite how dangerous Iinowae is, the thought of leaving scares me even more. It may be a shitty home, but it’s still home, y’know?” 

We smiled.

“Yeah.”

The cyan alien leaned into me, but I retracted into my seat as his nose brushed against mine.

“S-Sorry,” He sputtered while holding onto a dorky grin.

I tried to respond, though all I did was choke on my words and decided it was better to stay quiet. He tried to kiss me. That was the first time he tried to kiss me—I should’ve just gone with it.

I stared at him as he finally turned on the ship and started fiddling with some more buttons after strapping himself in. Clearly, the moment had passed, but despite how focused he was on setting everything up, his leg bounced aggressively on the floor.

“You good?”

“Nope.” He snickered. “I’ve test driven this damn thing so many things, but now that the demo’s over, I’m freaking out.”

“We don’t have to take off right away!”

The boy took a deep breath. “It’s fine. I’m ready to get the fuck outta here. You?”

I smiled. “Yeah.” 

I clung to my seat as Hiro drove the ship out of the barn, and it eventually lifted off the ground. I wished I had thrown up before I had gotten inside, not because of motion sickness, but because of my nerves.

As he pressed the pedal and titled the handles further and further upwards, I set our destination, and before we knew it, the ground was no longer visible. We were above the clouds, and soon enough, out of the atmosphere altogether.

Paradise was only a few days away.

Before Hiro fixed the gravity controls and eventually put the ship into autopilot, I couldn’t remove my gaze from the window. The most I ever saw in the night sky from where I previously lived was the moon, of course, Xibagantu and its rings and several moons, and Castor, which resided in the middle. It was weird to see them up close, and Iinowae seemed to look beautiful from up in space. From far away, it looked like a nice environment, but I knew the truth. No wonder we rarely got visitors. In comparison to Xibagantu, we didn’t have the most welcoming atmosphere.

We had yet to set the ship into hyperdrive while drifting through the cosmos so we could continue taking in the scenery. This was the first and last time we’d likely ever be in space, and I wanted to cherish it.

I messed with some buttons on my side of the control pad and shuffled through the hundreds of songs I had uploaded onto the system from my phone. The sound of the jet engines was debilitating, and aside from that, I refused to sit in silence for such a long period.

I watched as Hiro unhooked his seatbelt and took a deep breath, finally relaxing into his chair like a puddle.

I snickered at the sight. “You okay?”

“It didn’t take that long to get out here, but it was definitely too long for my body to be tense like this.” He whined. “Now I feel insanely sore.”

“Am I supposed to control the ship now?”

The cyan Iinowaen eventually got up and walked out of the cockpit. “Nah, we can just let it sit for a little bit. Honestly, we still need to let it warm up a bit before booking it out of here.”

“Sounds good,” I mumbled and began to sift through my satchel for my journal with no luck. Despite all the compartments it had, it wasn’t in a single one, and the last thing I wanted was to have to start another one. Again.

I followed Hiro into the crew quarters that we had decorated weeks prior. The first area was similar to a dorm room with two loft beds, under which held a ton of our primary bags. The next section held a small dining area even with a sofa and TV. Most of the stuff we used to fill space was either broken and we repaired it, or we stole altogether. Given the likelihood of us crash landing, we made sure not to waste too much money on what wasn’t essential.

As Hiro lay on the couch, I dug through the bags under my bed, aggressively searching for my notebook. In the meantime, I could kill time on my computer or browse the library of books the other boy had brought with him, but I was set on writing. 

I just needed to vomit my thoughts out in an organized manner.

“What are you doing back there?” Hiro asked, sitting up. “You’re making a ruckus.”

“I uh, I’m just looking for something,” I mumbled under my breath.

When I looked up, the Iinowaen was right beside me, and I jumped. And then I saw what he was holding out to me.

“Is it this?”

I snatched it from him, flustered. “Uh, yeah. Thanks.”

“When I got up to the barn, it was lying on the ground. It seemed important. so I held onto it.” He rubbed the back of his neck, and I stayed quiet.

“You’ve always told many so different things about those. Drawing books, textbooks, future novels—even though it’s filled with grid paper.”

“Wait—did you read it?!”

His face turned cyan. “A little…” He mumbled.

I suddenly had the urge to take all my worthless journals and throw them into the vacuum of space. 

“I just skimmed it, seriously! I didn’t overanalyze anything or like…” He laughed. “Sit down with a cup of coffee and treat it like some bestselling novel.”  

“I know we’ve both been stressed,” He went on. “For valid reasons, that is. But you also seemed really distant, almost like something had stolen your glow. I was just…curious if I could do anything to help, or at least try and understand what was happening.”

I stared at my notebook and stood up to stick it under my mattress. “You could’ve just asked me.”

“I doubt you would have answered,” He snickered. “So…?”

I shrugged. “It’s not that big of a deal.”

Despite my stubbornness, Hiro kept smiling. “You wrote about kissing me a lot in there,” He mused, and I coughed.

“Y-Yeah, and?!”

He laughed. “I’m not judging you—promise! I just thought it was cute! If you really wanted to kiss me, why’d you jump back before we took off?”

I waved him away. “Cuz, I don’t know how to. And I also felt like an idiot. And…we’ve never really done that kind of stuff, and it scares me a little bit, is all.”

Hiro leaned against the couch. “Well, same here! I’m more of a dork than you!” He laughed. “And of course, we’ve never done anything. We’ve always been too busy watching our backs!”

“I mean,” He went on. “It kind of hurt to read, but at the same time, I was kind of glad to know I wasn’t the only one who thought our relationship was, well…dry. We’re not even gonna talk about how last night was the first time I slept beside you in a bed.”

I snickered while watching his blush spread to his ears.

“I know right? I mean, if you want to sleep next to me in here, that’s fine too. I know the bed’s small, but eh.”

Hiro grinned. “It’s fine, it’s fine! We literally have the rest of our lives to get used to that kind of stuff. On Earth, we can do whatever we want, at least I think.”

I stared at his sweatpants that didn’t match a single part of his outfit. I couldn’t bring myself to look at his eyes. “Yeah, but right now is the only time we’re guaranteed to be alone.”

“So?”

I walked over to him and sighed. “So we might as well try anything while we have the free time and safety of our compressed space box.”

Hiro laughed at my response, and while he was distracted, I swallowed my anxiety and kissed him. Or at least I tried my best to do so. I held his face for a while, and he placed his hands on my waist, and though it felt insanely weird and awkward, I liked it. I liked it because it was him.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” He snickered, pulling back a little.

“Neither do I. It’s fine.” I leaned into him some more, and we stayed like that for what felt like ages, regardless of the butterflies in our stomachs and the heat in our pants.

Part of it made me wish we hadn’t waited so long to do this, but at the same time, it was nice to know our relationship had already lasted so long with minimal affection. There was more under the surface than our strong desire to have our hands all over each other.

For a little bit, I forgot we were floating in the empty vacuum of space. In this case, there were at least planets closely in view from where we were, but despite my anxiety, I couldn’t let go of Hiro. For a while, we fooled around in the back of this ship—or at least fooled around as much as any virgins could.

When I finally stopped overthinking, I could breathe. I could focus on the way Hiro slid his hand up the back of my sweater and despite his trembling, how he never let go.

Kissing wasn’t necessarily easy, but it was nowhere as complicated as I assumed. Then again, it’s probably because it was Hiro. He knew me in every other aspect of my life, so even if I made a fool of myself, I had nothing to fear. While I had no evidence, I’m sure he felt the same way. Relationships aside, he was always more shaky, clumsy, and dorky than me, but I could tell he was persistent.

Alas, I eventually leaned out of his grasp, cracking a smile after wiping off his saliva.

“Okay, I’m tired.” I snickered.

He cocked a brow. “How are you tired? It’s only been like five minutes.”

I rolled my eyes, pushing him back against the couch and stepping away. “Shut up. I don’t know,” I covered my mouth with the back of my hand, mumbling. “I told you I was bad at this.”

“Well, I’ve never kissed anyone else and have no comparisons, but I’d say you’re pretty good.” 

Hiro had the cutest, cockiest smile plastered across his face. I glanced at his sweatpants again. No wonder.

The more I looked at him, the more on fire I felt. I knew my face was flushed as hell, so I scoffed, took a deep breath, and returned to investigate our luggage, only for Hiro to come up behind me.

“So,” He began, already sounding like he was up to no good. “You gonna add a new entry to your journal now?”

I turned around, laughing. “No! Mind your business!” I shoved him out of my face, which ended up knocking him over, but he proceeded to laugh with me.

My stomach finally loosened up as I sat beside him. I finally felt like we had a chance. If we talked, everything would be fine—our friendship, our relationship—anything. It was just us now. We could talk about anything, do anything, whatever.

The Commander finally wasn’t breathing down our backs.

Hiro returned to his feet and stretched. “Alright, alright, bullshit aside, breaks over.”

I snickered.

“I’m gonna set our route. I’m sure the ship’s ready to go now.”

I followed him back into the cockpit, even though he didn’t need me. I wanted to watch, and regardless of the countless stars around us, Hiro was the best view.

He returned to his seat and revealed the map on a translucent screen that covered the windshield. From under his chair, he pulled out his own journal as I leaned over his shoulder, waiting for him to explain everything.

The Iinowaen glanced at me and turned down the radio. “What are you being so nosy for? We wrote this together. And you wrote most of it!”

“Eh, I don’t know, I’m tired.” I sat beside him. “Use that as a bedtime story.”

Hiro snorted and then laughed at the sound he managed to make. “Yeah, yeah, okay. Well, I guess we might as well go over it before making any rash decisions.”

I leaned back over to him. "Especially since we're both sleep-deprived."

“Shush. We’re gonna have to leave Delta Cider from this angle if we wanna be in the right trajectory for Earth.” He pointed at the screen and glanced at his notes. “Only problem is that we’ll waste at least a quarter of time if we go around Castor’s asteroid ring.”

“But if we go through it…we honestly might be obliterated.” I smirked.

“Exactly. But our fuel comes into play. While I made sure the levels were maxed out before we left, if we dilly-dally, we might find ourselves in some deep shit.”

I leaned forward, finicking with the control panel. “Damn, then let’s get a move on.”

“N-No, don’t freak out yet! We should last approximately a hundred-twenty hours, or five days, at regular speed. Hyperdrive would take half of that, but we’d potentially get there in double time.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I sense another ‘but’ coming.”

“But…” He chuckled, fiddling with locations on the map. “If we were to run into any collection of issues—signal loss, battery malfunctions, external damage, you name it—there’s a high chance we won’t have time to fix them and reach our destination on time without getting stranded in space.”

Hiro kept smiling at me, but I couldn’t muster a decent expression. I remember him vaguely going over these notes months prior, hell I had been the one to do the math for it, but as with many things today, this felt a little too real.

“S-So, what I’m sayin’ is that we could cut through Castor’s territory and go into hyperdrive afterward to save time and fuel, but then our ship itself would be at risk.” The cyan boy scratched his neck. His grin had yet to diminish, but I could tell he was anxious.

“That’s…a valid point, yeah. But we used government-approved materials to make this. Stacked on top of one another, even. It’s almost military grade!”

Hiro nodded rapidly, his hands clasped as he stared at the screen. He leaned forward and pressed a few button combinations until the AI spoke:

“Route selected. Estimated time: 107.25 hours.”

Hiro winked at me and strapped himself in. “Alright. I just wanted you to weigh in on it since all of this is pretty much life or death.”

I chuckled awkwardly. “Yeah…”

For a while, I watched as the cyan Iinowaen focused on directing the ship. I would say he was focusing on the road, but that was the issue—there were no roads in space. We had to make our own. Our own routes, maps, shortcuts—all of it, especially since we were set for Earth. Finding a safe route to Xibagantu was easy, but leaving the galaxy was an entirely different set of problems.

Alas, while Hiro was distracted, I grabbed my journal and sat beside him while info-dumping onto the pages. While I hated imagining it, I was curious about what specific pages he read and any feedback he had. I had many books, but I’d managed to keep up with this one, meaning it dated back to a few months ago.

I glanced up as Castor’s asteroid ring finally came into view, but it was still far enough away that I felt fine being distracted by something insignificant. I didn’t want to leave the flying to Hiro, but he infinitely knew more than me in that subject since he carried around half of his mother’s knowledge in his head. 

Honestly, seeing him so focused was attractive. I kinda wanted to kiss him.

Fuck.

Was this just how it was gonna be now? Now that we’ve opened the door, all the cravings flood my brain since my body knows there’s a small chance something could happen again. The last thing I wanted was to turn into some love-struck dork thinking about kissing his boyfriend every five seconds.

I aggressively tapped my pen on the paper, staring at Hiro. His violet eyes, his long, turquoise eyelashes that were significantly darker than the rest of him, and his countless ear piercings that were primarily hidden behind his annoyingly straight hair. I mean, it was a bit wavy, but it was way straighter than mine.

My hair was known to break combs which often pissed my dad off as if I didn’t get my hair type from him.

God, I hated how much I already missed my dad somehow. Just when I got comfortable with leaving, I started second-guessing everyone and everything, but there was no turning back.

Yeah.

Starting over was gonna be good. Great, even. I loved my dad, sure, but I loved Hiro more, and I could finally relax when I was around him. I’ve been waiting for that for four years.

I sighed and started doodling my boyfriend in the corner of the page, but just as I removed the point from the paper, preparing to turn the page, the ship jerked forward, and I went flying into the windshield with a crash.

“Holy shit! Fuyuki!!” Hiro screeched as I proceeded to lay upside down on the dashboard. There’s no way I could’ve nicely stuck that landing.

“I thought you were strapped in!”

“Uh-huh…” I moaned, holding my head.

Hiro tried to unhook himself to help me but started panicking and couldn’t exert enough pressure to undo the latch, thanks to his shaky hands.

I was alright and finally sat up despite my odd position, only for the aircraft to shoot forward again and throw me back into the window.

“Fuck! Are you doing that?”

Hiro finally freed himself. “What?! No!”

The Iinowaen awkwardly grabbed me off the dashboard and strapped me in. My ears were ringing but I couldn’t tell if it was internal or external. However, the ringing quickly turned out to be beeping, erupting from the dash and its surrounding monitors.

“Route disrupted. Time estimated: Unknown. Damage located on the south wing. Hazard level: Below average.”

The words from the ship bounced around in my head. 

“Below average, below average, below average,” Hiro repeated at least a hundred times. “That’s fine. That means we’re fine—we can keep going.”

I stuck my face in my hands. “Was that an asteroid? If so, holy fucking…shit. We gotta go someplace else.”

“No, it wasn’t. The impact was in the same spot both times.” Hiro switched one of the monitors to the outer cameras.

Truthfully, I had no idea what was going on anymore. My shoulder was sore after being slammed into the glass, but so was my head.

The two of us flinched as a screech came through the radio, followed by varying frequencies of static.

“Shit.”

Hiro looked at me.

“This is Castorian territory now! Not Iinowaen!” I exclaimed, confused.

“Yeah, but Iinowaens are fucking everywhere…” He hissed lowly, frantically pressing some buttons on the dash.

He managed to get the shields up right before the AI made its last comment.

“Ship compromised. Property of IIT.4379, Pekoe Sector.”

“What the fuck is that?!” I yelled.

I don’t think I’d ever seen Hiro so terrified. We knew from the start that there was a fifty-fifty chance of us making it to Earth or even out of Iinowae alive, but barely a few hours in, and we were already doomed.

“Iinowaen Intergalactic Transportation. Specifically, the sector that monitors all areas near the remains of the planet Pekoe.”

“Which was blown up centuries ago and became the asteroid ring we’re near,” I mumbled to myself.

“Y-Yeah.” He stuck his face in his hands. “There’s no getting out of this. We’ll be back on Iinowae in no time, that is, if they don’t blow up our ship altogether up here.”

“Don’t say that!” I exclaimed.

The radio painfully shrieked, and we groaned at the sound.

“Testing, testing. Connection secured,” a female voice began.

Hiro and I froze in our tracks.

“Your ship has been compromised until further notice. We require your IITA license approved by the Commander, a scan of your birthmark, and your reason for traveling.”

“We can fudge all the shit but our birthmarks. If they scan us, they’ll find us in the system and learn we’re practically kids and definitely haven’t been approved to leave Iinowae.” I whispered loudly.

“Scan your items and upload them to the system for verification. All information will be transferred to our vessel. You have five minutes.”

The static returned, and Hiro and I sat in silence for a bit until I jumped to my feet. However, my sore head was not a fan of the sudden movement, and I almost fell back.

“F-Fuck. Okay.” I grabbed the Iinowaen’s arm. “All we have to do is remove them from our system so we’ll get our ship back, and we can book it out of here. I have my dad’s travel pass, but there’s no way we can forge our fucking birthmarks. Just—stay right here and make sure we don’t blow up or something!” I yelled and ran out of the cockpit, although each step I took felt uneven.

“What?! Yuki, we have five minutes!”

“I know!” I shouted back at him and searched for my computer bag.

I never anticipated us being hit or attacked by something up here so soon otherwise I would’ve rushed to secure our things beforehand. Our bags were scattered across the floor since they were the only things not tied down, but I still managed to find my laptop and return to Hiro. I grabbed a few cords and hooked them up to the back, attempting to connect it to the ship.

“What are you doing?!”

I shooed him away as I squatted on the ground, prying open another panel under the dashboard. “It’s a last resort. I uploaded some of my dad’s software onto my personal computer that’ll let you bypass certain programs. Will it irreversibly break my computer?” I chuckled. “Yes. But that’s why we brought yours for backup.”

I glanced back at him, but the cyan Iinowaen still looked petrified.

“While it’s still a low branch, my dad technically works for the government. He travels in and out of Central Command so much that it’d be easier for him to…take shortcuts.” I scoffed, recalling a story he told me. “Some of them were granted, whereas this one is completely illegal…but it should work.”

Hiro watched me intently as my laptop booted up, and I pressed a few key combinations. The brightness of the screen was giving me a migraine, but I knew if we were able to book it out of there, I could sleep in peace. I could regularly survive on six hours, but not after facing this much stress.

“Optimizer—start.”

The AI finally spoke again, and I ran over to Hiro’s side of the ship, grabbing the controls.

“What’s happening? Are we switching seats?!”

“Just stay strapped in!”

I kept the handles tilted forward, although we weren’t moving. My grip tightened as I watched the progress bar continue, but the closer it got to 100%, the louder the static from the radio got.

“Optimizer—complete.” The screen displayed several unrecognizable programs it found that weren’t within our control. I instantly selected and removed them.

And then the entire ship went dark.

No static, no screens, no flashing buttons—the only light came from Hiro’s antennae and mine.

“What the fuck did you do?!” The Iinowaen grabbed me from behind, and I jumped.

“Hold on! It’ll all be fine!”

“You can’t promise that!” He yelled.

“We can’t promise anything, dude!”

I heard the boy groan, and his voice shook as he spoke. “We’re gonna die. We’ve probably got a minute left. What do you think they’re gonna do to us?!”

Hiro grabbed me again, now pulling me from the dashboard and into his lap. The sudden motion made me dizzy, and though I wanted to return to my feet, my body felt like lead.

My co-pilot started crying in the darkness, holding onto me for dear life.

“All I know is that if I die, I wanna die with you in my arms!”

I grabbed my head.

Hearing him freak out was only making me feel worse. He sobbed into the crook of my neck as I tried to steady my breathing, but just as Hiro hiccupped, the lights returned. The sudden brightness made us flinch, but at least that meant we were moving in the right direction.

That was until I read all the code on the screen.

“Fuck.”

“W-What?” Hiro stammered, now trying to wipe his face as I sat up.

“We’re back at ground zero. Our systems aren’t compromised, but our systems…aren’t even our systems anymore.” I got to my feet, frantically swiping the main screen. “Factory reset,” I mumbled.

“That’ll take hours to reprogram! Even with all our notes!”

“We programmed it once—I’m sure we can program it again!” I exclaimed.

Hiro shot daggers at me. “Yeah, but not in the nick of time!”

My partner grabbed his notes from under the seat again and started digging through them, but just because our routes, preferences, and maps weren’t uploaded didn’t mean we couldn’t go anywhere.

At the end of the day, we just needed to leave the asteroid ring.

As Hiro panicked, I took control of the ship, and as soon as I heard the engine rumble, I took off. I had taken flying lessons a few times, so the sensation wasn’t too weird, but I don’t think I could ever get used to arial steering wheels. I stood in front of the pilot’s seat where he still sat, awkwardly blocking his view. I would’ve moved to my side, but I was tense enough as is. 

“A-Are you flying the ship?! That’s not your job!”

I whipped around. “Yeah, well you’re freaking out, and we need to go!”

Hiro got to his feet, which knocked me off my balance a bit. “But you’re brains and I’m brawn!”

“Yeah? Well, flying a ship takes a bit of both. I know we didn’t plan to take turns, but we’re sitting ducks up here!”

The two of us yelled as the government ship nearby shot our tail wing again. I knew what I needed to do for the most part—it was like a video game. All I had to do was avoid the shots behind me and the obstacles in front of me, but bickering with Hiro was making it impossible to concentrate. Each time I turned away from the dash to look at him, the ship would jerk forward from the impact.

I had the joystick to keep me upright since the other Iinowaen was the only one strapped in, but I could see better standing up anyway.

“They’re gonna shoot us out of the fucking sky, man!” Hiro grabbed my sweater, and I shook him off me.

“No shit! I’m trying to avoid it! I refuse to go down without a fight! I’m just as scared as you, but I refuse to just panic and give up!”

“I didn’t give up! I was trying to think of a plan!”

I groaned. “I never said you did! I just got a plan first, so I’m acting on it before it’s too late!”

I fixed my posture, standing my ground as the ship continuously shook from the attack. I frequently checked the side cameras, but every time I blinked, another came into view. The idea of intergalactic police sounded so stupid to me but here we are! I tried to ignore the multiplying cops, but the rapid-fire as I lunged the ship from side to side had a hold on me. The sound of the lasers, the beeps from the dash as we kept getting hit, and Hiro clinging to me from behind—it was too much for my head.

“Give me the wheel—you can’t fly a ship!” The Iinowaen shrieked.

“It’s fine!! We have a shit ton of armor!”

“You’re gonna get us killed!”

“I’m trying to save us!” I hissed.

Hiro jumped up and tried to shove me off the controls which only ended up spinning the ship in a nauseating circle for a split second.

“Dude, stop! Just move to my seat and focus on reprogramming! C’mon! You have the notebooks and tutorials!” I exclaimed, but the boy proceeded to grab my sleeve.

“Why are you always so reckless?!” He cried.

“That’s just how I am!” I snapped. “You know that!” I pressed a combination of buttons on the dashboard, splitting my focus between directing the ship as fast as I could, all while putting up with Hiro’s antics.

“You’re acting like a lunatic! Be reckless if you want, but my life’s on the line here too! We need to work together!”

I laughed. “Our lives have been on the line since the moment we were born!” My grin widened as I faced the windshield, although I had nothing to smile about. “Hell, you could say our lives were at risk the moment we started dating!”

“Yuki!”

I glanced back. “I’m not wrong! That’s just how our world works!”

“God, if I knew you were gonna be so fucking pessimistic, I never would’ve let you be my co-pilot!”

“Well, you had many chances to bail before we left the ground, so that’s on you!”

“Yuki!” He yelled again, and I bit my tongue, genuinely trying to keep my mouth shut. At this point, everything was spilling out. I didn’t want to take my stress out on him, but I felt like my spirit was separate from my body, and I was watching this whole ordeal from the sidelines.

“God, it’s like you’ve been abducted by aliens!” He joked harshly, and I could hear him trying not to cry. “Or if anything, you hit your head! I want my Yuki back!”

I whipped around to the Iinowaen’s bright blue face, covered in tears. He trembled beside me, still clinging to my sweater.

“I did hit my head!” I screeched. “Twice, even!”

“What?!”

I started laughing. “When the IITA originally caught us, and I went flying into the fucking windshield! My ears have been ringing for the last hour, all of these lights feel like trying to stare at an eclipse, I’m dizzy, I’m tired—I can barely hear myself think!”

Hiro looked terrified and grabbed my shoulders. “Stop flying the fucking ship! You have a concussion!”

“I’m fine!” I shook him off me and finally returned to my side of the ship, grabbing my assigned joystick. “I refuse to sit back and wallow in pain from a dumb headache! We’re on a fucking mission! I refuse to be useless!”

“You’re not useless!” Hiro cried. “You’re never useless, but you sure as hell aren’t ‘fine!’ You just gave me a shit ton of reasons why!”

He grabbed his control, but I quickly noticed that his override mine and my contributions were making no difference. 

“I would’ve been fine if you stopped yelling at me!”

Hiro strapped himself back in, glaring at me for a second before taking on my job. “You were gonna get us killed!”

“So what?!” My voice cracked. “We’re gonna die one way or another! Up here, on Iinowae, on Earth—it doesn’t matter! At least we got up here! That counts for something!”

The Iinowaen gripped the joystick harder, frozen in place. All he did was stare at me as the ship drifted to a halt. He wasn’t crying anymore, but he sure as hell wasn’t okay, and I clearly kept adding to his anxiety.

“We never had the same dream…did we?”

“W-What?”

He sadly gazed up at me. “We wanted to leave Iinowae. We wanted to be someplace where we could be free. And we wanted to be together but…your conditions for freedom had no destination. You could die, and you wouldn’t care as long as you weren’t on Iinowae. You still would’ve met your goal.”

My boyfriend removed his hands from the control panel, and he quickly stopped looking me in the eye. “I don’t want to die with you. A-At least not right now,” He sighed. “A century from now, when we’re old and our hair’s faded to black and our antennae have lost their glow—sure because that means we lived a good, long life together.”

“Deep down, you were always wary about me joining you because, in truth, your conditions would put me in danger. You care for everyone but yourself. You’re doing this for you, but if you die and I don’t, you’d still count it as a success.” He wiped his face. “You’ve always been reckless, yeah.” He chuckled. “It’s one of the things I love about you, but not right now. Not with this.”

He finally looked at me again. “You have no regard for your own life, do you?”

I gulped, quiet.

The silence was deafening.

Although the ship was still target practice for the feds and our systems proceeded to beep louder, all I could focus on was how shaky our breaths were, especially Hiro’s. 

“I-I know the statistics about fugitives. We’re more likely to be struck by lightning than they are to escape the Commander’s grasp. I know that, but I still have hope because I want to be able to love you in public. To hold your hand and kiss you without being shot and sedated.” He chuckled coldly. “I can’t do that if you’re not…here.”

One of the blasts shook me enough to knock me back into my seat, but it barely fazed me.

“Why does this surprise you?” I mumbled. “If you know the statistics about fugitives, then you surely know the statistics for people like us: death rates for Irregulars—self-inflicted or not.”

Hiro tensed up. “Then why go through all of this if you just wanted to kill yourself?! What a fucking waste of time and energy and—”

“Because I have hope too!” I shot back. “I was determined to try, but if it went to shit, there was no fighting it! But since you’re with me, I’ll at least fight to keep you alive because you have the drive to make something out of your life! You’re worth something…” I started crying softly.

“So are you!”

I looked at him through my tears. 

I wanted to leave Iinowae—I was dying to leave Iinowae, even. I wanted a life with Hiro, but despite our years of preparation, we barely had a chance. I was merely preparing for the inevitable, whereas Hiro wanted to ignore it and keep believing that no matter what, we would succeed. I admired his optimism, but it wasn’t helpful. 

We were gonna get let down.

And I would’ve been fine being disappointed, but Hiro deserved to see the light of day, even without me. His determination was attractive, and I would fight to ensure he had a chance.

“If you’re not there, I don’t wanna go,” He admitted softly. “You spent much of your childhood alone, yeah? Every Irregular does. I don’t wanna be alone anymore. I don’t wanna go anywhere if you’re not going with me. And you know why?”

He paused as I sniffled, staring at my lap.

“Because I love you.”

I gripped my pants, softly breaking down again. I could tell he was waiting for me to say it back. It was the only thing that made sense to say in the situation, and then maybe we could finally move on. Alas, as our ship crumbled around us, I couldn’t convince myself that it even mattered anymore.