Archive of Our Own ^beta

Suyun dives out of a burning spaceship, free-falls through empty sky, and crashes through a window to find the prettiest girl she’s ever laid eyes on.

Not that it matters, of course. Her combat vest is soaked through from a gash on her ribs, the visor of her blast helmet snapped in half, and a bag of the most sought-after drug in the galaxy clutched to her chest like a baby; there’s no time for distractions. In the distance, she hears the sound of the freighter she just leapt out of exploding, in a crash landing that will hopefully get the Union Police off her back. She pants, swallows down her adrenaline, reaches for the blaster on her hip, and—

“Holy shit, are you a pirate?” the girl gasps, sounding delighted, and Suyun is momentarily stunned into silence.

“Am I a what,” she repeats blankly, hand falling away.

The girl’s expression wavers. “A pirate,” she says, frowning. “Like, you know—exploring the galaxy, searching for treasure on abandoned moons, living together with your crew on one big ship…” 

Suyun watches in disbelief as this girl continues gushing about pirates to a hardened criminal, as if she can’t see the blood all over Suyun’s clothing, or the tell-tale glimmer of the powder in the clear satchels inside her bag. Nice to be ignorant, she thinks sourly, then remembers herself. Her face hardens. She reaches back for her blaster, crouching down—

“Oh, crap, and you’re injured,” the girl breathes, breaking off her rant. The dreamy look on her face gives way to horror, the genuinely concerned kind Suyun’s only ever seen in the theatre district. She falters, somehow stunned into silence again. “Here, let me help you.”

A soft hand wraps around Suyun’s blood-caked wrist, pulling her gently towards the door. Suyun follows as if hypnotized, too bewildered for common sense. The warmth of the touch is somehow more alien than any species she’s encountered in all her twenty years of life.

What the fuck am I doing, she manages to think faintly, before meeting the girl’s eyes and blanking all over again.

When she comes back to herself, she’s sitting on a slab of marble by the entrance of what must be the most luxurious washroom for lightyears. The walls are carved into a concave dome of the same material as her seat, illuminated by an invisible light source that undulates in soft spirals around the room. Sinks, closets, and mirrors rise from the floor in shapes more elegant than practical, consummated by a chalice-shaped bathwater centerpiece that appears suspended in midair. Outside, glass shards from the broken window lay scattered across lush carpeting, the trail ending just short of a bed with a shimmering canopy and posters rising to the ceiling. The view beyond the room is pure blue sky, so high up that all other buildings and landforms are buried out of sight.

Suyun’s heart thuds. These are not the rooms of an ordinary person.

“Um, would you mind holding out your arm?” 

Suyun startles to attention. The girl is back, a roll of gauze in one hand and a tube of some metallic fluid in the other. She looks sheepish, holding them out in front of her like she isn’t quite sure if she’s allowed to.

“What’s that metallic shit?” Suyun asks warily, as the gears in her mind click slowly into place.

“It’s—um.” The girl frowns. “I’m not…totally sure, but I’ve used it since I was a kid, and it works on pretty much everything. It’s got, you know, microbots and stuff?”

Suyun inhales sharply. A tube of fucking microbotic cream—only the most powerful, expensive medicine in the galaxy, and this girl is offering it up like it’s just your everyday painkiller. Suyun could steal this tube and make far more money than she would with the glitter she’s just sacrificed her ship to protect. She could still knock this girl out and make a break for it, probably—no, but if her suspicions are correct—

“Sorry, does that sound okay?” the girl asks nervously.

“U-um,” Suyun stammers, caught off guard. She looks down at her mangled body; the only things currently stopping her from falling apart are adrenaline and sheer force of habit. Then she looks back up, meeting the disarmingly sincere eyes of this disarmingly harmless stranger. 

She is so tired.

“…Fine,” she says, taking off her blast helmet and dropping it on the floor, a decisive surrender of her better judgement. She slumps back against the wall, limbs aching, finally allowing herself to let go.

The girl smiles, eyes crinkling. “Great!”

Careful hands lift and stretch out her arm, plying it like some sort of delicate machinery. Now that she’s calmer, Suyun watches from the corner of her vision as the girl applies the medicine, focused little wrinkles forming between her eyebrows. The girl’s face is slim, her eyes wide and expressive, her nose tapered to an elegant point. Light purple curls fall in waves to her shoulders, interspersed with silver-entwined braids. Suyun lets her gaze sink further; she’s wearing some kind of silk, flowy shift, held up by metallic bands on her neck and upper arms. There’s an attractive assurance to the way she moves, her fingers clumsy but firm, her body lithe as a dancer’s.

And what galaxy did they find you in, beautiful? Suyun almost asks on instinct, trademark smirk at the ready—but even she knows it isn’t the time for that, and besides, the relief seeping into her muscles is too much for her to do anything but breathe and lean back.

“So…” the girl begins, as she works. Suyun’s eyes flick to the right. The girl is chewing her lip, eyes down, clearly trying her best to look nonchalant. “What, um, what were you doing? When you crashed?”

Suyun sighs. Take a wild guess, she thinks dryly. “Nothing legal.”

The fingers on her arm briefly pause. “Oh. Right.” Suyun watches the girl’s expression shift from uncertainty, to curiosity, to a determined kind of excitement. “What about, um…exploration, and stuff? You’ve been all over the galaxy, I bet! What planet did you just come from? Was it far?”

“Different star system,” Suyun says shortly. “Bimaum.”

“Bimaum, huh?” the girl echoes, frowning. “Bimaum…Bimaum… ah!” 

Suyun startles. The girl’s eyes have suddenly brightened, like the engines of a spaceship firing up for takeoff. Then she realises that they aren’t just brighter, but also much closer than they should be—the girl is leaning way forwards, an overeager smile stretched across her cheeks.

She jerks away. “Whoa!”

“Sorry,” the girl says, not looking sorry at all. “But—that’s the artificial planet, right? Where everything is one big city and all the architecture is pink and there are synthetic trees and mountains and everything?”

“Uh. Right.”

“Wow.” The girl sits back, dreaminess returning. “I’ve always wanted to go there. Or, well. Anywhere outside the Woollim system, I guess.” She smiles timidly, rubbing her neck. “I’m…not really allowed out that much.”

Sheltered, Suyun thinks spitefully, but without real heat; there is a genuine sadness to the girl’s voice that somehow makes her want to hold back.

“I see,” she responds blandly, and lets the girl’s pensive silence fill the room.

Her arm is fixed within the minute. She imagines an army of microbots weaving through her body, patching up broken sinews and blood vessels with their priceless, microscopic appendages, and swallows down a pang of frustration. All that money.

The girl squeezes more of the cream onto her hands. “Okay,” she says, “next should be your ri—ah.”

Suyun looks down, confused. The gash on her ribs has already drenched the entire lower half of her shirt and vest with blood, but that was to be expected. As for the wound underneath… right, she thinks, of course. How cute.

“Um…” the girl starts awkwardly, gesturing at Suyun’s chest. “Sorry, could you…”

“Strip?” Suyun asks, a smile playing on her lips.

The girl flushes bright pink. “Yeah. That.”

Suyun’s smile grows. Any chance to fluster a pretty girl is time well spent. But this time, the sheer pain of touching the area around the wound quickly dashes any hopes of messing around further—by the time she’s managed to take off her vest and roll up her shirt, her whole body feels like it’s on fire. She grits her teeth, suppressing the urge to cry out.

“Holy shit,” she hears the girl whisper. She doesn’t need to look to know how bad it is; she was there.

Too gruesome for you, princess? she’s about to scoff, but cool fingers are pressing into her skin before she has the chance to open her mouth. She hisses, jerking her head down to complain, but there is a grim determination to the girl’s eyes that pulls her up short. The protests die on her tongue.

Some foreign feeling wells up inside of her then, a mixture of pity and reluctant admiration. She’s trying, Suyun realises. She’s ignorant, and sheltered, but she’s really trying.

The words come out before she can stop them. “Bimaum is…”

The girl looks up. She doesn’t say anything, but her eyes are already shining.

“Well, you’ve already got most of it,” Suyun continues, avoiding her gaze. “It’s nothing huge, just a ball of metal some tech giant scrapped together years ago. But, uh, I guess…”

“Yes?” the girl asks quickly, trying and failing to keep a straight face.

Suyun swallows. “The sunrise over the synthetic mountains. It’s—pretty. Sparkly and shit.”

“Wow,” the girl breathes, after a contemplative silence. She sits still for a moment, a faraway smile on her face. Then, quietly, wistfully: “I wish I could see it.”

Suyun swallows again, ignoring the way her heart twinges. “Mm.”

The rest of her treatment passes in relative quiet. She lets whatever brief emotion she was feeling fade to the back of her mind, thoughts turning instead—as they really should’ve done earlier—to how in the world she can get out of this mess. The bubble of safety she’d surrendered herself to on impulse is shrinking by the second, whether she likes it or not.

I’ll have to get through the building somehow, she thinks wearily. I can wash up a bit and steal a uniform, so long as I can fit the glitter underneath. Then I can leave, find some cheap freighter, and return to the mothership within the week. She fingers the blaster still strapped to her hip, reassured by its weight. I’ll be fine.

Her eyes slide to where the girl is standing, washing her hands over a stupidly decadent sink. Her back is turned. Suyun’s hand tightens around her blaster, then falls away.

Gratitude, annoyance, and a resigned sort of guilt rise in her chest in equal measure. She didn’t really deserve the help, but it was given to her anyway—and now there’s nothing she can do to pay it back.

The girl turns around again, smiling. The bubble has nearly popped.

“Thanks,” is all Suyun can say when they’re done, tugging her bloody shirt over layers of gauze and freshly healed skin. Her combat vest lies on the floor with her helmet, abandoned.

“No problem!” the girl says proudly, beaming. “Though you should really be more careful next time.”

“Uh.” Like that would be possible. “Okay.”

“Oh!” the girl exclaims suddenly, hands clapping together as if she’s just remembered something important. “That reminds me—do you need help leaving? It’d be bad if you were seen, right?”

The fuck? Suyun stares at her, a dull anger flaring up in her gut. “Why are you so—” She cuts off. “Nevermind.”

The girl tilts her head. “Why am I what?”

Suyun watches her. The girl’s face is open, innocent, and totally unmarred by any of the hardship scarring the rest of the galaxy. She sighs. Perhaps it’s stupid to just voice her suspicions out like this, but: “Hey. You’re the princess of Woollim, aren’t you?”

The girl stiffens, something in her expression stuttering shut. “…So what if I am?” 

“So what if you—” Suyun sucks in a breath. If only all the leaders of the Galactic Union had such dumb children. “So, why in the world are you helping me?”

The girl shrugs. “You were injured,” she says simply. “It was in my power to help you. So I did.”

“Look, princess,” Suyun says frustratedly. She’s not sure why she’s still talking at this point; the smarter choice would be to just count herself lucky and leave, but something about this girl undermines common sense. “I don’t know what you think pirates are, but I’m not exactly an innocent person. The world is a lot bigger than whatever crap they teach you in a palace, you know. A lot worse.”

“And?”

Suyun stares. The girl is completely unperturbed, a coolness to her eyes that wasn’t there before. “What do you mean, and?”

“If the rest of the world is messed up, it’s not my responsibility,” she answers calmly. “It doesn’t mean that I should’ve just left you for dead.”

The anger flares hotter. “I am a space pirate,” Suyun hisses. “How naive are you? You don’t even know what I—” 

“Look,” the girl interrupts, exasperated. “Do you want my help or not?”

Suyun’s mouth slams shut. “Yes,” she grits out, because there’s nothing else she can do.

The girl leads her down an empty corridor decorated with the same pristine splendour as her rooms, into a perfectly moulded glass tube of an elevator, and through dozens more rooms that she barely has the energy to admire. All of her brain is focused on caution, her hand gripped tightly around her blaster—and, more reluctantly, on trying to wrap her head around the girl whose confident footsteps she’s now following into a somewhat dusty storage space.

“Right, here’s the exit,” the girl says cheerfully, turning.

Suyun looks around. Even this room is pleasantly designed: smooth, cream-coloured flooring slopes up to a metal door, and artificial daylight flickers down from the ceiling.

“There’s really nobody here?” she asks warily.

The girl shakes her head. “No. We’re still in my personal quarters.”

Shit, you are rich, Suyun doesn’t say, but her expression probably speaks for itself.

She takes a breath, fiddling with the pockets of the surprisingly plain robe that the girl had insisted she ‘borrow’. She hadn’t asked about the bag; Suyun wonders if she already knows. But it doesn’t matter. They’re returning to reality, now.

“Well,” she begins, walking to the door, “I guess this is goodby—”

The press of something small and cold into her palm cuts her off. Suyun blinks, looking down at where the girl’s hand is now curling her fingers over what looks like a tiny metal egg. 

“What’s this?”

The girl smiles sheepishly, scratching her cheek. “Spare comm. You could contact me sometime.” She bites her lip, seeming to think. Then: “I’m Yunkyoung, by the way.”

Yunkyoung. Suyun sounds out the name in her head. Yunkyoung.

“…Suyun,” she responds, then walks briskly out of the door and into the outside world, not looking back.

A month has passed by the time Suyun actually dares to make the call.

She’s sitting alone in the cockpit of her minifreighter, a new one outsourced to her by the quartermaster. Outside, the vista of space passes slowly, a black void flecked with distant light. She has her feet kicked up on the command board, tinkering idly with the holographic screen of Yunkyoung’s comm.

There is only one contact in its registry. Suyun’s finger hovers over CALL. She shuts her eyes; purple hair, bright eyes, and quiet smiles flash through her mind like a holofilm reel.

“Fuck it,” she mutters, and presses it.

The screen flashes green after three rings.

“Hey,” she says, before she has enough time to reconsider.

There is a pause. Then: “Who is this?”

For a moment Suyun says nothing, just letting the sound of Yunkyoung’s voice settle in the air. “It’s, uh…”

“…Suyun?” the voice asks cautiously.

Suyun licks her lips. “Yeah.”

Silence falls. The hum of the engine rumbles gently through the ship. Suyun hears Yunkyoung holding her breath through the speakers, and makes up her mind.

“I’m near Woollim,” she says casually. “Heading to Bimaum.”

Yunkyoung inhales sharply. “Oh!”

Suyun stares at her nails. The next sentence weighs heavily in her mouth, but she gets it out anyway. “You…” She gulps, throat dry. “You wanna come?”

“W-well—I mean—of course!” Yunkyoung stammers, and Suyun can see her smile from lightyears away.

Bimaum from space looks like a spiky pink ball encased in a fuchsia bubble, in and out of which hundreds of spaceships travel in neat, invisibly regulated lines. Suyun squints at them. That’s one…six…thirteen different pirate ships, she determines.

“Wow,” Yunkyoung says from beside her, for what must be the twentieth time in the last minute. She’s sitting in the one other chair of the cockpit, hands clenched tightly in her lap, eyes shining. “It’s just, so…I don’t know…”

“Let me guess, wow?” Suyun says dryly. Yunkyoung nods. It’s like the sarcasm doesn’t even reach her.

It had taken much less work than Suyun expected to smuggle her out of the palace. She had barely been in the civilian spaceport for a couple of minutes before Yunkyoung approached her with a wave, not even wearing a hood.

Suyun had balked, instantly turning to scour the crowd. Throngs of multicoloured species were wandering around the port, seemingly unconcerned. “You—what the fuck? Won’t people recognise you? Didn’t anyone notice you leave?”

“Hello to you too,” Yunkyoung had replied, raising an eyebrow. “It’s okay, nobody really knows what I look like. Nor cares what I do, to be honest.”

“What, not even the palace?”

“Especially not the palace,” Yunkyoung had laughed, and that was the end of that.

Suyun watches her out of the corner of her eye. She’s wearing a dress in a similar style to when they first met, but this one is shorter, fashionably pleated, and rose pink: the kind of thing you would usually save for a real outing. Hm. Cute.  

The command board beeps. “INCOMING CHECK IN,” blares a robotic voice. “ACCEPT?”

Yunkyoung startles; Suyun suppresses a smile. “Sure.”

A hologram of an unimpressed-looking octopod pops up before them, life-sized and flickering. “Bimaum immigration to minifreighter RP087, arriving from the Woollim system. Is this information correct?”

“Yep.”

“Name and business, please.”

“Suyun. Just travelling.”

There is a pause. The octopod’s four eyes narrow. “We have this freighter listed under—”

Suyun coughs, rolling up the sleeve of her jacket to reveal a tattoo on her forearm, the silhouette of a space whale with Xs over its eyes. She glances to the side, where Yunkyoung is watching curiously. Her lips purse. Look away, please.

The octopod squints at it for a moment, then sighs, tsk-ing in bored disapproval. “Right, of course. You may pass.”

The hologram cuts out barely one second later, leaving the cockpit in silence once more. Suyun pulls her sleeve carefully back down; the mark is her emblem, her ticket to safety, however reluctant.

“What was that?” Yunkyoung asks, head tilted.

Suyun rolls her eyes. “I’m a pirate, remember?” 

“Ah.” Suyun watches her face for any sign of distaste or regret, but there’s none: only acknowledgement.

The ship’s engines shudder as they land. Suyun shuts her eyes, running over her task for the day. It’s another smuggling job, which is simple enough, especially in Bimaum; most of the planet is now little more than a cover-up for underhanded business. But with this passenger…

Suyun turns. “Hey, Yunkyoung. Can you promise me not to—”

She blinks. Yunkyoung is gone, the seatbelts of her chair dangling loosely off to the side.

“That idiot,” she curses under her breath, grabbing at her own restraints and dashing out of the cockpit.

A blast of fresh air sends her hair flying back as she lowers herself out of the ship, already racing through worst case scenarios in her head. She spins the instant her feet hit the ground, taking in the vast, familiar grounds of Bimaum’s spaceport, its high-tech taxiway system operating swiftly under the midmorning sun. That’s when she sees her: a still figure in the middle of an empty landing pad, facing away, seeming almost to part the indifferent wave of robots and other travellers.

Suyun walks up to her, arms crossed. “Oi.”

Yunkyoung doesn’t respond. Her lips are parted, her gaze fixed on something in the distance. Suyun follows it, frowning.

The skyline of Bimaum towers before them, just far enough to be admired. Giant buildings in a hundred pastel shades rise to meet a pale pink sky, like rows upon rows of immaculate sculptures submerged in a rosy liquid. The buildings plateau in countless different shapes, each succeeded by another to extend infinitely in either direction, some made from a glassy metal that reflects the artificial clouds far above. The hubbub of traffic and shamelessly loud holo-ads is audible even from here.

“It’s beautiful,” Yunkyoung whispers.

“Not when you know what’s inside,” Suyun mutters, more to herself.

Yunkyoung turns to look at her then, oddly solemn. “No, even then. Beauty is…different. You can find it anywhere. Even if it’s just on the surface.” 

Suyun says nothing, keeping her eyes on the city. The words unnerve her a bit more than she’d like to admit.

“Anyways,” she says eventually, “don’t run off like that again.”

“Right, sorry,” Yunkyoung laughs. “I was a bit too excited, I guess.”

And it’s true. Once she’s sure that her freighter has been safely taxied to the hangars, Suyun leaves, Yunkyoung following eagerly behind. They take a somewhat dated high-speed rail to the city, and Yunkyoung can’t seem to stop gushing over every minute detail.

“These little tables are so smart!” she’s saying, sounding genuinely amazed. “Putting them in the armrests saves so much space, wow. And they’re totally optional too—that’s so convenient!”

“Mm,” Suyun replies, watching amusedly as the other passengers side-eye them, much to Yunkyoung’s complete obliviousness.

“And what are these—oh!” Yunkyoung’s seat twitches back a bit, and she gasps. “You can control the angle of the seat? That’s great!”

Suyun stifles a laugh as the felidonian sitting behind her bares its teeth in annoyance, fur bristling. Yunkyoung has now begun to spam the button in fascination, moving her seat relentlessly back and forth.

“Suyun, isn’t this so—” She stops, narrowing her eyes. “Are you laughing at me?”

“No,” Suyun tries to say neutrally, but the laugh slips through anyway.

Yunkyoung’s subsequent whining lasts for the rest of the trip, although at least it’s a bit less embarrassing than what she was doing before. What a troublesome princess, Suyun thinks to herself, smiling a bit.

And then, once she’s managed to guide Yunkyoung through the station without issue, they’re in the city of Bimaum proper. Psychedelic vehicles soar by over light blue asphalt, and holographic screens loom over the streets, blasting advertisements. Between the buildings are unnaturally even patches of synthetic grass, embellished by the occasional globular, rubbery tree. It would look like a parody of a city, if it wasn’t for the endless sea of real passersby: humanoids, reptilians, insectoids, and a thousand others roam the streets, all with the same looks of either touristic wonder or uninterested professionalism.

Yunkyoung sucks in a breath. “Oh, wo—”

“No time for any more gawking, I’m afraid,” Suyun interrupts, taking Yunkyoung’s wrist and dragging her into the crowd. It’s not totally true—Suyun has left herself more than enough time to finish the job. But, as she’s beginning to discover, there’s just something unendingly entertaining about getting under the other girl’s skin.

The place they end up at is a seventy-storey skyscraper with a cutely rounded roof, as well as a huge, glimmering sign over the entrance reading FOOD COURT.

Yunkyoung stares, neck stretching endlessly upwards as she struggles to take it all in. “What the…is this whole thing really just for food?”

Suyun grins. “Imports from every cuisine around the galaxy, baby.”  

“What did you just call me?” Yunkyoung splutters, flushing. Then, after another second to fully absorb the sentence: “Wait, really? That’s—that’s incredible!”

Suyun just laughs, pushing her through the vast entryway. Yunkyoung yelps, stumbling. The crowd sucks them in almost instantly.

Inside, they filter automatically into one of more than four dozen lines, held intact by thin, gleaming barriers that rise like forcefields from the peach-coloured floor. Suyun looks around with interest. She’s only actually been here once; she doesn’t usually treat herself to this kind of luxury, especially not in the nicer parts of the city.

“I didn’t realise there was so…much,” Yunkyoung says quietly from beside her. 

Suyun raises an eyebrow. “So much what?”

Yunkyoung makes a vague, sweeping gesture. “Everything. I don’t know. So many kinds of people, and such huge places…I don’t know.”

Suyun watches as her eyes go somewhere far off, to that abstract level of thought that she seems to lose herself in sometimes. There it is again: that feeling. Pity, admiration, maybe even sympathy.

“This food court is just one of many in Bimaum, you know,” she says wryly.

“Whoa.”

The building is structured too efficiently for the line to go anything but fast. Before they know it, they’ve reached the check in, consisting of a square pad just big enough for approximately eight humanoids.

They step on. A short fence materialises around the pad, formed with the same gleaming barriers as the lines behind them. 

“Welcome to the food court. Table for two?” asks a pleasant, robotic voice.

“Yes please,” Yunkyoung answers earnestly, before Suyun has the chance to respond for them. 

“Answer affirmative,” announces the voice, and the pad lifts into the air, up towards a wide hatch in the ceiling where other pads are pouring in like spaceships. Suyun watches Yunkyoung peer wide-eyed over the edge, hair flying back in purple ripples, and smiles despite herself.

The pad stops somewhere around the twentieth floor, where it soars horizontally over the heads of other diners until it finds an empty slot to descend into. The moment it lands, a table and set of chairs surface from within, complete with a holographic menu hovering on top. Suyun sits, grudgingly impressed. Yunkyoung follows suit.

“Order whatever you want, I’m paying,” Suyun says, already flicking idly through the menu. Three-dimensional models of featured meals blink in and out of the air as she scrolls, alongside long passages detailing their ingredients and species compatibility.

Yunkyoung makes an affronted noise. “No, I should—” 

“What, pay with the royal card? And get identified and sent back home, and watch me go to jail?” Suyun says dryly. Yunkyoung deflates. “I didn’t think so.”

In the end Suyun settles on a simple broth, infused with sootberries and borgak meat. It’s a dish from the very outer rims of the galaxy; she’s feeling nostalgic, she supposes. Yunkyoung, on the other hand, spends at least half an hour ooh-ing and aah-ing over every option she scrolls past, until Suyun reminds her that the menu includes literally every importable meal in existence.

“But I haven’t even gotten to Woollim yet!” Yunkyoung complains.

Suyun sighs. “You’ve lived your whole life in Woollim. Isn’t this a welcome change?”

Yunkyoung scrunches her nose. “I suppose,” she sniffs, and settles on a sweet milkfruit dish from the icy planets of a system Suyun hasn’t been to, as well as an odd goo-like substance whose menu model seemed to have pulsed.

Naturally, the food takes about ten seconds to arrive, floating onto the table out of a tube-like device that Suyun hadn’t even noticed. Hers comes in a big wooden pot, and Yunkyoung’s in two rather more complicated contraptions: one in a hollowed-out glass sphere that’s somehow configured not to roll, and the other stuck on an iron sheet held upright by a thin stand.

“Where do I even begin?” Yunkyoung asks delightedly, not seeming to want an answer.

This is a nice place, Suyun thinks to herself between sips, watching as Yunkyoung pokes in awe at the sphere. It’s just a pity that everything else turned out the way it did.

“So what are your plans for the rest of the day?” Yunkyoung asks nonchalantly, finally digging into her milkfruit. It’s been carved into spheres, each from a differently coloured strain, but all melting away to the same sticky-sweet puddles. 

Suyun narrows her eyes. The nonchalance seems genuine this time. “I have work to do,” she answers carefully. “I can leave you with a friend for a bit. After that, I dunno—you’re the one who wanted to come so badly.”

Yunkyoung tilts her head, chewing. “Well, yeah. But I thought you planned for the food court, at least? It seems like you had it in mind from the start.”

Suyun stills. She feels a blush creeping up her neck, and shoves it down with cold, hard willpower.

“Nah,” she says, and now it’s her turn to feign nonchalance. “I was just hungry.”

“Riiight,” Yunkyoung says slowly, beginning to smile. “It’s not like you knew I was coming, and thought about where we could go, but wanted to pretend that you didn’t actually care, and—”

“It really isn’t,” Suyun interrupts, neck burning.

“Oh. Too bad,” Yunkyoung pouts, and thankfully doesn’t press.

They finish their food around an hour later, Yunkyoung still talking conflictedly (and at this point entirely to herself) about the amorphously part-solid, part-liquid texture of the goo. Suyun checks her watch. With a flick of her wrist the band slides open, revealing afternoon.

“Hmm.” She wasn’t lying about her work, at least. “We’d better go.”

“No problem,” Yunkyoung grins, so Suyun calls for the bill, drops her money into the slit that opens on the table, and lets the pad whisk them to the exit.

The streets are just as busy as before. Suyun squints around the road, searching. When she finds what she’s looking for she takes hold of Yunkyoung’s wrist, walking them there together.

“Ow, hey, walk a bit slower—oh, is that a taxi booth?”

Suyun makes a vague noise of affirmation. She’s busy glaring down at the order screen, trying to remember how it works. Usually she doesn’t stray this far from city centre (or, more precisely, the criminal underworld). 

NUMBER OF PASSENGERS? the screen asks. 2, Suyun selects. DESTINATION? A map pops up; Suyun selects a street just outside of the area labelled Smoke Complex. Then there is a payment screen, then a dispassionate thank you.

“Okay,” Suyun says slowly, “I think that’s fini—”

A polished vehicle screeches to a stop in front of them, whipping up a violent gust of wind. Suyun cuts off, shielding her face with a grimace. The door slides open; the interior is just one cushioned room, no driver, no steering wheel, no form of cockpit.

“Well, after you,” Suyun offers, holding out a hand. 

The ride to Smoke Complex is fairly quiet. Yunkyoung sits with her back straight and her hands folded neatly in her lap, gazing out of the window. All of a sudden her expression is unreadable.

“…What are you thinking about?” Suyun asks.

Yunkyoung is silent for a moment, then sighs gently. “Nothing much,” she says. “Just, the world. The future. You know.”

No, that’s way too vague, Suyun wants to respond, but somehow it doesn’t feel right to interrupt her right now.

Yunkyoung turns. Her cheek is washed pink in the ever-changing glow of the city, like a ghostly flower. “Hey, Suyun, I wanted to ask. Will we be able to see the sunrise?”

Suyun looks away. “Dunno. Didn’t think that far.”

Yunkyoung laughs. “Come on, be honest. I won’t judge.”

Suyun feels herself make a face, then drops it immediately. She hasn’t felt this childish since she was literally a child. It’s not like it’s that embarrassing that she’s thought this out or anything, it’s just—whatever. There’s something about it.

“Well. Not the sunrise,” she answers eventually. “We shouldn’t stay overnight. But, ah…” She pauses, clearing her throat. “The sunset is still pretty nice.”

A soft chuckle echoes through the room. “Thanks,” she hears Yunkyoung say, certainly not affectionate, but something more than polite. It makes her skin prickle.

The street where the taxi drops them off is considerably more run-down than the one they left, though the number of people has nearly doubled. Suyun sizes them up, eyes catching on their scars and lazily concealed blasters. The crowd here is thicker, and visibly rougher: it’s no longer an option not to keep hold of Yunkyoung’s wrist. 

“Where are we going?” Yunkyoung calls, nearly shouting over the clamour.

“You’ll see,” Suyun calls back, weaving them skilfully amongst the passersby that seem the least dangerous.

The storefront they end up at is old and dusty, with a crooked sign over the door that reads Marine Records in flickering neon. They step in front of it, finally pulling out of the mob. It’s an old door—it takes at least five seconds for it to detect their presence, and another ten to slide itself creakily open.

They enter to the gentle chime of a bell.

“Whoa, what is this place?” Yunkyoung whispers, awed.

The inside of the store is small and musty, the floor cracked and painted over in an unusual black-and-white tile pattern. Thin, prettily designed objects of different materials—some glassy, some papery, some metallic—are plastered across the walls and ceilings, in a swirling sequence that somehow accommodates all of their miscellaneous shapes and sizes. In between, a few cheap-looking shelves are filled to bursting with even more, leaving only a tiny sliver of a path to actually walk through. The room itself is lit by a throng of shaky holograms in gradients of blue, each depicting a marine creature in underwater flight. In the corner farthest from the entrance is a run-down cash register and an even more run-down armchair, sat next to the one piece of technology that seems on par with the rest of Bimaum: a big yellow machine with a hundred different dials sticking out of it, another thin object rotating slowly on top, and a smooth melody playing from somewhere within.

“Yeonhee,” Suyun calls. A figure by the counter turns, breaking into a smile.

“Suyun! Hi!” Yeonhee greets. Her black hair is tied back in a low ponytail, revealing a pair of dangling fish earrings as well as an old, puckered scar that runs from her neck to her collarbones. Her eyes are warm as always. “Oh, and who’s this? New recruit?”

“Just a friend,” Suyun says quickly, before Yunkyoung can answer with something stupid like her whole identity. “Her name’s Yunkyoung.”

“Hi,” Yunkyoung says, with a nervous wave. “Um, can I ask—what is this store? Are you the owner?”

Yeonhee laughs. “Yep, I am. It’s a record store. I sell vinyls from around the galaxy. Wanted to since forever.” She looks at Suyun, quirking an eyebrow. “But you didn’t bring her here just to sightsee, did you?”

Suyun sighs. Sadly that is part of it, she thinks wearily. And the rest is somewhat more embarrassing. “I need to get some work done over at Smoke. Would you mind, uh…”

“…Keeping her safe?” Yeonhee fills in for her, grinning. “What’s this? Aloof, philandering space pirate Suyun actually cares about somebody?”

Suyun feels her ears redden. Her eyes flit sideways, where she sees Yunkyoung watching her with interest. “Whatever,” she grunts, ducking her head. “I’m leaving.”

“Seriously? It’s been like ten seconds,” she hears Yeonhee giggle, but she’s already making for the exit. “Aw, don’t be like that!”

She pauses when she reaches the door, scratching her neck. “Oh, but. Yunkyoung.” She turns, meeting the other girl’s eyes. Yunkyoung looks bewildered, still caught between staring at them and the store’s sprawling collection. “Don’t worry. You can trust her.”

She leaves before Yeonhee has the time to make fun of her any further, striding back into the streets without waiting for the door to shut.

Shoving her way through the crowd, she raises her head to her destination. A slew of grey buildings arranged in a compact square rise like prison bars toward the sky, releasing a whole storm’s worth of sickly red smoke clouds. Beneath her jacket, the tattoo feels heavy on her skin.

Wish it wasn’t there, she thinks vaguely, but there’s nothing else for it—she enters the complex, completes the transaction with robotic precision, and returns with a newly replenished bag to tuck carefully into her belt. 

The sky is already dimmer by the time she comes back. She hears faint voices coming from inside, and stops just short of the door’s entrance radar.

“…so you left the crew?” It’s Yunkyoung’s voice. Suyun tenses.

“Yeah,” Yeonhee says, muffled. “It wasn’t easy. Still isn’t. But some risks are worth suffering.”

“That’s incredible.” Yunkyoung’s voice is even softer through the wall. “I mean it. Really, I wish I could…” She trails off. “No, nevermind.”

They fall silent. Suyun looks at her feet, mouth flattening. Her fingers find the hem of the bag, and she clutches it loosely. She can’t let go, not yet.

“You know,” Yeonhee begins, “Suyun’s also—”

Suyun steps forward, rapping sharply. “I’m back,” she announces, somewhat louder than she needs to.

The door screeches open. She walks in to see Yunkyoung nestled in the armchair, Yeonhee leaning comfortably against the counter. Suyun’s eyes drop to where she’s still shrugging her coat back on over her shoulders, concealing a perfect mirror of the mark on Suyun’s forearm. The record player is playing something electronic and soothingly low, undulating through the room at what seems like the same pace as the holograms.

“What’s this one?” Suyun asks, in lieu of greeting. There are some things that she’d rather not talk about.

“Screamo, actually!” Yeonhee answers with a smile. “Written by cetaceans, for cetaceans. We humanoids don’t have the hearing range.”

“Great,” Suyun says, deadpan. She turns to Yunkyoung. “Sunset’s coming, by the way.”

Yunkyoung’s eyes light up. “Oh! Should we leave?” Then she looks back at Yeonhee, frowning. “Ah, but—I was learning so much about records, and, um, ah-nuh-log music…besides, don’t you want to stay and talk with your friend?”

Suyun blinks. “That’s…”

“Ah, Yunkyoung, you really are sweet,” Yeonhee laughs, looking fond. Suyun’s eye twitches. Already? “Don’t worry about it. Suyun swings by often enough. And she loves me, even though she likes to pretend otherwise. Right?”

“Whatever you say,” Suyun says dryly, ignoring Yeonhee’s pout. 

Yunkyoung glances between them for a moment, then shrugs. “Well, if you’re certain.” She stands up, smoothing out her dress. “Shall we go?”

“Go on, don’t let me stop you!” Yeonhee says cheerfully, shooing them out. “And you’ll be back anyways, won’t you? Whatever it is you’re coming for.”

Suyun’s mouth lifts into a smile. “Right.”

They leave without any further delay, exiting the dimly blue-glowing store to find themselves beneath a dimly lilac-glowing sky, though it’s kept high above them by the relentless glare of the city lights. Suyun walks them warily to another taxi booth, keenly aware of the blaster on her hip, but nothing happens.

“I really am looking forward to it,” Yunkyoung says during the ride, her expression softening into something content and just a bit wistful.

Suyun doesn’t reply. There’s nothing to add, after all.

They’re let off at a street that is for once considerably different from the rest of Bimaum. A gap the width of a battleship opens up between blocks on one side, revealing this time not another jumble of buildings, but a gleaming set of mountains. They shine dark fuchsia at the base, gradually turning to pale salmon at the peak, although they have the same bouncy, rubbery polish all throughout. Suyun figures it was here that the planet’s architect gave up on naturalism entirely: the ‘Bimaum Mountain Range’, as it is so helpfully labelled by an archway at the entrance, resembles the gelatinous desserts Suyun saw at the food court far more than any organic landform.

“Wow, these are the fakest things I’ve ever seen!” Yunkyoung enthuses, and of course this girl would be able to make it sound like a compliment.

“Wait till you see them from the top,” Suyun says, with a real grin. There is something about these stupid mountains that always gets her a bit excited.

The ground past the archway is covered in an odd synthetic grass, which pops out of the ground in a perfectly spaced grid of little pink blobs. They squish underfoot like stretchy bubbles, making Yunkyoung laugh and start walking with a lot more vigour than strictly necessary. Even here, the grass is rubbery and gleaming—and even here, there are too many people.

“This way,” Suyun says, beckoning Yunkyoung over to a partially hidden spot at the base of the first mountain. All of the mountains are respectably sized, but they’re built so round and close to the entrance that they feel more like theme park attractions. “I know a nice shortcut, if you want to escape the crowd.”

“Oh, I’d love that!” Yunkyoung beams, and goes to join her, almost skipping.

Suyun squints at the plasticky rim where the ground first slopes upward, searching. Then, abruptly, she lifts her foot and rams it into a point right along the edge.

A burst of something green and cybernetic flashes beneath her shoe, erupting into little squares of light on either side. Suddenly the ground under her foot has collapsed into a single flat stair, the layer of pink that was there before rolling away in fleshy waves.

She takes another few steps, grinning. The same thing happens every time, forming a disorderly staircase straight up the side of the mountain, though each stair starts shrinking back to normal just seconds after its creation.

She turns back. Yunkyoung is still standing at the bottom, staring. Suyun raises an eyebrow. “You coming?”

Yunkyoung shakes herself. “Of course!” she says, and proceeds to follow in Suyun’s footsteps with grave concentration. “But…what’s going on? How does this even work?”

Suyun shrugs. “It’s some sort of glitch, I dunno exactly. All of Bimaum’s synthetic nature is at least half built from code—and this glitch here just happens to lead to the nicest spot in the mountains.”

“Whoa. Amazing,” Yunkyoung says. Then there is silence, save for the squelching of their footsteps and the steadily more distant sounds of the city. Suyun feels Yunkyoung’s eyes burning into the back of her head. “You’ve been here a lot, huh.”

“I guess. It’s a pretty place, after all.”

“So…you think it’s pretty, too. Bimaum, I mean.”

Suyun scoffs, bitterness rising in her throat. “You kidding me? Bimaum is a shithole. Maybe it was nice at first, but c’mon, it’s completely commercial in the end. Pirates and drug lords hand out a couple bribes, and suddenly the place is teeming with criminals. The only people who still find it beautiful are the ones rich enough to stay away from it all.”

Yunkyoung makes a thoughtful noise. “I see,” she says quietly. “I hadn’t realised.” There’s a lot you don’t realise, Suyun thinks, but Yunkyoung isn’t finished. “Still—there are some things to appreciate, aren’t there? The mountains, Yeonhee’s shop, the food court, you know. I feel like, if you only see the bigger picture, you miss a lot of wonderful things. And you have to notice those things, if you don’t want everything to be terrible. Or something.”

Suyun lets the words sink in, keeping her eyes on the ground in front of her. There is a solemnity to Yunkyoung’s voice that makes her feel like if she looked back, she would be thrown off even more than she already is.

“Maybe,” she allows at last, watching the way the sunlight glints off of the gentle, squishy slope. Maybe there’s a lot I don’t realise, too. “Anyway, let’s keep moving. There’s still a lot of ground to cover.”

“Sure,” Yunkyoung says, and they remain quiet for the rest of the walk, two solitary dots weaving their way up a mound of perfect, glittering pink.

They come to a stop at a small plateau near the peak, where a handful of other hikers have also gathered, coming out of what seems to be a series of expensive, crowded elevators. A surprised insectoid curses when they appear, making Yunkyoung giggle.

“Come on, let’s find somewhere else,” Suyun mutters to her, as the insectoid glares after them with its twenty-some eyes.

There is a ridge on the plateau that sees over the mountains, the sun, and the city all at once. Suyun and Yunkyoung sit on the edge, legs dangling down together on the mild, almost pillowy incline.

The sun is setting. The sky drips onto the mountains and through the cracks between buildings like a prismatic cocktail, a heady mix of pale pink, deep rose, wine red, and dusky indigo. The last of the sunshine reflects off the mountainside in a sea of sparkles, almost imitating the ever-blinking lights of the surrounding cityscape. People of innumerable species and standings mill around the peaks, all observing the same silent scene. Squinting, they might catch the hint of a reflection on the mountains’ smooth pink surfaces, of clouds and skyscrapers and distantly drifting spaceships.

This time Yunkyoung doesn’t have to express her wonder aloud: one look at her face is enough for Suyun to hear the wow that must be echoing through her head. Her lips are parted, her eyes as wide as Suyun’s ever seen them, as if to absorb each and every detail of the view before her. She looks pensive, and gentle, and beautiful. Suyun’s heart twinges again.

“…Do you like it?” she finds herself asking, unusually hesitant, when Yunkyoung still hasn’t said anything.

“I love it,” Yunkyoung murmurs, gaze still fixed to the scenery as if by some gravitational force. Suyun’s own gaze gravitates to Yunkyoung. “Really. So much. Thank you for bringing me here.”

“S’no big deal,” Suyun mumbles, entranced by the movements of Yunkyoung’s mouth. Fuck. This means something, doesn’t it. “I’m more surprised that you trusted me in the first place. You should really watch out for yourself more, you know.”

Yunkyoung laughs, finally turning to face her. The eye contact makes Suyun swallow. “I could say the same to you. There was no good reason for you to go to all this hassle just for one sheltered princess, either.”

Suyun flushes. “I know,” she says, and finally it’s out; finally there’s no more pretense for her to hide behind. For whatever reason—even she doesn’t know exactly why—she’s put a lot of effort into this visit. The admission takes some weight off her shoulders.

“I guess we’re both just being irrational, then,” Yunkyoung says, with a smile that makes Suyun’s flush deepen.

“I guess,” Suyun echoes, returning the smile in spite of herself.

The sun continues to set on that note, the colours of the sky shifting around like a painting mid-creation. Suyun lets whatever feeling it is that’s been burgeoning inside of her expand like an ocean, warm and profound.

Irrational, huh, she thinks to herself. I guess so. But maybe…maybe this doesn’t have to make sense. 

They stay there until the whole sky is a rich violet, and floating street lights have begun to pop up around the mountainside. Suyun catches Yunkyoung yawning out of the corner of her vision, and suppresses a snort.

“I think it’s time to go, princess,” she says wryly. “We should get back to the ship.”

Yunkyoung looks at her sleepily, head tilted. “You sure? Don’t you have to like, take precautions and stuff before leaving? Didn’t you literally get shot and crash through my window last—”

“Precautions are already in place,” Suyun interrupts, rolling her eyes. No thanks to you, this time. “And that was just a fluke, anyways.”

“I dunno, I still kind of wanna stay, just…” She trails off, yawning. “Just, just, a liiittle bit longer…”  

Suyun snorts, watching as Yunkyoung struggles to fight off her sleepiness. Somehow, it’s a satisfying sight; somehow, she wouldn’t mind having to deal with it again.

“Come on, princess,” she says gently, and will continue to say for dozens more outings, on dozens more planets: “Let’s get you home.”

It becomes a habit. Suyun isn’t quite sure how. She’ll be back at the mothership, taking orders, raiding container ships with the rest of her crew, when suddenly she’ll think: Yunkyoung would like this place, or thing, or species. And then, although the odds should be against them, they go to find it. The palace never notices. The captain never cares. Irrationality is working, at least for the moment.

And the feeling that Yunkyoung planted in Suyun’s chest only grows, bigger and bigger, until suddenly she’s no longer flirting with every girl she meets, no longer frequenting the same bars and theatre districts, sometimes even no longer as bitter. It makes her do weird things, too: things like tidying her hair before they meet, smiling at nothing in particular as Yunkyoung blabbers, and sometimes inexplicably finding her gaze drawn to Yunkyoung’s lips, all pink and soft and—

“What are you looking at?” Yunkyoung asks with an uncertain laugh, swiping self-consciously at her mouth. Suyun blinks, snapping back to reality.

“You had a petal on your cheek,” she lies.

“Oh.” Yunkyoung wrinkles her nose. “Well, whatever. Things like that are the point of going to flower fields to begin with, you know?”

Suyun snorts. “Okay, weirdo.”

“I’m serious!” Yunkyoung protests, and Suyun lets the remainder of her rant drift comfortably in one ear and out the other.

She lifts her eyes back up to the sky, vast and blue and speckled with clouds. They’re lying side by side in a field of red and white flowers—paper stars, Suyun recalls—watching the two suns crawl slowly through the atmosphere, unusually distant. Everything smells of nectar and fresh, clean soil. A gentle breeze sends her hair fluttering over her face, wisps of silver obscuring her vision. She exhales contentedly, closing her eyes.

“How d’you like Bouncee so far?” she asks, shamelessly interrupting Yunkyoung’s monologue.

“Hey, I wasn’t finished!” Yunkyoung says indignantly. Then she pauses: Suyun imagines her deflating, then smiling reluctantly. “But, yeah. I love it. It’s so…happy. And different. And, I don’t know, away from everything else.”

Suyun hums. It’s the same reason she’d liked it, when she first happened to drop by for a fuel refill. It’s a small planet, orbiting a binary star lightyears away from anywhere noteworthy. Its native humanoid inhabitants never venture far.

“I’m glad,” she says simply, because she is.

A yelp from beside her makes her eyes snap open again. She turns her head, and immediately bursts out laughing: some kind of butterfly has landed on the tip of Yunkyoung’s nose, its thin, teal wings shimmering in the sunlight. Yunkyoung is completely frozen, staring at it with mixed fear and fascination.

“Here, let me help you,” Suyun says, still laughing, and swats it away.

“Thanks,” Yunkyoung says, with palpable relief. She watches, mesmerised, as it flutters lazily into the air, landing again on the petals of a paper star. “It’s beautiful.”

A smile twitches up the corners of Suyun’s lips. “If I had a dollar for every time you said that…”

Yunkyoung laughs. “Then what? What would you do with all that money? More piracy?”

Suyun sighs, bringing her hand absently to her tattoo. The opposite, more like. “Nah, I’d buy myself a house,” she says lightly. “A nice Yunkyoung-proof mansion, far from Woollim.”

“What’s with that?” Yunkyoung giggles. “So mean.”

Suyun just closes her eyes again, letting Yunkyoung’s laughter ring peacefully through the air around them.

They leave when the suns are just past their zenith, picking their way through the grass back to the main road, a cobblestone path that meanders through a cluster of more hills and flower fields. There’s already a good number of people trickling down it, all pointing excitedly at the same thing: a huge, cylindrical, two-tiered edifice in the distance, with what looks like a big blue marquee set up at the top. The faint noise of drums, firecrackers, and shouting can be heard even from here.

“What festival did you say was happening again?” Yunkyoung asks as they slip into the crowd. 

Suyun frowns. “Forgot the details. Something about planets aligning.”

“Wow. This much celebration, just for that?”

“There’s some myth about it.”

Yunkyoung hums, seeming to consider this. They stroll in silence for a while, watching children run eagerly past them, clutching sparklers and flowers and all manner of alien toys. The people in this part of Bouncee seem to dress mostly in eclectic yellows, with puffy sleeves and skirts; Suyun has been observing them since they landed, on a shabby spaceport about an hour’s walk away.

Halfway through, they come across an odd-looking structure. A few metres off the side of the road, two tall metal bars are twined together into a pillar, a bright blue flame burning on top. It would look like a candle, if the few candles Suyun remembers seeing were much larger and not made of wax.

“What do you think this is?” Yunkyoung asks, gawking up at the flame. A handful of other people have also stopped to admire it, chattering to each other in an unfamiliar language. Bouncee is one of the only planets Suyun’s been to that hasn’t long since adopted the galactic standard.

“No idea,” Suyun answers truthfully. “Must be something to do with the festival, but I dunno wha—”

“It is a signal,” says a voice from behind them. Suyun startles, turning. A girl with long brown hair is standing just off the road, also gazing up at the pillar. “So that the planets know where to meet.” She looks down, meeting Suyun’s eyes with a grin. “You are foreigners, correct?”

“Correct!” Yunkyoung chirps, before Suyun can even make up her mind to respond. “Are you from around here?”

“Yes!” Juri answers, equally chirpy. “I am Juri, I have come for the festival as well. I can…tell you more about it?”

“Of course,” Yunkyoung says promptly, eyes shining. Suyun sighs. So trusting, she thinks, but Juri does seem harmless, and she’s curious too.

“It is called the festival of the lovers,” Juri explains. Suyun darts a look at Yunkyoung. “The two planets—they are our creation gods—are always at opposite ends of the sky, but today they meet. We say it is their one night together after a long time of loneliness, to love each other and continue, ah, creating.” She grins mischievously, looking back at the flame. “That is why we blow it out after they align. To give them privacy.”

“O-oh, I see,” Yunkyoung says, scratching awkwardly at her neck. Suyun rolls her eyes. Trust this girl to be embarrassed at the thought of space rocks making love. “Oh, but—wow, that’s so romantic!”

“Right?” Juri says, smiling brightly. “I can show you around the rest of the festival too, if you like!” 

Yunkyoung frowns. “Really? You wouldn’t mind?”

Juri laughs sheepishly, looking away. “Ah, sorry. Bouncee does not get many travellers, and I am alone this year. I do not wish to intrude, but…”

Suyun observes her. Hands in plain sight, clothes that make concealment fairly difficult, and the kind of shy smile that reminds her of when she and Yunkyoung first met. Beside her—for once, at least—Yunkyoung has decided to wait patiently for her verdict. 

“I guess we could use a guide,” she says at last.

“I am happy to hear it!” Juri says, perking up again.

The rest of their walk is filled with lengthy recounts of their respective adventures. Suyun carefully leaves out the reasons for her travels, and Yunkyoung of course leaves out her royal status, but they do learn a lot about Juri: a Bouncee native who’s spent her whole life travelling the planet, and is learning the galactic standard in preparation for excursions outside of the star system.

“We do not really have the technology for it,” she laments. “The galaxy came to us before we could go out to it. But there is so much to explore, even just on Bouncee…I want to see it all.”

Suyun finds herself smiling. “I get that,” she says, almost wistfully. “Exploring, just for its own sake.”

She feels a pair of eyes on the side of her head, and turns. Yunkyoung is watching her, an oddly intent look on her face.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Yunkyoung says, shaking her head. “It’s just nice to see you happy, that’s all.”

Suyun’s ears are pink all the way to the festival.

Standing in front of the edifice itself is like standing in front of a whole new planet. Stairs and ladders are etched into the sides of each tier, and window-like holes carved in between suggest the presence of whole substructures further inside. Firecrackers burst like stars in every direction, and banners of a hundred colours fly like birds through the air. Suyun spies a clump of stalls on the first tier, already detecting the faint whiffs of spicy meats and sweet pastries.

Juri guides them to a ladder on the left, where a dozen other groups are also making their way up. “Follow me!” she says, eyes sparkling. “I know the best places—even though it changes every time.”

Yunkyoung’s lips form a round o. “It changes?”

“Yes! It is all built from scratch, just for this one night. The construction material is actually edible, you know.”

“Really?”

Suyun grins. “What, you wanna take a bite?”

“That would not be recommended,” Juri laughs, as Yunkyoung swats irritatedly at Suyun’s shoulder. “We feed it to the livestock when the festival is all finished.”

“That’s so cool,” Yunkyoung says, grabbing onto the ladder’s first little carved-out rung. Suyun watches her; the thought that it’s all made out of food is somehow unsettling.

Juri catches her staring, and smiles reassuringly. “Ah, there is no need to worry. It is edible, but sturdy. She will not fall.”

“What? I-I wasn’t—” Suyun cuts off, flushing. “I mean, uh. That’s okay, it’s not like I was particularly worried.”

Juri—a stranger that she’s barely known for half an hour—snorts. “Yes. Okay. If that is what you would like me to believe.”

She barely has time to splutter out a response before Juri is off, and it’s her turn to scale the strange, cakey ladder. The fuck is up with strangers these days, she thinks grumpily. I’m a fucking pirate.

The celebrations once they’ve reached the top are just as vigorous as they seemed from the bottom. The noise is all around them now, a lively cacophony of chatting and bartering and whooping; it’s a bit strange not understanding things for once, but something about the scene has its own language. Juri walks in front, parting the sea of people for them, and even then there are too many smells and sounds and colours to take in at once.

A splash on the cheek startles Suyun into cursing. Yunkyoung laughs. They turn; there is a pool of water a few metres to their right, in which a pair of fish-like creatures twirl to the beat of a drum, pushing two floating balls with their long, rubbery snouts. A crowd has formed around them, cheering and clapping.

“Oh, wow, Suyun!” Yunkyoung exclaims. “Aren’t those one of the animals floating around Yeonhee’s shop? You know, the holograms?”

Suyun squints at them. “Huh. You’re right.”

“Ah, they are re-enacting the story of the lovers!” Juri gushes, hands clapping together. “Come, come! We should watch!”

They slide into a small gap at the edge of the crowd. Now that they’re closer, Suyun can see streams of coloured dye trailing after the balls through the water, swirling and expanding in tiny mandelas behind the creatures pushing them. Her brow furrows.

“The balls represent the gods,” Juri explains, noticing her confusion. “In our legends, the world began in emptiness, but the gods had the power to change this. That is why they release the dye.”

“I see,” Suyun says. Her gaze slides over to Yunkyoung, who’s watching with rapt attention. She recognises the spark of fascination in her eyes, and smiles.

Juri’s explanations continue, receding into the periphery of Suyun’s hearing. “Here they are orbiting each other, at the very edge of the pool…” Suddenly Suyun finds herself thinking back to the days before her crash. If it didn’t happen—what then? she wonders distractedly.

The drums beat out a steady, melancholic rhythm. “See, they are still lonely, look how far underwater they are…” The marine creatures twirl lethargically in the coloured water, pushing the balls forward in little bumps at a time. I guess things would be pretty similar for the most part. It’s not like I can even spend that much time with her. We both have our limits.

She lets her thoughts wander. Grimy streets under crimson skies. The cold reassurance of a blaster in her hands. Days upon days in a spaceship full of criminals, willing or not. And then, Yunkyoung: Yunkyoung’s hand on her wrist, Yunkyoung’s face under the twilight, Yunkyoung’s laughter breaking the silence.

No. Something has still changed, for sure. Something important.

A thunderous crash of the drums wrenches her out of her thoughts. She blinks, just in time to see the balls meet and a torrent of now thoroughly dyed water burst skyward, spraying the crowd with rainbow droplets. They cheer.

“Ah! Cold!” Yunkyoung cries out, flinching.

“And so they come together at last! That is creation,” Juri finishes, applauding. “But, ahh—there they go again. It is always bittersweet, this festival.” 

Under Juri’s guidance, they spend the next few hours sampling food, lighting sparklers, and playing carnival games that both of them are horrible at. It feels like something she should’ve done when she was a child, somehow. From the way Yunkyoung reacts, all bright and giddy, Suyun can tell she feels the same. 

“Here, take it,” she giggles, after finally managing to throw her dart through a series of stupidly complex obstacles, winning a hideous prize: a rubber doll of some bug-eyed amphibian, that makes even the children around them recoil.

Yunkyoung gives her an incredulous look. “You really want me to have this? Me? You want me to take this back to my house?”

“Oh, right, ” Suyun says, then giggles harder. “Your house.”

Juri looks between them curiously, a whole pile of luxurious prizes (mostly snacks) leaking out of a satchel on her waist. Then she looks back at Suyun’s prize, and snickers. “I did not even know they gave that one out. You must be very bad at the game, Suyun.”

“I know,” Suyun says, rolling her eyes.

“Ah, fine, I’ll take it,” Yunkyoung says suddenly, plucking it out of Suyun’s hand and dropping it into her pocket. “You’d probably just throw it out, anyways.”

“It belongs in the trash,” Suyun argues, but she can’t hide the pleased smile that stretches across her face.

Suddenly, the beating of drums—lighter and more playful than with the marine creatures—catches their attention, alongside the trilling of several long, thin instruments whose many knobs gleam under the sun. Around the musicians are a throng of dancers, seemingly made up of random festival goers, flailing cheerfully with no apparent organisation. They travel together as one cohesive whole, charging like a wild animal through the crowd.

“What are they doing?” Suyun asks Juri, curious.

“Oh, them? They are nothing special,” Juri answers wryly. “Just some idiots who want to go dancing.”

Suyun laughs. “Did you hear that, Yunky—”

She cuts off. Yunkyoung isn’t listening; Suyun watches her wander over to the dancers as if entranced. A stranger from within the throng sees her, grins, and pulls her in to join them, laughing brightly when she yelps. That’ll be enough encouragement for her already, Suyun thinks fondly, and sure enough Yunkyoung starts dancing within the next few seconds: skipping around, twirling her hands through the air, beaming radiantly.

“You like her very much, don’t you,” Juri says softly from beside her. It’s not a question. This time Suyun isn’t even surprised: she can feel the affection showing on her face as clearly as if she was seeing it herself.

“Yeah,” she murmurs. The answer slips out of her before she has time to think about it, but that’s okay. It’s still just one quiet answer, to one girl who’s barely not a stranger. “Yeah, I do.”

Yunkyoung rejoins them about half an hour later, just as the two suns are beginning to set. She is sweaty and panting and still grinning like a child, cheeks rosy.

Suyun wrinkles her nose. “You stink.”

“Really?” Yunkyoung asks anxiously, then laughs, waving her hand in dismissal. “Ah, who cares. I had so much fun!”

“I can tell,” Suyun says, smiling.

They hold eye contact for one long moment, one still point in the shifting crowd, before letting it fall.

“Suyun, Yunkyoung!” Juri calls, tapping them both on the shoulder. They turn. “I have found a place I would like to show you!”

“What is it?” Yunkyoung asks eagerly.

Juri points to a food stall on their right, with a sign over the top reading something Suyun can’t understand, and what looks like some kind of mollusc painted beside it. The ambience around the stall is somewhat subdued; people stand around calmly, conversing in low, private tones, a little oasis in the otherwise ceaseless noise.

Suyun laughs. “More food, huh?” 

The line at the stall is a long, languid thing, and the binary sunset is visibly underway by the time they reach the front. The stall owner is an elderly lady with an old, wrinkled smile, who looks interestedly between Suyun and Yunkyoung and lets out a cackling laugh when Juri points at them, presumably making an order.

Suyun lets the sound of their haggling fade into the backdrop, gazing up at the gentle, distant glow of the two suns. She squints at the faint smudges on either side of them, curious, and inhales sharply.

“Yunkyoung,” she says, pointing. “Look. It’s the planets.”

Yunkyoung follows her finger up to the sky and gasps. Two round objects—one bigger and faintly purple, the other with what looks like a ring system drifting around it—are growing steadily closer, wading their way through the orange-red ripples of dissipating sunlight.

“Wow. You’re right,” she whispers. “So they’re actually visible from here.”

“Mm.” They’re silent for a while. Juri and the stall owner seem to have gotten into a lively conversation; the rest of the line just waits peacefully, chatting amongst themselves. “Huh, I think I remember flying past one, actually. Maybe we’ll see it again when we leave.”

Yunkyoung laughs. “You think?” Then she frowns. “Wait, that reminds me—didn’t you have a job to do? Why haven’t you gone anywhere yet?”

Suyun swallows. She knew the question was coming, sooner or later. “I, uh,” she starts hesitantly, “didn’t actually…have anything to do, this time.” She fights off a blush. “I just thought…I dunno. I was free, so.”

“Ah.” One soft-spoken syllable, telling volumes. Suyun’s eyes slide slowly sideways. Yunkyoung is looking down, flushed pink, biting back a smile. Oh, Suyun thinks, heart thudding, oh.

“The food has come!” Juri announces triumphantly, two tiny molluscs held out in her hands. Suyun and Yunkyoung both jolt to attention.

“O-oh, thanks,” Suyun says, picking one of them up between her fingers. She holds it up to the light, tilting her head. Its shell is pleasantly rounded and gleams a pretty green, fading to pale gold at the edges. “But how are we meant to—” 

“Fear not, I will guide you,” Juri says smugly, a mischievous gleam in her eye. “First, you must exchange them! It is a tradition.”

“Uh.” Juri makes a series of impatient hand gestures. Suyun looks at her quizzically, but hands it over. “Okay.”

“Next, you must open them up. Carefully, please!”

Suyun runs her nail along the rim of the mollusc she’s just received from Yunkyoung, prying it delicately open. Inside, cushioned on a disc of purple flesh, lies a vividly scarlet, fruit-like sphere. Suyun whistles, impressed.

“And finally—you must pick up the fruit, and you must eat it!”

The fruit is squishy under Suyun’s fingers, giving off the faint, sweet aroma of a berry. She pops it into her mouth, meeting Yunkyoung’s eyes as she does. It crumples instantly, releasing a sweet, tangy juice that makes her tongue tingle. 

The sudden cheering of the surrounding crowd makes them startle. Suyun looks around, and realises that they’re being watched: there are at least a dozen pairs of eyes trained on the two of them, looking equal parts amused, impressed, and even suggestive.

“What’s going on?” Yunkyoung asks, bewildered.

“They are congratulating you, silly!” Juri laughs. “It is a special snack exchanged between lovers, only on this day! Usually it is consumed in private, but I thought that since you are foreigners, and so sweet together—”

She’s cut off by the sound of Yunkyoung choking, her whole face turning a violent shade of red. Suyun’s own face isn’t doing much better, but now she’s caught between the urge to cackle like a maniac and correct Juri before Yunkyoung explodes.

“W-we aren’t like that!” Yunkyoung manages to wheeze eventually, though she’s still coughing. Suyun looks at her and smirks, heart racing happily when she sees Yunkyoung redden even more.

“Ehh?!” Juri exclaims, sounding genuinely astonished, but the sound of her voice is quickly drowned out by more cheering. Suyun looks up, and can’t hold back a giddy, disbelieving laugh—the planets have aligned, and a thousand rainbow fireworks erupt through the air like stars.

But that’s exactly the problem, Suyun thinks absently to herself, a few months later. It never leads to anything more.

The lounge of her minifreighter is quiet, broken only by the muffled whirr of the engines and the rustling of cargo mid-flight. Suyun stares up at the steel roof, sighing. There are no windows here, but she can imagine the view outside anyway: barren, pitch-dark, devastatingly silent.

They’re collapsed together on a battered couch by the main storage room, headed tiredly back to Woollim after yet another excursion. Suyun can feel the heat of Yunkyoung’s body beside her. It’s comfortable, and just a little bit intoxicating. Autopilot will suffice for now.

“Hey,” Yunkyoung says out of the blue, “what do you do with all the, uh, stuff you smuggle, anyways?”

Suyun raises an eyebrow. “Bring it back to the mothership, obviously.”

“And then?”

“Move it elsewhere. Like a blackmarket delivery system.”

Yunkyoung hums. Suyun feels the sound vibrate through the couch. “Do you ever smoke any?”

“Well, we are pirates, so…” Suyun stops. She turns her head, narrowing her eyes. “Why do you ask?”

Yunkyoung gulps, avoiding eye contact. “Dunno. I just figured we could…you know. Since there’s nothing else to do. And starbloom isn’t that bad, anyways.” She chews her lip. “…Right?” 

Suyun studies her for a moment, then snorts. “You sound like a rebellious kid whose mom just told them not to do drugs.”

“Hey,” Yunkyoung whines, pouting. “I’m not a kid.”

“I know, I know,” Suyun says, rolling her eyes. She glances at the storage room, considering. If it’s just starbloom… “Well. We could, technically.”

The curious sparkling of Yunkyoung’s eyes is like a drug of its own—after seeing it, Suyun can’t very well find it in herself to refuse.

Half an hour later Yunkyoung is giggling like an idiot, fingers dangling loosely around a joint that’s slowly wasting into ash. A cloud of pinkish smoke drifts lazily out from the tip, the same shade as the crumbling petals wrapped inside. Suyun can already feel her weight floating away from her body, her thoughts gently unhinging themselves from the world around her.

“Suyun.” Yunkyoung’s voice is silly and lilted; she says Suyun’s name like she’s rolling it around in her mouth. “Suyun, we’re in space.”

Suyun’s eyes droop shut. She is happy to let Yunkyoung exist only in a vague bundle of sensory information beside her. Yunkyoung beside her at all is good enough. “Mmm.” 

“Flying, actually,” Yunkyoung clarifies, as though it’s a matter of grave importance. “Through space. Like—like space birds. Even though I’m actually…a princess.”

“Yep,” Suyun says. It’s true.

“And you’re a…” Yunkyoung trails off. “Pirate?”

“Yep.” That’s true, too. 

“Nooooo,” Yunkyoung says slowly, “you’re not a pirate.” Really? Suyun cracks open an eyelid; Yunkyoung is squinting into the distance, looking dissatisfied. “You’re a… pretty pirate.”

The rush of warmth into Suyun’s cheeks is no longer unfamiliar. She smiles, relishing in the way her heartbeat picks up. “Thanks.”

The next stretch of silence cloaks them like a blanket. Suyun’s mind wanders, a half-coherent string of thoughts melded together with half-coherent images.

Is this really okay? Long, snow-white palace towers extend across the black canvas of her closed eyes. A princess. In my ship. Smoking starbloom. My friend. Yunkyoung’s smile, flushed red under the stars. My…something more than friend. Yunkyoung’s shrinking figure in the spaceport far below her. An empty cockpit. The boorish grin of a gold-toothed client. Smoke, pain, dingy bags of powder. The cold kiss of a trigger.

Is this really okay?

Beside her, Yunkyoung takes another drag on the joint. “This feels great,” she sighs, her breath rose pink. “There’s a…word…? Right, ebullient. This feels…ebullient.”

Suyun’s lips twitch drowsily upward. “You think?”

“Yeah. For real,” Yunkyoung says solemnly. Suyun watches thoughts pass like clouds through her eyes. “I feel so…far away. I feel like, nothing that needs to matter, matters.” She sighs again. “Why didn’t I do this before?”

Something about the way she says it makes Suyun laugh. “‘Cause—Yunkyoung, you’re, like, a princess. You’re going to be all…important. And rich. And above this.”

“Nooooooooo.” Suyun imagines the word spilling out of her in one long stream, flowing straight from her heart to her mouth. “Important? Me? Noooo.”

Suyun yawns, only half listening. “If you say so.”

There is a comfortable beat of silence. Then: “Hey, what’s that?” Yunkyoung asks, turning towards something in the storage room a few metres away. She looks curious as always, reaching out a lazy hand. “So shiny.”

Suyun follows her gaze. There is a bag by the entrance of the door she’d left ajar, collapsed just enough to expose the satchels of fine, shimmering powder within.

Sobriety hits her like a meteor.

She shoots upright, hand flying out to Yunkyoung’s wrist and yanking it back. Her face is hard. It doesn’t matter that Yunkyoung is too far to actually reach it; it wouldn’t matter if she were even farther. 

“S-Suyun?” Yunkyoung asks, eyes round with alarm.

Suyun ignores her, striding over to slam the door shut. Glitter, out in the fucking open, she curses internally. Fuck. I should’ve been more careful.

She turns back, eyes flinty. A storm brews somewhere within her. “Don’t ever fucking touch that. Ever. Okay?”

Yunkyoung swallows. “Okay,” she says feebly.

It occurs to Suyun that this must be the first time Yunkyoung has seen her like this. There’s never been any cause for severity, before. But things like this are different, and dangerous, and should be kept as far removed from Yunkyoung’s world as possible.

Memories flash before her eyes like laserfire. The crumbling buildings of a planet on the very brink of the galaxy, subjugated and left for dead by the ever-industrious Union. The concepts of right and wrong and family distant murmurs on the arid wind, drowned out in the ceaseless cries for survival, survival, survival. The glint of uncannily white powder on deathly grey streets, under blood red skies, reflected in the manic eyes of skeletal beggars.

Of course she would leap at any opportunity to escape. Of course she would pull Yunkyoung back, tell her off, keep any trace of that life far out of sight— 

Shit, she thinks, sitting down woozily. Perhaps she isn’t as sober as she thought.

“You don’t…like doing this, do you,” Yunkyoung says tentatively, after a long, tense pause.

Suyun huffs a laugh. “No. Not really.”

“Suyun.” Yunkyoung’s voice is soft and deliberate, in a way that Suyun suspects would be the same even without the starbloom. It is piercing, too—Suyun’s chest twinges, hard. “What do you really want to do?”

“I want to…” She knows the answer already; she’s voiced it before to a girl with the same tattoo, in a little store full of fish and dreams. But the words feel heavier in Yunkyoung’s presence. Like another layer of their fantasy, peeling away.

“Yes?”

“I want to stop,” she says eventually. “Leave the crew. Travel for travelling’s sake. Maybe do normal deliveries, or something. I don’t know. I’m saving up. Waiting. But it’s hard. I want to…”  

She trails off again, letting the sound of her voice float away, dissipate alongside the smoke of their forgotten starbloom.

Yunkyoung smiles, eyes crinkling. Then, gently: “You’re a good person, Suyun.”

The words come out like a kiss. Suyun shuts her eyes and savours it for all its worth, warmth flooding the depths of her heart and remaining there, unfading.

The stern of the mothership is dark and empty. Square windows hacked into the walls reveal the black abyss beyond, siphoning light out of the ship rather than in. Suyun’s footsteps echo solitarily down the walkway, metal soles clanking against metal floor.

She’s making her way back to her quarters after another raid, pressing down on her shoulder with a wince. Clipped by a stray laser—not bad, all things considered. At least this way she could excuse herself from both the celebrations and the crowded med bay. 

Her comm rings. She looks down, startled. A holographic screen appears in front of her: ANSWER?

She blinks. It’s not her usual comm; it’s the comm Yunkyoung gave her, that she keeps tucked away in the deepest compartment of her jacket. She glances around furtively. There’s no-one here, for now.

She picks up. “Yunkyoung?”

The sound of something choked and shaky reverberates through the corridor, like the ghostly cry of some space monster. What’s happening? Suyun almost asks, before it hits her: they’re sobs.

“Yunkyoung?” she asks again, more urgently this time. “Yunkyoung, what’s wro—”

“Suyun.” It’s Yunkyoung’s voice, trembling between breaths. “Suyun, a-are you…can you…”  

“Yeah?”

There is an unsteady inhale, and another choked, wretched sob. “I-If…you’re anywhere near the W-Woollim system…c-could you maybe…come?” 

Suyun’s mouth presses into a line. The mothership is heading toward the outer rims of the galaxy; it’d take an extremely powerful, fuel-consuming jump to hyperspace to get there in time.

“Please?” Yunkyoung whispers, voice cracking.

Fuck. Suyun shuts her eyes. “I’m near enough,” she lies, and Yunkyoung’s sigh of relief is enough for it to feel like the right decision.

Sneaking her minifreighter out of the hangars is simple, with the rest of the crew already busy. One watchstander is all she has to dodge before rushing through blast-off, ejecting herself hastily into the cold expanse of space.

The cockpit shudders with the sputtering of the engines. Suyun rests her hand on the jump drive lever, breathing out. It’s worth it, she tells herself firmly, and wrenches it down, squeezing her ship through the vortex of superluminal travel.

She lands in the spaceport before she knows it, having blown through five whole canisters of fuel. It’s the middle of the night; the capital’s gracefully spiralling streets are shrouded in darkness, empty save for the occasional whirr of a lonely vehicle. Suyun breezes through them all, following the map in her head with perfect, single-minded focus.

The towers come into sight. Finally, Suyun thinks, at last breathing easy.

The figure waiting at the hidden entrance to Yunkyoung’s quarters is swathed in a dark, hooded cloak; the hood falls back as Suyun approaches, revealing a familiar face, wan and puffy-eyed from crying.

“Hey,” Suyun says, not quite sure how to act.

Yunkyoung offers her a small smile. “Hey.”

“How are you, uh…”

She meets Yunkyoung’s eyes, helpless. Yunkyoung’s smile ebbs; there is a dullness to her face that Suyun has never seen before. “Just…come up, first,” she says quietly.

It’s eerie going up the same route that Yunkyoung had first led her down so long ago. Eerier, almost, that Yunkyoung is leading again at all. Each hallway they walk down has at least a dozen elegant, elliptical doorways, opening to a myriad of opalescent ballrooms and libraries and repositories. They do pass a few servants this time, but all of them keep their heads down, ducking quietly out of Yunkyoung’s way. 

They’re walking at a constant distance apart, but suddenly Suyun feels vividly that there is a gap—something vast, something important, that she can’t close just by stepping closer. Yunkyoung looks proud, and regal, and imposing, and Suyun…

She shakes herself. Not now.

They come to a stop at one of the glass tube elevators, which bends upward to join a honeycomb column of other tubes, extending endlessly in both directions. Suyun peers down; the bottom of the column devolves into a labyrinthine tangle, with passageways for seemingly every part of the basement.

“Where are we going?” she asks tentatively.

“The top,” Yunkyoung responds, pressing the button without looking back.

The elevator ride passes in dead silence.

“We’re here,” Yunkyoung says softly when the doors open, taking Suyun’s hand and walking her out.

Suyun finds herself on some kind of terrace, an enormous disc of a platform impaled like a shield on the tip of the tower. A thousand glowing purple flowers illuminate its perimeter, unfurling directly out of the metal ground. Floating benches are scattered around at random intervals, long, cushioned, and slightly rounded. Suyun waits for Yunkyoung’s usual wow! and then remembers with a pang that she is the only outsider here.

Yunkyoung guides her to a bench near the brink of the terrace, folding her hands daintily in her lap as she sits. Her expression is pensive in all the wrong ways.

What happened? Suyun wants to ask. Tell me. Trust me. Let me in.

“Why here?” she asks instead, feigning normalcy.

Yunkyoung points upward. “Look.”

Suyun lifts her head. The night sky is dappled with stars, rolling out above them in an infinite cosmic tapestry. Silhouettes of distant spaceships glide between the outlines of foreign constellations, the galaxy from a whole other perspective. Keeping her gaze up feels almost like being in space, floating weightlessly through the silence, an astronaut without a helmet.

“It always feels like I’m exploring, from here,” Yunkyoung continues softly. A dim spark reignites in her eyes, then fades. “Like…I can actually leave, for once.”

Suyun frowns. “You have, though. We’ve been all over the galaxy.”

“So what?” Yunkyoung’s voice is bitter. “I always come back, in the end.”

“That’s not the point,” Suyun retorts. Something churns uncomfortably in her stomach; it shouldn’t be Suyun saying these things, or Yunkyoung needing to hear them. “It still happened, didn’t it? We’ve explored so many places, and seen so many things. That still matters, right?” 

“Ah.” Yunkyoung softens. Suyun watches the words settle in; her eyes when she turns toward Suyun are fond. “You’re wiser than I remembered.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Suyun grumbles, but she gets it. It’s thanks to you.

Yunkyoung laughs. “No, nothing. Thanks.” She smiles, closer to her usual self but still somewhat weaker, somewhat sadder. “You’re right.”

“Of course,” Suyun scoffs. Somehow it doesn’t feel like much of a victory.

The air is clean and soothingly cool. The bench sways gently in the breeze. One of the flowers beside them flickers, fading to pale white in an otherwise iridescent cluster.

It is a long time before Yunkyoung speaks again.

“I’ve…known how my life was going to pan out. Ever since I was a kid,” she starts, staring fixedly at the stars. “They were always reminding me. My mother, my teachers, the royal council. Everyone.”

Suyun watches her. She feels a vague dread pooling in her gut, and pushes it down. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Yunkyoung echoes. Her voice is crushingly frail; she’s always been honest, but Suyun has never seen her so vulnerable. “That’s why…that’s why they don’t care what I do. There was never any escaping it. Whatever detours I tried to take before it happened.”

Detours. The word twists in Suyun’s heart like a knife—another layer, gone. Her lips part. Nothing emerges.

“When I was a kid, I used to come up here all the time,” Yunkyoung continues, something wet glistening in her eyes. She isn’t actually looking at the stars, Suyun realises; she isn’t actually looking at anything. “I would watch the stars and read about space and adventure and…all kinds of things.” She smiles distantly. “Pirates in particular. They were my favourite. So…free, and strong, and stupid.”

“Hey,” Suyun tries to protest, but it comes out as a croak. The dread is rising, harder and harder to ignore.

“Suyun,” Yunkyoung murmurs, meeting her gaze, and suddenly Suyun knows—this is where all of their pretenses die. “Suyun, I—I have to leave, soon.”

It doesn’t hurt the way Suyun expected it to. It isn’t shocking, or explosive, or anything like that. It’s worse—it’s like the culmination of a thousand smaller wounds, suddenly bursting open all at once, suddenly reminding her that she was hopeless from the start. Her heart throbs in her chest like a terrible bruise. Her blood has frozen in her veins. There is pain, and there is grief, and she already knows that there is nothing she can do to make it stop.

Fuck, she wants to say, then It’s okay, I figured, then Run away with me, then Take me with you, then I’m sorry—denial and resignation and anger and despair war in her head, numbly, uselessly.

“You know how tenuous relationships are, in the Union,” Yunkyoung continues, because even in moments like this time goes on. “I’m not the heir to the throne. Not even the empress’s child, or anything.” The Union. The throne. The empress. Suyun has never felt so powerless. “I’m just something to—to keep happy, and marry off when the time comes. A pawn.” She smiles bitterly. “And the time…the time is coming.”

For the first time in years and years, Suyun feels her eyes prickle. “Yunkyoung…”

“I-I…” Yunkyoung’s voice is breaking. “I don’t know what to…”

Her face crumples. Something in her eyes has shattered. Suyun hugs her before she fully knows what she’s doing, as if trying to pick up the pieces. Yunkyoung is small and warm in her arms, pressing closer as if trying to help her. 

Time passes. It’s the most they can do.

“Yunkyoung,” Suyun whispers, when she’s finally mustered up the courage. “Yunkyoung, I have to ask. For us—is this, is this the—”

“Don’t say it.” Yunkyoung’s voice is harsh. “Please. Don’t say it.”

Suyun doesn’t.

“So let me get this straight,” Suyun sighs, exasperated, “your captain wants us to ditch the entirety of our usual trade route for a whole year, effectively cutting our profits in half, and for…what, exactly?”

The girl sitting across from her sniffs. Her hair is pale pink, she’s wearing her crew’s tattoo—some kind of fruit, followed by a capital Z—exposed on her shoulder like a badge of honour, and she is the spitting image of a bored, pain in the ass teenager. They’re seated on opposite ends of a table tucked away in the darkest corner of the dining area, the waves of Jus’s enormous sea shimmering in ripples of light on the floor around them, kept out only by the equally enormous glass ceiling.

“That’s not what I said,” the girl says coolly. Her name is Dahyun, and she is an asshole.

“Oh, really?”

“I said,” Dahyun continues, rolling her eyes, “that you would do that in exchange for free use of one of our trade routes, and a proper alliance against the police.” Are you stupid or something? she doesn’t say, but it’s written—very deliberately, Suyun suspects—all over her face.

“All pirates are basically in an alliance against the police—”

“That’s why I said a proper alliance. You know, sharing intelligence. Coordinating raids. We work in pretty similar territories, after all.”

Suyun narrows her eyes. Dahyun is tapping her finger impatiently on the table, looking like she has better places to be. “…Fine. Whatever. I’ll bring it up to the captain.” You annoying little prick, she adds internally. Why’d I have to be sent out for this?

“Glad to hear it,” Dahyun says dryly, and with that Suyun’s task for the day is done.

Fucking finally. She drains her drink and stands up, chair sliding backward with a screech. Dahyun stays in her seat, arms crossed, without any visible intention to do the same.

Suyun hesitates. She is young, after all. “Uh, you’re staying?” she asks cautiously. “Do you know how to—”

The dark look Dahyun gives her shuts her up instantly, as well as quashing any remaining goodwill she might have had for children. “I’m fine,” she grunts. “I’m not a kid.”

“So, you’re…”

“Waiting for someone. A friend.”

Suyun looks at her, suddenly noticing the way she’s fidgeting with her clothes under the table, and the ill-hidden Jus travel brochure sticking out of her bag. She suppresses a small smile. So she’s normal after all.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Dahyun asks suspiciously.

Suyun shrugs. “Nothing.” Her eyes catch on the brochure. Record stores and purple curls and soft smiles flash through her head. “You know,” she says conversationally, “it’s not too late to back out of it all. You’re so young.” 

Dahyun’s hands still on the hem of her skirt. Her eyes when she looks at Suyun are guarded. “…My friend’s a pirate too,” she says slowly. “It’s not a problem.”

“Sure,” Suyun says, shrugging again, “but if you ever change your mind, or find yourself thinking that you have better things to pursue, you can always—”

“And how’s that working out for you?” Dahyun interrupts, staring pointedly at the space whale etched onto Suyun’s forearm. Something in her face has closed off.

Suyun’s eye twitches. Brat. “I’m doing fine,” she lies, plastering on a passive-aggressive smile. “Just some well-meaning advice from, you know, an adult. I’ll be on my way now.”

She leaves without another word, annoyed. On the way out she passes another girl, with the exact same tattoo in the exact same place. Her hair is black and cutely rounded, and there is an intent, happy gleam in her eye. Suyun lets some of the annoyance drain out of her.

I know the feeling, she thinks, reluctantly sympathetic, and keeps walking.

The planet of Jus is entirely aquatic, covered from pole to pole in half-water, half-ice, depending on the position of the sun. Beneath its surface is an elaborate maze of glass structures, suspended with high-tech hydropower. It’s stationed at the convenient edge of an otherwise uninhabited star system, frequented by traders and deliverymen, not governed by any specific nation. In short: it is an ideal meeting point for criminals who want to be discreet.

Suyun’s boots clack on the glass floor, just above the dark abyss of the ocean. The corridor around her is rectangular and sterile, with the exception of an array of little egg-shaped lamps stuck onto the walls like sea slugs. Light shines at the end of the passage, opening up into a vast and much better-lit lounge. 

She steps through with an instinctive smile, immediately scanning the crowd. Comfortable, almost bed-like seats are arranged in an arc at the edges of the room, providing the perfect angle from which to admire the teeming waters above them. In the middle of the dome is a round information centre, manned by a little fish-like robot.

There aren’t that many people today; Suyun finds what she’s looking for soon enough. She strides over to a short figure reclining on a cushioned seat, lilac hair sprawled out, bathing in a strip of watery sunlight like a phantom. 

“Hey,” she calls. “Get up, you lazy ass.”

Yunkyoung cracks open her eyes. “Already?” she asks, yawning.

“Yeah. Felt like hours, though. Had to meet up with this—with this little shit—”

Yunkyoung laughs. “You sound angry.”

“Ugh.” Suyun deflates. It’s her loss if she lets it get to her, she supposes. “How was your nap?”

“Pretty good!” Yunkyoung answers cheerfully, stretching. “Dreamt about those space whales.”

Suyun hums. They’d spotted them on the way to Jus, a whole pod of creatures the size of small moons, their steel hides—the sturdiest material in the known universe—grey-black and flecked with millions of tiny, star-like dots. Not an overly rare sight if you knew where to look, given how well-documented their migration patterns were, but still undeniably, unendingly breathtaking. They had flown in inevitable silence, like a belt of ghostly asteroids, some with water from their stay in Jus still streaming off of them in lethargic comet tails.

“They’re cool,” Suyun admits, quiet.

“Mm,” Yunkyoung says. She glances at Suyun’s forearm, then looks away. “I just thought, wow…they really remind you how insignificant you are.”

“True enough,” Suyun says with a shrug. She hasn’t really wanted to think about their insignificance, lately. “You wanna get some food?”

In a flash Yunkyoung is upright, eyes shining. “Of course!”

The restaurant Suyun finds for them is another, smaller glass dome, with low tables and pretty pillows to serve as seats. A group of felidonian chefs cook in a kitchen at the centre, silent and efficient. Diners of various species chat peacefully amongst themselves as the chefs work. There is an interesting service system running through the room, Suyun notices; glass tubes built into the dome itself carry seawater and fish from the outside, where they are then slipped out onto the counter, chopped, and sucked up into another tube to deliver straight to the diners’ plates.

“Whoa, that’s so clever!” Yunkyoung gasps, and for once Suyun finds herself inclined to agree.

They sit down at an empty table by the kitchen, admiring the chefs’ knifework. It’s not every day that you see food being prepared by hand, or at least not in the developed world.

“Are we meant to eat it raw?” Yunkyoung asks, torn between awe and concern.

Suyun grins. “Don’t worry, I’ve had it before. It won’t kill you.”

“Thanks for the reassurance,” Yunkyoung grumbles.

They manage to come up with an order after only a handful of arguments, sending it off to the kitchen via the standard digital menu. In the meantime, they look up through the ceiling, where a lively medley of marine creatures are swimming around, carefree.

There are striped fish whizzing around in colourful, hyperactive schools; bigger, somewhat sluggish fish drifting around on their own; wrinkled creatures with golden-spotted shells skimming the water with their fins; all manner of seaweed and coral debris floating around like specks of paint; and even sometimes what is unquestionably a huge, vicious predator skulking back and forth below them, with a flat snout and razor-sharp teeth and unnervingly intelligent eyes. A whole other world, just beyond their reach.

“It’s like Yeonhee’s shop,” Yunkyoung mumbles, the turquoise glow of the ocean reflected in her eyes like Jus’s blue-white sun.

Suyun snorts. “I wonder why.”

“Oh. Right,” Yunkyoung says, frowning. “But they’re not entirely the same, anyway. This is, you know, more vivid. Less like just a dream.”

“I wonder why,” Suyun repeats, deadpan.

Yunkyoung blinks, then bursts out laughing. “Come on, you know what I mean.”

“If you say so,” Suyun teases, even as the words just a dream continue to echo through her head until the food arrives.

The fish they ordered has been sliced into neat, juicy squares, with white streaks of fat running across the surface in appetizing lines. It smells faintly of salt, but mostly of nothing; the only word you could really use to describe it is fresh. There are no utensils. Suyun picks up a slice, deliciously tender between her fingers, and drops it into her mouth.

It dissolves instantly, its texture right on that perfect boundary between liquid and solid, half-melting, half-squishing. The clean, delicately meaty flavour of the ocean fills her mouth.

“Fuck, that’s good,” she groans, chewing.

Yunkyoung shuts her eyes, sighing in contentment. “Another thing to love about this planet.”

Suyun raises an eyebrow. “Really? What else?”

“Like, I dunno, the lounge. All the empty space. The fact that the sun stays out for centuries.”

“What’s so good about that?”

Yunkyoung shrugs, reaching for another slice of fish. “The day never ends.”

“Hm.” Suyun leans back, thinking. “I guess. But then you’d never see the sunset.”

Yunkyoung stills, almost imperceptibly. Suyun wonders if she’s remembering the same scenes: purple-pink twilights, dissipating suns, and a hundred fond smiles, all different and all the same.

“You have a point,” she acknowledges, looking away.

When their plates are empty and the bill is footed, they leave, winding their way down a series of progressively deeper corridors. The water grows darker as they descend, and the fish species odder, everything warped by the convex glass that curves protectively over the staircases.

“Where are we going, again?” Yunkyoung asks, as a colossal, tentacled monster passes beneath their feet. Suyun feels a finger nudging timidly at her hand and takes it, trying vainly not to smile.

“I haven’t told you yet, idiot.” They’re hand in hand, now. “It was meant to be a surprise.”

“Oh. Why?”

Suyun shrugs. “Guess I wanted to make it more memorable? Because we don’t…” Her voice catches in her throat. “Have much more, you know…”

“Ah,” Yunkyoung says softly. Her grip tightens. They fall silent, ignoring the reality that weighs in the air around them like lead. Then: “Wait—does that mean I’ve just been blindly following you for the last, like, half an hour?”

“What can I say, you trust me,” Suyun says, grinning mischievously.

Yunkyoung ducks her head, flushing. “Yeah,” she says quietly. “I guess I do.”

It’s not the reaction Suyun had expected, but that’s fine. Better, even. Another quiet confession to lock away into her memories, to relive.

The tube they end up in is at the very bottom of the glass structures, out of which thrums a rhythmic cacophony of ticking and whirring. They’re still holding hands as they enter, Suyun first, Yunkyoung following nervously behind.

“…Have you brought me here to die?” Yunkyoung asks warily, only half-joking.

Suyun laughs, the sound ricocheting off the walls. “Nah, don’t worry. It’s just a freight transport system, see?”

She points to their left, where an automatic pulley system brings crates of unknown contents over to a conveyor belt, which then carries them down into big steel carts that rattle busily down the tunnel beyond. There are thousands of crates, only a handful of lights, and certainly no people. It’s a primitive system for such an otherwise advanced planet, but it serves Suyun’s purposes well.

She brings Yunkyoung to where the cargo is being loaded, flat crates piling up to form an even, floor-like surface halfway down the carts. Each cart pauses for a couple of seconds before setting off, slowly at first, and then increasing to an easy, comfortable jogging speed.

“We’re hitching a ride!” Suyun announces, eyes sparkling. She’s been looking forward to this.

Yunkyoung balks. “You want me to get into one of those?”

Suyun rolls her eyes. “C’mon, princess. It’s flat, and protected, and moves at the speed of like, you.”

Yunkyoung huffs, offended. “I can move faster than that!”

“Then shouldn’t the carts be fine?”

Yunkyoung gives her a dark look. Suyun grins.

They miss five more carts before Yunkyoung manages to hype herself into actually doing it. Suyun holds her steady as she finally clambers into the sixth, then jumps in to join her just before it has the chance to speed up. It rocks once, twice before stabilising again—“Crap!” Yunkyoung yelps—and then they’re off, huddled together in a trundling cart on its way to nowhere in particular.

“It’s so dark,” Yunkyoung complains.

“Look closer,” Suyun says, and waits for Yunkyoung’s gasp.

There is no sunlight this deep into the ocean, that much is certain. Occasionally a frightful fish drifts by just close enough to be visible, or one of the tunnel lights illuminates a patch of black water. But, letting your eyes adjust to the darkness, a different scene gradually fades into view: the night sky in the deep sea.

A swarm of flying lights pass by overhead, a shifting swirl of sapphire stars. A handful of slow-moving chandeliers float prettily in the distance. Daubs of glowing clouds wander directionlessly, alongside the occasional colourful set of lines so intricate they look like paintings.

“It’s bioluminescence,” Suyun explains.

“It’s magic,” Yunkyoung whispers.

Suyun snorts. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

“No, you absolutely should,” Yunkyoung says gravely, eyes catching on a particularly vivid cloud-creature with splashes of colour like a supernova. “Or if not magic, at least like, space. Outer space, underwater. Imagine how much you could explore just on Jus!”

Suyun smiles. It’s a nice image, somehow. “Space exploration without actually being in space?”

“Exactly,” Yunkyoung says, with feeling. Then she spots something, and starts to excitedly smack Suyun’s shoulder. “Oh, oh, wow! What’s that?” 

Suyun follows her line of sight to a shimmering set of silver, five-pointed stars, just bright enough for them to make out the blue scales and crimson fins of the fish it shines off of. It’s somewhat out of place among the rest of the fish, peaceful and rather more gaudy. It looks familiar, Suyun thinks, squinting, and then she remembers—

“It’s a moonfish,” she realises, eyes wide.

“Pretty sure you mean starfish. I mean, look at it, it’s literally covered in—” 

“No, for real,” Suyun says, shaking her head. “I read about it in the brochure. They’re meant to be crazy rare, thanks to their stupid breeding habits. The males live in the deep sea, the females live up in the shallows, and they can only interact in the few metres in the middle that they can both actually survive in.”

Yunkyoung laughs. “That is stupid,” she says, then falls quiet, staring as the cart steadily passes it by. Thoughts pass through her eyes like planets; Suyun can feel them in orbit around the cart.

“Not many people get to see them, huh?” she says, when it’s out of sight.

“Not many, no,” Suyun answers. Then, after a pause: “I’m glad it was us.”

I’m glad it was you who found me that day. I’m glad it was me who showed you the galaxy. I’m glad it was us who did all of this together, who trusted each other, who taught each other, who picked up each other’s pieces, who fell in, who fell in… 

“Me too,” Yunkyoung murmurs softly. Suyun can see the glow of the underwater lights reflected on the purple of her hair, in the black of her irises. She can see herself, too, dark and familiar, gazing back with just as much intensity.

“Hey, Yunkyoung,” she begins, at last. Suddenly she feels like she can say it, if it’s now, if it’s them. “Whatever happens, I…I just wanted to tell you—” 

She’s interrupted by the sharp, effervescent sound of something hurtling up through the water. They turn, just in time to catch a glimpse of a glimmering rock shooting up past the glass, streams of blue-green kelp trailing behind it as if by solar wind.

“A shooting star!” Yunkyoung gasps. “Come on, make a wish!”

Suyun shuts her eyes, smiling in fond resignation, and complies. Next time, then. The decision is easy, anyway—there are only a few things she would still wish for at this point.

“What did you wish for?” Yunkyoung asks her excitedly. Then she freezes, looking panicked. “Wait, no, don’t tell me—it won’t come true if you—”  

Suyun laughs. “Even though it’s probably just a weird underwater phenomenon that has nothing to do with shooting stars at all?”

“Even so,” Yunkyoung says seriously. “It’s not like the real ones are actually stars, either. They’re just rocks.”

Suyun hums. “You’re not wrong.”

“So, like,” Yunkyoung continues, “on the off chance that it works, or whatever, we should be careful, because maybe…maybe…”

Suyun watches her. She’s scratching her neck, blushing, clearly trying hard not to fall back into her usual rambling. It’s familiar; it’s mesmerising. She etches the sight into memory, a tattoo in the deepest reaches of her heart. 

She looks back up. From here, the ocean almost seems still.

“Maybe,” she echoes. “Maybe.”