From the day he stopped asking to be killed, the Captain did all manner of uninvited things. Not content with bringing roses every day, he would leave fairy tales and light reading material for Luka to pass the time alone in the treatment room.
On days when Luka kept his mouth firmly shut and stared at nothing but the wall, the Captain never pushed him to respond. Instead he would simply sit beside him and quietly turn the pages of whatever book he’d brought.
That measured distance and steady warmth became a lifeline that pulled Luka back above the surface each time he branded himself a monster and sank into suffering. Luka still couldn’t love the self that had become so foreign to him. But during the hours the Captain visited, he was beginning — ever so gradually — to accept the fact that he was not just a broken lump of flesh, but a person named Luka.
The Captain was humming softly to himself.
“Hm, hmm, hmm.”
Thinking of Luka, with whom he’d grown considerably closer lately, a smile spread across his entire face.
When he’d first laid eyes on Luka, the first thing that caught his attention was the soft, flowing black hair. When light touched it, it shone with a deep, subtle luster like a dark night sky. It was beautiful and mysterious — as though the universe itself were held within it.
A few days ago, he’d washed that hair with cedarwood-scented oil, and the silky feeling of it sliding through his fingers had been extraordinary. The Captain had found himself stroking it for quite some time without even realizing it.
But as beautiful as that night-sky hair was, it was still those pale blue eyes that were most beautiful of all. In the beginning they had been cold and stained with pain and hatred — but since Luka had begun opening up little by little, they shone as though they held the deepest, clearest lake in the universe.
Even so, if he had to name the most striking quality he’d come to notice from spending time together — it would have to be the voice.
Such a delicate face, and yet such a low voice.
It fell into a peculiarly low register — not too heavy, not too thick. Even a short “Mm.” in response resonated quietly through the air in that low range and seized the Captain’s ears every time.
Perhaps that was why — no matter how quietly Luka murmured to himself, he could always hear it. Clear and beautiful and calm, like listening to a song.
Everything about him, from head to toe, is striking. The face is delicate and lovely, but the voice is firm, the movements are incredibly careful. He’s guarded too. The more I learn about him, the more he engages all five senses.
That first week, Luka had been like a tiny kitten with all its fur puffed up on end. He spoke nothing but kill me and refused every hand that came near him.
But the Captain had seen at a glance what lay hidden behind those sharp words — fear, and loneliness. He also knew well enough that what could soothe a sharp-edged little creature was nothing but warm and gentle sunlight.
So every day he brought Luka a yellow flower. Hoping to breathe even a little life into that bleak treatment room.
At first Luka had looked at the yellow flower with curiosity — saying he’d never seen one like it back home — yet kept his distance from it as though something terrible might happen if he got too close, and simply observed it from afar. Then gradually, as his wariness crumbled, he began to stroke the petals softly. With a touch of extreme caution, as though afraid the petals might bruise under the strength of his grip.
He’s deeply guarded, and yet when treated well he lets those walls come down just as easily. I find it unbearably endearing.
Another endearing image came to mind. Luka would grumble that the Captain’s daily visits were a nuisance — and yet he observed his every action, his every movement and path, down to the last detail. As though, contrary to what he said, he couldn’t care less about being bothered — he was desperate to know more. That kind of honesty was so terribly charming.
Honesty — yes, that’s right. Luka doesn’t seem to be very good at hiding things.
Whenever he kissed his forehead or the back of his hand, Luka would flinch and go rigid — but never cried out that he hated it. No, the stronger impression was of someone embarrassed and flustered, not knowing what to do with affection he was receiving for the first time. He wondered whether Obel, who tended to him every day, had noticed the way Luka’s earlobes turned faintly red when touched gently.
He shouldn’t notice. He must not.
He also remembered the pale blue eyes staring straight at him with a question.
“What kind of person are you?”
That Luka had begun to wonder about him. That was the clearest signal of life there was — lifting his head from the depths of death and beginning to look toward another person. That alone made something in the Captain’s chest feel warm enough to itch.
Before I give him that answer, I need to make him healthier and safer.
At the end of the corridor he’d walked, the bridge door slid open. With a pneumatic hiss, the heavy door parted to reveal the tense hum of machinery and the crew’s bustling movement beyond.
The Captain stopped humming. It was time to set aside the gentle man he was for Luka and become the cool-headed Captain of the Nautilus.
“Status report.”
Ivelynsia immediately pulled up a display and stepped forward.
“The Aegis pursuit squadron has closed to 1.2 parsecs behind us. One of their vessels is rapidly correcting its trajectory — attempting to cut off our projected jump point. Their commander is quite sharp.”
On the screen, the Aegis vessels glowing red were tightening around the Nautilus’s route. According to Ivelynsia, the jump corridor would be sealed in five minutes. Every crew member’s eyes turned to the Captain at once.
He stood with his arms folded, staring at the screen. Thousands of tactical scenarios raced through his mind in rapid succession.
“Aegis won’t easily find my ship.”
He’d made that promise to Luka. For the sake of keeping it — and above all, to avoid bringing the terror of war crashing down again on someone who had only just barely begun to catch his breath in that treatment room — this pursuit had to be shaken off perfectly.
“Navigator, maintain current heading. Reduce engine output to 80%.”
The bridge stirred at the command. Ivelynsia’s eyes went wide with surprise.
“Captain? Reducing speed will send us walking straight into their encirclement!”
“Exactly. We reduce speed and make it look as though we’re getting caught in their blocking trajectory.”
“Pardon?”
“They’re expecting us to panic and speed up, so they’ve concentrated their power on maneuverability. Pure maneuverability struggles to respond to irregular situations.”
The Captain continued steadily.
“Thirty seconds before entering the intercept point, we alter course — 45 degrees downward.”
He glanced toward the comm port in one corner of the screen and smiled.
“Kai — that new inertial control unit you just serviced — seems like perfect timing to run a performance test, doesn’t it?”
From beyond the comm port, Kai’s voice came spilling over with delight.
— Oh, Captain! You trust my maintenance skills? Leave it to me! You won’t be disappointed!
“Good. Ivelynsia, scatter decoy chaff and dummy signals at the blockade point they’re anticipating. We punch through the weakest boundary of the Tartarus Gas Nebula — below their encirclement.”
“But that nebula has an unstable gravitational field…”
“What’s the problem? The Nautilus can handle a gravitational field of that level just fine. All hands, brace for impact! We move on my signal.”
The Nautilus seemed to drift slowly — very slowly — toward the Aegis encirclement, as though being pulled in. Silence fell over the bridge. Everyone held their breath and waited for the countdown.
Golden eyes fixed on the view outside the window. At a distance now visible to the naked eye, the Aegis warships had begun to come into view. They were closing fast. They looked rabid — hungry to swallow the Nautilus whole in a single bite.
Their movements were frantic and arrogant. Exactly as the Captain had calculated.
“Now! Full engines! Change heading!”
At his shout, the Nautilus let out a tremendous roar and wrenched itself sideways. The massive thunder of the engines reverberated through the hull — but thanks to Kai’s prized inertial control unit, the shock inside the bridge was minimized.
Outside the window, the Aegis vessels scrambled to correct their trajectories in apparent confusion. But the Nautilus had already slipped through, sliding beneath their encirclement.
“Scatter the jamming signals!”
The jamming signals Ivelynsia deployed detonated in the void and paralyzed Aegis’s radar. The Nautilus seized the opening and disappeared into the swirling red gas of the Tartarus Gas Nebula.
“Entry into the gas nebula complete. Aegis fleet has broken off pursuit. We’ve lost them.”
At the radar operator’s report, the crew broke into celebration. Simply saying goodbye to that relentless Aegis — even if only temporarily — seemed more than enough to satisfy them.
Unlike the celebrating crew, Ivelynsia watched the Captain with a look of genuine wonder. When had he planned such an infuriatingly clever maneuver? She had assumed his head was entirely full of thoughts of Luka — and yet ship command, it seemed, was a separate matter entirely.
The Captain issued orders to keep the crew from popping the champagne too soon.
“Hold position in the nebula’s low gravity zone for now and reset the route. Maintain silent running until Aegis has fully withdrawn.”
And with that, he quietly unfolded his arms. As the tension eased from his muscles, Luka surfaced in his mind again.
The Tartarus Gas Nebula… the red gas here is quite beautiful too.
It wasn’t anything like the desert landscape you could see on Luka’s home planet — but perhaps seeing this nebula would spark a little sense of wonder in him. On the day Kai’s prosthetics were connected, this was what he wanted to show him first — the universe painted in even more colors, even more beautiful.
I should bring the cedarwood oil again when I visit tomorrow.
Luka liked the smell of wood. The Captain still didn’t know why. Even so, learning even one thing that Luka liked was a discovery that made him glad.
And a thornless yellow rose, too.
The Captain’s eyes, gazing out at the calm universe beyond the window, filled with quiet anticipation for what was to come.
