“Haa, hh….”
He raised his trembling left hand and felt along the stump of his right shoulder. Then, drip by drip, fat teardrops fell onto the sheet.
“I don’t want this….”
His voice, which he’d always thought of as low to begin with, sank deeper still. As if submerging into a darker abyss than the one he’d been pulled from when he was first rescued a month ago.
“If this was why you brought me here, why were you kind to me. Why were you so gentle. You should have just… killed me….”
The thin thread of ‘center’ he had desperately held onto in the captain’s quarters yesterday snapped away without a trace. Having tasted hope made the despair all the more cruel.
Luka curled in on himself. His spine pressed visibly through the dry skin stretched over it. That alone made his already small body look even more fragile and precarious — a mirror of how he had looked when the captain first found him, barely breathing, wanting only to die.
“Luka…?”
The captain couldn’t make sense of it. Just yesterday Luka had been so full of hope — why had it suddenly come to this.
“Luka, what’s wrong….”
When he reached out a hand, Luka screamed.
“Don’t touch me…!”
The captain froze. Luka, tears brimming in both eyes, cried out at him:
“Just kill me — if you’re going to turn me into some robot weapon, then kill me!”
“Luka, it seems like there’s some kind of misunderstanding….”
“I told you not to touch me…!”
“Luka…!”
“I don’t want this, ngh — this isn’t how I wanted to survive. If you were going to use me like this, you should have told me from the start. Why did you do it, why did you make me want to die even more….”
This was beyond a misunderstanding. Luka’s despair had clearly eaten through every last rational part of him. The captain spoke in a stiff, clipped tone — the ‘cold captain’ that only appeared on the bridge, a side of him he had never once shown Luka.
“…Obel, Kai — postpone the surgery.”
At the captain’s low voice, both of them faltered. Kai spoke first.
“Captain, if we leave Luka’s body like this, the nerves at the stump will start to necrotize. We need to connect the prosthetics quickly….”
“I understand, so that’s enough for today.”
“But….”
“The synchronization values needed for surgery have already dropped. Are you planning to force the connection?”
Just as he said, the synchronization values had fallen from 92 down to 58. Forcing the connection wouldn’t be life-threatening, but there was no telling what kind of shock it would deal to Luka’s mind. The brain could be contaminated by the Aethernos energy as well. Obel quietly gathered the medical tools he had brought.
“Understood — we’ll pause for now.”
He issued his warning right up until the moment he turned to leave the operating room.
“But Kai is right. If the surgery is delayed too long, there will come a point where the prosthetics can no longer be connected at all. There isn’t much time. Make the decision quickly.”
Obel delivered those blunt words without looking back and walked out of the operating room. Kai quietly withdrew after him. The remaining two prosthetics that had been waiting to be connected sat on the bed. It seemed Kai had left them there hoping Luka might grow even a little more comfortable with the machines.
But unlike Kai’s thoughtful gesture, Luka didn’t spare so much as a glance at the prosthetics. He only continued to cry — soundless tears falling one by one.
“…Luka.”
With just the two of them left in the room, the captain’s voice shifted back to the gentle tone that Luka knew.
“I’m sorry for startling you. I wasn’t trying to frighten you.”
A large hand cupped Luka’s wet cheek. When Luka flinched and tried to push him away with his left hand, the captain held it firmly this time and didn’t let go.
“Hngh….”
Hot tears spread outward along his fingertips. Luka turned his head, as if trying to hide the fact that he was crying, and tried to pull away from the touch. The captain seemed to sense it before he could — and kept his hold on the face he’d caught, without letting go.
It wasn’t a forceful act meant to compel eye contact. It was simply that if he let go now, even for a moment, he felt Luka’s soul might shatter on the spot.
“Luka, can you look at me?”
“Let go….”
“Lift your head, alright?”
“Let go of me….”
The captain held his breath and studied Luka’s face. The hollowed skin around his eyes, worn down by repeated nightmares and pain. His lips, drained of all color. His lashes, trembling finely with fear.
A face that had only just come of age — a face that should have been overflowing with life — was shadowed by death. It was as if the will to live, so carefully planted, had slipped away like grains of sand.
“…I’m sorry, Luka. I pushed you too hard without any explanation. It’s late, but I want to explain everything — will you hear me out?”
No matter how gently he spoke, Luka’s pale blue eyes drifted unfocused through empty space. Seeing his own reflection in those hollow eyes, the captain bit his lip — perhaps finding himself selfish in that image.
He had been so certain that the prosthetics were the only solution. By fixating entirely on the outcome and ignoring both the purpose and the process, he had ended up hurting the Luka who mattered so much to him.
The captain could not bear his own thoughtlessness. Late as it was, he wanted to give Luka back his peace — even now.
“The captain’s quarters — my room — was comfortable for you, wasn’t it? Would you like to rest there for a bit? What do you think?”
“…….”
“The juniper scent you like will help calm you down. Should I bring you some yellow roses too?”
“…….”
“…Don’t cry, Luka.”
All through the journey, cradled in the captain’s arms, Luka cried without making a sound. He hadn’t known himself that the prosthetics frightened him this much. It was as though some quiet trigger inside him had been pulled.
Was it because the Aegis ships destroyed everything I had… and now anything mechanical makes me sick….
If he hated machines that much, this ship should feel unbearable too. But it didn’t — which made his own heart impossible to understand.
I don’t know. Maybe it was because I couldn’t picture the future I’d imagined — not with those prosthetics….
Little by little, Luka began to reclaim his composure. The tears he’d been spilling slowed, and finally stopped. He looked at the captain, who was carefully holding him and walking down the corridor.
“Luka….”
It was the first time he had ever said that name — the same name as his own — that way. The captain seemed just as startled by it: his golden eyes flickered slightly as he looked down.
Different faces. Different personalities. Different circumstances. Everything was different except for the name. A clear stranger — and yet someone who treated him as someone precious, to a degree he couldn’t account for. He had been neither accepting nor pushing that person away, hovering somewhere in between. He had decided it was time to put an end to that ambivalence, and so he spoke.
“…Tell me now. Why did you bring me here.”
