“…Huh?”
Luka’s eyes flew open. He had expected it to feel like floating above mechanical legs — but it didn’t. This was closer to the feeling of actually standing on two real legs.
“Oh…?”
Astonished, Luka found himself taking a careful step forward without even thinking about it.
It wasn’t simply walking. The flow of force from the tips of his feet up to his knees, then through to his hips — he channeled it all in line with the footwork forms of his martial arts training.
Shhk.
The way Luka moved, gliding across the carpet, was so smooth it was hard to believe he had only just had the prosthetics connected. As if surprised by his own movement, Luka gave his right hand a light swing through the air. The prosthetics were reproducing Luka’s trained muscle memory with perfect fidelity.
“Oh my — Captain, look at that! The sync rate is going up at an insane speed!”
Kai cried out in excitement, eyes fixed on the holographic pad. The captain watched Luka from the middle of the room, a faint smile at the corner of his lips, as Luka moved through his martial arts forms like a dance.
Luka turned smoothly on the spot in a full rotation, then walked right up to the captain and stopped. He was still unsteady — but his eyes shone with a vitality the captain had never seen in them before.
“Haa, haa — you were right.”
Luka looked up at the captain, breathing hard.
“This… it feels like my body, way more than I expected. No — it feels even clearer than before. I can tell exactly where I’m standing, where I need to send the force.”
Luka, who had always been so quick to push others away, placed his palm quietly against the captain’s chest for the first time. The captain’s heartbeat, transmitted through the mechanical hand, resonated with Luka’s nervous system.
“Luka — does it feel good?”
“Yeah…!”
“Impressive — you can already move like that. I didn’t think this place would end up being your training ground.”
The captain ruffled Luka’s hair, then lifted him up in one clean motion. Luka with the prosthetics attached was about twice as heavy as before. But to the captain, he still felt no heavier than a feather.
“Right then — for a first session, that was excellent. But if you overdo it, Obel is going to be furious again, so let’s stop here for today.”
“Ah, I can keep going…! Put me down — stop treating me like a child…!”
“No. Before you’ve fully adapted, your nerves are going to tire quickly from too much input. We’ll add thirty minutes a day.”
“I can keep going!”
“Such a stubborn one.”
Grumbling, Luka shoved at the captain’s shoulder with his mechanical arm — with considerably more force than before. The captain caught that force easily, curving it aside with his hand.
Even with the output turned down, this was chrome alloy — it didn’t break easily. A force that would have had Kai or Obel crying out in pain found nothing to flinch at in the mechanical arm.
Of course, he had no intention of carelessly breaking the precious prosthetic that had finally synchronized with Luka — so the captain slowly eased the pressure from his hand.
“Shall I check whether you’re really alright?”
The captain’s large hand moved toward the soft inner part of Luka’s thigh. The moment it closed firmly around the boundary where machine met flesh —
“…?!”
A sharp electric signal surged through Luka’s spine and flooded his entire body. His overstimulated nervous system had reacted acutely to the external contact.
“Ah…!”
A short sound escaped from between Luka’s lips. It wasn’t simply pain, and it wasn’t discomfort — it was a strange, unfamiliar sensation.
Luka instinctively curled in on himself. But the captain only pulled him deeper into his chest.
“How is it — just like I said, the sensation feels strange, doesn’t it?”
If Obel had been there, he would have explained the phenomenon smoothly.
“A textbook case of hypersensory response. It’s a micro-current backflow phenomenon at the junction where the organic tissue and the neural interface are bonded.”
But right now, in the captain’s quarters, there was only Kai — busy monitoring the prosthetic’s response — and the captain, who had no intention of laying out medical explanations. So Luka was left unable to make sense of the tingling sensation, and simply kept flinching.
“It — it feels strange….”
The eager enthusiasm from moments ago, insisting he could keep going, was gone entirely. Luka hesitated, unsettled by his own body’s sensitive reaction.
“Wherever your hand is feels too hot. Like… like it’s burning.”
Luka’s mind went blurry all at once. He couldn’t tell whether this heat was purely the result of overloaded nerves, or whether there was some other reason.
“Are you very uncomfortable?”
“Ngh, ugh… yes, take your hand off.”
“Bear with it a little. Your body needs to get used to my temperature.”
Even that gentle command made him startle. Now it wasn’t just the parts bonded to the prosthetics — even the perfectly ordinary voice flowing into his ear was hitting him with acute sensitivity.
“Mm — the hypersensitivity readings are pretty high. I can’t really tell on my own.”
Kai, slower than the captain to pick up on Luka’s reactions, scratched the back of his head.
“Should I call Obel? I gave him a heads-up before we started, so he’d probably come quickly.”
The captain finally removed his hand from the inner thigh. Luka, who had been flinching from the overwhelming sensation, let out a small sigh of relief — then startled sharply and cried out:
“Ah…! Wait — don’t call Obel yet…!”
Kai paused mid-reach toward the comm port. The captain looked down at Luka. He was still flinching, unable to settle the flush spreading across his face.
“I — I’ll just stay like this for a minute. It’ll pass soon…!”
The captain’s gaze slid slowly down to Luka’s lower body. The front of his trousers was visibly tented. The hypersensitivity seemed to have reached somewhere else that was sensitive as well.
“…That’s why I said to take your hand off… ngh… why didn’t you listen….”
Suppressing his irritation, Luka tried to lift his legs to cover himself. Even that motion looked precarious — and so the captain bit down hard.
Like the moment yesterday when he’d hidden his emotions, the tendon at his jaw jutted out sharply before settling back. If he didn’t clench his teeth like this, he felt he might reach his hand toward the front of Luka’s trousers — so he reined the impulse in.
“…It’s alright, Luka. Obel will know about this kind of reaction and give you a sedative.”
“But….”
“It’s fine. Don’t worry.”
Luka had bowed his head in embarrassment — the back of his neck had gone red all the way up. The captain watched without being able to look away, and spoke without turning toward Kai:
“Call Obel.”
Neither Kai — who was oblivious — nor Luka — who was too preoccupied with his own body to notice — registered that his voice was lower than usual. The captain leaned in and whispered to the flustered Luka, every one of his senses on edge:
“If it gets worse, tell me. I’ll help.”
What kind of help, exactly — Luka couldn’t even begin to imagine. He shot a brief glance at the captain’s face, his own still flushed, and turned away.
“If I leave it alone, it’ll go down on its own….”
“Well, that would be a relief.”
“Ngh… it’s just because it’s unfamiliar. I’m not a pervert….”
“I know — you think I’m the pervert.”
“Th — that’s….”
“How does it feel? I’d appreciate it if you described the sensation a little.”
Luka kept his mouth firmly shut. The captain coaxed him again with another whisper:
“You need to describe it so I can give Obel an accurate picture of your symptoms.”
If he hid his symptoms and didn’t get proper treatment, that would cause Luka trouble in a different way. He hesitated — and then parted his lips and answered in a tiny voice:
“It’s strange and unfamiliar….”
“Strange and unfamiliar how?”
“Just… a bit….”
He seemed to struggle to put it into words, hemming and hawing — until he whispered in a voice small enough that Kai couldn’t hear:
“…It feels lewd.”
To the captain, those words landed like a thunderclap. The lips that had been calmly speaking to Luka twitched slightly, as if struggling to maintain composure. Truly, this was a moment that demanded an extraordinary amount of patience from him.
“Haa, good grief….”
At the captain’s deeply exhaled response, Luka broke into a nervous sweat and shot him a cautious look.
He claimed to be an adult who had come of age — and objectively, Luka was an adult whose body hadn’t quite finished growing. Somewhere between boyhood and young manhood, he was as full of vigorous, restless energy as any male his age.
It was simply that his body’s unnatural state had meant survival instincts had taken precedence over physical desire, pushing it to the back of his mind for a time. Now, with his senses sharpened, he was being forced to feel a kind of arousal he’d only experienced back in more peaceful days — and it seemed to leave him thoroughly mortified.
“You actually look your age now, Luka.”
At that, Luka bristled, his eyes sharpening.
“I’m not a kid.”
“Finding even this level of sensation lewd — that’s pretty kid-like.”
“Ngh, no it’s not….”
“I suppose you never held a girl’s hand or had your first kiss at the academy?”
At that, Luka’s mouth dropped open — then clamped firmly shut. He shot the captain a glare that made it clear he found the teasing infuriating.
“…I’ve never dated anyone. And this is different from that anyway…. Even the feeling of you just touching me normally is different from this — what does kissing have to do with anything….”
