The captain carefully set Luka down onto the soft carpet spread across the middle of the room. It was the first time he’d sat on the floor rather than a bed. Luka tried to balance himself, but with nothing to hold onto, his body tilted helplessly to the side.
“Ugh…!”
Just before he toppled to the floor, the captain pulled him in and held him.
“Don’t rush. First, steady your breathing. Start by finding that ‘center’ you talked about.”
At those words, Luka glanced back at the captain, his eyes sharp. Coming from someone who understood his situation better than anyone, the words felt careless.
“…Easy for you to say. I can’t even put strength into my toes — how exactly am I supposed to find my center?”
Luka snapped irritably and twisted his body. He generally accepted his condition with composure, but in moments like this — when his body wouldn’t move the way he wanted — he became a prickly, brittle child. The captain pressed his large hand steadily against Luka’s trembling shoulders.
“So are you going to give up?”
“…You’re not being very gentle today.”
“Because I know that’s not what you want right now.”
He was not someone who only ever coddled and soothed. When it came to what truly mattered, the captain was more precise and clear-eyed than anyone.
“Use my body to find your center. I’ll be your support. Draw the strength up from the base of your spine. Like that time you stood on the fortress of your homeland, looking out over the sand dunes.”
The captain’s calm, unhurried voice strangely settled Luka’s ragged breathing.
Right — throwing a fit here only proves I’m weak. I’m already annoyed about being treated like a child, and the last thing I want on top of that is to be treated like someone helpless.
Luka steadied his breathing and closed his eyes. He reached into his memory, still vivid and clear.
The red sandstorms. The quiet training ground of the academy. The trees growing sparse but fierce inside the fortress walls, as if boasting their stubborn will to live. The transparent sunlight caught in their leaves. The moments of feeling nature — all of it was waking from somewhere inside him, as if it had never left.
“…Breathe in, and let it out very slowly.”
Luka murmured softly to himself as he put strength into straightening his upper body. The captain moved in time with him, tracing each vertebra of his spine with his fingertips.
“One at a time, from here.”
“Huu….”
“Good — I can feel the breath filling in. Try to bring the breath down a little further, toward your navel.”
“Hh, ngh….”
“I’ve got you, so don’t worry.”
Every time Luka lost his center and wavered, the captain’s arms tightened around him with firmer strength. And each time, Luka learned which muscles in his body he needed to use.
“That’s it, Luka. You’re doing well.”
At the captain’s praise, Luka bit his lip. It should have been a miserable situation — and yet the captain’s encouragement kept unwinding the tension from him. He was almost at the point of wanting to ask, “Did I do well?” once he’d properly gotten it right, just to earn even more praise.
Don’t get carried away. Settle down.
Luka kept reining in his own emotions while continuing his breathing for a long while. Eventually, as if his energy had finally run dry, he let the back of his head drop gently against the captain’s chest.
“…It’s hard. To think that just breathing takes this much out of me….”
“It’s not just breathing. You’re reclaiming control over your own life right now.”
The captain wiped the sweat from the back of Luka’s neck. Luka didn’t look back, but he could roughly imagine what kind of expression the captain was wearing as he looked at him.
“…You’re a really strange person. I genuinely don’t understand why you go to all this trouble for me.”
“I told you. I want to see you walk again, and stand on the bridge of this ship. Even if that’s my own selfish desire.”
“But what kind of feeling even is that….”
“Looks like you still have the mental energy to think about me. You should be focusing more.”
At the deliberate, deflecting reprimand, Luka bit down hard on his lower lip.
Damn… if nothing else, I’ll succeed out of sheer spite.
Burning with renewed determination, Luka grabbed the captain’s thick forearm — the one wrapped around him — with his left hand and gripped it tightly.
Focus. I’m going to use this person to hold my body upright.
He pushed against the captain’s firm arm muscles as if to push them away. The rebound made him feel the full weight of his own body. Accepting this strange, unfamiliar mass — so entirely different from before — was the first step.
“I’ll try again. This time… take your hands away.”
The captain hesitated for a moment, then slowly released the arms that had been wrapped around him like a restraint.
The moment the supporting force disappeared, Luka’s upper body swayed and shook. His vision tilted, and the floor rushed toward him. But instead of squeezing his eyes shut, Luka drew up the breathing he had repeated hundreds of times on the academy training floor.
The center isn’t at the end of the spine — it exists in the empty space.
Luka imagined that his legs were still there. He etched into his mind the sensation of feet that no longer existed pressing into the ground, of arms that couldn’t swing cutting through the flow of air. His abdominal muscles clenched taut, and a bead of sweat dripped from the tip of his nose.
It’s not the body that stands upright — it’s the mind.
In a single breathless instant, a miracle happened. Without the captain’s hands, Luka’s upper body stood straight. Against gravity, by his own will, he drew a vertical line. Without even bracing his remaining left hand against the floor, Luka held the position on nothing but core strength alone.
“…I did it.”
A short, awed breath escaped Luka’s lips. In this moment, what commanded his body was not another person’s care, not the aid of a machine — it was himself, and himself alone. An unfamiliar sense of accomplishment blazed hot in Luka’s chest.
The captain, who had been holding his breath beside him, finally let it out and laughed quietly. Instead of pulling Luka into his arms again, he moved around and settled himself in front of him.
“See? What did I tell you. I said you could do it.”
The captain’s voice was full of pride and certainty. He gently smoothed Luka’s disheveled hair back and offered his praise without restraint.
“Even without being held by someone, you’re more than capable of standing upright on your own. Your life belongs to no one but you.”
The captain genuinely honored the weight of that small, hard-won victory Luka had carved out for himself. Luka stared at him, his face damp with sweat, then turned his head sharply away, visibly flustered.
“…I only did it because you kept nagging me. It was annoying, so stop talking now.”
Luka’s cheeks were even redder than before. The captain, as if he couldn’t help himself at the sight of it, gave his shoulder a light pat and gathered him into his arms.
“Sure, sure. Our Luka did it because he’s so capable. Did you find some confidence? When Kai brings the prosthetics tomorrow, don’t forget the feeling from today — just carry it over.”
Luka buried his face in the captain’s chest and thought. Perhaps — just perhaps — that ‘beginning’ this man kept talking about wasn’t something entirely impossible after all.
Over his empty limbs, a fierce, burning will to live was beginning to take root.
Luka was awake until the early hours of that night. Even lying in bed, he did nothing but stare blankly up at the ceiling of the treatment room.
It wasn’t the same sleeplessness as when he wrestled with insomnia, forcing his eyes open to flee from nightmares. Whether it was excitement keeping him awake — knowing he would soon have his prosthetics — or whether it was fear, he couldn’t say.
Unable to define his own state, he eventually gave up on sleeping. Instead, he pressed his left arm against the mattress and pushed himself upright with great effort.
With no legs, simply bearing the weight of his upper body was enough to make him feel breathless. But perhaps thanks to the practice in the captain’s quarters, finding the center of his body again came without too much difficulty.
“Haa, huu….”
Once his breathing steadied, he leaned against the side of the bed. With his line of sight raised, he could look through the palm-sized window and see more clearly.
Scenery that he could never have seen while lying down poured in. Far in the distance, fragments of a shattered planet were catching the light of a nebula and glittering like jewels — before being swallowed whole into the vast darkness. And what remained was pitch-black void. A space of nothingness, utterly empty.
“…….”
The thought flickered through him that one of those faintly visible fragments might have been the place where he had lived. Just the thought of it had been enough to torment him with nightmares for nearly a month.
But at some point, the pain that had visited him daily had faded — and in its place, something like a vague, hollow emptiness had settled in. Luka looked down at the severed right shoulder and the empty space below his thighs.
“Right — I survived. Maybe it’s alright now, to treat my own life as something precious.”
