Luka was standing alone in the outdoor training hall.
The afternoon sunlight filtering through the leaves scattered across the wooden floor like flecks of gold dust. The air carried the pleasant, lingering scent of aged timber and polishing oil. Luka stood with a ceremonial sword in hand, lost in a daze.
Is this a dream?
His eyes drifted slowly downward, surveying his own appearance. The white sleeves of his ceremonial robes fluttered softly in the breeze. Through the fabric, he could see his right hand gripping the sword and both legs planted firmly on the ground. He felt such relief at those natural, intact limbs.
Haah… it must have been a dream.
A sigh escaped him on its own. Right — it must have been a horrific nightmare where his arms and legs disappeared. How did he end up having such a tragic dream.
Luka smiled with relief and slowly raised the sword in his hand.
He took the opening stance of the sword dance. Each time the blade cut through the air, sunlight flowed along its edge, glinting softly like scattered jewels.
It was less a martial art than a beautiful rite. The hard, smooth sensation of the wooden floor beneath his feet. The solid, grounded weight bearing down through the wrist that held the sword. And the sound of his own heart beating in steady rhythm. Everything was perfect, and it felt as though it would last forever.
It was different from the times he swung a sword to survive — this was an act that brought peace and stillness to his heart. Truthfully, Luka preferred this sword dance to actual combat swordsmanship. He’d never told anyone, too embarrassed to let that private feeling show.
I’m happy. I want to keep dancing like this, alone, forever.
Just then, from beyond the staircase that led into the training hall, a familiar laugh reached his ears.
“Luka! Are you still practicing? Come eat with us!”
His classmates from theology class were waving and smiling brightly. Luka smiled back at them and began to lower his sword.
But the peace that had seemed like it would last forever was overturned in an instant. The warm sunlight was stained into a dreadful, blood-red.
RUMBLE!
With a thunderous roar that shook the very ground, the floor of the training hall trembled — then shattered in an instant. The wooden planks split apart in jagged ruins, and crimson blood surged up through the cracks.
He tried to run, but his limbs wouldn’t move. Looking down at his body, the intact arms and legs had been crushed and torn away from him. Only his left hand remained whole.
Ah…
In one moment, the tragedy ripped away Luka’s peace.
Ah — aah—!
The horrific pain carved through every inch of him more vividly than reality itself. Blood surged and spilled from the severed edges of his shoulder and thighs. That blood then transformed into a vast sea of flame consuming the entire planet.
Everything shattered, burned, and disappeared. The moment despair and terror rose all the way to his throat, Luka could bear it no longer — and screamed a single, thunderclap cry.
“AAAAH!”
He wrenched his body violently and opened his eyes. His gaze, drenched in cold sweat, wandered through the air without focus.
“Hah — hah — hh…”
Cold air rushed deep into his lungs. Not the scorching, flame-choked air — but cool, clean air carrying the faint scent of refined metal. There was no time to understand or adjust to the sudden, unfamiliar environment. The machines had already begun blaring urgent warning tones.
— The patient is showing signs of extreme anxiety. Appropriate intervention is required.
An artificial intelligence voice. Registering that sound a beat too late, Luka looked around him, gasping like an animal.
Everything was foreign. Metal walls, metal floor, metal ceiling. Even the bed he was lying on was cold metal. There was not a single trace remaining of the home he had loved.
The warm sunlight that had brushed through leaves. The smell of earth that clung to the tip of his nose. The comfortable, soft wooden floor of the training hall that had felt so good beneath his feet. His friends’ laughter. Even the arrogant voices of the royals and nobles he’d thought he never wanted to see.
Everything that had been familiar, everything that had been natural — it no longer existed at his side, as if it had all been a dream. Everything here was artificial, and hard. It was as though he had been swallowed alive into the belly of some great metal beast.
“How… what is all this…”
He had survived. That was the one certain thing — that he had survived. But Luka had no room to take any joy from it. His one remaining left hand fluttered and spasmed as it searched over his body.
A catheter had been attached to his body. The upper half of him, exposed above the sweat-soaked sheets, was mottled with surgical scars and bruises. The needle punctures through which IV fluids flowed made him look not like a living being but like a specimen prepared for experimentation.
“Nngh… nn…”
At the tragedy that had befallen his own body, only sounds stripped of human language poured out.
“Hh… nngh, ah, ah…”
Tears streamed from both eyes. Whether it was because his body had been broken, or because of the shock of watching his home be annihilated — he couldn’t tell. Only the single thought that this was unbearable filled his mind.
It felt like a death sentence. If he’d just died, he wouldn’t even have had the chance to feel this way. Reality was decidedly more horrifying than the vague death he’d been wishing for.
“Someone, someone please… please…”
Luka writhed with his one remaining left hand and forced out a ragged, scraped-raw voice.
“Please, please… kill me, please…”
His left hand’s fingernails dug into his palm. Pain alone was the only thing still proving he was alive. But even that sensation was something he hated. Luka wrapped his hand around the severed edge of his shoulder and wailed like a wounded animal.
“AAAAAH—!”
— The patient is showing signs of extreme anxiety. Appropriate intervention is required.
A medical assistance machine approached to administer a sedative. But the moment Luka saw the sharp needle, he reached out his left hand and grabbed the machine’s arm.
“The needle… please, just stab my throat with it, please…”
The artificial intelligence voice replied levelly as it watched Luka plead to be killed.
— I am a medical machine designed to treat human beings. Ending a life is not within my function.
“Just give me the needle — I’ll take care of dying myself…!”
— Anxiety indicators have exceeded threshold. Immediate intervention will be applied.
The machine subdued Luka’s one-armed thrashing with ease. Then it injected the medication not into the throat he had extended toward it, but into the vein of his left arm.
“No—!”
As Luka struggled and began to slip off the side of the bed railing, the machine caught him. The clatter of a fall was avoided — but the terror-stricken wish escaping from his lips didn’t change.
“Kill me, let me die, please, please…”
— Fall risk detected. For patient safety, raising the bed rail height by 50 centimeters.
“Please…!”
His voice grew fainter and fainter. As the medication took effect, the pain subsided — but his consciousness dimmed along with it. His spirit, having lost any desire to live, had grown ravaged and worn, and he could no longer even feel the passage of time.
Luka dragged his fingernails across the raised railing.
Screeech—
The skin-crawling scrape of metal split through the darkened treatment room. As though mocking him for the fact that he would never again feel his home’s soft leaves, its warm breeze, the coarse grains of sand mingled within it.
— The patient’s anxiety is not subsiding. Shall the dosage of administered medication be increased?
That question, as though awaiting a decision from someone in charge, was heard — and a few minutes later, the door opened. Someone approached with footsteps so silent they seemed deliberately muffled. It was a man who carried a faint scent of cedarwood — a scent that resembled, in some distant way, the smell of home.
“……”
He said nothing. He did not ask Does it hurt so much it’s hard to bear? Is there anything I can do? He offered no hasty words of comfort. He simply stood at the bedside and watched Luka quietly.
— Welcome, Captain. Shall the dosage of administered medication for the patient be increased?
The Captain switched off the artificial intelligence voice that kept repeating its question. Instead, with warm, large hands, he slowly cupped Luka’s wet face.
The Captain’s fingers wiped away the tears pooled at the corners of Luka’s eyes, and carefully swept across the cheeks raw from crying. It was the same touch — utterly careful, utterly reverent — as when he had lifted Luka from the crumbling planet.
Luka hated that warmth, and yet — because of that warmth — he felt for the first time that he was still alive. The man’s touch seemed to be saying this to Luka:
Even if you give up on yourself, I will not give up on you.
Luka wanted to ask him.
Why me?
Of all the people on his home planet — why had he saved him specifically. Why was he caring for him with such dedication, watching over him, tending to him like this.
But right now he was too overwhelmed simply trying to accept his own situation to have any room to seek meaning in someone else’s actions. In a state where he only wanted to die, even a meaningful answer would be of no use.
The question could be buried and left unknown forever — he just wanted to die.
“Kill me, kill me… hk…”
Luka murmured as though those were the only words left to him — and closed his eyes. He fell asleep as though losing consciousness on the spot. Unable even to bear the weight of himself, his face sank into the man’s palm and his awareness slipped quietly away.
The Captain did not withdraw his hand — as if, even if he could not resolve Luka’s grief, he could at least carry its weight alongside him for a little while.
After that, Luka struggled every night. Whenever the artificial intelligence’s warning tones sounded, the Captain would unfailingly appear and cup his face with those hands. And within that palm, Luka would repeat kill me over and over — and only then would the end of another desperate night finally come.
A mere week. It was still too short a time for Luka to accept his changed life.
