You look up from your book, wearing a smile you’ve reserved for me. “Tired of studying?”

I take a seat beside you and sprawl out, my back against the table. “I hardly see the point.”

The top of the library is a skylight that opens out into the stars. The view was nice for the first month or so, but soon I longed for even the gray skies of home. Above us, the spires of the cathedral where we meet for Mass once a week jut out from the center of the ship.

“Get off,” you say, shoving at my shoulder, “you’re on my notes.”

I’m taller and stronger than you, and I don’t budge. I close my eyes, grinning when I hear your annoyed huff.

“Aren’t you worried about your future?”

I know you’re bitter. You’re a scholarship student and I’m a legacy admission. Your parents are nobodies on some backwater colony, and I’m the son of a general.

“Yeah,” I say. I reach up and flick one of your dark curls out of your eyes.

“You’re weird,” you say, but you close your book and stand up anyways.

We end up in the conservatory, letting mango juice run down our chins and listening to the ship’s engines hum. This time, it is nearly instantaneous—the fuselage catching fire, the ship evaporating around us. The garden, and you, dissolve into the endless dark.

This is always where the story ends.

Each cycle I beg you to stay with me a little longer: ignore your studies, come back to the dorms, explore the underbelly of the ship. You laugh and bat me away, talking about your grades, your career.

When we were both children, my father brought you to me as a companion, a role model to keep me from acting out. It worked some of the time—the rest of the time we became partners in crime, inseparable.

Now we’re aboard the most prestigious school this side of the Milky Way, with all the sons of state and industry learning how to run the galaxy by inflicting their petty tyrannies on each other.

To everyone else, you are quiet and studious. We’ve been together long enough that I can tell when you’re angry at the things people say to you. All that “credit to your race” shit. Your thin face goes blank. Later, when we’re alone in an empty hangar, you fume.

You hate when I defend you, because you hate drawing attention to yourself, or you just don’t want me to suffer by association. Goddamn martyr. Maybe this is why you don’t say anything about the fact that I’m in love with you.

It’s always easiest when it happens in the middle of the night. There’s only a split second of fear and pain, and then I wake up again in the past.

This time, it happens more slowly. The gravity breaks down first, and then the oxygen. We have emergency suits, but we won’t reach the next station fast enough. I sit beside you and hold your hand, feeling the life ebb out of you.

“Do you remember the last plague of Egypt?” you ask.

I never paid much attention in catechism class. “Locusts?”

“God sent his angel to take all of the nation’s firstborn sons…” You lean your head against my shoulder and close your eyes, like you’re falling asleep.

This is where the story ends. Can we try again?

We’re stopped to refuel. News comes in about the war. The other boys gather excitedly in groups to discuss the latest development: an insurrection put down by the empire. Some of the students are leaving for the rest of the semester, recalled by worried families or summoned to serve at their fathers’ sides.

“You should get off here,” you tell me. “Go home to your family.”

“Come with me,” I say.

A shadow crosses your face. I know how you feel about my father. I won’t abandon you, though. What if time keeps on going without you?

You don’t press the issue.

I don’t see you all afternoon. After dinner, I find you speaking with a girl from the kitchens. She has dark hair like you. There’s a twinge in my gut. I go up to her and put on my most charming smile.

“Hullo. What’s a pretty thing like you doing here?”

She flushes and ducks back into the kitchen.

You round on me, furious. “I hate when you do that.”

“You know her?” I ask. “Is she from back home?”

“No. No.” You shake your head, like you’re waking up from a dream. “I just had a question about the menu.”

We sprawl out on the floor of the dorms, where we’ve dragged our mattresses together.

“Do you remember when I broke that ceramic horse your father liked, and you took the blame for me so I wouldn’t be sent away?” you ask.

“Yes,” I say. “He grounded us both for a month anyways. What brought that up?”

“Nothing.”

When I wake up in the middle of the night, the space beside me is empty.

I think a part of me has always known. In the maintenance hatch, your arm deep in the guts of the ship’s control mechanisms, you apologize to me.

I know there is nothing I can say to stop you. Instead, I rest my head on your shoulder. Your hair tickles my cheek. “I forgive you.”

You lean against me, withdrawing from the tangle of wire, and stroke the back of my neck like a dog.

“I’ll do it for you,” I say. “This time, you can go home.”

You slip the wire cutters into my hand, unable to speak. I bend down to kiss you, because why not? You kiss back politely, obligingly, figuring, I suppose, it’s the least you can do.

This is where the story ends: I send you out into the stars, alone.

Copyright © 2026 by Seoung Kim