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In 1986, America watched as six of NASA’s brightest astronauts and a schoolteacher went up in flames on national television. Although Rohan wasn’t even born yet, he’s seen the footage way too many times.
In 2003, another seven people lost their lives as the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated upon re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere.
While he goes over statistics in the back of his mind, Rohan still smiles and waves to the small crowd of workers who have gathered as he walks down the tarmac to the newest of NASA’s shuttles, the Olympus. His hands are sweaty under his gloves and his heart is pounding in his ears, drowning out the noise of cheering and applause.
This will be an easy trip — they’re only going to be placing another satellite and taking some samples from the moon’s surface to examine and catalogue back on Earth. They’ll be gone for about ten days, give or take a day or two depending on how things go.
To his right, their commander is waving to the other workers just as Rohan is, a brilliant grin making the corners of her eyes wrinkle. Her long, pink hair whips around her face like a shiny cape, reflecting the glint of the early-afternoon sunlight pouring down on them.
“You look nervous. Ready to go?” Reimi asks him, almost having to yell over the whooping and hollering.
Rohan nods stiffly.
“Of course.”
The payload specialist and pilot have already seated themselves and are waiting patiently for everyone else to climb aboard. As Reimi disappears into the shuttle, Rohan feels a hand clap his shoulder and turns to see his fellow mission specialist smirking.
“Excited? It’s our first mission~” Josuke says in a voice so chipper, it makes the hairs on the back of Rohan’s neck stand up irritably.
Since he’s known Josuke, he’s never seen him with his hair down; he’s only ever kept it up in this ridiculous, outdated pompadour style, as if he thinks he’s a modern day James Dean or something. Yet, his hair is down now, falling over his face in thick, soft-looking strands of black.
Rohan shrugs Josuke’s hand off with a scowl and walks to the entrance of the shuttle.
“Don’t touch me, Higashikata.”
“Sheesh. Someone’s grumpy.”
Josuke chuckles and turns away from him, then fits a thin, white hat over his head, into which he shoves all his loose hair. They both make their way into the shuttle with one final wave to the crowd as it clears the tarmac to prepare for Olympus ’ launch. Rohan watches the door to the shuttle shut, the last sunlight he’ll see for over a week disappearing as it locks into place, and swallows hard. He knows he should be grateful — that children around the world grow up wanting to be an astronaut. He knows that of the 18,000 or so people who apply to work for NASA, they only hire about 10 people. 17,000 people are already working for NASA, including himself, and yet the Olympus has a crew of only 5. Somehow, even though he was chosen to do what most people dream their entire lives of doing, he wishes he were still out on that tarmac, looking up at this shuttle instead of strapping himself inside of it.
Once he’s all strapped in, lying flat on his back with his feet in the air, Reimi checks his and Josuke’s restraints. As he’s closing his eyes and taking a few deep breaths to try to ground himself, his peace is interrupted by a loud yell right by his ear.
“All right, let’s do this!” Josuke hollers and Rohan winces.
“Woo-hoo!”
The other two crew members yell back from the front of the shuttle, although they’re too preoccupied to turn and make eye contact.
Rohan rolls his eyes and tries again to slow his rapidly-beating heart. It would be easier to do if the biggest idiot in the world weren’t strapped in right beside him, the heat of Josuke’s shoulder pressed against his own making his head foggy.
There are a number of different switches and buttons above them — the ones on the right side are for him and the ones on the left are for Josuke. They’ve gone over what to do so many times and done so many simulations that Rohan could probably do this in his sleep if he had to. But, right now he’s very much awake, aware of every part of his body and what it’s touching. His pressure suit is bulky and stuffy, reflecting his own body heat back at him like a furnace that stretches from his toes to his forehead. He realizes he hasn’t been breathing much for the past minute or so and inhales audibly as his finger reaches for a button.
“What are you doing, man? This isn't the time to be hyperventilating,” Josuke chastises him, pressing a few buttons himself.
Rohan’s face feels hot. Of all people to catch onto his nervousness, he’d hoped it wouldn’t be Josuke. Josuke always seems so carefree, scared of nothing. Then again, most astronauts don’t seem to be scared of much. Fear is kind of a deal breaker when you’re going to be sent into space, where any number of things could go wrong and end in an untimely and very painful death. But, Josuke is on a whole new level. He never seems to take anything seriously, like he’s never had to worry about anything in his life. That irritates Rohan. It makes him want to be that one person who dislikes him — the one person who tells him to shut up. He never manages to steal the light from Josuke’s big, blue eyes, but he tries, anyway.
“Shut up and focus,” Rohan bites back, although he feels he needs to hear these words more than Josuke at the moment.
“T-minus 95 minutes to launch. Everything is looking good on our end. How’s everything back there, Picasso?” their pilot asks.
“Pressure is stable. Everything checks out,” Rohan reports, his voice much more confident and firm than he expects it to be.
“Bravo?”
“Visors should be closed and locked so that I can initiate O2 flow,” Josuke says, his eyes carefully trained on the buttons in front of him.
“Visors closed and locked,” Reimi responds.
“Roger. Initiating O2 flow.”
Josuke flips a switch and a faint whirring sound starts up at the back of the shuttle. He and Rohan are basically backup crew, so they don’t have much to do now except wait for a bit, leaving Rohan to his thoughts once more.
As the boosters power up, he focuses on the whirring sound of the engine, his eyes shut tight in his helmet. He can feel someone’s gaze on him, no doubt Josuke’s, but he doesn’t care.
When he got the phone call that he was chosen to be on Olympus ’ crew, he should have been thrilled. Yet, when he had hung up, he felt nothing but dread slowly beginning to weigh on him, as if someone had come up and draped a backpack full of bricks onto his shoulders. It shouldn’t be a surprise that he was chosen, either. After all, both his parents have worked as Engineering Technicians for NASA for over a decade. His being hired was probably never solely on his own merit.
Rohan’s destiny was set the day he was conceived and he should be nothing but grateful — that’s what everyone in his life has always told him. How can one possibly be ungrateful for the chance to become an astronaut — to be part of that 0.04% of the population who gets to go to space, the most mysterious and underexplored realm of existence?
He’d be lying to himself if he said space didn’t interest him at least a little bit. There’s something about the unknown that intrigues everyone, especially Rohan. When he was younger, he had floor-to-ceiling shelf jammed full of books about astronomy, from planets to black holes and everything in between. He read most of them more than once and kept a journal full of notes on different things that stood out to him.
He wondered about all the moons orbiting Jupiter, and the pools of frozen methane on Titan. Just a few years after he was born, NASA publicized photos of ice they discovered on Mars. Along with most people, Rohan wondered where humans would go if they continued to destroy Earth with their greed and carelessness. He hoped they wouldn’t all end up like the people in that movie, Wall-E — obese and glued to a screen with no purpose other than to stay alive.
Extraterrestrials were never off the table, either. He knows that life exists on Earth because of its distance from the sun, among a billion other things. So, when he learned that there are suns in other galaxies, he thought there must also be a sun somewhere with planets orbiting around it that share similar circumstances with Earth, allowing life to flourish on them...maybe not aliens like in Mel Gibson’s Signs , or Marvin the Martian, but even the possibility of microorganisms existing on other planets is fascinating. After all, life on Earth was microbial before it evolved into what it is today.
Deep down, Rohan has always liked the idea of being able to escape.
“Safety console?” the pilot asks, interrupting Rohan’s thoughts.
“Safety console is go,” Reimi responds.
The whole shuttle is vibrating now, everything alive and ready for take off. To his left, Josuke has his hands in his lap and looks focused.
“LRD?”
“LRD is go.”
“OTC?”
“OTC is go.”
“Houston flight?”
“Standby,” another voice on the intercom says.
“Roger. No constraints to launch?” the pilot asks.
“No constraints,” Houston replies.
“Stay in manual focus,” Reimi tells the pilot and he nods his head.
They wait for a few more minutes until Houston pops up on the intercom again.
“All right. You guys are clear for launch.”
“Roger.”
Everything happens pretty quickly after that. Josuke goes back to his buttons and Rohan goes back to his, pressing what needs to be pressed at the right time.
He can feel his heartbeat in his ears, pulsing outward like a wave of ripples follows a stone after it sinks to the bottom of a lake. Then, the back of the space shuttle erupts with so much power that it feels as if the entire thing is undulating around them.
“Preparing for liftoff,” the pilot announces. “Liftoff in 3, 2, 1…”
Rohan stares straight ahead, his knuckles white as he clutches the edge of his seat.
It only takes a few minutes to break through the atmosphere and Rohan is holding his breath almost the entire time. Once they’ve made it all the way through, the cockpit is filled with whooping and laughter. He’s the only one silent, lying there and trying to remember to breathe.
The space shuttle’s design is truly gorgeous — from the insulating layer of LI-900 silica tiles made of quartz sand to the aluminum underneath that lines the carrier, Rohan has always admired NASA’s team of fellow engineers. There’s all kinds of tubing hanging from above, along with more buttons and switches.
A few minutes go by and something nudges his shoulder, pulling him out of his head once more.
“We made it,” Josuke says quietly, pointing at the front windshield.
It’s the first time Rohan has looked through it since they launched, partially because he’s been scared to and partially because he’s been focused on other things.
His eyes widen as he sees the infinitely large expanse of pure black. The moon is far away still, small enough to fit between two of his fingers if he were to hold them up, and as he continues to look, he can also see tiny specks of bright light — stars in every direction, an unfathomable distance away. It’s not much different from looking at the night sky through a telescope, but the difference now is that his eye isn’t stuck in a tube, but rather that the sky is wrapped all around him.
He feels so small and insignificant. The moon fits in his hands when it’s over 1,000 miles wide and their little space shuttle isn’t even 200 feet long. Yet, he could fit billions of moons into the immense blackness that surrounds them and those billions of moons would only be a tiny cluster of regolith in comparison to the rest of space.
“I wish I had my sketchbook,” is all that Rohan can think to say, his gaze still stuck on the windshield.
The lights from all the machinery inside of the cockpit wash over Rohan’s face, illuminating his skin with a pale blue hue that makes his green eyes brighter than usual. Josuke turns his head finally and also looks out of the windshield, instead of at Rohan.
“They didn’t let you bring it?”
Rohan snorts and unhooks the straps holding him down, since they’ve already made it through the atmosphere. It should be nothing but smooth sailing from here.
The minute he’s free from his restraints, his body floats up, no longer being held down by gravity. He’s already done countless zero-gravity simulations, but this will be for a much longer period of time. He’s heard it’s probably one of the more enjoyable things about space, other than the fact that if one spends too much time being weightless without properly exercising, their muscles might atrophy beyond repair. Of course, NASA has trained them all to avoid that, and there’s a special exercise machine on board for all of them to use.
“I didn’t ask. There are much more important things to do. Not to mention trying to hold a pen and a sketchbook in zero gravity would be ridiculous.”
He has to make an effort to turn toward Josuke in order to say this; he’s trying hard not to float away from his seat. Honestly, it’d be better just to stay strapped in for now, but he needs to stretch his arms and legs for a minute.
“Then I guess you’ll just have to remember what everything looks like.”
He and Josuke are the only two on this mission who haven’t been in space before. This is Reimi’s third mission, but first as a commander. Their pilot, Nadine, is a veteran. This is her fifth mission, but she’s commanded the space station for long periods of time in between. She’s undoubtedly the most familiar with space, but prefers not to be in charge.
Their payload specialist, Kevin, is quiet and reserved. He’s strapped in more toward the back of the shuttle, looking through a manual of some kind. He hasn’t said anything since they departed Houston, but Rohan’s never known him to say more than a handful of words at a time. He’s been working for NASA for nearly a decade, but this is only his second mission. Josuke and Rohan are relatively young, compared with most of the people in this particular crew. The youngest man ever to be sent into space was Gherman Titov, who was 25 when he embarked on his first mission; Josuke is only 26.
For how stupid and careless he acts most of the time, even Rohan can admit that Josuke is exceptionally bright. From what he’s been told, Josuke somehow already has a PhD in neuroscience and 5 years working for NASA under his belt. Rohan himself has a PhD in aerospace engineering and 7 years of experience, but he also grew up learning about space exploration from his parents.
He didn’t mind majoring in engineering because it gave him an excuse to draw. Ever since he was very young, he’s been interested in visual art, much to his parents’ dismay. There were several times he’d gotten in trouble for drawing on the walls of his room, or for doodling on tests and homework at school. He’s pored through too many art books to count and taken several art classes as electives when he could. When he was a teenager, he even envisioned himself animating for cartoons or making comics and being wildly successful...he thought that maybe if he wrought fame with his art, his parents would finally have to concede that being an artist was as worthwhile a profession as working in a STEM field. But, one thing had led to another, whether it be his parents only paying for his classes if they were STEM-related, or his education and work experience only being applicable for jobs in the STEM field, and soon enough he found himself enjoying the money and thinking maybe it wasn’t so bad.
Now here he is, given the opportunity of not a lifetime, but really a hundred lifetimes, and all he can feel is guilt whenever he so much as questions if this is truly where he’s meant to be.
“It’s crazy, isn’t it?” Josuke’s voice breaks through his thoughts again.
“What?”
“All that nothing. Everything’s so crowded on Earth. How many people do you think there are in space right now, anyway? Like, maybe 20? More than that?”
“Probably more. There are new space stations being built all the time.”
“Compared to the, like, 8 billion or whatever back home, though? It’s crazy.”
8 billion people in the world. And Rohan is the one who gets to go to space.
“Yeah. I guess so.”
There’s another long period of silence. Rohan’s eyes are still stuck on the view ahead of them. Josuke has a point. It’s really nothing but emptiness out here, as far as he can see. He wonders what it’s like to live on one of the space stations, nearly alone for months or even years at a time. He’d like to say he’d enjoy it, but he already feels lonely when he comes home from a long day of work to nothing. He doesn’t even have a pet to greet him at the door.
When he was still in college, his “friends” would usually keep him around to help them study. While he’s worked with NASA, the only people who have bothered to talk to him on a regular basis are people who think they can somehow climb through the ranks if they’re buddy-buddy with him, because of his parents. He’d much rather be alone than deal with anyone like that. Now he feels as though he has to question anyone who’s nice to him.
“Everything okay back there?” Reimi asks, turning to look at all 3 of them over her shoulder.
Kevin gives her a thumbs up; Josuke and Rohan both answer, “All good” at the same time.
“We’re in the boring stretch, I’m afraid. Not much to do,” Nadine explains, although her hands are still at the controls.
Even if it’ll be boring for everyone else, the pilot will have to be focused at all times until she switches places with Reimi, so she must just be making small talk. Rohan slowly floats back to his seat and straps himself back in.
“We could play a game?” Reimi suggests.
“Hell yeah,” says Josuke. “Let’s play Truth or Truth.”
“Truth or Truth? What are you, 13?” Rohan gripes.
“Sure! It’d be a great way to get to know each other. Not that we don’t already, but training doesn’t really have a lot of down time, does it?” Reimi agrees.
“Not really,” Nadine says with a chuckle.
“So, who’s going first?”
“I’ll go,” Kevin says, surprising everyone. “Strawberry, Truth or Truth?”
Rohan’s never heard anyone call her that before. Usually, they just call her Reimi. There’s gotta be a story behind it. Maybe if he’s forced to play this stupid game, that’ll be his question.
“I think I’ll go with...truth.”
Reimi giggles and waits for his question.
“What’s the food you’re gonna miss most this week?”
“Hmmm…probably strawberry shortcake. With extra whipped cream.”
“Figures.” They share a laugh. Even Nadine and Josuke join in, but Rohan just sits there awkwardly, feeling left out. “Okay, whose turn is it next?”
“I’ll go. So, Bravo. What was your favorite cartoon as a kid?” Nadine asks.
“Uh, probably Tom and Jerry ,” Josuke answers after a few seconds.
“What? Not Johnny Bravo ?”
“Didn’t watch it much.”
“Gotcha. So, why the hair then?”
There’s a moment of silence and Rohan looks around, feeling uneasy. Josuke is usually a pretty happy, easy-going guy, aside from being an idiot and an asshole, but when anyone so much as questions his hairstyle, he loses it.
“The hell do you mean, ‘why the hair’? What are you saying?” he asks, aggressively.
“I’m just trying to figure out what inspired it. Because it, uh, looks really good.”
As quick as Josuke was to get angry, though, he switches back to smiling.
“It’s a long story. But, a good one,” he answers pleasantly.
“Remind me to ask you later,” Nadine says with a smirk.
“Roger.”
“It’s your turn, Bravo,” Reimi reminds him.
“Picasso, Truth or Truth?”
Of course he would ask Rohan — why is he not surprised?
“You don’t need to ask Truth or Truth. There’s only one answer,” Rohan bites.
“Okay, well here’s my question: why are you such an asshole?”
“Why are you such an idiot?!”
Reimi immediately holds up her hands, looking concerned.
“Guys, stop it. We’re gonna be stuck together in close quarters for an entire week. This isn’t the time.”
“It’d be fine if we could just eject Dr. Kishibe,” Kevin suggests and Josuke snorts, chuckling quietly.
“That’s enough,” Reimi says, firmly.
After that, everything is quiet for a solid five minutes, other than the hum of the engine and some intercom chatter from Houston.
Rohan’s face is hot and he looks to the side. He’s always had a knack for making people hate him, even if he doesn’t open his mouth. It’s easier to convince himself he doesn’t like other people, so that it doesn’t hurt as much when they don’t like him in return.
That’s probably why he hates Josuke so much. He’s so infuriatingly himself — so expressive and outgoing; he’s never met anyone who didn’t adore Josuke.
Rohan knows that if he allowed himself to be even half as vulnerable as Josuke, he’d still be just as hated. So he stays reserved, like a hermit crab hiding away in its shell.
“Orbit in 2 miles,” Nadine announces and everyone is focused back on their separate tasks.
Soon, the last voice he wants to hear is drifting up to his ears and grating on his nerves, once again.
“I’m sorry. For what I said. I was just —”
“ Don’t patronize me, Higashikata,” Rohan practically hisses before Josuke can even finish.
They shouldn’t be talking at this point, anyway. Josuke should learn to keep his mouth shut. Unfortunately, everything they say to each other can also be heard by everyone else since they’re all communicating over the same channel; they should have left all their bickering back on Earth, but apparently that’s impossible.
“GPS offline,” Nadine says.
“Do you think it’s safe to keep moving without it?” Reimi asks.
“We shouldn’t. Disengaging for now. So, Bravo. About that story.”
“You really wanna hear it now?” Josuke responds after flipping a switch.
“We’re in orbit until the GPS goes back online. Probably hit a pocket of dust.”
“If we continue forward, we risk a collision. We’re practically blind,” Reimi explains.
“If there’s a pocket of dust, we should thrust out of it,” Rohan says, undoing his restraints again and quietly moving toward the front of the cockpit.
“We could thrust right into some kind of debris or a satellite. Can’t see much without the GPS.”
“Well, the GPS isn’t going to work if we’re in a pocket of dust. If we start up the backup power while it’s malfunctioning, it could short circuit.”
“That’s risky. I’d rather wait it out. Let’s see what Houston says. Houston, this is Commander Parminder. Looks like our GPS has gone out. Wondering if we should drift until it comes back online or thrust through it. Over.”
It’s a few seconds before Houston responds.
“Hi, Nadine, this is Houston. We’ll see if we can do anything on our end, so drift for now. Over.”
“Roger. Guess you’ll have to save your story for later, Bravo.”
“All right,” Josuke laughs nervously.
A palpable amount of anxiety is radiating from Reimi and Rohan turns to look at her. She has her eyes glued to the console, flipping a few switches intently.
“I’d advise that everyone makes sure their pressure suits are on and tight,” she suggests. “I have a bad feeling.”
“Yeah, yeah. You always have a bad feeling. It’s fine, just a little space dust. Nothin’ we weren’t prepared for,” Nadine tries to reassure her, but Rohan tightens his helmet, anyway.
He turns around to look at Josuke and it seems that Josuke is tightening his, too, thankfully. As much as he hates him, Rohan doesn’t want anything bad to happen to his crewmates. Both Kevin and Nadine, however, have their helmets completely off, which probably isn’t a good idea while they’re traveling through a patch of cosmic dust, but Rohan isn’t about to reprimand anyone. That’s not his job.
“I’ve tried a few things, but it’s still offline. Hopefully nothing short circuited. Even the backup power isn’t doing anything.”
Rohan goes back to sit down next to Josuke, figuring he’s done all he can do. It’s really up to both of the commanders because they have much more experience than he does. He’s sure they’ll figure it out.
“Nadine, this is Houston. We can’t see any obstacles on our end, so you should be clear to thrust northwest, toward the ISS. Over.”
“Roger. Everyone sit back. We’re gonna push through this cloud of dust and hopefully the nav will go back online.”
Everyone makes sure they’re strapped in and when Nadine drives the ship forward, Rohan can feel a force pulling him into his seat.
“Are we clear?” Reimi asks, but Nadine shakes her head.
“Doesn’t look like it. I’ll give it a bit more.”
Rohan is pulled into his seat again as Nadine thrusts forward once more and the GPS finally lights up, along with many of the buttons surrounding it on the control panel.
“Yes!” Nadine cheers, high fiving Reimi as a grin lights up her face.
Then, a loud, “BANG!” fills the cockpit and everyone is jostled in their seats. Rohan grips his restraints, his breath starting to quicken.
“What was that?” he asks.
“Not sure. Bravo, what does the safety console look like?” Reimi says, her fingers rapidly fidgeting with the controls again.
“Safety console offline,” Josuke reports and Rohan’s stomach sinks.
“Thrusters unresponsive. Houston, can you see anything on your end?”
There’s another loud crash and this time everyone lurches forward into their restraints painfully. Rohan tries to steady his breathing, but he quickly starts to panic. He feels as if he’s being pulled to the bottom of a swimming pool by his ankles, looking up at the surface but not being able to swim away from whatever’s grabbing him. Out here, there’s nothing he can do. There’s nobody around for miles. They’re on their own.
“We’ve lost signal,” Nadine says, way too calmly.
There’s pieces of something flying in front of their shuttle and Rohan can’t tell if it’s part of the craft itself or something else. Everything’s happening so quickly around him, but Rohan himself seems to be moving in slow motion.
He sees Nadine reach for her helmet, but before she can grab it, something rips through the wall of the shuttle and she’s sucked out, beyond Rohan’s field of vision. There’s just enough time for him to undo his restraints, although he holds onto them. To his left, he can see Josuke has done the same thing. He immediately turns and grabs the front of Rohan’s suit to tether himself to it as the rest of the shuttle rips away and Rohan is left holding nothing but a piece of metal, onto which his seat was once strapped.
He has oxygen filtering through his helmet, but he still feels as if he’s gasping for air, slowly drowning at the bottom of that swimming pool his frantic mind made up and not being able to do anything about it.
“This is Josuke Higashikata speaking to Houston. Olympus has hit an unknown obstacle and is now in pieces. The only other crew member I have eyes on is Dr. Kishibe. We're currently drifting with the ISS at 7 o’clock, the moon at 11 o’clock, and…” he takes a deep breath and turns his head. “Earth at 1. If anyone else can hear me, please reply. Over.”
“I can hear you,” Rohan says, breathlessly.
There’s nothing around them but floating debris — hunks of metal that are slowly drifting away from them. The International Space Station is a small speck off in the distance and the moon a slightly bigger speck in another direction. Both he and Josuke are dwarfed by the Earth, like two shrimp swimming next to a blue whale. Rohan has never felt this helpless and terrified in his life. All he has is his space suit and Josuke, who, at the moment, is staring directly at him.
“Can you see anyone else?” he asks.
“No. I can’t see anything.”
“What’s your O2 at?”
“100%.”
“Me too. You got an MMU on you?”
“Yes. Do you?”
“Yeah, I’ve got one.”
Rohan exhales loudly. His panic is starting to give way to adrenaline, which is slowly clearing his mind enough to come up with some kind of gameplan.
“Each MMU should be good for about 6 hours, right? Do you think that’s enough to reach a station? That’s 12 hours combined.”
“But our O2 will only last 6.”
“That doesn’t give us a lot of time.”
“The ISS is the closest thing to us. If we stay here, we’re just wasting oxygen. Let’s go.”
“Wait, what if — “ Rohan starts, but Josuke is already thrusting toward the International Space Station, pulling him along. “Shouldn’t I be thrusting, too? If we both thrust, then our momentum won’t be interrupted by the other person being dead weight.”
Josuke laughs, a sound that contradicts the chaos in Rohan’s head.
“That’s what she said.”
“What?”
“Nothin'. Yeah, let’s both thrust.”
“How the hell can you be laughing right now? Our shuttle just blew apart, the nearest space station is easily twenty miles away, and we probably only have six hours until we both die. Is that funny to you?”
“Who would have thought you’d waste precious oxygen tryin’ to chew me out.”
“Who would have thought you’d be making that’s-what-she-said jokes in a literal life-or-death situation!”
“Sheesh. All right, thrust on three and we’ll get a rhythm going. One, two, three.”
They both use their thrusters at the same time and it seems to work, propelling them forward until they come to a stop again, Josuke saying only those three words every once in a while until they’re able to time each thrust perfectly.
Throughout Rohan’s life, he’s had this recurring dream where he’s on the roof of a tall building, looking over a city he doesn’t recognize. He can barely see the people walking down below, so far away they look like little ants that he could easily crush beneath his thumb. He takes a step off the building and finds that, instead of falling to the ground, he simply walks upward, as if there’s an invisible staircase in the sky waiting for him to climb. So, he continues to climb it, until even the clouds are beneath him. At some point, though, the staircase ends, and when he takes his next step, there’s nothing to hold his feet up. So, he ends up falling. But, he knows that when he closes his eyes, he’ll wake up.
He almost feels as if he’s in that dream now, walking on that staircase, miles above everyone and everything else. But, it’s more comforting to know he can’t fall in space, at least.
“Bet you’re glad you left your sketchbook at home now,” Josuke says after what feels like an hour, although it probably hasn’t been that long.
“I guess so,” Rohan responds.
They’ve been thrusting along for a while now, but the space station doesn’t seem much closer. From what Josuke says next, Rohan assumes he’s thinking the same thing.
“Let's see. So, what’s on The Great Dr. Rohan Kishibe’s bucket list?”
“My bucket list? I don’t really have one.”
“Aw, c’mon. You gotta at least have thought of shit you wanted to do before you died, right?”
There’s silence while Rohan thinks. Next month, he’s supposed to turn thirty. He’s never considered dying so early. Between work and school and following other people’s dreams, he hasn’t really been able to consider living, either.
He takes too long to answer the question, so Josuke starts answering it himself.
“I wanted to go scuba diving for a long time. Got that covered during training,” he drolls, as if going down a checklist he drew inside his head. “I also really wanted to go to fashion week, but I could never score tickets. They’re pretty hard to get and super expensive.”
It takes a minute for Rohan to register that Josuke is talking about New York Fashion Week, which is something he actually goes out of his way to watch every year, although he’s never met anyone who shares his interest in it.
“I usually just watch the livestream,” Rohan says, quietly.
“Me too. But, I always see the people sittin’ on the sides of the runway and think, ‘Damn, I wish that was me.’ Y’know? It’d be super cool to meet, like, Michael Kors or something.” Rohan makes a noise of disapproval. “What? You don’t like Michael Kors?”
“If we’re talking about last year’s show, his collection was extremely bland and disappointing. I much prefer Zimmerman’s work.”
“I mean, I think all of it’s pretty cool. I didn’t see anything I didn’t like.”
“Ugh. You’re so simple .”
The space station is a little bigger now, but still seems so far out of reach. There’s no way they’re going to make it. Rohan wonders why they’re even bothering at all, but he supposes their only other option would be to sit around and wait until they start choking on their own CO2.
“What’s wrong with being simple?”
Rohan tries to wrack his brain for an answer that can bring out the hint of hurt he detects in Josuke’s voice and magnify it. But, for the first time since he’s known Josuke, he actually feels guilty for saying something so unnecessarily mean to him.
He wonders what is wrong with simple — what’s wrong with Josuke . He supposes there really isn’t much, and that’s the problem. Josuke is tall and unbelievably fit, with eyes as bright and blue as sapphires and the kind of sharp cheekbones you only really see on superheroes. He’s the type of guy who has no trouble making friends with strangers and probably drops everything he’s doing to help an old person across the street.
If someone who knew Rohan were asked about him, they’d probably say that he doesn’t have anything nice to say most of the time and the only thing he cares about is himself — and he’d revel in that, because throughout his life, he’s learned that depending on people will only leave you disappointed. Caring about people is only an invitation for them to hurt you. Telling people things about yourself is just giving them information they can use against you later.
“I don’t know,” he finally answers.
His O2 is at 75% now. The station isn’t getting much closer.
He wonders what’s happening back on Earth. Surely, Houston knows that their shuttle has been destroyed. Maybe everyone already thinks they’re dead.
When he and Josuke die out here, nobody will be able to find their bodies and bring them back.
Will there be a funeral for him? How many people will come?
How many people he actually cares about?
Is there anyone he truly cares about…?
When Rohan was a child, his mom was adamant about making his birthday cakes from scratch and he never understood why. For his eighth birthday, she’d made him a cake with this horrible, liquidy frosting that was “caramel” flavored. It was the third she’d made, after two smaller practice cakes, and she’d set it on the table in front of him with a nervous smile. In the middle of the cake was a big candle in the shape of an eight, with a flame flickering on top of it.
He can’t even remember the names of the kids who had come to his party. They’re all just blurry faces sitting around a table to him now. But, he remembers they’d talked about the weird cake his mom had made and how the Kishibes must be too poor to afford a cake from the store, among some other nonsense that wasn’t true.
He’d come home the next day and screamed at his mom. He’d told her he’d never eat a homemade cake again and that she’d ruined his birthday by not just buying him a cake like all the other kids.
After that, he only ever got store-bought cakes. He can’t really remember most of them, yet he remembers that oozing, funky-looking caramel cake, and the unsure expression on his mom’s face as she set it down.
To this day, he still feels guilty about it.
“So, back to what we were talkin’ about. Your bucket list. You think of anything yet?”
Rohan swallows. His O2 is now at 60%.
“I guess I’d want to have an exhibition.”
“Of your art? Like, in a gallery?”
“Yeah. But, I probably wouldn’t charge people to come see it. I’d just rent out a space and make it open to everyone.”
There’s a long period of silence after he says this. Either Josuke finds his response uninteresting or he’s thinking of what to say.
“I don’t really know anything about art, but...from what I’ve seen, you’re pretty damn good at it.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Higashikata. You haven’t seen any of my art.”
Another pause.
“Actually, I, uh...kinda looked at your sketchbook while you were in a sim...one time…”
“You what ? You snooped in my bag while I was in a sim ?!”
“I was bored! And you’re always so damn annoying about it, y’know? I just thought it’d be funny if you were always hypin’ yourself up and then you were, like, super bad at it or something. I don’t know. I was wrong, obviously.”
While Rohan’s heartbeat starts to quicken again, he tries to come to terms with the fact that his least favorite person has actually gone through what is probably his most private possession — something immensely personal and close to his heart. It’s infuriating. His sketchbook is for him and anyone he so graciously allows to look at it, under his own terms. Yet, Josuke just decided that he was worthy of being privy to them.
“I saw that sketch you did of me, by the way. I think I’m probably a little more breathtakingly handsome in real life, but —” Josuke continues, but Rohan immediately jumps to his own defense.
“You — that wasn’t —!”
Rohan’s shoulders stiffen when Josuke has the nerve to start laughing at him. He feels horribly embarrassed. He knows he’s done a few sketches of Josuke, but he didn’t think Josuke would ever manage to see any of them.
“Oh my god, you actually were sketching me. I was totally joking. I only saw a sketch of some old dude with glasses on a train and some fruit or somethin’. But, I had a feeling, when I felt your eyes on me that one day we were all sittin’ around at that boring conference. Oh, yeah. And then that dude who was supposed to be there never showed up —”
“— You went through my personal belongings without asking. If I told the director, you could have been fired for that.”
“Still could be, I guess.”
A feeling of dread washes over Rohan like a cold, wet towel being thrown over him. The space station is still miles away and his O2 is at 52%. The only noise either of them can hear is each other’s breathing through the headsets that are still miraculously working.
“We’re not gonna make it, are we?” he says, although it feels as if the words are coming from someone else’s lips and not his own.
He’s shivering in his suit, partially because it’s cold and partially because he’s starting to realize that he might only have a few hours left. He’s thirty years old, never been in love, never sold a painting, and now he’s going to die.
“We’re gonna make it,” Josuke responds, firmly.
Rohan has to admire him for his ridiculous optimism at a time like this. He’s never heard of anyone surviving a collision in space. He doesn’t think there’s ever even been a collision like this above the Karman Line.
He’s heard of the airlock malfunction on the Soyuz 11 that killed 3 people. There are a few stories floating around about parachutes not deploying in time, too.
Rohan had thought the scariest part would be breaking through the atmosphere. Everything beyond that was supposed to go smoothly.
“Do you think the others are still out there?” Rohan asks, although he knows Nadine and Kevin didn’t have their helmets on.
He knows that there’s no way they could have survived.
“Yeah, they definitely made it. They probably have the same idea we do.”
“What’s your O2 at?”
“58%. And yours?”
“50.”
Josuke chuckles.
“Probably because you’re freakin’ out. Anybody in your life ever told you to relax? Maybe, like, sit back, open up a bottle of wine, eat some shit that isn’t good for you, and watch somethin’ stupid on TV?”
“I see no value in drinking an entire bottle of wine and eating, ‘shit that isn’t good for me’. And why would I watch something stupid on TV? Wouldn’t I watch something I want to watch?”
“I mean, like, somethin' that’s stupid to other people but that you like. Somethin’ you wouldn’t want people to know you like.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Like, The Real Housewives of Atlanta ? Or something?”
There’s a pause while Rohan contemplates if Josuke somehow found out he watches that or if he’s commenting on his own preferences. He’s always thought Josuke was the complete opposite of him in every way, but maybe they actually have some things in common.
“So, who’s your favorite?” he decides to ask, after a few minutes.
“Is it too cliche to say NeNe? I like how feisty she is. Like, she’s not afraid to tell people what she thinks. And she always gets what she wants. I like that.”
The edges of Rohan’s lips quirk upward into a small smile, the first smile he’s worn since well before they ever left Earth.
“I’d say Kim. That song she wrote was god awful, though.”
“‘Tardy for the Party’? That song was stuck in my head for weeks .”
“It’s pretty catchy, even if it’s absolute trash. I’ll give her that.”
“ Don’t be tardy for the party...whoa-oh, whoa-oh...Don’t be tardy for the party… ” Josuke starts to sing, and Rohan feels himself smiling even wider before he can stop himself.
“Don’t you dare start singing that. I’ll never be able to get it out of my head.”
“ Whoa-oh, whoa-oh… ”
Rohan has to bite his lip to keep from laughing. Before he knows it, he’s using his MMU as an afterthought, thrusting forward without thinking about how far they are from their destination, or how many regrets he left sitting in half-empty cups of water on his desk back at home.
He doesn’t even have any plants that will wilt in his absence. Maybe the only thing that will mourn him is all the food rotting away in the fridge.
“You’re gonna use up all your oxygen.”
“If I use it up, I use it up.”
“Don’t be an idiot, Higashikata.”
“Maybe I just wanna keep you company.”
There’s a long silence and the smile fades from Rohan’s face. His heart starts to pound again and their surroundings come back into focus as if he’s just taken off a pair of dark sunglasses in a dimly-lit room.
“You’re just saying that because we’re about to die.”
“Maybe. But, that doesn’t make it any less true.”
It feels like some sort of confession, coming from Josuke, although he’s really only telling Rohan that he wants to be around him. That’s more than most people have ever said to him, though. For a moment, he wonders how different things would have been if Josuke had said something like that months ago. Would they be friends? More than that?
His oxygen level is 30% now. The space station is bigger and closer, but he’s also realized that things look a lot closer than they actually are out here. His throat is tight as he watches Josuke put all of his body into every movement they make toward the station. He’s probably the most optimistic person Rohan has ever met, someone who would be able to smile at a funeral.
That’s the first thing Rohan had noticed about Josuke, when they met during training 2 years ago: his smile. It’s probably the thing that had irritated him the most, too. He has these perfectly straight, white teeth, like someone in a toothpaste commercial. Rohan has hardly ever seen him not smiling. Maybe Rohan just doesn’t understand how he can be so happy all the time.
Rohan’s spent his entire life trying to find even a fraction of that happiness.
“I never wanted to be an astronaut,” he says, suddenly.
Josuke can probably hear the tears in his voice, but Rohan doesn’t care.
His O2 is at 25%.
“I kinda always knew that. You wanna be an artist, right?”
“I wouldn’t be able to make any money with it. That’s why I did this instead.”
He’s choking on his words, his tears floating around in his helmet now, making it difficult to see. Ever since he can remember, he’s kept his emotions bottled up, only crying when he’s alone. Even when his grandmother had died, his face had been dry during the service. He’d only cried in the shower afterward, when the running water could mask the sound.
“Who told you that?”
“My parents.”
“Are your parents artists?”
“No.”
“Then why are you listening to them?”
Rohan lets out a quiet, muffled sob, his breath coming out in unsteady huffs. He knows crying is only going to make his O2 drain more quickly, but he can’t bring himself to stop. He’s not even sure how much he cares at this point.
If he’s being honest with himself, he probably hasn’t cared about dying for a long time now.
“My O2’s at 15%. I’m not gonna make it. You should just leave me here.”
“You’re givin’ up already? Look. The station’s right there. I’m gonna get you there and we’re both gonna make it outta here, together.”
“I’m holding you back. You’ll never reach it if we’re tethered together. What’s your O2 at? Like, 25%?”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m not lettin’ you die out here. That’s not an option.”
“Shut up and listen to me, Higashikata —”
“No, you shut up and listen to me for once, you stupid, emotionally-constipated asshole. We’re either both makin’ it to that station or we’re both dyin’ out here. So, what’s it gonna be?”
What Josuke is saying should be an insult, but the instant Rohan hears it, he’s able to blink the tears out of his eyes and see what’s in front of him a little more clearly. He doesn’t say anything more, but keeps following Josuke forward, until the station is a little closer.
By the time it’s at a reachable distance, though, Rohan’s O2 is at 2%, and dropping quickly.
“When my O2 runs out,” Rohan says, “you have to detach from me.”
“Your O2’s not gonna run out. It’s just a few miles away.”
1%.
“There’s no use carrying around a dead body. You only have a bit of oxygen left. You gotta use that to get to the station and get help. Hopefully Commander Sugimoto’s there, too.”
“You’re such a bastard, Rohan. God, you make me so damn mad sometimes.”
There’s a light in his helmet that’s blinking red now, showing that he’s exhausted all of his O2. As if he didn’t already know.
"Josuke?" he asks, reaching down for the hook that attaches the tether to his suit.
"Yeah?"
“I’m glad I met you."
“Rohan, what are you — what the hell are you doing!!”
Josuke turns to face him now, watching as he unhooks himself from the tether and, with the push of a button, uses his MMU to thrust in the opposite direction.
“Rohan, don’t do this. You fucking asshole. You —” his voice cracks as he trails off, reaching out for Rohan, but hopefully he’s too far away now.
The last thing Rohan remembers is fire spreading across his chest as he breathes in.
He falls back and pretends he’s just dreaming, walking up that staircase into the sky — that if he closes his eyes, he’ll wake up and find himself back in bed, ready to start everything over again.