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There was always chaos on the Harmony Spaceship. Jongseob was used to it by now, he had been on board the spaceship for 2 years now, and in the beginning, he was quite worried, don’t get him wrong. But now, he had seen Keeho panicky yell through the comms so many times that it hardly fazed him anymore. The captain tended to panic whenever a mission had the chance of going even remotely wrong.
“Intak! Please get us out of here before we get blown up by drones in starships!” He yelled at their pilot, the comms in Jongseob’s ear had begun to sound a bit static, he was losing connection with their Spaceship.
You see, everyone on the ship had their own unique position. Keeho was the leader, he took care of the strategies and made the final decisions on the ship. Even though he panics a lot, Jongseob really respected him for all the hard calls he needed to make, he knew that Keeho cared deeply for the members of his crew and that was the reason for his panic most of the time. He didn’t want any of them to get hurt.
That’s understandable of course, but even if they did get hurt it didn’t matter that much. Their doctor, Jiung, was very skilled and had patched Jongseob up multiple times without any trouble. However, he loved to scold the younger boy when he got hurt and was always complaining about him needing to be more careful. Jongseob could always count on his injuries being gone by the time he walked out of the med bay.
Then you had Intak, he was one of the most skilled pilots Jonseob had ever met and was also the main reason why they were all still alive. Intak tended to get out of tricky situations last minute, and Jongseob was incredibly grateful for his hyung and his suicidal instincts that somehow saved the day every time. The black-haired boy had earned The Harmony a lot of respect from other spaceships in the galaxy through his flying skills.
And then last but not least there was their sniper, Theo. He was the oldest of their little crew and had a reputation in the galaxy for his skill with a holo-riffle. He also operated the canons on the ship. On many planets, it was rumored that the sniper from The Harmony had never missed a shot and that he was one of the most ruthless sharpshooters out there. Jongseob would say that about half of that was true, their oldest member had indeed never missed a shot before. However, Theo was also a big softy. He loved to coddle the other members with affection and Jongseob had only seen Theo get mad once in his time on the spaceship (they don’t mention that though).
When Jongseob was first stranded on the Harmony he was worried about how he would fit in on the spaceship. Everyone seemed to have a specific role already and he wasn’t sure how useful someone like him could be to the crew. But then they discovered his skill as a pilot, and no, not like Intak, who was skilled with flying a large spaceship and maneuvering it through obstacles. No, he couldn't operate such a large ship without crashing it eventually. He was somehow very skilled at flying a smaller type of battleship called a starship. It’s a small sphere-shaped spaceship normally operated by only one person but was big enough to fit two.
Keeho had decided to buy one to expand The Harmony and help them go on smaller missions where they didn’t need to fly the whole spaceship back to a close planet. But none of them had ever expected Jongseob to be so natural at it. The first time he tested the starship he blew all of them away. He operated the ship with such ease, flying through the galaxy at an enormous speed and dodging any meteors or space trash on the way. By the time he landed the vehicle in the exact spot he started, the others had already decided what his role in the group would be. From that moment on, Jongseob became their designated starship pilot.
“Jongseob we need backup! Please return to The Harmony!” The captain’s voice yelled through his earpiece. Jongseob looked at his built-in map but it seemed to have been hit from when he was flying away from the drones that were currently still attacking their main ship.
“My map isn’t responding! I need directions!” He yelled back, hoping that the earpiece wouldn’t lose connection.
“Okay Seob I have your location pulled up here, you’re very close by please go full speed forward, I will tell you if you need to turn!” Jongseob immediately went full speed after hearing Keeho respond, trying to get to his friends as fast as possible.
It was hard to navigate in space, especially if you didn’t have a map or a clue where your destination might be. The only thing he could do was go full speed ahead. Until, finally, someone on the other side yelled at him to change courses.
“Okay, you’re getting close! Hold tight and-” There were a couple of seconds of silence.
“LEFT! LEFT!” He heard his captain shout out. The moment Jongseob heard the voice, he yanked his steering wheel to the left and he made a 90° turn at maximum speed. But something was wrong.
“SHIT! I MEANT THE OTHER LEFT! GO TO THE OTHER LEFT!” But it was too late. Jongseob had noticed it a second too late but when he finally saw the huge meteor he couldn’t do anything about the inevitable. He had just the time to press his alarm button and send his coordinates to the others when his starship fully crashed into the space rock.
He didn’t know how long he was out for, it could’ve been only seconds, it could’ve been hours, the only thing Jongseob knew was that he was alive. He was alive and appeared to have been stranded on a nearby planet. He was lying in soft purple-colored sand, his starship was on fire and almost unrecognizable with how damaged it was. He reached to his earpiece to try and contact The Harmony but it seemed like he was out of luck. He pulled the fried piece of electronics out of his ear with a sigh.
While getting up from his place in the weird-colored sand, the reality of the situation kicked in. He was alone, stranded on an unknown planet with nothing except a broken starship and a fried earpiece. He didn’t even know if this planet was inhabited with life. At least he knew humans could survive on the planet, he hadn’t suffocated after all.
He looked around and took in his surroundings. He landed in what looked like some sort of purple dust desert. There was no sign of life around him but it did seem like there was a weird forest on his right, at the edge of the desert. It didn’t look like trees were growing there though, more like some type of giant mushroom. He didn’t really know, describing an environment you never experienced before is hard.
Jongseob decided to walk in the direction of the forest, he would find some shade there while he looked if anything was looking slightly edible or if he could find water. The walk wasn’t that difficult and went with relative ease. The sand got stuck in his shoes which wasn’t that fun but he had bigger things to worry about.
When arriving at the mushroom forest, Jongseob looked around at the strange plants to see what could be considered edible. It was pretty worrying if he was honest, almost all plants here glowed in neon colors and nothing looked like it wasn’t poisonous. He felt scared to pick the plants with his bare hands, who knew what would happen?
He was so focused on searching through this new world that Jongseob had almost missed the sound that came from his left. He turned around quickly, ready to defend himself if he got attacked. Instead of a monster who wanted to eat him, there stood a boy looking curiously at him.
The boy was around the same height as Jongseob. At first glance, Jongseob would think that the boy before him was human. He looked almost exactly like he would expect from a normal, human boy, except for his shining purple irises and his two green feelers sticking out of his head.
The two boys stared curiously at each other without saying anything. They both took in the appearance of the other. Seeing him seemed to surprise the aliën boy just as much as it surprised Jongseob. It was only after a good 2 minutes of silence that the boy made a strange noise. He seemed to try to communicate with a language that Jongseob had never heard before, it was made entirely of different peeps sounds in different tones. He could only stare in confusion, the other boy seemed to notice fast enough and switched to another plan.
“Who are you?” He asked in broken Common, a language learned by 90% of planets inhabited by highly intelligent beings. Jongseob himself had learned the language thoroughly when he first joined The Harmony, it was his only way of communicating with other species. The other boy seemed to struggle with the language though, and Jongseob felt kind of bad.
“I’m Jongseob.” He responded slowly, using his hands while talking to make sure that the other understood him. The aliën seemed to brighten a bit. He made a small “Ah” noise and repeated the name he just learned. Jongseob laughed happily when the boy got it right.
“My name is Soul.” He said, slowly with a thick accent, and an awkward tone, like he was trying to remember what exactly his textbook said. Jongseob smiled at him. “Soul.” He said, trying his best to say it in the same accent as the other boy. Soul nodded enthusiastically.
“My ship crashed,” Jongseob said next. The other boy had confusion in his lavender eyes. “Like this, zzzzzzmmmm BOOM!” He emulated a crash with his hands and Soul lighted up, understanding what he meant. Jongseob and Soul continued their game of charades to learn more about each other. It was hard and took a lot of time, but it was worth it. Jongseob managed to tell the boy about his ship being attacked, and him crashing into a meteor. It seemed like Soul understood that he had people looking for him because he immediately took Jongseob’s arm and dragged him back into the desert, where his damaged starship still lay in the dust. Soul grabbed a strange object out of his pocket and threw it at the ship. Almost instantly there was a huge pink smoke going up in a line, it climbed higher and higher until Jongseob was sure that it had suppressed the height of most skyscrapers back on Earth. It reminded him of those old smoke signals people used to set up when they wanted to be found.
Soul was trying to signal to his members where they were. Soul was helping him.
After throwing the pink dust, Soul went to sit down and Jongseob joined him. They continued their game of ‘guess what I’m saying by these limited words and hand signs’ and Jongseob was surprised to say that after maybe an hour, he knew far more of Soul than what he expected.
Soul told him that he was alone, on the planet. Well, he was sure there were others like him out there, but he hadn’t come in contact with someone since they were very young. He had survived on his own and told Jongseob that he was a good cook and could make a lot out of limited resources. He then proceeded to pull out some kind of glowing plant and prepare it like it was dinner. He showed him the different kinds of techniques you needed to take out the poison (called it) and make it edible while still holding on to the flavor.
They killed about an hour and a half with only that, and after he was done he gave the food to Jongseob who hesitantly brought it to his lips. It’s not like he didn’t trust Soul, it was just what if humans couldn’t eat this particular food? What if he died? But then he remembered that he had to eat something sooner or later, so he took a big bite from the food and oh.
It was delicious.
The dish was easily the best thing Jongseob had ever eaten in his life. He looked at the cook with wide eyes. Soul laughed at his amazed expression, glad that his new friend liked the food. Jongseob was quick to eat all of his weirdly good dinner and thanked Soul for the food with a quick bow.
The two friends got lost in another conversation, this time about how funny it was that their species looked so similar, (Soul joked that they were practically twins and Jongseob's heart couldn't help but feel warm at the thought). They talked about anything and everything, communicating became easier with the second and it may look weird to an outsider but Soul just seemed to get Jongseob in a way that only the members of his crew managed to understand him. They were so invested in their conversation that both of them hadn’t noticed the big spaceship making its way to land next to them until there was a loud noise.
Soul flinched and looked alert at the new presence but Jongseob quickly recognized The Harmony and jumped up in excitement at the thought of seeing his hyungs again. When the spaceship landed, Keeho was the first one to step on the new planet. The moment Jongseob saw the captain, he ran to him and pulled his leader in a big, soft hug.
“Oh Seob, we were so worried. I’m so glad you’re okay. I’m so sorry.” The older man murmured softly in his hair and Jongseob could feel the tears trying to escape.
“I know, it’s not your fault. Thank you for coming.” He said back. He could feel the leader was going to argue but before he had the chance, the other members left the ship and Jongseob practically flew in their arms.
“JSeob!” “I missed you so much.” “Thank god you’re okay.” “Never do that again.”
They talked through each other as they crushed Jongseob in the biggest hug he had ever gotten. After a while, the others let go and Jongseob reassured them that he was totally fine. He got help after all.
That was the moment he remembered Soul. He looked back at the boy, who was still sitting on the ground, awkwardly watching the ship reunite with each other. Jongseob saw the longing in his eyes, and his stomach turned at the thought of leaving his twin here to fend for himself again.
So Jongseob moved to Keeho’s side again and started to explain what happened to him. Keeho listened with concern and looked surprised at Soul when hearing about how the aliën had helped their young pilot. He listened about how Jongseob and Soul bonded, about how Soul cooked him food and Jongseob could see that Keeho’s heart melted when he heard that the boy was alone.
“Can he stay? Please, hyung?” Jongseob had pleaded, and really, who was Keeho to deny?
After their conversation Keeho went over to the other guys, to explain the situation and to announce that they were getting a new crewmate. Jongseob walked over to Soul. The boy looked sad, at the thought of his only friend going away. Jongseob smiled at him and asked the question that would change all of their lives forever.
“Stay?”