Work Text:
Hyeongjun always wanted to explore space. Ever since he was a little boy, he dreamed of traversing the great universe beyond this pale blue dot.
He made up his mind and joined a space agency. He started as an intern, and worked his way up the job hierarchy, determined to make his lifelong dreams come true.
Hyeongjun isn’t the type to talk to anyone outside the realm of work, until he met Seungmin, an older colleague while working at the mission control branch. Seungmin always made it his goal to befriend every coworker and interns alike in his branch, so of course he tried to get to know Hyeongjun.
Hyeongjun was irritated and found Seungmin annoying at first, but he slowly warmed up to him. As time went by, they formed a close friendship and started spending more and more time together, to the point dating rumours were spreading around the agency.
Coworkers always joked, “Seungmin is in love with Hyeongjun”, and vice versa. And they’re right, the two actually started developing feelings for each other at some point in their relationship. And after that, there was no going back. They were inseparable, as if they’re glued to each other.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
That is, until after vigorously training, Hyeongjun finally climbed his way up to being a proper astronaut. He is set to board a probe to Mars, finally achieving his childhood dreams. Seungmin, on the other hand, had no interest in exploring space himself, happy with his comfortable job as a mission controller here on earth. And so they agree to part ways
On that faithful day, as Hyeongjun was about to board the spaceship on his own, he had the final conversation face to face on earth with Seungmin. Seungmin can’t help but cry a little knowing he won’t be able to see his lover for at least 5 years. “Don’t be sad, it’s just 5 years. When I complete this mission, we’ll live together and I’ll never leave your side again, ok?” Hyeongjun reassured him, and kissed him for one last time. The spaceship takes off soon after, there is no turning back.
Anyways, the agency is nice enough to let Seungmin be Hyeongjun’s primary mission controller, so now it’s like some sort of long-distance relationship, a millions of kilometres long one. Outside of professional conversations, they still talked like they used to, like nothing ever changed.
But as Hyeongjun’s journey went along, the time it took to transmit each message increased, so they talked less and less. The silence felt like it was going to drive him insane, but he slowly got used to it over time. He started drawing distant stars, space debris and other objects he comes across to kill time, hoping to show them to Seungmin when they see each other again.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Back on Earth, 6 months have passed now and the almost lack of messages is starting to take a toll on Seungmin too, but that makes the little “I love you~”’ at the end of transmissions feel all the more sweet.
The journey went without a hitch, well at least besides that one malfunctioning clock that was quickly fixed with the guidance of mission control, so no major hitches, just a small issue that was easily troubleshooted.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
8 months. Hyeongjun is about to land on the red planet now, only a month away. But that’s when more serious issues started to pop up. One day it’s the radar not working, the other day it's the engine randomly slowing down. That issue was rectified the next day, but it’s still not a good look.
Most concerningly, the power is dropping faster than expected. No one, even back on Earth, could find a cause, which made fixing it pretty much impossible. The only thing Hyeongjun could do was to shut off the light inside the probe to save energy, but it isn’t much help.
And the next day, even more problems. The engine wasn’t running at all, and the radar issue is back. He can’t catch a break, can’t he? At this point, Hyeongjun was irritated and hadn’t slept in days. How did his childhood dream turn out like this? Now he wanted nothing more than to get everything over with and go home.
Seungmin, back on Earth, is getting very concerned. The whole agency is concerned. This isn’t good, none of these issues were expected. They tried to do everything in their power to help Hyeongjun, but the 20 minutes it took for a message to arrive, and another 20 minutes for their messages to get to Hyeongjun was frustrating. The back and forth took around 6 hours, but the issue was thankfully rectified.
The next few days no major problems appeared, which is a relief to both Hyeongjun and the team on the ground. He finally calmed down and decided to get a full night of sleep.
That very night, Hyeongjun woke up to an alarm blaring, no, multiple alarms blaring. The engine has failed, the power is running out, and the probe is losing pressurization. This is horrible, the probe could collapse any time now if he doesn’t find a way to fix it.
Nothing seems to work. This can’t be it, right? It can’t just be over like this, right? As much as he can wish, Hyeongjun doesn’t think he can survive this, no, the oxygen running out is already making him dizzy. No, he doesn’t want to die. Not until saying goodbye to his lover, at the least.
And so, he picked up the spaceship’s microphone.
“This final transmission is for you, Seungmin. By the time this reaches you, I’m gone, the ship has collapsed, taking me along with it. I’m using this last breath to tell you that I love you, you’re my everything. Please don’t let my love for you die with me, know that I will love you forever, until the end of time.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“No, this can’t be right? Hyeongjun? Hyeongjun. You’re gone? Just like that?”
Seungmin sobbed. This can’t be it, right? He desperately tried to connect to the spaceship again.
‘Signal lost, target not found.’