Luca opened his mouth carefully.
“Can I... ask you for one thing?”
The captain’s eyes went wide. His hands, in the middle of arranging thornless roses in a vase, stopped dead like a robot cut off mid-motion. Holding back the urge to shout anything you want! on the spot, he looked at Luca with fervent golden eyes.
“A favor? What kind?”
Luca fidgeted with the bedsheet, then spoke carefully, in a voice barely loud enough to hear.
“...I want to wear something other than a hospital gown.”
The loose sleeves around his severed shoulder and thighs flapped limply whenever he moved. The sight of it reminded him every single moment that he was something incomplete.
“...This thing’s too big, it keeps sliding off me. It looks pathetic.”
Luca pulled the sheet up and curled in on himself, and the captain didn’t miss the anxiety in his eyes.
“All right. I’ll have something made that fits you exactly. Give me a little time.”
A few days later, the captain came in somewhat later in the evening than usual with a wrapped box in his hands.
“Luca, look at this. I got you a present.”
“A present...?”
“Mm. Want to open it?”
Luca took the box and opened it carefully. Inside was a single garment in deep navy. Nano-velvet, far denser and sturdier than ordinary cotton. High-grade clothing built specially to hold body heat during space voyages. But the shape of it wasn’t normal.
“What is this...? A dog outfit?”
“Mm, I had it altered so you could wear it.”
“...My clothes?”
“If it’s no good and you don’t like it, there’s nothing to be done, but...”
The captain studied Luca’s face carefully. He’d expected a bright smile at the gift, and getting only a furrowed brow instead seemed to have thrown him.
...The shape was so unfamiliar I didn’t realize it was for me. So this is the kind of clothing my body needs now.
Looking again, the hems were neatly finished to match exactly where his arm and legs ended. Special elastic banding had been added so the fabric wrapped the amputated areas softly without compressing them. Above all it had a certain thickness to it, enough that it felt like it would hold his thin body up firmly.
“Want to try it on? I got Obel’s permission before bringing it. It’ll be much warmer than the gown.”
For a while Luca only fidgeted with the fabric. He was grateful that one complaint about the gown had brought this so quickly, but realizing anew how much his body had changed, enough that clothes had to be cut down this small, made him sad too. Still, he couldn’t go on refusing his own body and pretending it wasn’t his forever, could he?
“Okay...”
At that careful answer, the captain let out a relieved breath.
“I’ll sit you up. Shall I hold you?”
“...”
No answer came. Even so, reading his mind from his face alone, the captain carefully supported him and gathered him up. He undid the gown’s buttons one by one, and the thin body was revealed.
Over skin that had once been smooth and firm like any boy his age, scars now stood out as if flesh had been forced back together, along with pale veins. What hurt the captain’s chest most of all was the curve of a body gone asymmetrical.
The right shoulder had lost the shape of its round joint and simply ended, smooth. The thighs that should have run long and lean below his hips stopped short, leaving only a stump.
“...Don’t look.”
Luca pushed the words out like a groan and struggled to cover his chest with his remaining left arm. His bandaged fingertips trembled faintly. The gaunt line of his collarbone quivered every time the captain’s gaze touched it. Showing someone his loss this nakedly was a humiliation he’d have rather died than endure.
“It’s hideous. Everything cut off, nothing left but bone...”
Instead of answering, the captain bent his knees to bring their eyes level. He laid his hand over Luca’s trembling left one. Against the broad, solid back of the captain’s hand, Luca’s looked like it might crumble at a touch.
“It isn’t hideous, Luca. You survived.”
With his other hand he ran a very careful stroke down the knobs of Luca’s protruding spine.
“You’re just a little thin. From now on I’m going to feed you plenty of good food and put weight on you, so don’t worry.”
“...Liar. What’s the point of gaining weight when I don’t even have arms and legs?”
“Put on weight and you can build muscle.”
“...”
“Muscle will widen your range of movement. That’s why I brought you clothes that are easy to move in.”
Luca’s face stayed stiff. At this rate the medical AI seemed likely to announce Warning, patient distress levels are rising all over again. And if that anxiety wasn’t soothed, mightn’t the plea of kill me, forgotten for a while now, start up again?
Unwilling to give it even that opening, the captain quickly pulled the nano-velvet over Luca’s head. The instant the soft lining touched the scarred places the coarse gown had chafed, Luca’s shoulders jerked and shivered. The captain straightened the garment for him.
“How is it? Anything uncomfortable?”
In place of ragged, flapping sleeves, the way the cloth fell exactly along the lines of his body gave a curious sense of security. Luca hesitated, then gave an honest verdict.
“...It’s comfortable.”
“If anything bothers you even slightly, say so. I’ll have it altered again.”
“...But this looks expensive. Where’d you get something like this?”
“Knowing could get you hurt. If my first officer finds out I ransacked the storeroom looking for it, she might actually take my head off.”
He drew a finger across his throat in jest, and Luca let out a tiny snort of laughter.
“That’s stupid. You call yourself a captain and you’re scared of your own first officer.”
Ah. He laughed.
At that first smile, the captain forgot even to blink and simply stared at Luca’s face. A face that had felt gaunt to the point of forlornness softened, and it looked terribly pretty.
It was already a beautiful face, with those neat, finely arranged features. When he smiled they took on soft curves, and even that sharp wariness crumbled away.
His laugh sounds good too.
He wished the boy would laugh more often. If Luca could laugh, he’d do anything at all.
The captain swallowed dryly. Let this greed show and Luca would take a step back and run. He had to approach slowly, without hurrying, a little at a time. Once they were close enough that his presence at Luca’s side felt natural. After that, he could confess his secret.
Pressing down the flutter in his chest, he kept his usual tone.
“It just means I’d like you to like these clothes that much. So, how are they?”
Luca fiddled with the end of the new sleeve. The cloth no longer flapped in empty air, and that satisfied him.
“...Not bad. Mm, no. A hundred times better than the gown.”
Grumbling, Luca slipped down under the blanket. In that instant the captain caught the flush of life in his cheeks. Unable to keep merely watching, he carefully reached out.
Soft hair slid under his palm as he stroked it, and Luca peeked just his eyes out over the blanket to look up at him. That his hand wasn’t sharply slapped away was enough on its own to make the captain proud.
Bit by bit, naturally, he was wishing once more that Luca would make room for him at his side, when out in the corridor Obel, passing by with a chart in hand, stopped walking.
The scene visible through the open gap was quite something. The great captain who commanded this enormous Nautilus, desperate to be at the side of a boy who couldn’t even eat properly.
Knock, knock.
Obel rapped the open door lightly with the back of his hand and spoke to the captain as he turned around.
“Captain, isn’t that the most expensive functional suit in our whole reserve supply? And you went and snipped it up like that. If Ivelinsia finds out, there really will be a war.”
Even at the scolding, the captain swung right back around to face Luca. He laid a hand on Luca’s forehead as he replied.
“We’re always at war anyway, so it makes no difference. Luca not being in pain matters more.”
Obel let out a laugh of disbelief.
“Anything you need?”
“No.”
“Then shall I just go?”
“Go.”
At a reply that left no room for anything else, Obel raised the corner of his mouth as though something about it amused him and disappeared down the corridor. Now that Luca understood how precious a thing the captain had handed over to him, his face filled with embarrassment.
“I wasn’t asking for something this valuable.”
“I gave it because I wanted to, so don’t fret over it.”
“...”
“Nothing else you need? You can ask me for anything, anytime.”
He’d said the same thing Obel had a moment ago. He claimed to need nothing himself, and yet he was desperate to do more for Luca.
Luca worried at the blanket with his hand, then hid inside it.
“Nothing...”
Ah, I must have come too close, if he’s throwing up a wall this fast.
The captain clicked his tongue in regret, but he smiled at the round mound the blanket made.
“Then get some rest, Luca.”
“...”
“I’ll come again tomorrow.”
Luca didn’t say a word until the captain left, but from the next day on his attitude changed noticeably. Awkward and hesitant, he began treating the captain with a little more familiarity.
“The juniper oil... could you bring more? It smells really good.”
“Shall I? I’ll keep topping it up before the scent fades.”
“Thanks.”
“It’s nothing. Ask me for anything, anytime.”
Like friends. Sometimes as though the man were the one guardian he trusted and leaned on. The despair, gloom, and pain that had hung over Luca’s face turned, at some point, into a smile that spread soft and unbidden.
