Without a weapon, just by using machine arms and machine legs, he could smash an opponent to pieces. For Luca, who’d lost everything to the Aegis invasion and been swallowed by helplessness, the idea raised a strange thrill. Anticipation, and fear.
So could I take revenge on Aegis?
It would be good to have at least enough strength to dream of revenge against the vicious bastards who’d shattered his world...
The pale blue eyes imagining a stronger self filled with disappointment soon enough. Realistically, what Kai described was hard to achieve.
Handling prosthetics to that degree would mean becoming a machine person. A horrific killing machine with circuits and wiring running all the way to the brain. Luca had no wish to become that, a thing devoured by metal.
“Ah, all done! I’ll head to the shop later and push the servomotor output up another fifteen percent. So it can reproduce any movement of yours perfectly!”
Humming, Kai buried his head back in the pile of machinery. The captain rested a hand lightly on Luca’s forehead to check for fever. His face was flushed, but confirming the heat wasn’t from illness, the captain smiled in relief.
“Luca, no one’s telling you to use the prosthetics as instruments of slaughter. Just know that every bit of this ship’s technology is being poured into letting you move freely again.”
The door opened the instant he finished speaking. Obel stood outside, pushing his glasses up with a fingertip.
“It’s been ten minutes.”
Kai shot his pliers into the air and shouted hurriedly.
“I’m not done! Doctor, wait!”
“Ha, seriously...”
Obel answered irritably, but he folded his arms and waited until Kai had finished. Luca didn’t look at the doctor with any discomfort. The man only ever performed painful examinations, but he was one of the people watching over his condition with real care. Luca wasn’t dull enough to miss that kind of devotion.
Revenge, I don’t know about. But with people working this hard for me, let me at least try to get up and walk.
He’d come to dream of a very small hope, one he couldn’t have imagined when he first came aboard. And the person who’d planted it was none other than the captain smiling brightly in front of him.
Luca stared openly at the captain, who came at the same hour every day. Feeling it, the captain tilted his head.
“What is it, Luca? Something you want to say?”
The blond hair falling to one side was beautiful. He couldn’t say for certain, but the captain seemed to come from noble blood. He was always relaxed and yet elegant, and he observed the formalities. Just watching him deal with people, he looked like a well-educated high aristocrat.
But it was strange for an aristocrat to be fleeing the eyes of the Aegis alliance aboard a ghost ship. If he let his imagination work...
Maybe he’s with a faction that started a revolution, and that’s why Aegis is after him.
He must have studied too much history alongside his martial arts training at the Academy, if that was the only direction his imagination went.
“Luca?”
He’d been staring far too openly, and belatedly he snapped his gaze away. To keep his wild imaginings from showing, Luca changed the subject.
“Um...”
“You can take your time.”
“...I want to go outside, like last time.”
Meals and treatments repeating had gotten dull. The treatment room no longer felt like the horrific prison it once had, but watching space through a palm-sized window had certainly grown tedious. If it meant getting out of bed, he was more than willing to be carried in the man’s arms, embarrassing as it was.
“This time... I’ve taken care of all my bodily business too. There won’t be a repeat of last time.”
“I keep telling you, that’s really nothing to worry about.”
“...”
“Still, hearing that you want to go out with me is welcome. Shall we?”
Luca let himself be gathered into the arms lifting him gently, without hesitation. The voice in his heart that had insisted on wariness and distance had, at some point, stopped being audible. The counter-question of who on earth he could trust if not a man like this had grown louder.
Once I have the prosthetics... I’ll need some kind of training to adapt to them, won’t I?
As they passed down the corridor Luca studied the interior of the Nautilus, turning over what method of his own might let him adapt to the prosthetics in this unfamiliar place. There was only one conclusion.
“On my planet the sand wind was always blowing.”
The captain’s ears pricked up. That low voice he always found so pleasant went on, calm.
“The castle where the Academy was is very high, so when I looked out a window during training, red dunes stretched on forever. Back then I was sick of that view...”
He adjusted his hold and listened a little harder. Watching the scenery slide past over the captain’s shoulder, Luca murmured on.
“I trained alone in that tedious place every day. The first thing I learned was how to balance on sand. The ground flows, so if you don’t put strength into your toes you go down fast, which means you have to focus everything you’ve got. My professor stressed every single time that it was the first stage of governing your mind.”
He’d talked about the Academy with Kai, and the lessons from those days seemed to be coming back to him one after another. It was a positive change. He recalled the past without agonizing over lost happiness, he didn’t try to flee the all-metal interior of the ship as something horrific, and he no longer brought up wanting to be killed or wanting to give up.
I’ll have to let him do everything he wants to do.
Especially since Luca had raised the subject of training himself, the captain was more than willing to help him attempt it even with his current, difficult body.
“That’s interesting. Finding your center on shifting ground... with that sense, you’d adapt to the ship’s irregular vibrations quickly.”
He answered gently as he headed deeper into the ship. Before Luca knew it they’d left the medical deck, arriving at a section blocked off by a heavy metal door.
“This is the training room the crew uses. Kai and Obel loosen up in here now and then. Luca, how about starting some simple breathing work and upper-body balance practice here before the prosthetics go on? The others would get a bit of motivation out of watching you train, too.”
At the suggestion, Luca’s expression went cold and rigid in an instant. The left hand around the captain’s neck tightened.
“...No. I’m never going in there.”
“Luca?”
“Looking like this... I don’t want people watching me flail around. What kind of training is someone without arms or legs supposed to do? Obviously they’d all laugh at me.”
Training, right. It would be a ridiculous sight, a lump of meat gasping for air. Imagining it alone was a disgrace Luca would rather die than endure. Feeling him tremble, the captain turned around at once.
“You’re right, I didn’t think it through. If you don’t want to, there’s no need to show anyone anything.”
He walked the corridor a while as though considering, then murmured low against Luca’s ear.
“Then how about my room? No one but me can enter the captain’s quarters. There, wouldn’t you be able to move as much as you like without minding anyone’s eyes?”
Luca faltered. The captain’s private space. Security in a place like that would be strict, so was someone like him allowed to go there?
“Did Obel give permission?”
“The captain’s quarters are mine, so mine is the only permission needed.”
“Um...”
“Would my space make you uncomfortable too?”
Wasn’t it rude to suddenly visit someone’s private quarters? He hadn’t learned anything about life aboard a ship yet, and he didn’t know these people’s way of thinking or their codes and rules, so Luca only watched for cues.
“...Would it be all right?”
“Would what?”
“If I went...”
“If you make use of my room, I’d be honored.”
“...Really, nobody comes?”
“I promise on my honor. In the captain’s quarters there’s only me and the stars outside the window.”
Luca fidgeted with a uniform button, thinking it over, and then gave the smallest nod.
“...Just today, then. I do want to work on my breathing for the first time in a while... and you’ll have to hold me steady, so there’s no way around it.”
The captain let out a pleased laugh and gathered him up more firmly. Not long after they set off for the deepest part of the ship, a familiar voice rang out.
“Welcome back, Captain Luka. Identity confirmed.”
With the artificial intelligence’s voice, the door to the quarters opened on a soft hydraulic sigh, then shut behind them.
An unfamiliar space he’d never set foot in. What caught the eye first, by far, was the full-length window.
“Whoa...”
A universe beautiful enough to pull a gasp out of him filled an entire wall. He stared blankly at that mysterious river of stars, then came back to himself and looked around the room.
It was clean, a cozy space with a pleasant warmth in the air. The interior reflected the captain’s taste, full of wooden furniture and the scent of juniper.
So that’s where the smell of wood came from.
The one moment in the treatment room when he could let his guard down was when he caught that juniper scent. Now that heavy fragrance lay faintly over the whole of the captain’s quarters. Luca let the strength go out of his body more easily than he ever had.
“Luca, I’m going to set you down.”
