The captain lowered him carefully onto the soft carpet spread across the middle of the room. It was the first time he’d sat on a floor instead of a bed. Luca struggled to balance, but with nothing to brace against, his body tipped limply to one side.
“Ngh...!”
Just before he pitched over, the captain caught him and pulled him in.
“Don’t rush. Steady your breathing first. Start with finding that ‘center’ you told me about.”
Luca’s eyes sharpened as he glanced back at him. Coming from a man who knew his situation better than anyone, the words felt careless.
“...Easy for you to say. I can’t put strength into my toes, so how exactly am I supposed to find my center?”
He snapped it out and twisted in place. Ordinarily he accepted his condition with some composure, but whenever he couldn’t move as he wanted, like now, he turned into a fretful child. The captain pressed his large hand firmly down on those trembling shoulders.
“So are you giving up?”
“...Not very tender today, are you?”
“Because I know that isn’t what you want right now.”
He wasn’t a man who only ever coddled and soothed. Faced with what mattered most, the captain was more precise and more coldly clear than anyone.
“Use my body to find your center. I’ll be your support. Gather strength starting from the base of your spine. The way you did looking out at the dunes from that castle back home.”
Strangely, that composed, level voice settled Luca’s ragged breathing.
Right, snapping here is as good as announcing I’m a weakling. Being treated like a kid already makes me furious. I’m not about to be treated as helpless on top of it.
Luca steadied his breathing and closed his eyes. He felt his way through memories that still came back vividly.
Red sand wind, the hushed training ground of the Academy, and the trees growing here and there inside the castle grounds as though flaunting their fierce vitality, right down to the clear sunlight caught in their leaves. The moments of feeling nature were waking inside his body, impossibly vivid.
“...Breathe in, and out very slowly.”
Luca murmured it and put strength into straightening his upper body. Matching his movement, the captain traced each vertebra with his fingertips.
“One at a time, starting here.”
“Hoo...”
“Good, I can feel the breath filling you. Try taking it down further, to your navel.”
“Hh, nn...”
“I’ve got you, so don’t worry.”
Every time Luca lost his center and swayed, the captain’s arms braced harder. And every time, Luca learned which muscle he needed to use.
“That’s good, Luca.”
At the praise Luca bit his lip. This was a situation that ought to have been miserable, and yet the encouragement kept loosening the tension out of him. He wanted, once he’d faithfully worked his way to understanding, to ask “Did I do well?” and get an even bigger compliment.
Don’t get carried away. Settle down.
Governing his own feelings, Luca kept breathing for a long while. Then, apparently out of strength, he let the back of his head drop against the captain’s chest.
“...This is hard. It’s only breathing, so why is it this much...”
“It isn’t only breathing. Right now you’re taking back the reins of your own life.”
The captain wiped the sweat from the back of his neck. Luca didn’t look behind him, but he could roughly guess what kind of look he was being given.
“...You really are a strange man. I don’t understand why you’d put this much work into me.”
“I told you. I want to see you walk again and stand on this ship’s bridge. Call it my own selfish greed, that’s fine.”
“That’s what I’m asking. What kind of feeling is that...”
“You must have attention to spare for me. You should be concentrating harder.”
At the rebuke, which felt deliberately drawn like a line, Luca bit down hard on his lower lip.
Damn it... if only out of spite, I’m going to pull this off.
Resolve brimming, Luca clamped his left hand around the thick forearm wrapped around him.
Focus. Even if I have to use this man, I’m going to hold my body upright.
He pushed against the firm muscle of that arm. In the recoil, his own weight came through whole. Fully accepting this unfamiliar mass, so different from before, was the first step.
“I’ll try once more. This time... move your hands away.”
The captain seemed to hesitate a moment, then slowly released the two arms that had been wrapped around him like restraints.
With the supporting force gone, Luca’s upper body wavered and swayed. His vision tilted and the floor came toward his face. But instead of squeezing his eyes shut, Luca drew up the breathing he’d repeated hundreds of times on the Academy training ground.
The center isn’t at the end of the spine. It’s in the empty place.
Luca imagined his legs were still there. He carved into his mind the sensation of soles that didn’t exist pressing into the ground, of an arm he couldn’t swing cutting the flow of the air. His abdominal muscles drew tight, and a bead of sweat ran down the bridge of his nose and fell.
What stands upright isn’t the body. It’s the mind.
In a split second of silence, a miracle happened. Without the captain’s hands, Luca’s upper body stood straight. Resisting gravity, he’d drawn a vertical line by his own will. Without even bracing his one remaining hand against the floor, Luca held the posture on core strength alone.
“...I did it.”
A short cry of wonder escaped his lips. In this moment, what governed his body was neither another person’s consideration nor a machine’s help, but only himself. An unfamiliar sense of achievement burned hot in his chest.
Watching with held breath at his side, the captain finally let it out and laughed low. Rather than gathering Luca into his arms again, he settled down in front of him.
“See? What did I tell you? I said you could do it.”
His voice was full of pride and certainty. Smoothing back Luca’s tangled hair, he was generous with his praise.
“Even without someone holding you, you can stand perfectly straight. Because your life belongs to no one but you.”
The captain sincerely respected the weight of that brief victory Luca had won for himself. Face damp with sweat, Luca stared at him for a moment, then whipped his head away, embarrassed.
“...I only did it because you kept nagging. You’re loud, so stop talking now.”
His cheeks had flushed redder than before. Finding the sight unbearably cute, the captain patted his shoulder lightly and gathered him up.
“Yes, yes. Our Luca did it because he’s so impressive. Feeling a bit more confident now? When Kai brings the prosthetics tomorrow, don’t forget today’s sensation. Carry it straight over.”
Luca buried his face in the captain’s chest and thought that maybe, just maybe, the ‘beginning’ this man kept talking about wasn’t entirely impossible after all.
Over his empty limbs, a hot will to live was sprouting.
That night Luca stayed awake until dawn. Even lying in bed, he only stared blankly at the treatment room ceiling.
Sleep wouldn’t come, though in a different sense than when insomnia had him forcing his eyes open to escape a nightmare. Was he awake because the prosthetics were coming soon and he was excited, or because he was afraid?
Unable to define his own state, he gave up on sleeping. Instead he braced his left arm on the bedsheet and hauled himself upright with effort.
With no legs, simply supporting the weight of his upper body brought him to the edge of breathlessness. But thanks to the practice in the captain’s quarters, he recovered his center without much difficulty.
“Haa, hoo...”
Once his breathing settled, he leaned against the head of the bed. With his line of sight higher, he could see further past the palm-sized window.
A view he could never have seen lying down came pouring in. Far off, fragments of a shattered planet caught the nebula’s light, glittered like jewels, and were swallowed into an enormous darkness. What remained was pitch blackness. A space of nothing at all.
“...”
The thought crossed him that one of those faintly visible fragments might be the place he himself had lived. Merely remembering it had tormented him with nightmares for close to a month.
At some point the anguish that used to come every day had thinned, and a vague emptiness seemed to have filled its place. Luca looked down at his severed right shoulder and the hollow space below his thighs.
“Right. I survived. Maybe it’s all right to start treating my life as something precious.”
