Crash Land on Kurai – Chapter 2

With the stress of the trip, my massive screw-up, and my hand throbbing in an ice bag, a migraine the size of the ship descends on my brain. Lights burst in my vision, and my head throbs as if tiny men are dancing around in my skull. I don’t want to remove my hand from the bag. I don’t want to struggle out of my restraints to turn off the lights. Why did we deactivate the voice commands anyway? Oh right, it was because those assholes from three doors down would shout into our room in the middle of the night and turn the lights on. Just to keep us on our toes.

I press my forehead to the desk and close my eyes, close out the world around me.

Back home, I had bowed with my forehead pressed to the floor for a long time before sitting up to face the empress, a woman I had both admired, loved, and came to distrust over the years of watching her in her own home.

How could she indulge her family and then demand so much of our people? Our families were close, so tight-knit I couldn’t tell where ours ended and hers began, so she’d given me favor, favor I felt I didn’t deserve. I ruined our relationship when I published that exposé of her family, and she still forgave me. I didn’t deserve that either.

“I have gifts for you to bring on your mission, and I’m trusting you to put them in the right hands,” she’d said, her hand on my shoulder. My body had shaken at her touch. Why would she spare me? “I may not like the girl you were, but I hope to be proud of the woman you’ll become.”

Proud of me? How would that ever be possible after what I did?

The migraine increases and makes me moan. I never said I was a likable person. I have a few friends, and they’re the only ones I won’t compromise for a story. Them and my sources. My first journalism teacher in middle school would wax lyrically about how journalism failed humanity before the wars on Earth, then came back into popularity during the post-war years when everyone left had been confined to Nishikyō, the last city on Earth. When all the Terrans came to Orihimé years later, they brought their freedom of the press with them.

Journalism was the right choice for me, the right path to take in school. I loved to write, but fiction never inspired me. Catching the truth on camera or finding corruption makes me soar inside. It’s the only thing I can rely on. The thrill of the hunt.

The doorbell rings, and I try to ignore it. The very sound of the bell makes my migraine increase by ten times.

I breathe in and out, counting to ten each time and focusing on a part of my body that doesn’t hurt. My toes. At least my toes don’t hurt.

The doorbell rings again. I groan. “Go away!” Yelling is a bad idea. I’m now nauseous.

“It’s me and the doctor. Let us in.”

Shintaro.

Sigh. I should have known he’d come by.

“Let yourself in. It’s not locked.”

The door slides open with a whoosh and click. One thing I hate about zero gravity and miss about home is footsteps. At home, because our family is influential and at the top of the food chain, we’re taught defense from a young age to save our skins from assassins. We’re taught to listen for footsteps and determine how many people are approaching. We’re taught to fight with the jō, a long karate staff, like our father. We’re taught how to jump, swim, and negotiate like a ninja. Space does interesting things to ninja instincts. I don’t like it.

“Hey,” Shintaro says, tapping on my shoulder. I lift my head and squint at him. His face softens in sympathy. “A migraine? Why didn’t you go to the infirmary after the fight? I waited for you there.”

I close my eyes against the brightness of the overhead lights. The doctor, Kiyota, lowers the lights to the dimmest setting.

“Confined to quarters for the next forty-eight hours.” The only thing in life that can make me cry now is pain, and I hold back the tears. I won’t cry in front of Kiyota, no matter what he does to me. “Figured the commander wouldn’t care if I was in pain.”

And I don’t want to be confined to quarters forever. This mission will not only make my career, but it’ll also repair everything I’ve broken.

“What’s your level of pain right now?” Kiyota asks, and I swallow to keep my lunch in my stomach.

“A four, maybe five. Not so bad.” Lying comes easy when it’s about myself. I save the truth for everyone else.

Shintaro kicks me in the leg, and I howl in pain. “What about now?”

“Fuck! Why did you do that?”

He sighs. “Because you’re lying. I can tell. I didn’t grow up right next to you and not be able to read your pain.”

Having a twin brother when you want to pull the wool over someone’s eyes makes living impossible. Impossible, I say.

“Fine. It’s like an eight. My hand is numb now, and my head feels like it’s going to explode.” I press my forehead back onto the desk. “My migraines are always worse in microgravity. And then they spike the first days back on solid ground.”

“We expected this.” Kiyota’s nimble and warm hands grasp my left hand and extend my arm. Of everyone onboard, he doesn’t judge me. He only cares about my body and keeping it alive. I like him. “Make a fist, please.”

I would protest. I can’t stand painkillers and never have, but I’m confined to quarters anyway, so what does it matter? I might as well not suffer. If they work, I can sleep and then keep myself busy after with mission statements about the system we’re approaching. I still need to learn as much as I can about our theories of what awaits us there. We’ll be arriving tomorrow.

“I’ll give you an anti-inflammatory as well. Should keep the swelling down in your hand.”

“Thanks, Doc,” I mumble into the table. I don’t notice the pinprick of the needle, but the pain fades, making my body relax into a lump.

While I’m lying there, he pulls my hand from the ice bag and checks it, humming and poking at my knuckles and fingers before wrapping everything with tape and gauze. “I don’t think anything’s broken.”

“It’s her brain that’s broken, Doc. Nothing can fix that.”

“I’ll check back on her in a couple of hours,” Kiyota whispers to my brother. I know he’s gone when I hear the door open and click shut again.

“Are we going to talk about why you punched the daylights out of Gen Miyazawa?”

Damn. I thought he had gone too.

“No.”

A pause. “That’s it. Just no?”

“That’s it. Just no.”

“Fine. Let me get you into bed.”

I rarely let my brother baby me, but it’s been a tough day already. He unstraps me from the desk, and heading over to the wall, he positions me next to the vertical sleeping bags.

“Why didn’t Ayamé stick around to help you out?” he asks, unzipping my sleeping bag and hooking the IV device up to the wall so it won’t float away.

“Because she’s got a job to do. I can’t ask her to stay every time I get myself in a mess.”

I’d stayed with Ayamé while her mother was in the hospital, and she had stayed by me plenty of times. But when we left on this journey, we had decided we’d make the trip as adults. It was time to be twenty-four-year-olds, not sixteen-year-olds. Besides, I never wanted to be sixteen years old again. Not enough time could ever erase sixteen from my memory.

When I have narcotics flowing through my system, it’s hard to remember I’m in space and I’m not a kid back home. We’ve only been on the ship for two months, arriving at our destination with three jumps instead of ten. Our people worked thirty years for a two-month journey across the stars. But it is what it is. My parents and others like them, including the empress and everyone in the government, had a difficult time convincing the population that this mission was necessary. But we need to reunite with the other Japanese migrants from Earth. We need a larger gene pool, a larger planet.

Bah. I push all the thoughts of work out of my head. Going over the reasons for the mission will only energize me, make me mad with lust for work.

Shintaro finishes zipping me into bed. Though the lights are dimmed, I can tell he’s disappointed in me by the slope of his face. He has Dad’s face, all angles with an occasional smile thrown into the mix. Mom loves to talk about what a fun and hilarious guy Dad is, but I only ever saw the looks of disappointment. And I can’t even escape those looks trillions of miles away.

“Yumi, why don’t you loosen up? Stop picking fights and make friends. Find a boyfriend. Do something about all this anger.”

Make friends? Find a boyfriend? He’s insane. Men don’t want me. I’m too brash, too determined, too driven. I scare men away.

“Go away,” I mumble.

I don’t want to hear about my problems from someone else.

“You know, I…” He pushes away from the bed, floating in the middle of the room. “I care about you. Mom and Dad care…. I just want to make up for…”

Shintaro hesitates, as my eyes droop. The drugs were a better idea than leaving me alone in my room for two days to stew. It’s never a good idea to let me stew. My headache and busted fist are serving me well.

“What? What did you say?” I ask him, aware that if he really wanted to tell me, he would have by now.

“You know, I don’t think you’ve ever forgiven me —”

“Shut up.” I let my eyes close, putting him far away. “I don’t want to talk about it. Why would I want to talk about something eight years in the past?”

“You never do,” he grumbles, shooting by me to the door. “And here we are, still fighting over it.”

“Wait!” My lips no longer work properly, which is not good. These meds are supposed to make my brain stop drumming, nothing more. Damn that doctor. He gave me extra because of my hand, and I have no tolerance for pain killers like I do with alcohol. “Ponytail. Take it out? Please?”

His face softens, and this time he looks more like mom. He’s only missing her wild, bleached white hair. “Sure,” he whispers, knowing how my hair hurts me when I’m like this.

He reaches for my head, and grabbing the elastic with his well-worn fingers, he pulls my hair free. “Better?”

“Much. Hey, tell Kazuo I’m sorry I caused such a problem at lunch. He’s going to be pissed when he wakes up.”

“He’s already awake, and he’s already pissed. But not at you.”

I sink into my bed and close my eyes as he turns off the light and leaves me to oblivion.