[oneshot] The stars remind me of you. (2/4)

[yakiseop]

Balance of the hunt:

Four heads, total sum of five thousand woolongs; one splintered rib; one major headache; four scratches on Ravi’s precious mono, R-IV; three dogs; one bag of sweet peas; and one universally sought after gambler, swindler, and general white-collar criminal, worth thirty million woolongs (not to be acquired).

“Taemin, this is Timoteo,” Ravi introduces rather reluctantly as Timoteo himself stands besides him, smiling angelically. “He’s someone you shouldn’t really get acquainted with. We’re deeply sorry.”

“Nice to meet you, Taeminnie,” he extends a hand to greet Taemin, who’s less weary than he is fascinated, studying the gambler with wide eyes. “You have quite strong arms. Where are you from?”

“I’m amnesiac,” Taemin smiles, and it’s hard to tell whether Timoteo is taken aback by that or not. “You?”

“Jovian system in general. Made in Europa, born in Callisto, raised in Ganymede, the rest is history,” Timo winks. Kai is ninety-percent sure the reference flew right past Taemin with no effect at all. “Say, Taemin, are you currently single or…?”

A frying pan hits Timoteo on the head. It’s Ravi. “Watch it,” he warns.

Timoteo gasps. “Could it beeeee? Are you jealo-o-o-oous??” he pretty much pirouettes over to the ‘kitchen’, where Ravi is.

“Kai will bite your hand off,” Ravi adds.

“Hey!!!” Kai objects, face brightly red, a dog in each arm.

Taemin seems to be completely abstracted from the conversation, glancing down to smile at the dogs that now pool around Kai like moving toys. He kneels down to add himself to that conglomerate, attracting Kai’s attention immediately as Ravi and Timoteo argue in the kitchen over something Kai can’t be bothered with.

“They’re so cute,” Taemin fawns, letting one of the dogs - the smallest one, still a puppy by the looks of it - climb onto his lap. For some reason, they’re all poodles. “Look, this one likes me!”

Kai clicks his tongue playfully. “He likes me more, of course. Don’t you, Jjanggu? You do, right?” Kai coos, scratching the puppy’s ear, squealing when his fingers get solemnly licked. “See! He loves me!! You love papa, don’t you, Jjanggu?”

“You gave them names?” Taemin smiles, toying with Jjanggu’s legs as Kai turns his attention to a lighter-colored poodle, who had been biting his shirt, demanding attention.

“Yep. This one here is Jjangah. She’s the only female,” Kai communicates as he caresses Jjangah's curly fur. “And this big baby right here,” he points at his own lap, where a remarkably bigger, pudgier chocolate poodle lays, observing everything placidly. “Is Monggu. Say hi to Taemin, Monggu!”

Monggu turns stomach-up to allow for caressing. Kai and Taemin giggle. Then, Kai remembers something. “Hey, you,” most times, specially right after reencounters, he refuses to call Timoteo by his name. Being familiarized to it, Timoteo understands, and turns around. “Why were they with you?”

Timoteo shrugs. “Dunno. Well, I’m guessing it was those guys’ merch,” he signalizes the SIDD members, tied and gagged near the elevator, with a nod of his head. “Personally, I don’t get why someone would make ‘illegal dog trade’ into a business. It’s just…” he frowns a bit pitifully at the dogs, one of which is still spread on Kai’s lap like a furry portion of chocolate pudding. “… dogs.”

“They’re cute,” Kai defends immediately.

“There’s a rumor that says SIDD dealt genetically modified dogs,” Ravi interferes. “That’s why it was illegal and all. It doesn’t even come detailed in the bounty announcement though, because no one got to confirm that. But apparently their dogs are very intelligent.” Ravi directs a glance at dogs as well, mirroring Timoteo’s pity. Jjanggu is trying to eat Taemin’s hair. “… They are cute, though.”

“Really cute.” Kai will approve of no bad things being said at his angels. “And we’re keeping them.”

Five thousand woolongs would usually be more than enough to buy them food for a trip around the solar system, and the Kiev survived on less most of the time, their income rarely surpassing two thousands and five hundred. The twist is that, now, there are five extra mouths to feed aboard, two human and three canine, and Ravi makes it clear how tight the budget is before going shopping for groceries.

“This is gonna buy us enough food and water, but no fuel for you,” he points at Timoteo, who glares in protest. “No toys for you,” he points at the three dogs, and Jjangah whines. “And you,” he points at Kai, who flinches, “you better work with what you have to fix your car.”

“Yessir,” Kai mutters obediently.

Ravi nods, eyes scanning each one of them, as if searching for evil intentions inside their souls. As he finds none, or, if he does, chooses not to comment upon them, he climbs onto the elevator. “Behave,” he says. And down he goes.

With Ravi out all day to shop, and Timoteo virtually stranded on the ship by the lack of a functioning vehicle to let him out, Kai decides he doesn’t have anything to worry about, and, after a couple of minutes entertaining Jjanggu with a screwdriver, he, too, takes the elevator, and goes fix his beloved mono.

K-IV’s situation could’ve been worse, Kai thinks as he studies it. The top looks pretty rough, but at least the metal is just squashed and a little bruised, no big tears or anything that would need a replacement. The cockpit windshield is shattered, but he can manage. He doesn’t even use it most of the time, since he mostly drives in cities. They’re all small fixable things, (even if they’re a lot of small fixable things, Kai thinks with a sigh), so he gets to it before his willpower wanes.

There are no clocks in the ship, of course, apart from one solar clock up in the deck that Kai could not and would not read. When it comes about the technical part of sidereal navigation, like solar clocks, topographic estimation, gravitational directioning and what not, Kai has always been soundly ignorant, and didn’t feel like learning any of that while he still had Ravi to pilot for him. Knowing about tube tariffs and how to fix the outer structure of a ship was enough for him, for now. Was more than enough, really.

Anyway, the point is…? The point is that, since there are no clocks aboard that Kai can read, he doesn’t know for how long he stayed down there, disassembling the K-IV to check for damages in the inside. He only knows that he’s tired, so it’s been probably a while. When he’s about to be done with the disassembling, hands prying off the last plaque of metal from the mono’s back part, he hears a bark, and turns around immediately.

“Monggu!!” the dog excitedly runs towards him, his tongue peeking out, and Kai kneels down to receive him in a tight hug. Trailing behind comes Jjanggu, who paws Kai’s arm to be let into the hug, and Jjangah, followed by a smiling Taemin.

“Ooh, so you’ve been fixing it,” Taemin comments, eyeing the naked structure of Kai’s mono with curiosity. “It doesn’t look as bad as it did back then.”

“Well, it looks pretty bad right now, since the body was removed,” Kai jokes, laughing out loud when Taemin rolls his eyes at him. “But you’re right, actually. No visible damage inside. Once I fix the body it’ll be good to go,” he makes a face. “For a while.”

Taemin hums, sitting down next to where Kai is playing with the dogs. One thing Kai had failed to notice till now: Taemin has a water bottle in hands, and he’s offering it to him. “Here, you worked hard,” he says. “And you sweat a lot. Don’t dehydrate.”

Kai laughs, wiping the sweat off his forehead with his shirt as he accepts the water with a quiet ‘thank you’. He had failed to realize how thirsty he had been until Taemin showed up with the water, enviably clean in one of Kai’s own white t-shirts and cargo short-pants of unknown origin. Ravi’s? Kai drinks up, relishing on the relief water brings to his throat.

“Ah, good,” he sighs as he swallows the very last drop of liquid from the bottle. “Thanks, Taemin. I forgot to bring water with me.”

“As I thought you had,” Taemin points out, petting Jjangah as she dignifiedly looks up at Kai. “You seem like the type to forget this kind of thing.”

!!! Outrage! “Why?” Kai objects, petting as many poodles as his hands can reach. “What are you trying to say about me?”

“Nothing!” Taemin dismisses any possibilities of evil intentions with a hand gesture. “It was just intuition, I guess. What can I say,” he shrugs smugly. “I guess I got a pretty good brain, despite everything.”

Kai huffs. He does, though. Kai noticed it from when they were together in Charon; Taemin’s eyes and brain are exceptionally good, in the classic way at least. Kai wonders if he ever got to go to school. Kai himself hadn’t, evidently. “I guess you do,” Kai mutters, and, if the delay in answering bothers Taemin, it doesn’t show. “If you hadn’t, Timo could’ve had you the moment he talked to you. Remember? Down there.”

Taemin makes a face and nods. “I was a bit alarmed,” he confesses. “I didn’t even know you had a gun with you,” and he giggles, for some reason, which makes Kai giggle too. “And I would never had guessed Mr. Timoteo was dangerous until he was disemboweling me in some shady place.”

“He probably wouldn’t have disemboweled you,” Kai notes. “Scammed you? Yes. Used you for bribery? Possibly. Disemboweled you?” he shakes his head, remembering instances from the past when Timoteo had expressed his disgust for ‘dirty jobs’, despite doing nearly anything for money. “Though, he could’ve threatened to disembowel you if he thought it’d somehow make you give him money. The first time I met Timoteo, he had a gun against my head.”

Taemin’s chin drops. “Really?” Kai nods, reminiscing. “What was the situation?”

“Ravi was the situation. Apparently, they’ve known each other for a looooooong time,” Kai gossips. Taemin, too, listens closely as if it were some kind of spy talk. “He thought that he could squeeze something outta Ravi if he used me as a hostage.” Dramatic pause.

“And then?” Taemin urges him on.

“Ravi shot him on the shoulder,” he reveals, and both of them stop to laugh. Neither of them have the slightest idea of why that’s so funny. It simply is. “And then he brought him in to patch him up. You know, Ravi likes to rave about how he’ll kill Timo if he ever gets the chance, but it’s all talk. He always ends up bringing him in.”

“Aw,” Taemin coos, and Kai snickers, imagining Ravi’s face if he could listen to their conversation right now. “I heard from Mr. Timoteo that he and Ravi will get married one day.”

“Pffffft.” Kai laughs even harder. He almost hits his head on Jjanggu’s when he laughs, but, this time, Taemin doesn’t really follow, so Kai feels obligated to sober up and explain. “Ravi getting married to anyone would be already hard to believe, honestly. But to Timoteo out of all people…”

“What? Aren’t they quite close, though?” Taemin seems to sincerely believe that’d be possible. Kai thinks it’d be impolite to laugh at him at this point, but Taemin is smiling too, so it’s all in good humor he guesses…? “I guess I just don’t understand marriage.”

“Well, your thoughts on marriage could be a hint to where you’re from, actually,” Kai says, feeling a bit smart for making that remark. When Taemin widens his eyes in curiosity, the feeling magnifies, and when Taemin makes a small ‘ooh’ sound, Kai enters cloud nine of smugness. “See, where I come from, people don’t think much of marriage, but, still, it’s a minimal requirement that the people involved at least like each other.”

“You think Ravi and Timoteo don’t like each other?” Taemin asks, and Kai laughs. “What!! Just because they fight a lot? Then I should suppose you and Ravi don’t like each other either!”

“It’s different, Taemin. It just is.” Then, Kai makes a face. “Though… you’re right, I guess. Ravi and I don’t like each other. At all.” Taemin bursts into a violent fit of laughter.

“Right,” he says between hiccups of laughter. “The only people in this ship who like each other are you and me.”

“Right,” Kai can’t help but smile when he sees Taemin laugh. It’s not a particularly pretty sound, or pretty sight for all that matters, but it justs… oozes enjoyment, in a way. “That’s the only marriage happening aboard You and me. And the poodles.”

“Ooh. Bold proposal you made right there, Mr. Kai,” Taemin taunts, a bit coquettishly, and Kai is starting to realize he might have said something very embarrassing. “I say yes. We’ll have to ask the poodles directly, though.”

It gets even worse when Kai doesn’t have a joke to follow up with. His precipitated descent into embarrassment served no purpose but to make the situation worse for himself; Taemin stills at his lack of response, and it feels like even the dogs are staring at him, waiting for him to say something that signalizes his real intentions. His face is scorching hot.

“What do people think of marriage where Ravi was raised?” Taemin asks nonchalantly, and he’s so unfazed by what just happened that Kai feels… strangely drained of energy. Why is he feeling like this? Why is this happening to him?

“Dunno,” he mutters, distractedly playing with Monggu, immersed in incoherent thoughts. “Never asked.”

A long, horribly uncomfortable silence.

Kai feels like shit for ruining the moment. They were having such a good time, gossiping and laughing and then he just. What did he even do? Weirded out. Glitched. He doesn’t even know-

“Ah, say something,” Taemin literally punches him on the shoulder, quite hard even. A sting of pain makes itself felt, curiously, in Kai’s hurt rib. “Why did you get so quiet!?”

“Sorry! I don’t know,” Kai thinks of taking revenge, but he just pushes Taemin shoulder instead, barely even applying force. “Say something, you. My brain is tired.”

“Okay. Do you have a dream? Like, a life goal?” Taemin asks, and the sudden question squeezes loud laughter out of Kai’s lungs. Taemin laughs too, feigning some outrage. “You’re laughing too much!”

“Okay, okay, I’ll answer,” Kai swats away the hand that Taemin, for some reason, was trying to smack over his face. “You know that bounties vary in price, right? I mean, you saw when we were watching Jack ‘n’ Jill.”

“Yeah,” Taemin nods, watching Kai intently. It’s a bit unnerving.

“Well, reasonably, there’s also a ranking of the most valuable bounty heads in the universe,” Kai explains, ascending to smugness heaven once again. Ah, how he loves feeling intelligent… “And there’s a number one in there. So. My dream is to capture the number one most valuable bounty head in the universe.”

“Ooh,” Taemin praises wordlessly. Kai’s head might burst. “And what kind of person is that? Or is it a gang?”

“Curiously enough, it’s a cyborg,” lectures Kai. “It’s called the Eve of The Future. Not much official info on it, besides ‘serial number: MR01V’ and ‘very dangerous’.”

Taemin makes a face. “Mysterious.”

“Ravi says it’s an old governmental project from Titan that got shut down after civil protests,” technically, that knowledge isn’t his, it’s Ravi’s, but, regardless… “It’s worth fifty-seven trillion woolongs, adding up one million every Europan year. That’s a LOT of money. We’d never have to hunt again. The first thing I’m gonna do when I receive the money is to eat a nice meal,” he adds, a dreamy smile on his lips. “Meat... fish... whole chickens, and maybe fresh vegetables too...”

“Are you for real,” Taemin laughs, shaking his head. Kai is unfazed. “Fifty-seven trillion, huh…” He repeats as his laughter fades, seeming to be trying to wrap his mind around the amount of money. Kai nods vigorously, and decides that he knows what to say next.

“How about you?”

Taemin snaps out of his daze. “Huh?”

“Your dream,” explains Kai. “What is it?”

“Oh!! I see,” Taemin smiles a bit timidly. “Hm, my dream… I don’t know if I have one? Or if I just don’t remember having one.”

“Ah,” Kai’s smile falls when he remembers. Shit. He shouldn’t have asked. “Sorry…”

“Don’t mind,” Taemin brushes it off. “If I can’t remember it, it wasn’t really important.” A small pause. He seems to be thinking. “I don’t know why, but I’d really like to see a flower field someday. Like, in real life.”

Kai nods, acknowledging it as a feat. “Like, a garden?”

“Not really? Like, gardens are usually artificial, right?” Kai is a little confused at that, but he nods. “So, I’d like to see a natural flower field. It doesn’t need to be big, or, like, the flowers don’t need to be pretty or anything. I just want to see it. And maybe spin till I fall in it and all,” Taemin grins at his own silliness, causing Kai to snicker a bit. Taemin is unfortunately cute. Specially when he’s with dogs and talking about flowers. Cute. “I don’t know why I want to do this. Ah, also, wouldn’t it be cool if I had a pet shelter?” Taemin raises Jjangah in the air as if to make his point clearer. “I could have a ship like this and travel through the universe to save stray pets from the streets.”

“That’d be cool!” Kai perks up at the idea. “Hey, maybe when I have the money, I could open it up with you. And Ravi. Ravi knows how to pilot a ship, and he doesn’t really hate dogs or cats or anything like that.”

“If you’re willing to have me,” Taemin jokes, but he’s obviously pleased. Kai is a bit scared by how wide he’s smiling, naturally, freely. “Ah, I should go back. Mr. Timoteo invited me for a match of chess a while ago. I told him I was just going to bring you the water and I’d be right back. It’s been… how long…?”

“Pretty long,” Kai agrees, playing with Monggu’s ears distractedly. “Too long to leave Timo unattended, I guess.”

“I guess,” Taemin agrees, chuckling, and, gently transferring Jjangah from his lap to the floor, he gets to his feet. “See you when you’re finished there, then. Also, I’m bringing the dogs with me.”

Kai gasps, a hand on his chest. “Are you divorcing me?!” The idiot. It wasn’t even funny.

Taemin laughed anyway. “We can get married again when you’re done fixing your car.”

“Okay then,” Kai humphs, giving up the dogs. “Bye, babies. Papa will see you all soon.”

And, without another word, Taemin leaves the garage, taking the dogs, the empty bottle, and a fraction of Kai’s heart with him.

They travel down to the Jovian system just for the heck of it. Ravi might say that he’ll shop for necessities, and Kai might say he’ll rekindle some old connections that might help with the business from then on, but truth to be told, they’re just doing it because they want to enjoy the luxury of having food, of not needing to hunt immediately and risk eating just onion soup every time they’re hungry. They go to Ganymede briefly, and Kai takes Taemin, Timo, and the dogs in a walk along the beaches of Damballah while Ravi cooks them special, native dinner. Kai gets a bit anxious at some moments during the walk, thinking Timoteo might try to pull one of his escape tricks on them, but he’s strangely docile the whole time, pensive, absorbed in thoughts. Kai lets him be.

After Ganymede, they visit Io, staying only long enough for Ravi to trade berry jam for fungi with local merchants, and soon they depart for Europa.

“Shouldn’t we visit Callisto first?” Timoteo jokes once they’re en route to Europa, toying with a butter knife while Ravi fixes the TV. “Our hometown. How romantic would it be?”

“Callisto? Romantic?” Ravi bursts in laughter. Even Timo himself can’t resist a sincere snicker; the only one probably not getting the joke is Taemin, and even he is smiling. “If you’re a fan of ‘nothing’ and ‘nothing at all’, I guess.”

So they skip Callisto, despite everything.

Europa is, by far, the nicest place Kai has ever, ever been to. If he didn’t know about how bullshit the government of the main cities is, he’d wish he had been born there. The rural part of Europa is perfect: not too cold, not too hot, breathable air, soil-y ground…

“This place is really pretty,” Taemin comments as he and Kai sit outside to see the sunset, eating fried snacks off a stick. The sky in Europa rarely has any clouds, but it’s always crowded with faint signs of the other moons, the asteroids, the comets… “I feel like I could live here.”

“I always feel that way,” Kai confesses, legs dangling from where he sits, on the currently inactive turbines of the Kiev. It’s a secret pleasure of Kai’s, to sit atop the ship when they land. Gives him an idyllic sense of home. “Maybe we could set up the shelter here before we take off. Our pet shelter, you know.”

“That’d be perfect!” Taemin exclaims, mouth full of onion and mushrooms. “Stop it, you’re getting me excited about this.”

Kai shrugs, smiling to himself for no reason. This is the best. Ah, this moment is seriously the best.

“Ka~i~ dar~ling~,” Timoteo ruins everything with one call, doing his annoying singsong talk thing as he emerges from the hatchway like a mole. “Ravi calls.”

Kai groans. “I’m going.”

“He says he reeeeally needs to talk to you,” Timo reinforces, pouting a little as if that’d put any emphasis to what he’s saying. He steals a side glance at Taemin, winking and waving friendly, and it riles Kai up for no reason at all. “Seriously, though. Ravi calls. Bye~” Down he goes.

Kai glances at Taemin, sighing, waiting for some kind of sympathy; he gets a smile, a pat on the back, a quick neck rub of encouragement. “I was thinking of walking the dogs a bit.”

“You do that,” Kai stretches, finishing up his snack in one bite, then jumping down to the actual deck hatchway, from where he and Taemin had come. “Want me to fetch them for you?”

“I’ll call them from the garage,” Taemin dismisses him. “Go before Ravi blames me for holding you back.”

Kai smiles faintly at his friend, and goes down the hatchway.

There’s a lot of things Kai has learned to expect when Ravi calls him and says it’s urgent. A mechanic system malfunction of some sort, usually hydraulic (Kai rarely messes with the electric stuff), or when he needs some help fixing something more complex, like the computer network, the security system, or worse: the refrigerator.

He has never come into the deck and found Ravi and Timoteo sitting side by side on the couch, like parents waiting for their child to come in so they can discuss serious matters. He has never seen that. He has never even dreamed of seeing that, even in the feverish nonsense part of his brain that thinks that he’ll really survive being a bounty hunter and set up an animal shelter with Taemin one day. He actually halts to a stop when he sees the scene awaiting him. One could practically hear Kai’s imaginary brakes screech.

“…” he hesitates.

“We need to talk,” Ravi says sternly, and it’s almost comic. Kai slowly makes his way to the couch across them, suspiciously vacant.

“What is this about?” Kai tries to joke. He laughs a forced laugh, turning to Timoteo. “What’s with the long face?”

Timoteo chuckles. “It’s nothing that serious. Don’t fry your brain over it,” is what he says, and this actually brings Kai some comfort. “I mean, it’s serious, but it’s not bad. It’s about Taemin.”

The comfort is snatched from Kai’s grasp abruptly. Luckily, Ravi doesn’t give him a chance to talk. “Timoteo and I have our suspicions about his origin,” Ravi says, making the simultaneously spacey and concentrated face he puts on when he’s into what he’s talking. “I thought a lot about it. First, because of his name. How many people you know have double names?”

Kai thinks. He thinks and thinks. “It’s not that uncommon back home,” he justifies, even though the most he thinks about it, the furthest he is from thinking of someone. “Some people add a second name to theirs when they start artistic careers. It’s common.”

Ravi and Timo exchange a glance. Kai hates it. “Have you taken a closer look at his necklace?” It’s Timo who talks this time.

“Not really,” Kai is admittedly being defensive about this. “He showed me. It’s like, his name in the back, garnish in the front.”

“Ah, see. That’s the thing.” If Kai loves feeling smarter than others, he hates when others look down onto him. It’s natural. “That’s not garnish. That’s actually just another way to write his name. Well, it wouldn’t be a big deal if it was just some code or something,” Timo rolls his eyes. Code writing. Mafia thing, Kai notes. He should scold him for messing with the mafia later. “but that’s not it. I researched those characters, and I found out that that’s actually ancient Terrestrial writing.”

Kai blinks.

He-what? Did Timoteo just? Imply? Taemin might be??

“Of course, I’m not saying he’s from Earth,” Timo dismisses immediately. “Or rather,” he adds, producing a cell computer out of nothing and handing over to him. “I’m not saying he’s from what Earth is nowadays.”

There’s one word that pops out to Kai’s eyes immediately: CRIOGENICS. He doesn’t read much past that, even if the word mummification penetrates his brain almost as if by force. He’s a bit lost. Or is he just willing to be lost? Forcing himself not to understand?

“That’s one theory,” Ravi quickly amends, seeing how Kai is physically rejecting the idea. “Though, I don’t think you’d like the other one very much either…”

“Either you like it or not, all of these are just theories. The cryogenic mummification is the most probable,” Timoteo adds, and he and Ravi exchange another quick glance. Kai wants to mock them for it. You guys look like a real couple, he wants to say. It’s like you’re communicating telepathically or something. Stop it. Stop. “Another possibility is that he’s an artificial human.”

Kai frowns. “Which means…?”

“Tube human. Synthesized You know?” Kai doesn’t know. Timoteo is a bit exasperated. “Cloning, Kai. Clones. He could be a cloned restoration of someone deceased.”

“Oh…” Kai mutters, a bit numb. Why isn’t he processing this…? Why is it bothering him…?

“In a way or other, it all traces back to Earth.” Ravi is the one who’s thinking the most about this. Kai can tell. Of course he would; Ravi has always had a lifelong fascination with Earth, its rise and fall as the crib of humanity. “Our next step should be, of course, asking him if he’s interested in-”

“No, wait. Wait a minute,” Kai interrupts them, slamming the cell computer onto the couch. Ravi is a bit startled, but Timo is unfazed, as if he had been waiting for that reaction. How ironic. “Do you really think he’d like to know his past if he’s really-like-cryogenic and stuff?? Like, hello, you were born a million years ago, someone froze you and all your loved ones are dead.”

“Calm down, you,” Timoteo scolds him. The nerve! Kai glares at him. “No one here is that dumb, you know. Well, except for you. Don’t you go around thinking you can scold us on shit like this just because you’re smitten.”

For a second, Kai considers punching Timoteo, burning with humiliation and fury. He almost does, really - his fist is tight, tense and ready to break the swindler’s nose. Eventually, though, he decides to hold it back for now; it’s not the right moment. Besides, it might pain him to admit it, but he’s right. He’s right.

“It’s true that no one wants to hear that kind of news,” Ravi says, trying to make peace between the other two. “But I doubt Taemin would like to live as an amnesiac for the rest of his life, Kai. No one wants to be past-less. Having a history, even a bad one, is what differentiates humans from robots, didn’t you say this once?” Kai is shrinking under Ravi’s stare. He’s not even trying to, but he’s hitting Kai where it hurts. “You, Kai. If you lost your memory, would you rather remember your past as it is, or live an entire life without knowing who you are and where you came from?”

Kai doesn’t answer.

He’s silent during the rest of the conversation, and, when they instruct him about the next steps to take, he quietly agrees on being the one to do it.

They spend quite a while decked in Europa. Kai spends all the time he can outside, for countless reasons; because he’s seen enough of the inside of the ship already, because he likes Europa… because he doesn’t like being around Ravi and Timoteo these days… countless reasons, indeed.

“There you are!” calls a voice from the distance. Kai sits up when he hears the sound, the grass softly rustling under his back. It’s, predictably, Taemin. “What are you doing sleeping there? Whatever you’re doing, can I join? Seems fun.”

Kai laughs. “Sure. I’m watching the sky. Really nice view.”

“Ohoo,” Taemin plops by Kai’s side with ease, his pale forearms brushing against Kai’s own tanned ones when he lies down. “Fixing cars, watching the sky, petting dogs. I officially love your hobbies.” Kai laughs again. He feels Taemin’s eyes on his profile, studying him, and feels horribly naked under the distant sun. “What are you thinking about?”

“Hm,” Kai hums, turning his head a little, just a little, to meet Taemin’s eyes. He wishes he could stay like, that, just looking at him. Just maintaining eye contact and not saying anything. Is that weird? The cell computer weighs down his pocket. “Stuff,” he says simply, shrugging, smiling a bit dazedly. “And you?”

“Nothing at all,” Taemin widens his eyes, as if delivering shocking news. Kai cackles. “No, seriously. I’m bored. The babies are sleeping.” He’s talking about the dogs. “Entertain me.”

This is his chance. This is a chance granted by the Gods, even. It has to be now. “Look at this, then,” Kai pulls the cellcomp out of his pocket, turning the screen on with a swift gesture. “How into history are you?”

Taemin shrugs. “As much as an amnesiac can be, I guess.”

“Do you know about Earth?” Kai asks nonchalantly, browsing the media files for the pictures he saved specially for this opportunity. “Like, its history and all.”

“Not all of it, but I know that it was where humans lived in the past,” Taemin confesses, searching his brain for more info. Kai is unreasonably smothered by affection. “And that a solar explosion destroyed pretty much everything there a while ago.”

“A ‘while’ being about over two thousand years ago, yeah,” Kai giggles, fullsizing the first picture. He’s ready. “Documents of life on Earth are awesome. They have so many super detailed pictures.” Taking a mental deep breath, he hands the cellcomp over to Taemin. “Take a look.”

That’s Timo’s plan. If Taemin feels anything, like nostalgia, or a sense of attachment, towards one of those pictures - specifically picked because each one of them represents an area of old Earth - that could be a sign, or a hint toward his origins. That’d signalize where to go next. Kai is honestly nervous.

“Oooh, pretty,” Taemin comments vaguely while admiring the castles, the temples, the oceans, the streets… tall buildings that look like Europa’s own, statues that remind Kai of his hometown, ruins like Callisto's, Gardens like Triton’s. How strange is it that each colony, each planet and satellite and town and house and pebble, is merely a refraction of what once had been Earth?

“Kai, look at this,” Taemin nudges his shoulder ecstatically, and Kai’s stomach drops with dread. What does he dread, after all? “Look at this. Isn’t it beautiful?” It also happens to be Kai’s favorite picture out of the bunch: a lone red gate, just like the ones in the streets of Mars, standing alone in the vast, blue ocean. He slides his finger over the screen, going to the next picture. “Oh my God, are those lockets?”

“There’s a legend about this tower,” Kai explains, finger pointing at the tower in the picture, but eyes sliding to look at Taemin. “They said that, if a couple wrote their names on a locket and closed it around the tower, they’d be together forever.”

“Ooh,” Taemin nods a bit ambiguously. “That’s a bit dangerous, if you think well.” A pause. Both of them burst into laughter.

When Taemin goes back to the ship, after he reviews all the pictures, Kai asks him to take the cellcomp inside. Taemin does it, and, with him, he takes another piece of Kai’s heart.

Timo has the cellcomp in one hand, a laptop computer on the table in front of him, and a regular tablet slightly to the left, where his free hand flies to from times to times to quickly scribble something. All of those are Ravi’s gadgets, Kai notices now that he can take a good look at them. He might have misjudged what Ravi and Timoteo’s relationship really is like.

“Northeast,” Timo mutters from times to times. “Latitude… no, not this one…”

“Isn’t he almost nice when he’s this quiet?” Ravi whispers to Kai, passing him a wrench for him to hold. He’s helping Ravi to fix the shower room door, which has been misbehaving for some days now, but his mind is elsewhere. “Makes you think you could stand living another day with him.”

Kai scoffs. “You say this, but he always finds a way in,” Kai whispers back, playing with the wrench as Ravi clips cables into place. “Every time we meet him, he ends up aboard with us.”

“What can I say,” Ravi shrugs. “He’s persuasive.”

Kai makes a face, stealing another glance at Timo’s curved figure, completely immersed in his own thoughts. “He’s smart,” Kai remarks, frowning to himself. “How did he get so indebted then?”

“He’s smart, but he’s an idiot. He might know that what he’s doing is ridiculous, but he chooses not to stop,” Ravi shakes his head, turning around to steal a glance at the swindler. “He likes gambling. So he gambles. The rest is just consequence.”

That answer puts Kai off a little bit. Because of it, he hits Ravi with the wrench, hard. “Hey!!” Ravi turns around to hit him back.

“Disgusting! Why do you talk like this about him! I don’t want you and Timo to marry!” Kai yells rather childishly as they exchange blows of something that’s between punching and slapping.

“You’re one to say! With you and Taemin acting like y’all married with children!” Ravi retorts, and hits Kai on the nipple. Outraged, Kai hits him on the belly. Wrestling is inevitable.

“You’re gross!”

“You’re gross!!”

“Quiet, you two,” Timo hisses when they’re at the peak of their fighting, Kai pulling Ravi’s hair while Ravi tries to throttle him. They freeze in place, turning around to find Timo giving them the coldest stank face in history. “I’ll charge you one hundred woolong per second of noise from now on.”

Kai and Ravi cancel the wrestling. No sound is made for the rest of however long lasts Timo’s research.

At last, after what felt like three full round trips around Saturn, Timoteo gets to his feet, jumps over the starboard rails, and lands right where Ravi and Kai are sitting.

“!!!” Ravi jumps up in startle. “Watch it! My toolbox!”

“So, this,” he pays Ravi no mind. “All of the pictures Taemin felt the most attached to are from this specific area of the planet,” the cellcomp shows a satellite image of the Earth, over which Timo had scribbled a red circle signalizing said area. “The upper part is submerged, but we might find terrain to land around the lower part. Unless this ship is amphibious. Is it?”

“I wouldn’t trust it,” Ravi warns.

“So no,” Timo accepts the warning. “We should plan landing at this point, then.” Kai has no idea of what Timoteo is trying to say, all he sees is random numbers. However, since Ravi seems to understand, he shuts up and pretends he does too. “It ought to have something still standing there. I’ve read that this area was built to stand through volcanic activity, so we’ll find something, at least.”

Ravi nods, taking the cellcomp into his own hands to take a look at the details. Timo and Kai; they can make all the kinds of plans of visiting Earth, but, obviously, without Ravi’s consent, they can’t go anywhere. Kai can’t pilot a ship for his life. Timo has a funny story about one big ship, one bag of scorpions, and a round trip to Haumea to tell someday.

Then, after he finishes analyzing everything, Ravi turns to Timoteo with amazed eyes. “Good job, you.”

Timoteo grins, sliding an arm over the captain’s shoulders. “Right? Have you fallen for me yet?”

“You guys,” Kai whines, pretending to throw a wrench at them, and it’s quite telling that Ravi flinches but Timo doesn’t.

They sit together in silence for a while, as if trying to digest the new information and its impact in each one of their lives. Kai, himself, thinks of Taemin, friendly talk and distracted smiles and the recurrent nonchalant references to his own condition. All of which, he realizes now, could’ve just been a way for Taemin to cope. Kai feels selfish, and generally horrible.

“So?” Timo prompts Ravi, glancing up to him, the actual question implicit. What do we do now? Where do we go?

Ravi catches it, and nods solemnly. “We better start making the rounds,” he announces, getting up, and his crew members follow his lead. “The ship is gonna have to make it through the tube if we want to reach Earth anytime soon.”

When the intergalactic council announced the decision of installing tubes in strategic points along the solar system just about a thousand days in the past, it was met with general quietness. There was uproar in some sections of the universe - the scientific community, the most knowledgeable sidereal navigators, some religious groups, some merchants - but the general public met the news with no reaction, because no one knew what tubes were. No one was sure of what they were for.

“Tubes are interplanetary shortcuts basically,” Kai explains to Taemin as he works on Kiev’s rust spots, fixing them with plastic paste and then painting over them. “They cut the distance of certain trips to a half, sometimes even more. If it weren’t for the tubes, no one would be able to go past Neptune to do business.”

Taemin makes a small ‘ooh’ sound, watching distractedly as Kai clumsily maneuvers a brush around. Aluminum paint is a drag to work with... so clumpy... “Is it dangerous?”

Kai glances up to Taemin, eyebrows creased. “Not particularly. Why?”

“Well, everyone aboard is fixing stuff,” Taemin points out. “It’s all you guys have been doing for a long time now.”

Kai digests the thought, nodding vaguely as it sinks in. “I get what you mean,” he diagnoses. “It’s kinda harsh on the ship, yeah, but what we really have to worry about is the traffic control. The council has their police all over the tube. The ship has to look on point.”

“Or they stop it from making the trip?” Kai shakes his head. “No? Then what?”

“They get aboard for inspection,” he says. “With Timo here, we can’t afford this. Worst case scenario is we getting jailed along with him for sheltering an outlaw.” Pause. Kai makes a face. “At least I’d get to go home.”

“Prison?” Taemin frowns.

“Mars,” Kai replies, and says nothing else.

It’s not an appropriate time to have emotional turmoils; Ravi wants them to wrap up until the next sunset, and there’s a lot of painting and polishing and changing and fixing to do, so there’s no time to glance down to the tools in his hands and meditate, but that’s exactly what Kai does from time to time. It’s usually when Taemin is not with him that the conflict surfaces. It’s usually when Taemin is with someone else that the conflict intensifies.

“Stop this,” he mutters to himself, glancing down to the polishing tool in hands. He’s there to clean the windshield of the piloting deck, but his mind is elsewhere, down in the main deck where Taemin and Ravi are teaching tricks to the dogs. “Look at yourself.” He can’t. The windshield can barely reflect a thing, hazily translucent instead of transparent, which had never been a problem before, since Ravi pilots mainly through calculus. Ravi. Ravi is down there with Taemin and the dogs. Kai wants to polish the insides of his own skull.

Someone downstairs is whistling the Martian pop song Love, vice of mine and it makes him want to polish the insides of that person’s skull as well. That song is horrible. He knows every word to it.

“How’s up there?” Kai almost ascends when Ravi’s voice calls to him from unexpectedly near. He turns around to face the pilot a bit defensively, clutching the tool against his chest. Ravi looks at him, looks at the windshield, and creases his brows sadly. “Kai.”

“I’m almost done!!” Kai retorts, and immediately gets to work.

Not even near to being the right time for emotional turmoils, but that doesn’t stop him from having them.

Eventually, like all things, the preparations for the trip finally end. The Kiev looks spotless from the outside, as if it was brand new out of the garage, and they all compliment each other over a few rounds of berry wine.

“If you ever get the bad end of the stick in this hunting business,” Ravi tells Kai, patting his back affectionately. “You can make your money painting ships. That shit looks neat.”

“You’d still need me for the chemical mixes, though,” Timoteo adds, giving Kai a taunting grin.

“I’d rather learn them all by myself. From scratch, even,” Kai deadpans, and, out of the corner of his eye, he watches Taemin chuckle silently. It fills him with a sense of victory.

They drink it up for a while, until they find out that the dogs have somehow locked themselves into the shower room. The ensuing confusion and alarm sobers them up, and so they’re ready to go.

“What’s Earth like, nowadays?”

Somewhere along the while Kai has been friends with Taemin, he had become increasingly used to the way Taemin arrives at his side: silently, not making a sound before he opens his mouth and speaks. Now, when Kai’s watching the stars from the front deck and Taemin once again creeps towards him, he could’ve well been startled by the sudden pull back to reality, but he’s not: he just turns to Taemin with his eyebrows slightly raised.

“Why you ask?” is what Kai replies with.

“Uh, maybe because we’re going there,” Taemin rolls his eyes, laughing at Kai’s supposed stupidity. Kai shrugs. He hadn’t asked outright what the other planets were like when they were traveling back from Pluto, so... “You already told me what it was like before. Showed me, actually. I was just wondering what it’s like now.”

Kai hums, pensive. It makes sense, after all. Taemin’s amnesia doesn’t go far enough back for him to forget basic history, like the origin of humanity and how most modern inventions were created, but, when it comes to the universal diaspora of mankind, he draws a blank. It’s unpleasant to think about that. It’s unpleasant, because it’s another hint that Ravi and Timoteo’s hypothesis about Taemin’s origins might be right.

“All was going well in this little planet named Earth,” Kai starts to tell, making theatrical gestures towards the vastness of the galaxy they were traveling in. “Or not that well, depending on what historicist you decide to trust. Anyway, one day, a solar storm happened-do you know what solar storms are?”

“Yeah, go on,” Taemin urges.

“A solar storm happened. It caused a heat wave, and then a series of natural disaster happened, and, eventually, the Terrestrial population was pretty much wiped out.” Kai steals the dark, vast Universe a glance. If you travel, you put all your stakes on a mass of plastic and metal, hoping you won’t collide with anything, hoping it won’t have a breakdown somewhere too distant for you to get help. If you stay home, you put your stakes on the Universe itself, hoping such chaotic entity will let your planet live to see another day. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Life is a funny thing. “Nowadays, Earth is mostly ocean and wasteland. There isn’t much to see.”

“Oh.” Kai tries to analyze Taemin’s face when he hears that; is that frown one of disappointment? Confusion? Or an unnamed feeling that Kai couldn’t, and shouldn’t, try to analyze? “Why are we going there then?”

Kai blinks. “Uh...” Shit. What should he say now? He wasn’t ready for that. “Uh, I guess we’re just trying to prove me wrong? I mean, I’ve never been to Earth. Ravi has never been to Earth. I’m not sure about Timo,” he makes a face. “But like, yeah. We just wanna see it.”

Taemin chuckles. “Okay then.” The gaze he directs at the stars is charmingly soft. It’s like... Kai doesn’t really know what it’s like, but it makes his heart squirm in his chest. “You know, the stars remind me of you.”

It hits Kai like a hammer on his throat. All of his blood rush to his head, he feels like he’s floating outside in zero-G-why is he reacting like this? Even after he tries to swallow the feeling, his laughter comes out strangled. “Hahaha, what? Why? What are you saying?” His face is on fire.

“I don’t know why! And I don’t know why I said that,” Taemin hides his eyes with his hand, visibly embarrassed, but not even close to being as affected as Kai is. His embarrassment, though, is so sincere and so visible that it worsens Kai’s condition. “But yeah, they do. They just do.”

Kai is, rather unfortunately, in love.

part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4

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