Page 63 of I Fell for an Alien Popstar

“Comforting,” I said.

“It should be,” Yuki said. “Most randoms who wander onto this tour don’t get the ‘tell me before you disappear’ speech. They get a security escort back to the lobby.”

“I just don’t want to be the reason everything gets harder,” I said. “For her. For you. For the press.”

“You are not the reason things are hard,” Lyn said. “Things are hard because this whole industry is built on a scaffolding of expectations and nonsense. You’re just the first person in a long time who is actually worth navigating the nonsense for.”

“That sounded very sincere,” I said.

“Don’t get used to it,” she said, then jabbed the air with her chopsticks. “Eat the egg. Dune made that for you specifically.”

“That is incorrect,” Dune said over the speaker. “I made it for the table.”

“Should have cooked them a tad less, Dune,” Yuki said.

“I’d like to see you cook eggs, Yuki,” Dune said.

Lyn and I laughed while Yuki rolled his eyes.

By the time the bowl was empty, the edges of Sira’s words had dulled from knife-sharp to something closer to a warning label. Still there. Still important. Less likely to slice me open on contact.

“Go to bed,” Lyn said, kicking my calf lightly beneath the table. “She’s going to be pacing a groove in the floor by now.”

“Do not let her pace,” Dune added. “Her boots scuff the panels, and I have to look at them.”

“Message received.”

I got up and walked over to the recycler chute. I dropped my empty bowl inside and pushed out of the mess hall. The door slid shut behind me, muting the last scraps of conversation and clatter.

The main corridor felt different at night. Most of the overhead strips were dimmed, leaving pockets of shadow between pools of soft light. A tech padded past in socks, eyes half-closed, cradling a mug as if it were life support.

Somewhere toward the front, someone laughed. The sound was brief and tired before a door hissed shut on it.

I moved on autopilot—past the viewing-bubble ladder and past the row of bunks with their curtains half-drawn and nameplates glowing low. A pair of trainers sat abandoned in the middle of the walkway, so I nudged them to the side with my foot so no one would trip over them later.

The ship’s systems buzzed beneath my boots, a steady background vibration.

By the time I turned down the short, quieter hall leading to the larger cabins, the sounds had thinned to almost nothing. Just the faint spill of someone’s music from a distant bunk, more of a muffled thump than an actual melody, and the soft hiss of air through the vents.

The corridor outside our room was quiet, washed in the low blue of too late to be awake unless you’re on shift.

Our door panel glowed when I stopped in front of it, the nameplates washing my hand in soft light as I reached out. I pressed my palm to the sensor, and the lock released. The door slid open on a quiet breath of cooler air.

Zhari was lying on her stomach across the bed, propped up on her elbows with a tablet in front of her. Her legs were bent, her feet kicking lazily in the air.

The lavender hoodie from that morning lay draped over the chair. She’d changed into a soft tank top and loose shorts, her hair twisted into a high, messy bun with a few loose strands slipping across her eyes.

She looked up the second I came in.

“There you are,” she said. “I was about to start composing a very tragic ballad about Sira stealing you.”

I closed the door and leaned back against it for a second.

“Pretty sure she just wanted to add me to a chart,” I said with a sigh. “No alien abduction involved.”

I shrugged.

Her eyes narrowed slightly.