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LUCAS
As it turned out, sci-fi as a genre had lied to us.
Space travel? Is not fun or exciting at all. What it is, is long, quiet, and boring as fuck.
Fortunately, this trip was quite a bit less awful than the last one. Yes, the humans all stayed together in one room, but that was a choice this time. More importantly, this time we got to wander the ship how we wanted. The aliens, mostly hybrids, with one full blue guy among them, treated us like students who had come on a field trip, not inconveniences who needed to shut up, sit down, and eat our Styrofoam.
No, they complained along with us about the tasteless blocks of foam, daydreaming aloud about the most decadent meals they could think of, that they’d rather be eating. With a little interpreting from me, from my experience eating Thorzi food, the conversations were pretty epic.
By the time we got halfway home, Kaelum’s crew were making lists of Earth foods they had to get some of before they turned around and headed home.
It was a sadder thought than I’d have imagined, and many of the humans seemed bothered by it. Not the Thorzi getting human food, but of being left behind on Earth.
So I wasn’t surprised at all when most of the way through the trip, Hiroki cornered me in a corridor, leaning in and whispering. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“Of course,” I agreed, pulling him into the closest room—the one I was sharing with Kaelum.
I blushed when he glanced over at the state of the sheets and hid a smile, but he shook it off after a moment, turning back to me, lip pulled between his teeth. “Do you think... would they be mad if I asked to come back? To—to Thorzan?”
All I could do for a second was blink at him, shocked. “Why would they be mad about that? I mean, they kind of need us. Humans, that is, if not us specifically.”
“I just”—he waved a hand around the room, but I wasn’t sure what he was trying to point out—“you know. They went through all this to get us out because we didn’t want to be there. Aldor said they’re probably going to get in trouble for taking us home, because they need us back there.”
“So you think they’d be bothered to not get in trouble?”
He scowled at me. “That’s not what I meant and you know it. Just... They’ve gone to all this trouble to get us here, to do this for us. Wouldn’t it be ridiculous of me to just be like ‘oh haha, never mind, I’ll go back now’?”
For a minute, I really thought about it. It made sense, in a way. They’d put their positions and maybe even their lives in danger to help us get home, so getting there and turning around and saying “oh never mind” was a little flighty, to say the least.
But no.
I shook my head, even more firmly. “No, Hiroki. I think it makes perfect sense, and I’m pretty sure they’ll be happy to take you back to Thorzan. You know why?” He bit his lip and stared at me, eyes round and hopeful. “Because we needed this. We needed them to prove that they care about what we want. That they’re not just kidnappers who think they get to do what they want. They have to be willing to let us go home. That’s important.”
He fell against me and sighed, though I couldn’t have said if it was from relief or something else. “Aldor’s kind of handsome.”
Aldor was the only full alien among the Thorzi on the ship, so I was a little impressed with Hiroki’s ambition. I mean, if full Thorzi were as much bigger than hybrids as they were to humans... well. It would be a lot to deal with was all.
I bumped him with my shoulder. “He certainly likes you too. Always touching your hair.”
He sighed and ran a self-conscious hand through it, exposing where the roots were starting to go dark. “You think maybe they’ll let me go down long enough to spend every penny left in my bank account on dye to bring back?”
I laughed at him, but then paused, considered, and nodded. “You know, Hiroki, I think they would.”
Unsurprisingly, the Thorzi were into it.
Hiroki cleared his throat during our standard dinner talk that night, after jokingly telling them they’d have to bring back cases of noodles, because apparently Thorzan had nothing like them.
“I, um, I don’t suppose there’s a chance I could go get a whole bunch of hair dye while we’re there too, is there?” He glanced between Kaelum, from whom he clearly expected the answer to come, and Aldor, the object of his affection. Aldor’s eyes had gone wide and hopeful.
Kaelum cocked his head. “What is hair dye?”
I elbowed him in the side. “It’s how he keeps his hair pink, sweetie, but that’s not the point.”
“Ahh,” Kaelum said, nodding sagely. “Then the pink is not natural. Like your pink, Aldor.”
Aldor flushed darker blue and shot Kaelum a glare, then jerked his head in Hiroki’s direction, giving Kaelum a meaningful look, like “get the hell on with it.” It was so human, and from the least human member of the group, that it reminded me, truly, how alike we all were.
“We certainly can,” Kaelum agreed. “And crates of your noodles, and anything else you might like to bring, if you wish to return with us. It is a cargo ship. We have nothing if not space.”
