Three weeks in, and evenings had turned into a second training block he never signed up for. Drills ended, and Zaria swapped a sword for a data slate without missing a step. Her expression didn't change either way. Bureau law. Coalition charter. Galactic history, abridged, and still somehow endless. He complained every night on principle and read the thing anyway, because arguing with her cost more than it ever saved.
"Page forty-seven, Hikaru. Before dinner." She could've had it printed on a plaque by now.
Books had never been on his side. Akemi used to sit across the kotatsu table tapping the same math problem three times while his eyes slid right off the page, and nothing about that had changed since grade school. He could read an entire paragraph of Coalition law and land at the bottom with nothing to show for it, brain already three moves ahead of whatever the words were doing. Sitting still with text in front of him felt like holding his breath on command.
His body never had that problem. A fist came at his face and he'd already read it before it finished moving. Drop him into a stance he'd never seen and he adjusted on instinct, no thinking required. That stuff carved in and stayed. Written law just slid off him, same as it always had.
One section actually held: Coalition Registry Classifications, Active Ranger Roster. Every bonded bearer on record got an entry, species, Key color, the Starei they channeled, a resonance profile logged the day the bond formed, two hundred years of it, thousands of names, every single one clean and complete.
Then one heading caught him. Starei Resonance Profiles, Active Ranger Roster.
Zaria's partner: an ancient predator built around raw strength, the kind of thing that never dodged because it never had to. Matched her exactly, the way she planted her feet and refused to give an inch.
Senna's: a cosmic serpent, all speed and misdirection, never quite where the last strike expected it. He thought of their last spar, how she'd vanished from his line of sight and reappeared behind him before he'd even turned.
Lyra's: a phoenix born from a dying star, built around protection. The way she threw herself in front of anyone she'd claimed as hers.
He read all three in one pass, the same instinct doing the work that read a stance or caught a feint.
Wonder what mine's even supposed to look like.
He'd asked, once. All three of them said they could hear theirs, feel it, talk to it if they needed to. He'd tried the same thing more times than he wanted to admit, sitting in the dark waiting for something to answer back. Nothing ever did. Zaria said patience. Senna said patience. Lyra said patience too, then hugged him about it, which somehow made the waiting worse instead of better.
The Bureau had nothing on file either. Not a name, not a species, not one line of resonance data. Two hundred years of records, and his page was the one blank slot in the whole registry.
He kept reading anyway. Zaria was going to grill him on jurisdictional treaties either way, and none of this was getting him there any faster.
The door hissed open. Maci leaned in the frame, tail swishing, one ear flicked forward.
"What're you doing?"
"Studying. Zaria made me." He didn't look up from the slate.
Maci crossed the room in three long strides and dropped onto Senna's empty bunk. "She would. Fraternization policy first?"
He swiped to the next screen. "Page forty-seven. Trade tariffs after that."
"Riveting stuff."
He glanced up from the slate for a second. "Hey, Maci. Zaria and Senna and Lyra, they've all got their Starei written up in here. What happens with mine, since I don't even have a file yet?"
Her ears flattened, and she scratched behind one of them, gaze drifting to the ceiling. "Yeah. Working on that, actually. It'll show up when it shows up. That's just how these things work."
He stared at her a moment longer, decided that answer wasn't worth arguing with tonight, and swiped back to the tariff tables. "Fair enough. Page forty-seven it is."
Zaria came back an hour later and quizzed him on jurisdictional limits and fraternization law. He stumbled through half-remembered fragments, mixed up two Coalition sectors, inverted the entire chain of command, and couldn't produce a single word for Article Twelve's sub-clauses. Something crossed her face first, gone before he could name it. Then her scales darkened, faint but real.
"You read this. I watched you read this."
"I did read it."
"None of it stayed."
"I know! I don't know why, alright, it's not like I'm trying to piss you off."
Something in his voice must have landed wrong, because she went quiet instead of pushing harder, studying him a beat too long before she closed the slate.
"Take a walk. Clear your head. We'll try again tomorrow."
The corridor air tasted like ozone and recycled water. Hikaru walked without any real destination, shoulders loose for the first time in hours, trade tariffs and jurisdictional limits still dead weight in his skull, Article twelve, sub-clause four, he'd failed every last piece of it. Three weeks in, and the Hub still beat him at basic navigation more often than he'd admit to anyone, corridors branching off corridors that all somehow looked like the last five he'd already walked through. He took two wrong turns without noticing, too deep in his own head to care, and ended up somewhere near maintenance bay seven with no real memory of choosing that direction on purpose.
Voices carried out of the shadows there, one sharp, one small.
"Third time this cycle. If you can't read a basic pressure gauge, maybe this department isn't for you."
"Please, I…"
"Don't 'please' me. Fix it or I'll have you reassigned to waste processing."
His feet moved before his brain caught up. He rounded the corner, hands in his hoodie pockets.
"Oi. Back off."
The tech turned. She was human, mid-thirties, a badge glinting on her collar. Her eyes swept him up and down, the loose hair, the oversized hoodie.
"Excuse me? This doesn't concern you, miss."
"Doesn't matter who I am." His lip curled. "And yeah, it does. She said she'd fix it. So let her."
The tech's jaw tightened. She glanced at the worker behind her, then back at him, something shifting behind her eyes. "Fine. But it's on your record if it's wrong."
She strode past, her shoulder catching his on the way.
He exhaled, then turned his attention to the person she'd been towering over.
She was small, maybe five foot two, drowning in baggy gray coveralls two sizes too big, the kind built to vanish against a bulkhead, sleeves rolled three times, hem dragging past her boots. A cap sat low over her face. Faint, fur-tufted ears lay tucked against dark hair, barely visible under the brim. A striped tail hung motionless behind her, pinned between her legs.
She went quiet, watching him, her mouth moving before any sound came out, warm brown eyes wide under the shadow of the cap.
"You. You didn't have to."
"Yeah well. She was being a jerk." He shrugged, uncomfortable with the whole thing.
Her tail gave one small twitch. "Nobody does that. Nobody ever does that."
"Tch. Whatever." He scratched the back of his neck. "You good?"
She nodded, quick and jerky. "Yes. I'm fine. It's already fixed." A short, formal dip of her chin followed. "Thank you."
Then she turned for a maintenance hatch set low in the bulkhead, tool belt crooked on her hips, and dropped into a crouch right away, already reaching for a pressure valve.
Every soul on this station assumed she was just the janitor. She'd chosen the most overlooked job in the Hub on purpose, moved through it quietly fixing what nobody else noticed was broken, and never once bothered to correct the assumption. Nobody even quite remembered hiring her.
The fabric across her back pulled tight as she worked the valve, and a seam gave at her left shoulder with a quiet rip, opening a gap the width of two fingers. Pale skin showed through the tear. She didn't pause. Didn't glance back. Her fingers found the valve, turned it, checked the gauge, routine and mechanical.
Hikaru's throat clicked. Tch. What was he supposed to do with his hands right now.
A pipe shrieked behind the bulkhead.
HISS
Steam erupted in a white veil and swallowed her before she could rise. The gray fabric darkened instantly, clinging to her shoulders and her collarbone, gone transparent where it mattered.
She didn't flinch, didn't scramble. She exhaled, slow, the sound lost in the vent.
"That's the third time this cycle." She peeled the sodden sleeve from her arm and wrung it out over the grating like a dishcloth, the same unbothered motion of someone who'd long since made peace with every failing system on this station.
His eyes locked somewhere they had no business being. Offer it, you idiot, take it off, do something. His hands twitched at his hoodie hem, then froze halfway, because what if she refused, what if she clocked the exact second his composure fell apart.
"Oi." He forced the word out, strangled. "Your shirt, it's…"
She glanced back over her shoulder, steam curling around her face, damp hair plastered to her cheek, water dripping off the cap's brim.
"It dries fast. Synthetic blend." She turned back to the valve. "Pressure's stabilizing. Good catch on the gauge earlier. Saved me a report."
She didn't wait for a reply, and didn't need one. Her tail swept once, deliberate, across the deck, and she went back to work.
He moved before he could talk himself out of it, crouching beside the valve with his hoodie sleeves shoved up to the elbows, reaching for the wrench she'd set down.
"Let me."
She didn't argue. She shifted over to give him room.
He turned the wrong bolt first, then the right one but too far. His fingers slipped on the wet metal twice, and both times she caught the wrench before it hit the grating and set it back in his palm without a word. On the third try she guided his hand to the proper fitting and held it there until the gauge settled into the green.
"Done." She wiped her hands on her thighs, leaving dark streaks across the gray fabric, and her tail dipped once, low, and she stood, cap brim still down, and started for the hatch.
He stayed crouched a moment longer. A familiar tightness pulled at his chest, the same pull that had made him chase down a crying kid in Shibuya three years back, and it was there again the day he carried Tsukiko's portfolio to her interview when she froze up at the station gates.
"Oi."
She stopped, one hand on the bulkhead, and didn't turn around.
"You never said your name."
Her shoulders shifted with a breath. "It's Selu. Selu Ashworth."
"I'm Hikaru. Hikaru Tatsumi."
A chime cut through the corridor hum, and the station comm followed right behind it.
"Hikaru Tatsumi, report to the command bridge. Immediately."
He flinched like he'd taken a hit he didn't see coming.
"Haah?! The bridge?" He threw a hand out at the corridor. "I don't even know where I am. This place is a maze. Somebody built it to mess with me specifically."
Heat climbed up his neck as the words left him to nobody in particular.
Selu's hands stilled on the valve. She glanced up, then back down fast, like she'd caught herself doing something she hadn't meant to.
"I know the way. If you want it." A beat, like she needed to talk herself into finishing the sentence. "From here it's not far."
"Yeah. Thanks."
The corner of her mouth twitched, there and gone. "Corridor C, fourth junction, then left at the bulkhead marked with triple amber stripes. Take elevator bank three to level forty-two. The bridge doors are the only ones with gold trim, so you can't miss them. Two minutes, at your pace."
He blinked. "Right. Thanks." He stepped backward already, one hand raised in a half wave. "Uh, hope we run into each other again."
He was halfway down the corridor before he glanced back, just once. Selu hadn't moved from the hatch, wrench back in hand, cap brim still low. She wasn't looking at him anymore, already bent over the valve again, but the corner of her mouth had tugged up, small and private, the kind of almost-smile that wasn't laughing at anything.
She was already turning back to the valve, the words for the gauge alone.
"What a weird person."
He was too far away to hear it, already running through Corridor C and the fourth junction in his head.