A raindrop for selvage! (2/3)

[stormies]

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.leo.
the lion

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He’d had well over a week to get through them, but the stack of boxes near his work table hadn’t gone down very much. Each box was full to the brim with old clothing, faded photographs, magazine clippings. Udo-san had been apologetic when dropping them off, her staff stacking them high at the rear entrance for Sho to bring inside to the vault. She’d been a valued donor for many, many years in both money and items, so he’d never been able to turn down anything she gave him. This latest batch, however, was stuff that had been stored away in her parents’ attic. Items that likely had little value, but Sho didn’t have the heart to tell her none of it was really all that display-worthy. She’d have been better off holding an estate sale. He’d bring it out at some point if her family ever hosted an event at the museum, but he still had to go through it all, add the donations to the museum’s registry.

Going through it all had been impossible the last week, and the reason for that was of course those dreaded syllables.

Matsumoto Jun.

He hadn’t expected to accomplish his goal by dropping in on Matsumoto uninvited at the restaurant the other night, but still, he’d wanted to get his displeasure off his chest. To explain why what Matsumoto had done was unfair, to explain what the coin meant to him. He wasn’t sure he’d really gotten his point across all that well. It was difficult to do that with the way Matsumoto watched him, teased him.

Sho was struggling with his feelings more than he’d expected. Matsumoto clearly wanted to extend this little game, to keep stringing Sho along about the coin. He seemed to find it fun, this odd little fight between them. But there was something deeper about him, something that left Sho unable to dislike him, no matter how badly he wanted to. There was a sadness to Matsumoto Jun, a heavy loneliness that showed itself in brief moments. Moments where he dropped the facade, dropped the jokes, and almost seemed to be begging for help, though he probably wouldn’t admit it. Despite what Matsumoto had done to him, despite what Matsumoto was still doing to him now by refusing to part with Virgo, Sho wondered if he might be the person to help him.

You’re probably just lonely, he told himself. You probably just need to get laid, he imagined Nino and Aiba telling him. Both of those things were probably true. He’d been focused so long on keeping the museum afloat, on the Zodiac coins, that he’d never made room for anyone else. He’d felt that having someone else in his life, anything more than a one night stand, might distract him from his goal. But there was no chance of moving forward, Sho realized, no way to achieve his goal without acknowledging that Matsumoto Jun was now part of the equation. The person he found attractive, intriguing, impossible to ignore…their paths were now intertwined unless Sho decided to let Virgo go. That, of course, he’d never do.

It was just as Matsumoto had said at the restaurant, his voice almost shaking in its conviction.

Once you’ve set that goal, it would absolutely kill you to give it up.

Sho endured Nino and Aiba’s teasing about it, but nobody else in his life knew about his obsession, his absurd need to make every Zodiac coin his own. There was no rhyme or reason to it at all. Like Matsumoto said, he only needed one to tell a story, but instead Sho had set out to get all of them. Had poured every bit of himself into obtaining them. It was ridiculous, it was largely pointless. But still, he refused to give it up.

And it seemed that Matsumoto of all people knew exactly why. Knew exactly how Sho felt, even as he refused to give in on Virgo. Kisumai’s investigations had told Sho plenty about the public face of Matsumoto Jun, the man he was before coming to Torenomachi. The man who’d cheerfully and easily outbid him in the auction. But that Matsumoto was not the same person Sho had spoken to in the gardens or in the private room at Yankumi. Sho understood the former, knew what made someone like that tick. But the latter, the Matsumoto Jun at Yankumi who knew what it was like to dig yourself into an obsession that consumed your whole life…that was the person Sho wanted to know. And increasingly, that was the person Sho simply wanted.

He sighed, marveling at how easily and how quickly he’d let Matsumoto take up so much room in his mind, in every waking moment. Sho shook his head, lifting the lid off of another of Udo-san’s boxes, desperate to lose himself in work. The hours slowly ticked away as he catalogued the eclectic mix of trash and almost trash that Udo-san’s parents had locked away in their attic. Letters written back and forth with distant relatives in Starside, abandoned knitting projects, power tools, music recordings of artists that never hit it big on either side of the planet.

He eventually put some of the music on, letting its mediocrity fill the museum vault. Maybe it was the first time anyone had listened to their work in decades. Sho wondered if that might make for an interesting interactive exhibit one day, perhaps if he gathered enough music from long-forgotten singers and groups. Maybe songs that were about more than just a fast new airship or hooking up with the girl they loved. Maybe songs about Starside or Nightside, songs about the sun and songs about The Great Empty. He eventually abandoned Udo-san’s donations entirely, jotting down his thoughts.

Sho got so lost in his new ideas that he didn’t hear the intercom at the vault door buzzing until what was probably the fourth or fifth try. He looked up, seeing that the clock on the wall already read 7:00 PM. The galleries were just closing for the day. Sho headed to the intercom, seeing that Suzu-chan, one of his part-timer docents, was about to press the buzzer again.

He intercepted before she could. “Sorry, sorry,” he said quickly. “I got caught up in something.”

Suzu smiled. This was not the first time she’d had to come say it was closing time. She was a sociology student at Keio, gave tours here at the museum to earn some extra cash. It gave Sho more time to work in the vault. “That’s okay, Big Boss. Our last guests for the day are heading out. We got fourteen people for the noon gallery tour today, eight for the 3:00 PM.”

“Good, that’s great.” Gallery tours were an extra charge, standard admission was for self-guided viewing only. “Thanks for your hard work today.”

“I remembered Watanabe Junichiro’s name this time,” she bragged.

“The last Watanabe,” they both said together in reverent voices before cracking up.

“Okay, okay. You are free to go, I’ll be wrapping up here shortly…”

“Actually,” Suzu interrupted him. “There’s someone here to see you.”

Sho was confused. There was nobody scheduled on his calendar, no events in the gallery that night. “Who is it?” He hoped it wasn’t Udo-san, back with even more boxes.

“That’s the odd thing,” Suzu said. “He insisted on paying ten times the admission fee and said to me, and I quote, ‘I’m here to see your boss. The name’s Hironomiya Virgo.’ I mean, I told Massu to keep an eye on him, but he seemed harmless enough and…”

Sho’s stomach dropped and his finger nearly slipped off the intercom button. “Suzu-chan, you can go home. I’ll meet with Hironomiya-san. He’s a potential new donor.”

“Ooh!” Suzu cheered. “Then it’s a good thing I didn’t have Massu kick him out. I’ll see you on Thursday!”

“Yep, you go kick that calculus exam’s ass, okay?” he said as lightly as he could manage, abandoning the intercom and taking a deep breath.

Hironomiya Virgo was here to see him, huh?

The vault door closed behind him with its decisive beeps, and Sho tugged on his suit jacket, straightening his tie as he emerged from his lair and into the galleries. He found the security guard standing at attention near the gallery entrance, waiting for instructions.

“Potential new donor, we’ll need some privacy for a while. Go ahead and take your dinner break, Masuda-kun.”

“Okay, Sho-san, no problem. If you need anything, you just call.”

“Thanks.”

Masuda departed, heading for the staff room. Sho was tempted to hide and observe him for a moment but “Hironomiya Virgo” was already there in the gallery, examining some Early Watanabe armor, and he’d turned at the sound of Sho and Masuda’s voices. Today he was in a well-fitted charcoal gray suit, and even worse, in a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles, his dark hair slicked back, giving him the air of a professor rather than a businessman.

“Hironomiya-san,” Sho said pointedly, walking forward to greet him properly.

“Sho-san,” responded Matsumoto Jun, inclining his head. He gestured lightly with his cane to the display case before him. “These originals or reproductions?”

“Originals,” Sho replied, crossing his arms. “The older the item, the more likely that I or someone who obtained it before me had it verified. It helps to have a university as a next door neighbor. There are various methods of confirming authenticity on pieces like these. The aging of the leather, any marks from the original tannery that produced it. The metal on the buckles. Even the age of the sweat stains inside the armor, if you’ve got an advanced enough scanner. The one on the left would have been worn by someone in one of Emperor Kuja’s first armies when he sacked the settlement of Oeilvert circa G-112. You probably know Oeilvert now as New Kagoshima. On the right, a set of battle gear from a few years later.”

Matsumoto nodded. “The GN on the breastplate signifies the old name, right?”

“Correct,” Sho said. “The GN for Garnet North, the original settlement on the northern continent. So this soldier had the unfortunate privilege of being opposed to Watanabe Kuja’s armies when they came and seized the city in G-117 as their capital. The city that was then renamed as…?”

Matsumoto laughed. “Why, Orunitia of course.”

“Of course,” Sho agreed.

His visitor tilted his head, offering one of his handsome smiles. “How are you doing today?”

“I’m well,” Sho lied, having Matsumoto before him again, and unexpectedly at that. “I’m very well. And yourself?”

“Much better now that I’m here to receive a history lesson from the master himself.”

Sho reddened at that, walking behind and around Matsumoto to the next display case over. “Oh, is that why you’ve dropped in unannounced? It’s not because I did the same to you last week at the restaurant?”

“If I’m going to serve as your expert on the rise of the global airship industry, then I thought it would be good to see what your current collections look like. Maybe I could offer some ideas on how best to incorporate what I’ll have to share into your existing gallery layouts.”

He raised an eyebrow. “What about my other offer? Regarding business connections here in town?”

Matsumoto waved him off, walking through the gallery, reading display cards and examining the contents of the cases closely. “I’m only here as a patron of the arts today, Sho-san.”

“I see.” He cleared his throat. “Question for you before I launch into my usual tour speech. Your spectacles. Originals or reproductions?”

Matsumoto laughed, pushing them up the bridge of his nose. “If by reproductions you’re asking if I’m only wearing these to look smart, then the answer is no. They’re originals. My distance vision is appalling. The lack of humidity here in Torenomachi is probably great for your artifacts, but it’s been drying the hell out of my eyes. Wearing contacts all day is killing me.”

“They let people with poor eyesight fly airships? Especially prototype airships?”

Matsumoto gave him an amused look, clearly knowing that Sho was drawing from information he’d learned from his private detectives. Sho had told them to stand down, as requested, but that didn’t mean he had to forget what he’d already learned. “Always contacts when I flew, you don’t get full peripheral vision in specs. But no, so long as you wore corrective contact lenses, they let you in the cockpit.”

“It wasn’t terrifying, flying models fresh off the assembly line?”

“I loved it because it was terrifying,” Matsumoto admitted. “If something went wrong, I had to think on my feet to keep her airborne or make the split second call to eject. Every flight was a risk, which made every flight intoxicating. Broke my heart to leave the Test Corps, but I got promoted to the Racing Division and had to step back. As I’m sure you know, being a scholar of both this planet and my personal history.”

“I’d apologize for the snooping, but I’m not all that sorry.”

“What a stubborn ass you can be, Sakurai Sho.”

“So my mother always says.”

Matsumoto chuckled, moving to the next case, turning and facing Sho. “Alright, let’s hear it. Leave no detail out, I want the full tour.”

And that’s exactly what Sho did, spending the next two hours slowly guiding Matsumoto through every corner of the galleries, telling him everything he knew and everything he could only speculate. To Sho’s surprise, Matsumoto was no passive visitor, only there to follow him around. He asked smart questions, thoughtful questions. Admitting his own gaps in knowledge and nodding appreciatively any time Sho could answer something for him. They gradually moved forward in time, from the crude swords of Watanabe Kuja’s warlord days through to the end of the Watanabe dynasty, its many efforts to invade the mysterious Garnet South colony.

“The battle flag of a warship, the Katsuragi,” Sho explained, gesturing to a tattered piece of cloth in the case, “or at least all that remained of it when it came slunking back from yet another attempted invasion in the late 530s. It’s not clear from records just how many invasion forces the Watanabe emperors sent south, but they kept trying at least through the late 640s. The loss of life generation after generation with zero reward had to be staggering, which is what finally led to the overthrow, the Hironomiya line promising no more halfhearted invasions. The south wasn’t worth conquering any longer when there was still plenty of land they could settle and rule in the north.”

Matsumoto nodded. “They barely taught us any of the details, only what we were supposed to think of it. A waste of money invested all to try and conquer lands swarming with monsters.”

“Monsters?” Sho asked, chuckling.

“Oh yes,” Matsumoto replied. “All the imperial textbooks hand-waved all these catastrophic naval and military failures you’ve been describing by blaming it on literal monsters. Monsters on the southern continent. Sea monsters, the oceans around the southern continent apparently were full of them too. The shogunates kept a lot of those lies in the books even when I was in school, if only because nobody really knows what it’s like down there anymore, and it’s best for us regular people to stay away and avoid getting too curious about life outside their control. So as far as Starside society is concerned, nobody knows or really cares if there even is a Garnet South these days or if the monsters gobbled them all up.” Matsumoto leaned in, knowing he had Sho’s attention. “But I’ve learned that there really are monsters in the south, Sho-san. They’re just not flesh and blood.”

Now Sho was interested. He had only a handful of old coins, clothing buckles, and gemstones that had been traded between Garnet North and Garnet South in the earliest days of settlement here. By the time Watanabe Kuja set about conquering the north, the lines of communication and nearly all trade ceased. No more blue topaz gemstones unique to the southern continent were making their way north, no more of their copper coins. For centuries the north sought to reestablish ties, or at least it had started with that intention. For the sake of diplomacy, to ensure that their fellow arrivals from Earth had not come to harm. But as scouting parties vanished one after another, they were followed by entire invasion fleets that presumed wrongdoing on the south’s part. Those fleets sent south were often lost too. Unlike the textbooks of Starside, those published Nightside were more honest.

Garnet South had been established roughly the same time as Garnet North, but it was the massive northern continent that had more favorable temperatures, better resources. The two colonies simply lost contact as methods of long-distance communication diminished in those early decades on the planet. Just as the early settlers had given up flight, they’d given up on the technology that let them check in with their southern neighbors. They’d turned inward, focusing on their farms and small settlements, at least until Watanabe Kuja decided it was best to have one country here, one Empire. The Nightside textbooks called the loss of contact The Silence, if only to make it sound more interesting than it likely was.

The southern settlements were likely abandoned or had died out long ago, Sho had learned in school. Survivors might have even headed north, their stories of life in the south dying with them since the Empire decided what history was worth preserving. If they were still down there, surely someone might have said something in the last several hundred years. The people of Nightside were no less curious about it than the earlier explorers of Starside had been, but after the first few trading missions had resulted in huge losses, Torenomachi too had given up on confirming the survival or demise of their southern cousins on Starside.

“What do you know?” Sho asked him, desperate for details to fill in his own gaps in knowledge. Matsumoto had spent much of his career flying. What might he have seen from the skies? “Have you been to the southern continent?”

“Me personally?” Matsumoto said. “No, I’ve only been south of the equator a handful of times. Never even came close to where that continent’s supposed to be. Well, I probably shouldn’t be disclosing company secrets…”

Sho grinned. “But…?”

“But since you’ve been able to teach me so much already today, I’d be remiss if I didn’t return the favor.” Matsumoto’s smile seemed genuine when he looked over, looking almost proud that he had something to share with Sho that he didn’t already know. “The monsters of the southern continent come in two varieties. Monster one, ocean currents. Whirlpools, rip currents. Somehow that continent is the most ill-placed bit of land on this entire planet, and I include your icebox half of it in that. The waters to reach the place are impossible to navigate, which is why most ships sent that way never came back. And the second monster, well, it’s pretty much invisible. I happen to be the grandson of the man who realized that maybe if you can’t approach by sea, you should try approaching by air.”

“Wait…wait, are you saying that’s why he invented…well, reinvented flight?”

“Yes and no,” Matsumoto explained. “It was obviously a question the old man considered. And in the earliest days of the Test Corps before I was even born, some of the first Matsumoto prototype long-haul ships were sent south to investigate, if only to try and enhance the shogunates’ maps. Nobody even knows how big that continent is after all these years. Nobody could ever sail around it to get a sense of it. My grandfather thought knowledge like that might be worth selling. Kiss a little ass and get a few research stipends. And here’s what those poor pilots found out - the air around that continent is even more impossible to navigate than the water. Engines stalled, electronics shorted out, some of the ships were nearly repelled backwards before they could even get within visual range. Most of them didn’t have enough fuel to make it back and report what they found out.”

“I’m no scientist, Matsumoto-san, but that all seems impossible. Ships from Earth landed on that continent nine hundred years ago. There absolutely were settlements down there, I have the pre-Silence artifacts in my collection to prove it and I’ve shown them to you. There have been no catastrophic disasters or earthquakes or anything that might have been able to create such a dramatic shift in the tides or the atmosphere down there without it impacting other parts of the planet.”

“I know,” Matsumoto replied, a bit of a spark in his eyes that Sho knew was mirrored in his own. “Which means the effect was probably manufactured somehow.”

“Manufactured!? By Garnet South?”

He shrugged. “They’re the most likely answer, but it’s not like we’ve been able to confirm it. My grandfather canceled all test flights south of the equator years ago, and my uncle’s refused to consider it as his successor. They lost too many good people. Some of the flights I did in the Corps, the instruments and capabilities they had me test…I always had my suspicions that the research was continuing even if nobody was flying down there. But now with my role in R&D, I finally got to see the budgets. There are teams that get regular funding toward developing engines and instruments to try and withstand the strength of those air currents, but it’s still mostly theoretical. We’ve got prototypes, some of them flight-worthy and just sitting in aerodrome hangars here, but my uncle’s never going to give the go ahead to test them in the south.”

Matsumoto tapped his cane on the floor, clearly disappointed.

“He’d have to involve the shogunate. Even today flying south would be seen as a political act, and there’s no way they’d get approval. My grandfather knew it, my uncle does too. If someone down there doesn’t want visitors and has gone so far as to develop the technology to keep us out, it’s too big a risk to poke at them. No matter how strong an engine Matsumoto Air Company can build, it’s not worth the potential loss of life just to confirm there are geniuses down south that have all but cloaked their continent away from the rest of us. After all, why investigate forbidden history when you could build something new and fancy to sell to the customers you already have in front of you?”

Sho looked over, still absorbing the information Matsumoto had given him. Information that clearly had no business being shared outside of the highest reaches of Matsumoto Air Company.

“This information would be worth billions to any of your competitors here on Nightside, the ones who don’t answer to a shogunate or to anyone but their shareholders,” Sho murmured. “And you just…told me everything?”

Matsumoto leaned in, close enough that Sho could smell his fresh, woodsy cologne. “Why wouldn’t I, Sho-san? Are you saying I can’t trust you to keep it a secret?”

Sho couldn’t meet his eyes. “I hired people to investigate you.”

“After I snapped up the one thing you wanted most in the world,” Matsumoto replied softly. “We’ve both behaved badly, haven’t we?”

He laughed gently. “For what it’s worth, I won’t tell anyone.”

“I know you won’t. Wouldn’t have told you otherwise,” Matsumoto said. “Of all the people in this dark and miserable place, you’re the only one who can at least appreciate this information from a historical standpoint. Not just a financial one.”

In that, Matsumoto was absolutely right. So many blank spaces in Sho’s knowledge of Garnet South were finally falling into place. All those lost expeditions, all those lost fleets. Everything Nightsiders didn’t know and had only been able to speculate about for decades. The sheer madness of the idea that Garnet South was not only still alive and possibly thriving but that they themselves had engineered a way to keep out unwanted guests? It was absolutely incredible. Everything Sho knew about The Silence, or thought he knew, was being upended, and frankly, he loved when that happened.

He looked up, seeing the honest affection for him in Matsumoto’s eyes, who’d clearly been enjoying the sight of the gears turning in Sho’s head.

“What?” Matsumoto asked, blushing a little.

“You’d love to fly one of those prototype ships, wouldn’t you? Fly south and see for yourself?”

Matsumoto looked down, smiling sadly. “You have no idea.”

“I’d go with you,” Sho admitted. “In a heartbeat.”

Their eyes met again, holding for a little longer than before.

Eventually Sho could bear no more of it, looking at Matsumoto Jun and so easily ignoring what he’d done at the auction. Almost forgetting the man was still holding on to Virgo as a joke or as leverage, for reasons Sho still didn’t quite understand.

“We’ve got a few more cases left in the next gallery over, if you want to finish the full tour.”

“Absolutely. I’ve learned more in a few hours than I did in all my high school courses combined. Lead the way.”

Sho was more self-conscious now, stumbling over his words a few times, feeling Matsumoto’s eyes on his back, eyes on his face as he went through the origins of the items remaining. It was another hour before he finished, and this time Matsumoto had fewer questions, Sho hearing mostly the echoes of his own voice in the galleries as the tour came to a close.

Masuda’s dinner break was long over when Sho escorted Matsumoto back to the museum’s main lobby, finding him there half-dozing at his post. The Garnetian Museum wasn’t exactly a high-profile target in a city full of jewelers, banks, and various other treasures. “Massu, I’ll escort our guest outside to the aircab queue. I just have a few things to wrap up for the night when I get back.”

“Ok, Sho-san. Thanks for visiting, Hironomiya-san.”

Sho stiffened a little at the additional reminder, walking with Matsumoto to the exit, holding a hand out once they were outside to gesture to the rail. “It’s safer if you hold on as you go down.” Sho saw Matsumoto’s hold on his cane tighten, and Sho quickly finished his thought. “You know, since you have to adjust from the lighting inside.”

Matsumoto said nothing, heading down the stairs carefully, grip strong on the handrail. With his injury, whatever it was, Sho wondered if Matsumoto could still fly as he used to. They’d been standing the entire time, walking through the galleries for over three hours together that evening, and Sho hadn’t missed that Matsumoto had eventually started to slow, favoring his leg more as they perused the collections. Why didn’t you stop, Sho chided himself. Why didn’t you even ask him if he needed a break? But then again, he’d gotten the impression in their meetings so far that such questions might not be welcome.

Clearly flying was something Matsumoto dearly loved, but if he struggled to walk, perhaps flying was even more difficult for him. He shouldn’t have said anything, he realized. He shouldn’t have asked him if he wanted to fly those prototypes. He’d gotten so lost in Matsumoto’s face, the way those spectacles perfectly accentuated his strong features, and the thoughtful questions he asked that he hadn’t even considered it. That his words might have opened some wounds Matsumoto kept hidden. That missing year and whatever had happened to him.

“Thank you, Sho-san. This was very informative,” Matsumoto declared once he was back on firmer ground, no more stairs to tackle. No sign in his voice that the walk down the stairs might have pained him. “I actually…I really appreciated this opportunity tonight. More than you know. Thank you for taking the time to show me around. What you and your family have gathered here, it’s really incredible.”

“I don’t usually get a lot of Starsiders who want both the full tour and for me to answer additional questions. You’ve been, well…you’ve been the most engaged visitor I’ve ever had here. So thank you, too.”

“Ah, you’re just saying that.” Matsumoto gave him a gentle shove. “I see right through you. The coin is still not for sale.”

Sho exhaled slowly, his calm fracturing. He’d been telling the truth. Matsumoto wasn’t just a spoiled heir from a spoiled family. He was intelligent, curious, noticed little details that few other visitors to the Garnetian Museum ever had. He was everything that Sho needed, the type of partner he craved when he actually took a moment to consider the sheer idea of someone putting up with him long-term.

How can you be so perfect for me, Sho wanted to shout at him, and then turn around and be so terrible? To joke so easily about something that clearly means everything to me?

From Sho’s reaction, silent as it was, he saw Matsumoto’s joking expression fade under the lamplight. Serves you right, Sho thought bitterly.

“Well,” Matsumoto continued, voice a bit less confident. “Hope to see you again soon.”

“Good night,” Sho said, not bothering to be polite. He turned and headed back inside, desperate to keep his composure.

“You reel in another big donor fish, Sho-san?” Massu asked as he entered the lobby once more.

“I’ve definitely reeled in something,” he muttered back, heading for his office.

Sho sat in his chair, reviewing the gallery security cam footage, rewinding it back to Matsumoto’s arrival. At the security desk, the feeds Masuda saw had no sound. Only the ones that came directly to Sho included the audio. Sho watched for a while, sound on low, seeing him and Matsumoto Jun in the gallery, figures seen by the cameras above, reproduced in black and white.

He watched for a few minutes, watched their encounter again. Saw now the way he leaned toward Matsumoto when he spoke, noticed the way Matsumoto leaned in toward him just the same. They’d been standing so close, speaking so eagerly at each display case. God, Sho thought, did I really smile like that at him?

He fast forwarded, embarrassed more and more by his conduct toward Matsumoto, how desperate he probably looked. Finally Sho turned his back on him at one point, and he noticed that Matsumoto had reached out a hand, almost close enough to reach for his arm. Sho’s heartbeat quickened, almost feeling that phantom touch now, over an hour later. It was right at the moment when they stopped talking about Garnet South, about the prototype ships and flying. It was when Sho was distracted, walking ahead to the next gallery to get to the next part of the tour. And in that moment, with Sho’s back turned, Matsumoto had reached for him.

Why? For what? To ask him something? To confess something?

To turn him around and kiss him?

Sho paused the video, feeling almost like he’d received an electric shock. If Sho had slowed, if Sho had stopped, Matsumoto would have touched him. But none of that mattered now, did it? Whatever Matsumoto Jun had wanted from Sho in that moment, he’d quickly changed his mind. Pulled his hand back, shaken his head. Diligently followed Sho to the next gallery as though nothing had happened.

“Oh, I hate this!” he complained aloud, the less-than-lucrative artifacts in his office ignoring his outburst as usual.

Angrily, he brought up the system controls, rewinding the video playback to the moment of Matsumoto’s arrival, seeing Suzu-chan speaking with him. Sho hovered over the button with his mouse for a few seconds before clicking and dragging from that moment up until only five minutes ago. He took a deep breath.

And then he deleted the footage entirely.

///

Despite its name, the Supersonic was not the fastest or fanciest skyliner model the company manufactured. It was nearly twenty years old already, ancient by the standards of some aficionados Jun knew, but it was the first airship he’d ever purchased with money he’d earned himself. Money that wasn’t part of a Matsumoto Air Company budget or a family trust in his name, but money he’d saved up from racing. It had taken him dozens of races to be able to afford it, as the payouts weren’t as much of a draw as the adrenaline rush that came from illegal racing.

It wasn’t a passenger liner that could hold hundreds for a long-haul voyage, but it was much larger than an aircab. In the days before flying, the wealthy of Orunitia and other Starside cities built themselves yachts, sailing on the ocean or on freshwater lakes. The Supersonic and ships just like her were sometimes called sky yachts, designed to sail along in no particular hurry, the same as the yachts that sailed on water.

Jun’s skyliner had a mid-level with four bedrooms for guests, his master suite, three washrooms, a dining room, a large kitchen, and the flight deck. Above was a large observation deck forward and an enclosed living space at the stern. The bottom deck housed the massive zidanium-powered engines, crew quarters, and cargo space, should he ever desire to live aboard for months at a time. In his past life, he’d wandered aimlessly for weeks at a time aboard the Supersonic sometimes, entertaining friends, giving other friends cover to carry on an affair or a deal or both.

The ship had been languishing in the Torenomachi aerodrome for over two months now, and before he’d even been able to commission a crew to fly her back to the light, he’d had to hire some cleaners to give the skyliner a good scrub. He’d then paid extra to hire in a Starside crew, paying generously for them to fly to Torenomachi and then take charge of the Supersonic for his trip.

After two months in the dark, he needed a break. Needed to feel some light on his skin that wasn’t artificial. He’d reached out to his parents, received confirmation from his mother that she and his father would rendezvous with him south of Madainsari for a meal, perhaps even an overnight, flying his way in their own skyliner, the Garuda. They’d had to cancel and had done so at the last minute, had informed him when he was already in the air, already across the dusk barrier and back Starside.

“Your father has a meeting with a very important client that just came up,” his mother had messaged him. “Let’s try again soon, okay? Maybe next month, Jun.”

Maybe it was feeling the sunlight again, after what felt like ages. Maybe it was the way she’d said very important client, as though that meant Jun was only a mildly important child. Maybe it was the seventeen friends he’d reached out to after his parents’ rejection, none of whom had availability for a meet-up on such short notice, though that had never been a problem for most of them before. He’d had to go silent with so many of his friends after the accident. Only a few even knew all of what had happened to him, and apparently his punishment was to be shunned a bit.

All of that together left him sitting alone on the Supersonic’s observation deck, sulking in the breeze as they continued past Madainsari. “Circle around however you like,” he’d commanded his hired crew. “We’ll head back to Torenomachi in the morning.” If his eyes got a little wet, he’d blame it on his contact lenses, on the air around him. On allergies flaring up now that he was back in the Starside air, even several hundred feet up.

He wouldn’t dare blame it on loneliness, on the humiliation that was his parents and his closest friends having better things to do than check in with him, even for one meal.

It was hours more before he finally got a bite, a message from one of his oldest friends, who had been dining with his in-laws when Jun’s invite had first come through. He couldn’t make it in person, but he had a few minutes available to connect today. Relieved to know that not everyone this side of the planet had rejected him, Jun headed inside, sitting on one of the sofas in the living space, bringing up the big screen.

Ikuta Toma’s family had found their wealth in custom furniture, and they’d managed to pivot their way into contracts with Matsumoto Air Company years before Toma or Jun had been born. Ikuta-made seating and upholstery were in most Matsumoto ships. They’d fought a lot as kids, always for stupid reasons. Not only was Toma a year younger, but his family (wealthy as they were) was technically reliant on Jun’s for a huge chunk of their revenue. Whenever Jun got mad at him back then, he tended to bring that up and only prolong their arguments. But now they’d grown up, the both of them.

It was Ikuta Toma who’d come to see Jun off at the Night and Day last year, as he always had. And it was Toma who’d realized something was wrong, using every resource at his command to call in a rescue. Without Toma, Jun would be dead. “Guess the company can’t switch to a cheaper interior designer,” Jun had joked when he’d come out of his first surgery, finding Toma there waiting for him.

He’d received a smack on the forehead in reply. They’d grown up, the both of them. Mostly.

“Well well,” came that noisy voice through the speakers, the connection struggling for a moment before Jun finally saw his friend, lounging near his pool on his grand estate outside Orunitia. “If it isn’t the Nightsider.”

Jun held up his arms for inspection. “What do you think? Getting too pale already?”

“You’ll make up for it in only a few hours over here.” Toma adjusted whatever screen was available poolside next to him. “How’s the leg?”

“Strong enough to still kick your ass.”

Toma laughed. “And you say that with such conviction too.”

Jun smiled. “The good thing about living in a climate-controlled bubble is that we don’t get any rain. Used to be unbearable over here, the pressure and all that.”

“Well that’s good. I’d ask how work is going but I don’t want to hear you complain for the next several hours. I’ve got some client meetings in an hour, and they’ll be whining about the new price increases like the cheapskates that they are.”

“It’s not as bad as it was initially, working there,” Jun admitted. Catering in good food had gone a long way toward earning him a little respect in the last few weeks. “Being in the dark is still awful, so I stay inside as much as I can. Found some good restaurants here though.”

“But they haven’t converted you yet? Into one of them?” Toma teased.

“I wake up and it’s dark,” Jun said. “I go to work and it’s dark. I leave work and it’s dark. I go to bed and it’s dark. I have every light on in my hotel room, and it still feels too dark.”

“So that sounds like a no. Well, are you doing anything but working? When you get fixated on work, you start sleeping at the office and barking out commands and not shaving for three weeks.”

He narrowed his eyes. “I’ve been shaving.”

“Jun-kun, seriously, I know it’s miserable there. Please tell me you’re doing more than working.”

“I’m doing more than working.”

Toma was skeptical. He’d never bothered to work very hard in his actual job, not when he could find a new hobby every week to better occupy his time. Sword fighting, investing in a struggling kabuki theater group, writing shitty novels. “Such as?”

Jun leaned back against the sofa cushions, hugging a pillow against himself. “I went to a party. I went to a museum.”

“That’s it?”

“It was a very nice museum.”

Toma smiled. “Okay, so you looked at a few portraits and consider yourself a man of culture now, I see…”

“It’s a history museum, I’ll have you know, and the curator gave me a personal tour.”

“So when you’re not working, you’re ignoring the beautiful cabaret girls in the Hospitality District to go look at junk with some antique-collecting grandpa…”

“Sho-san’s not a grandpa, why are you jumping to conclusions?”

Toma said nothing at first, only raising an eyebrow. And Jun realized his mistake.

Before Jun could continue onto a different topic, the Sobu Hall auction or the wild things he’d witnessed there, Toma was staring him down, looking triumphant.

“So not only is the guy who cheated on his history exams visiting history museums in his free time, he’s on a first name basis with the museum grandpa?”

“I just told you he’s not…” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Okay, if it’s what you want me to say, then I’ll just fucking say it. Toma. I’ve met someone.”

“Thank you very much!” his friend cheered.

“Not that it’s any of your business.”

“With that Nightside complexion, it’s easier to see when you’re blushing now. Even your ears, Jun-kun. Aww, you must really like grandpa.”

Jun resisted the urge to fling the cushion at the screen, knock it over. It felt good to admit it out loud though, his feelings for Sakurai, even if it was to somebody like Toma who would find a way to weaponize it against him.

“He’s a nice guy,” Jun told him. Well, Sakurai was mostly a nice guy, save for his death glares any time Jun mentioned the Virgo coin. And the week or so of not-so-secret surveillance from his private detectives. But otherwise, a nice guy.

“Good for you,” Toma said, looking halfway sincere, until he spoke again. “Having only your hand for company the last year or so has made you a real drag to deal with.”

“Goodbye Toma, it was nice hearing your voice again…”

“Wait, wait, wait. No, you don’t get to slink away on me. It’s been ages since I’ve gotten to see Matsumoto Jun with a crush on somebody. You make the most adorable, ugly faces when you’re in love.” Toma leaned in a little closer to his screen. “So. How did you meet him?”

“At that party I mentioned. There was an auction being held, and I outbid him on the one thing he really wanted. I was just joking but uh, I found out that he really really really wanted that thing, so that pissed him off quite a bit.”

“Ah, so very like you to make friends quickly everywhere you go…”

Jun snorted. “Yeah, thanks. Despite that, we’ve met a few times since then and I’ve realized that…well…”

Toma waited, looking even more self-satisfied that he was wrangling this information out of him.

“…I really like him,” Jun admitted. “He’s smart and thoughtful. He’s funny. He’s…someone I can talk to and be myself. He’s someone I want to keep talking to.”

“He’s hot?”

“Well, obviously.” Jun held up a hand in protest. “And yes, yes, that’s exactly why I noticed him in the first place, I’m just as shallow as you’ve always known me to be. But Sho-san, he…I don’t know. Toma, I can’t put it into words…I don’t know him that well yet, but at the same time, I feel like I understand him completely. And that somehow, he understands me too.”

“This is all very touching,” Toma teased. “Are you going to give him that thing from the auction? To win him over?”

Jun looked down. “Maybe. Maybe I should.”

He’d even had it in his pocket the other day, walking through the galleries of the Garnetian Museum. He’d wrapped it in a handkerchief to keep it safe, to ensure it wasn’t damaged. For Jun, who’d always tuned out during his instructors’ lectures in school, he’d found himself hanging on Sakurai’s every word during their tour. He seemed to know the story behind every item in his collection, his passion for knowledge nearly bursting from him as he pointed to each object in every display case like an old friend. His eyes had positively lit up whenever Jun had asked him a follow-up question, giving him the opportunity to keep explaining, keep teaching. Seeing Sakurai Sho in his element, Jun had well and truly fallen for him. Not just for his eyes or his ass or the dirty looks he gave whenever Jun teased him, but for the person. For all of him that he could see and observe.

And then they’d gotten on the topic of airships, Garnet South. Sakurai had asked him about flying, if he wanted to fly the R&D prototypes, because of course he didn’t know. Even his detectives wouldn’t have turned up that information for him. Jun had almost done it then, had reached out a hand to apologize for taking Virgo away from him without knowing its real value. Jun couldn’t fly, but who was he to keep the stupid coin from someone who needed it the way Sakurai Sho needed it?

But still, he’d hesitated. He wanted to prolong them, these excuses they had to see each other.

“You’ve gone quiet,” Toma said.

“Just thinking.”

“I can only advise you to be careful,” his friend continued. “Given your brain’s limited capacity.”

He laughed. “You’re such an asshole.”

“I know, I know. But hey, for what it’s worth, I’m happy for you. It’s been hard since the accident, you know, seeing a Matsumoto Jun that told me he had nothing to live for anymore. A Matsumoto Jun that hates himself. A Matsumoto Jun that’s just going through the motions. That’s not who you are, and you deserve better. After all the terrible shit you’ve been through, you deserve to be happy…”

Jun could feel himself tearing up, even as he waited for Toma to shy away from his sincerity again.

“You deserve to be happy, even with museum grandpa.”

He let out a deep breath, shutting his eyes. “I haven’t won him over yet.”

“Then give him the auction prize. Or even better, first give him something he wants, that prize, and then give him something he doesn’t even know that he wants…”

“If this sentence ends with a reference to my dick…”

“No, no, no,” Toma laughed, waggling a reprimanding finger at him. “He’s a Nightsider, right?”

“Right.”

“And he’s into old shit, right?”

Jun chuckled. That was certainly one way to put it. “Where are you going with this?”

“Where did I propose to my wife?”

He was confused. “Wait, what?”

“Where. did. I. propose. to. her?”

“The rose garden in Cleyra.”

Toma cocked his head, grinning. “And why there?”

Jun didn’t understand this tangent at all. “Because of her allergies, she’d never been there before. But she’d always wanted to go, so you rented that weird diving outfit for her so she could breathe. I know this insane story, Toma, but what does it mean?”

“It means put your man in a diving outfit and bring him someplace that he’s never been allowed to go. For someone that likes old shit, what would be their Cleyra rose garden?” Toma started clapping for himself. “Dude, I’m a genius. If that doesn’t win him over…”

“Toma, what the fuck are you even trying to…”

And then it clicked.

“Wait.”

A Nightsider that loved “old shit.” Jun knew exactly where to bring him. As well as how challenging such a stunt would be to pull off successfully. It had been a while since he’d been presented with a challenge like this, and his heart and brain both started to race. With ideas, with anxiety, and then with even more ideas. Go big or go home.

Toma looked way too proud. “I’m smart, right? It will take some planning and effort on your part, but you’re always such a stickler for details that you’ll find a way to do it.”

“He might say no. I could plan it for weeks, and he still might say no.”

“Jun-kun. He might say yes.”

Jun had barely said his goodbyes to Toma before he was up from the sofa, heading below to his master suite, finding his personal computer. He dove right in, taking down pages and pages of notes as he reviewed approved flightpaths, reviewed crews for hire, reviewed logistics and any governmental regulations and restrictions at the site. This was a plan that wouldn’t come cheap, but that part wasn’t a problem for Jun. The crew non-disclosure agreements alone were going to be millions of credits to ensure secrecy, to ensure that Sakurai was protected. But it would be worth it. All of this would be worth it, just to see the look on his face when they arrived.

Not just to win him over, Jun realized. Not just for his own selfish interest in the guy. But simply to see the look in Sakurai Sho’s eyes when he saw history, this very specific history, up close. Someone who would appreciate it more than anyone Jun had ever met. After so long with so little to look forward to, Jun knew that working his ass off the next few weeks to bring Sakurai a little unexpected happiness would simply be enough for him. It would give him a problem to solve. It would give him purpose.

With the sunlight outside his cabin window all day, he didn’t realize how long he’d been planning before he looked up and noticed they were crossing the dusk barrier again. Darkness followed shortly thereafter, his eyes itching, reminding him that he hadn’t slept all night. His leg was killing him, another thing he’d barely noticed, so deep was he into the details of this ridiculous master plan.

He eventually emerged from his master suite, moving to the flight deck so he could get a little exercise and observe their approach to the Torenomachi dome once more. Even with the pain in his leg, the headache he could feel coming on after being hunched over his computer all night, Jun couldn’t stop smiling. His mind was still moving at a million miles a minute, or so it felt as he bid farewell to his hired crew, made his way to an aircab and headed back for the Sumire Hotel.

He had meetings to schedule, appointments to make. And lots and lots of Starside officials to bribe.

Jun was exhausted when he made it to his hotel room, physically and mentally, but he perked up at the batch of mail that had been left for him during his short absence. Another green envelope with a golden ribbon had arrived while he’d been gone, and he opened it with shaky hands. It was happening in two weeks, and Jun decided to make that his deadline. Bit of a compressed timeline to get all the arrangements done, but Jun thrived with a bit of added pressure. If there was another coin in the auction that night, Jun would let Sakurai have it. If there was no coin, all the better. The guy would be in good spirits with either scenario. The Sobu Hall auction would just be the prelude to the adventure Jun was planning.

He grinned, dropping the envelope back on the desk and going to bed. He lay there for at least another hour, turning on a lamp a few times to jot down a few more ideas. But he knew he needed rest tonight, if only because the next two weeks would be a race to the finish line. And maybe the start of something different altogether.

///

.virgo.
the maiden

///

He’d handed Nakamaru his invite without a word, barely keeping calm as he stood along the ballroom wall, observing other party guests as they started trickling in to Sobu Hall. He knew if he went over and spoke to Murao-san that he’d definitely want to hold his next lecture at the museum. He knew if he went over and spoke to Kitagawa-san and her husband that they could be talked into sponsoring a new exhibit. Sho saw several opportunities to earn credits all over the room, and somehow he passed on all of them, desperately scanning the crowd for the object of his curiosity.

Since receiving Nino and Aiba’s usual invite, Sho had already been a nervous wreck. What if they’d found Pisces? What if he didn’t have enough money? But he’d come in to work yesterday morning as usual, only to find the folded lavender paper lying on top of his computer keyboard, and his anxiety had skyrocketed.

It had been folded very precisely into the shape of a skyliner, revealing who it was from without Sho even having to think about it. Sho paid his security and cleaning staff well, so that meant that Matsumoto had probably had to pay a lot for them to sneak it into his office where he’d see it right away. Or maybe he’d told some other sort of tale, that it was regarding a donation offer or exhibit proposal, could they do him this one small favor? After all, he’d been to the Garnetian Museum before, had paid ten times the admission just to get his private tour. He was definitely well-known (and liked) among the staff now. Suzu-chan and Masuda had seen to that.

Sho had unfolded it, finding only a handwritten note.

Sho-san,

I have no designs on your next coin. You can choose to believe that or not.

Pack a bag and bring it with you to Sobu Hall. Pack enough for three days’ travel. We’ll depart for the aerodrome together upon the conclusion of the auction.

Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow.
Jun

It wasn’t so much an invite from Matsumoto as it was a command. Who the hell did he think he was, dropping off a letter like that and expecting Sho to not have a million questions, a million concerns?

Three days’ travel? To where? With others?

Just the two of them?

Maybe it was easy for someone like Matsumoto Jun to drop everything for three days and go somewhere on impulse, but that was not the type of life Sakurai Sho led. He’d tried calling through to Matsumoto Air Company, to their R&D facility outside of town. “I’m sorry,” some assistant had told him. “Matsumoto-san is not available at the moment.”

“When might he be available? I need to speak with him as soon as possible.”

“He will be traveling for business this week. Perhaps I can schedule a call or meeting for next week?”

“This is Sakurai Sho calling,” he’d said, teetering just on the edge of rude. “I insist that you connect me with him today.”

“I’m sorry,” the assistant had replied, her voice giving absolutely nothing away. His name certainly didn’t intimidate or impress her. “He is quite busy at the moment. Again, I can schedule you with him for next week, if you like.”

Sho had declined, ending the call and ready to tear the letter to pieces. He didn’t need this. He didn’t need this, not when Pisces might be so close. He suspected that Matsumoto’s business travel was a cover for whatever the hell this invite was about. But where would they be going? And why? And at such timing as this?

He’d tried Matsumoto’s usual haunts last night, the Bittersweet restaurant at the Sumire Hotel. The other restaurants and clubs and theaters that Kisumai had tracked him to before. Ueda had flown him back and forth across the city for hours without complaint until Sho had finally given up. Whatever Matsumoto was planning, he’d already anticipated that Sho wouldn’t just accept his paper skyliner at face value. He’d hidden himself, was probably observing Sho’s panic at a distance and laughing.

He’d gotten home long after midnight, pacing his apartment until his body gave up on him. He’d slept terribly, waking in the morning to another digital reminder that the auction was tonight. The promise of Pisces, and yet, all Sho had been able to think about was that lavender skyliner, folded so neatly, ordering him to do as Matsumoto requested.

Barely able to keep down his breakfast, Sho had headed for his closet, tugging down his grandfather’s portrait, taking in the sight of his collection once more. The notch waiting patiently for Pisces. The notch where Virgo already ought to be. He didn’t have much choice, did he? Even if Matsumoto was telling the truth, that he had no interest in Pisces, the man still had Virgo. If Sho refused this mysterious invitation, would Virgo be lost to him forever?

He didn’t want to believe that. Didn’t want to accept that Matsumoto might be that fucking cruel, but still, the man had to know that what he was doing would just make Sho angry. He’d packed a bag anyhow, just as he’d been told to do, adding clothes and toiletries even as his hands trembled. He’d coordinated with security and with some of his docents. The Garnetian Museum would open with limited hours for at least the next three days while Sho was indisposed. Fortunately, there had been no scheduled events to cancel or postpone.

Ueda, of course, had seen it all as one giant red flag. “Aniki,” Ueda had begged him, even as he was loading Sho’s travel bag in the aircab. “Aniki, this doesn’t smell right.”

Sho hadn’t told Ueda much about Matsumoto Jun, if only because Sho didn’t want the guy dead. At least not anymore, though the taunting little invite had stirred up some of those feelings again. Ueda didn’t like that Sho had no itinerary, no idea where he was going, and no idea who else might be on that flight.

So here he was now at Sobu Hall, wondering if Matsumoto was even planning to show his face before the auction. But even if he did, would Sho even know what to say to him? He was so busy watching the crowd that he jumped when a hand wrapped around his wrist, tugging him away from the wall.

“This way, Sho-chan,” Aiba Masaki said, bringing him away from the ballroom and away from the crowd. Aiba rarely showed his face at their parties before the auction, so something was definitely up. He said nothing that might draw attention, letting Aiba lead him down the hall to a panel on the wall, where he confirmed nobody had followed them before twisting one of the wall sconces. A secret passage opened, and Aiba tugged him inside, the panel closing behind them almost as quickly as it had opened.

Sho, of course, had been here before. Compared to so many other rooms in the mansion, it seemed almost empty, devoid of decorations. This was Nino’s private dining room, the round table in the center, its walls adorned with Sobu Trading photographs. Sho noticed that a few previously empty spots on the wall were now filled with frames, the photos within being those Sho had given him last time. Unlike the gourmet hors d'oeuvres and treats the party staff were circulating the rooms with, Nino was in here munching on a slice of pizza. He’d always had simpler tastes, usually sneaking dinner in here during most of his parties.

“Hey Sho-chan,” Nino said, sitting there in a simple gray suit, a cloth napkin tucked in at his collar to avoid the splat of any pizza sauce.

Aiba took off the eyepatch he wore for public appearances during his parties, dumping it on the table and having a seat himself. He opened one of the three pizza boxes on the table, musing aloud about which one to try first.

Neither of his friends felt like saying anything by way of explanation, so Sho knew it was on him. “You’ve invited me to a pizza party?”

Nino had another big bite, shaking his head.

Aiba finally selected a slice overloaded with mushrooms and peppers, gesturing to Sho with it. “Did you pack your suitcase?”

Sho scowled, leaning heavily against one of the empty chairs at the table. “What the hell is going on?”

“Jun-kun paid a lot of money to find out who we are,” Nino said. “A lot. I truly admire his tenacity. And his money. But mostly the tenacity. Along with buying us dinner tonight and when we met up the other day, he asked us what was available in the auction this evening.”

“And you told him?”

“I feel that we misjudged him after our last event. He’s actually quite nice,” Aiba admitted, not bothering to answer Sho’s question. “Didn’t you think so, Nino?”

“Mmm,” Nino nodded, still chewing. “Said it was obvious you’ve been working too hard lately, Sho-chan. That you’re a bit stressed. He said you’ve been so kind to him since he’s arrived here in Torenomachi, that you gave him just the best little tour at the museum, even though you’ve been busy. He thought you deserved a break, so he coordinated a vacation for you.”

“Very romantic,” Aiba said, picking off one of the mushrooms and popping it in his mouth. “He said he wanted this trip with you to go off without a hitch, so he asked if we could confirm if Pisces was up for bids tonight. And since he asked so nicely…”

“You told him!? You never tell me anything and I’ve known you for…for…for twenty fucking…!” Sho squeezed the back of the chair, letting out a shout of frustration. “What the fuck?!”

Nino set down his pizza, dabbing his fingers on his napkin. “Sho, don’t curse in front of my dinner.”

“Nino…”

His friend smiled. “He paid for all the food tonight, not just our pizza. Paid upfront for all of this evening’s party expenses and staffing as a means of apology and in the spirit of friendship, because he unfortunately will not be bidding on anything in the auction. What a guy.”

“He still has my Virgo.”

Aiba had his mouth full, but spoke anyway. “That may be so, but at least he won’t have Pisces. Not after tonight anyway. And neither will you.”

Sho felt himself deflate like a balloon. “Seriously?”

“Seriously,” Nino admitted, and Sho could tell that it pained him to do so. He wasn’t lying.

“We’ve got ten items,” Aiba said plainly. “Nothing you’re likely going to be interested in. We’re still in progress on Pisces, alright? Having some difficulties tracking down reliable leads on it. So I swear to you, it’s not up tonight.”

“Sit down,” Nino ordered. “Eat some pizza because you look like you’re about to fall over.”

Sho grumbled under his breath, doing as he was told and loading up a plate.

Once he had a little food in him, even if it was greasy and unhealthy the way Nino preferred, he felt a little better. He’d always known that money was his friends’ key motivator, that it was Nino’s anyway, but he never thought they’d budge on the auctions. Never thought they’d ever give in, come clean to him. Just how much had Matsumoto paid them? Because of that investment, whatever it was, Sho didn’t have to worry about Pisces now, at least not tonight. Relief coursed through him. Now he only had to worry about Matsumoto Jun and his mysterious intentions. A different type of worry entirely.

“I don’t understand any of this.”

Aiba grinned. “We’re much more straightforward here on Nightside when we want to sleep with somebody. Starsiders can be cute, huh?”

“That can’t be the only reason,” Sho mumbled, feeling his cheeks burn hot.

“Why not?” Nino asked.

“Because…” Sho trailed off, unable to come up with anything. He’d known from the start that Matsumoto Jun was interested in him. He just hadn’t known how much. Nobody had ever pursued him like this, never with this amount of effort. With Sho’s devotion to his work and to his coins, nobody had ever bothered.

They’d only been face to face three times. The auction. The restaurant. The museum. Only three times, perhaps seven, eight hours altogether, standing beside him, sitting across from him. Looking into those clever eyes, seeing that wicked smile directed his way. Less than a day in the man’s company, and yet each encounter had certainly left their mark on him. How many hours had Sho spent thinking of Matsumoto Jun, long after he’d departed? Despising him. Desiring him…

“Sho-chan,” Aiba said, gesturing to him emphatically with a piece of crust. “You’d be an idiot to turn this guy down.”

“And you know, if it doesn’t work out, at the very least you get a free vacation to…” Nino paused for a moment. “Well, he didn’t tell us where you were going, but hey, a free vacation.”

There was a knock at an alternate door in the room, and Nakamaru let himself in. He held up one of the auction invites, waving it. “Ninomiya-san, you wanted to know when he got here.”

“Excellent, thank you very much,” Nino said, dismissing his butler and turning back to Sho. “Well?”

The chair scraped against the floor in Sho’s enthusiasm to get up, Nino and Aiba snickering at him as he followed Nakamaru from the room. The butler said nothing, leading Sho through the halls, through the perfumes and laughter of the other guests, and to the set of double doors in the library-slash-high roller room. How long had it been since he’d been standing here, ready to go out into the gardens with a handsome stranger? More than a month now, one of the oddest months of his life.

Nakamaru opened the door for him. “He said he was going this way, Sho-san.”

“Thanks.”

Sho adjusted to the lantern light, his shoes kicking up pebbles as he walked. There was no question as to where he’d find Matsumoto. His instincts were correct when he found his way to that same fountain again, the one with the iron rail. The fountain’s installed lights seemed brighter than they’d been last time, reflecting off of the water, smaller jets sending choreographed bursts of it into the air. Sho stood there where the pebbled paths met the imported grass, watching Matsumoto Jun from behind as he stood at the rail observing the spray of water, leaning his weight against it, his cane hooked onto the rail beside him. He was leaning a bit heavily, his posture poor, clad in a dark jacket that stretched perfectly across his broad shoulders.

“There you are,” Matsumoto called out, voice almost lost in the fountain noise. Sho hadn’t made any effort to disguise his approach.

Sho moved closer, keeping a few paces between them as he came up to the rail, looking to his right. The spectacles again, and even with only the fountain lights to observe him when he turned, Sho could see that Matsumoto looked exhausted.

“Are you alright?” he couldn’t help asking.

The kind smile Sho received in response warmed him from head to toe. “I’m terrific.”

“Dry eyes again?”

Matsumoto laughed softly. “That’s part of it. Haven’t been sleeping much the last few weeks.”

“Everything alright? With work?”

“Don’t play dumb, Sho-san, it doesn’t suit you.”

Sho cleared his throat. Okay, so no matter how badly Matsumoto Jun wanted him, he was still picking fights? “Very well then.” He looked Matsumoto straight on. “Have you tired yourself out bribing my friends and planning mysterious, last minute trips?”

“Yes and yes.” Sho hadn’t expected that, unable to come up with a quick retort, so Matsumoto continued. “Well, it’s a last minute trip for you, but I’ve been putting this together for a while now.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to take you somewhere.”

“I have work and responsibilities here.”

“So do I.”

“You already assume I’m coming with you?”

“If you weren’t coming, you wouldn’t have bothered walking all the way out here to find me. You’d still be in there, wetting yourself in anticipation about the auction.”

Sho scowled, trying to tamp down how badly he wanted to shut Matsumoto Jun up, though he was struggling to decide if it was best to shut him up with tape or with a kiss.

“Is it love or like with you, Matsumoto-san? Because you are confusing the hell out of me.”

“Don’t you mean love or hate?”

“No,” Sho insisted. “You appear to like me to some extent, but not as much as you love making fun of me.”

Matsumoto looked away, shaking his head. “I’d both love it and like it if you stopped your fussing and got excited about our trip.”

“I didn’t ask you for an impromptu vacation. I haven’t asked you for anything but Virgo, and unless this trip I needed to pack three days’ worth of clothing for is a trip to wherever you’ve stashed it, it’s difficult for me to get excited about it.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you knew where we were going.”

“And where is that, Matsumoto-san?”

This time Matsumoto turned all the way, leaning sideways against the fence, resting a hand on his hip. He offered Sho a boastful smile.

“Starside.”

Sho rolled his eyes, backing away from the fence. Was everything a joke with this person? “I’m going back inside, I’ll see you at the auction. And after that, I am going home. Enjoy your trip.”

“Sho-san, wait.” He kept walking, putting plenty of distance between them. “Wait, I said!”

He knew Matsumoto was following him, could hear pebbles scattering far behind him. He was halfway to the mansion when the sound grew louder and soon he felt a hand on his shoulder. Sho turned in the lantern light to see the exertion in Matsumoto’s face. The man had chased after him as best he could, and Sho’s heart sank to discover that he’d left his cane behind in his hurry to do so. Matsumoto’s eyes were pained, sweat rolling down his face.

“I’m serious,” Matsumoto said, nearly out of breath. There was sheer desperation in his face. “I want to take you to Starside. Please…”

Sho turned all the way, letting Matsumoto balance more of his weight against him, wrapping an arm around him. “You shouldn’t have forced yourself…” He looked around, spying a bench nearby. “For goodness sake, sit down.”

“Please,” Matsumoto begged him, unwilling to relent, nearly gasping his words out. Having to cling to Sho to stay upright. “It will…it will be worth it, I swear…”

Sho had to nearly carry him to the bench, setting him down. He ran back to the fountain, grabbing Matsumoto’s cane and returning to where he’d left him. Matsumoto was still there, obviously in a great deal of pain, leaning forward and rubbing his left leg, all around his left knee. Sho smacked the bench lightly with the cane, letting out a wordless shout of frustration. Frustration with Matsumoto and frustration with himself in equal measure for walking away and letting this happen. For getting angry instead of waiting for an explanation.

“Are you hurt?” He held the cane out, Matsumoto taking it with a shaking hand. “Should I call for a doctor? There have to be at least a dozen at the party.”

“I’ll be alright…I just…”

“You can’t take me Starside, Matsumoto-san. As a pilot, you ought to know that better than anyone,” Sho said. “It’s part of the agreement we made centuries ago to stay out and keep the peace with you all, the agreement we updated again once your grandfather reached his grand achievement. Every ship that leaves Torenomachi has to file a flightplan and passenger manifest that is immediately accessible to any Starside city with airspace. Everyone says we have no laws here, but we abide by this one and we always have because there are millions more of you than there are of us. Might have been easier to accomplish in the past, sneaking one of us past the dusk barrier, but not now. Your shogunates will send ships to intercept and…”

“No they won’t,” Matsumoto interrupted.

“Have the laws changed or are you just that arrogant?”

“No, they won’t even know we’re there.” Matsumoto looked up, still rubbing his sore leg. “Because we’re not going to be in anyone’s airspace. I designed the flightplan myself, and the one I’ve already filed with the aerodrome is fake.”

“That’s…”

“Illegal, yeah, but it’s worth the money I’ve spent paying off…” He dared to laugh. “Oh god, so many people…”

“You sure seem to delight in bragging about all the money at your disposal but then still want me to pay you credits I don’t have for Virgo.”

“That’s different…”

“I’m half-convinced you hate me, because why else would you keep stringing me along like this? What the hell do you even want from me?”

“I don’t hate you at all,” Matsumoto pleaded with him. “It’s quite the opposite…”

“Then give me Virgo, or at least let me buy it from you without bankrupting myself, and we’ll have no reason to quarrel ever again.”

“I don’t have it on me at the moment,” Matsumoto said, smiling weakly. “Besides, quarreling with you has been the highlight of living in this dark, ridiculous place.”

“Why don’t you just ask me out to dinner like a normal human being? I would have said yes.”

“That’s no fun.”

“You’d rather break the law?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.” Matsumoto leaned back against the bench, crossing his arms. “You’ve studied our history, Sho-san. Don’t you think you deserve a chance to see some of it up close? I have the money and the connections to give you that chance, just like you bragged about having the connections here in Torenomachi if I want to make some new business partners. So don’t think of it as breaking the law. Think of it as bending a few rules with me in order to enjoy a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

“Once in a lifetime because you and I will both end up in a Starside prison once we get caught or someone decides you didn’t pay him enough money and rats us out.”

“That won’t happen. Let me do this for you.”

Sho stared at the ground. “You don’t need to go overboard like this when I’m standing here trying to tell you that I like you. I don’t need to get dragged across the dusk barrier when I know how I feel. I don’t need to be impressed. You’re already enough to have my attention.”

Matsumoto stopped speaking, unable to bounce back quickly from Sho’s honest admission.

The fireworks went off overhead, briefly bathing the dome in their multicolored light. It was time for the auction.

“Sho.”

He looked up, stomach twisting in knots at the sound of his name. And only his name.

“Please come with me. I promise, I’ll keep you safe.”

Sho watched him sit there, still trying to recover from chasing after him. He needed this, whatever this trip was. Matsumoto needed it and not just because he wanted to impress Sho or fuck him or likely both.

I understand what it means to aim all of yourself at something impossible or foolish.

This was who he was, Sho realized. This trip was just one more confirmation that this was who he was, take it or leave it. Grand gestures, impulsive decisions. Chasing the impossible and refusing to compromise.

Sho spent most of his days alone in the vault of a museum and had spent all of his life here in The Great Empty, living in the dark. Collecting the objects and writings of those who’d come long before him, those who’d lived in the light. Learning their stories because it was the closest he’d ever get to the sun they revolved around. Imagining their lives and memorizing their adventures. Never bothering to have any adventures of his own. And here was Matsumoto Jun, bending every rule to give him that chance.

It was just as Aiba had said. He’d be an idiot to say no. A complete and utter idiot.

Sho let out a deep breath, saw that Matsumoto was watching him, grasping his cane. The fireworks overhead were reflected in the lenses of his spectacles. He was desperate. He was exhausted.

He was perfect.

“I suppose you’ve sunk a lot of money into this once-in-a-lifetime experience,” Sho muttered. “A lot of non-refundable commitments?”

“None of that matters.”

Sho sighed. Alright, Matsumoto Jun, he thought. Have it your way.

“According to our now mutual friends here at Sobu Hall, there’s nothing of interest to me in the auction this evening.”

Matsumoto’s voice was more hopeful. “I’m very sorry to hear that.”

“So it appears that the rest of my evening is now free. Coincidentally, so are the next few days on my calendar. My driver has my bag. I just need to send for him.”

He held out his hand, giving in to impulse.

“Shall we get going then?”

Matsumoto took it, letting Sho pull him up from the bench. They stood close, hands still clasped, both daring the other to take the next step now that they’d admitted in their own odd ways that this was something they both wanted. It was Matsumoto who let go first, looking away, looking elsewhere. Suddenly embarrassed. Maybe every elaborate, over-the-top thing he’d done to get to this moment was finally sinking in.

“You’ll never be so happy you’ve broken the law,” Matsumoto assured him, hiding once more behind his bravado. “Trust me.”

///

Jun wasn’t really a superstitious person, but he could have sworn that Sho’s driver with the wild hairstyle had given him the evil eye upon arriving with his employer’s suitcase. The driver had wanted to be the one to bring them to the aerodrome, but Jun had already arranged for transportation. Just one step out of dozens in his Sakurai Sho Visits Starside master plan, the plan that had controlled Jun’s entire existence for the last two weeks.

They were nearly there, sitting opposite each other in the hired aircab, listening to whatever shitty music was popular on this side of the world. A younger Matsumoto Jun might have decided that the flight could wait. He’d gotten a confession out of Sakurai already, and they hadn’t even left Torenomachi yet. For all that Sho had complained and argued with him, Jun was pretty sure that if he’d leaned in for a kiss that it would have been reciprocated. With the way Sho had been looking at him when the fireworks started going off around them, Jun was fairly certain anything he requested might have been reciprocated.

So why hadn’t he? Why hadn’t either of them, when they’d been together in the dark all but declaring to the entire garden that their feelings were mutual? For all their puff and bluster, they were both rather shy and clumsy at heart, weren’t they?

He grinned, wondering if he might find more courage in the light. The driver brought them to the aerodrome entrance gates, landing at an open spot. Sho got out first, checking his watch, humming a tune Jun didn’t know, clearly doing his best to not look suspicious, and it was actually rather cute. His nervousness was adorable, but it was all for nothing. Jun’s money would be erasing their departure entirely, scrubbing it from every camera in the aerodrome, but since Sho had already criticized him for bragging about his deep pockets back at Sobu Hall, he kept it to himself.

The aerodrome had been built on to Torenomachi a few decades earlier, looking like a giant boil protruding from someone’s skin. The city was one of the first adopters planet-wide of airships, embracing them for both personal transport and the importing of goods and foodstuffs. Compared to some of the aerodromes Jun had been in Starside, there were people and workers wandering the terminals at all hours, flights frequently departing into the darkness. Some were Starside visitors, the rest were Nightside workers. Those in town on business, visiting from another dome. Cleaning people and skyliner company employees starting the late shift.

With so many people preoccupied with where they needed to be, Jun expected that few would recall two businessmen heading for the private skyliner terminal just after midnight. Fortunately Sho had decided against those ridiculous red pants he’d worn the first time they’d met, clad this evening in a black blazer and slacks, a maroon dress shirt and black tie in accompaniment. He’d taken off the jacket in the aircab, had it draped over his arm as they navigated their way to the Supersonic.

They tugged their bags along behind him, saying nothing as people engaged in dozens of conversations all around them, as travelers walked, jogged, or ran through the terminal to catch their intended flight. Jun regretted chasing after Sho earlier, and once they were in the air, he seriously needed to give his leg a proper rest. It had been a split-second decision, refusing to let Sho walk away after everything he’d planned, everything he’d prepared. He was paying for it now.

He’d hired the minimum required crew for a ship of the Supersonic’s size, all people that he or his family had worked with before. They came from the same freelance company, one that specialized in privacy and discretion. This particular journey, however, was above and beyond that usual expectation of secrecy. They’d stay on the flight deck or in crew quarters, and Jun had been promised that interaction with him and his guest would be kept to a minimum. Not just to keep Sho protected, but for the crew’s protection as well. Knowingly transporting a Nightsider across the dusk barrier was a crime in every Starside city. Though it was Jun who’d see the longest prison sentence if they were caught, the crew had signed on and accepted the bonus pay Jun provided while understanding the risks to themselves as well.

They made it to berth 16, turning to exit the skyliner terminal and enter the hangar where the ship awaited. He stopped just inside the entrance, the doors whooshing shut behind Sho, ruffling his hair and shirt as he stared up at the large ship in awe. “You’ve been aboard a skyliner before,” Jun teased him. “It’s not that impressive.”

“I have, you’re right,” Sho admitted, voice unsteady. “I’ve just never boarded one that’s going where this one is going.”

“Well, according to the flightplan I filed, it’s going to the dome in Condepetie, so let’s get moving.”

They headed through the airlock where it was connected to the mid-deck. He walked slowly, giving Sho a chance to look around.

“It’s not going to be a short flight, since I’ve had to design a route that has to dodge around official Starside airspace. It’s about six hours to the dusk barrier where we’ll be crossing, so we should sleep first. From there it will be another eight to our destination.”

“You’re keeping it a secret until we get there?”

He smiled. “You’ll be glad I did.”

He gave Sho a quick tour of the kitchen, dining room, and the washroom that would be his to use before escorting him to one of the guest bedrooms. “There’s a remote control on the bedside table if you want to make any adjustments to the mattress or the lights in here, it’s all one wired system. The remote on this table is for the screen here. There’s a few seconds of lag time if you try to catch any shows or movies broadcast from Starside stations, so just wait for it to load.” He moved to the closet, sliding the door open. “Blankets, more pillows if you need them.” He gestured to the chest of drawers where Sho was standing. “The case on top there, those are for you.”

Sho looked over, grabbing it and opening it up. He held up the pair of tinted spectacles, eyebrows knitting in confusion.

“They’re for your protection. Since you’ve never been in the light before. Also, top drawer there’s lotion you’ll need to put on or you’ll get a sunburn. It won’t irritate your skin, it’s the same formula I’ve always used. Let’s see…” He moved over, tugging one of the drawers open. “I wasn’t sure about your hat size, so I got a few different ones. Oh, there’s a bathrobe in the closet too. I’ve got a few different types of soap in the washroom I showed you. Toothpaste and toothbrushes. A razor and shave cream if you forgot to pack any.” He was trying to remember everything he’d prepared. “I asked Ninomiya-san and Aiba-san what you like to eat and drink, so you’ll find that the kitchen is pretty well-stocked. I’d advise against alcohol, simply because it can hit you quicker in the sunlight, and I don’t want you to be ill…”

“This is very generous…”

Jun shook his head. “And then the curtains in here are the same blackout curtains I always had back home. Helps to mark the difference between daytime and nighttime. Plus, it will be really bright for you, regardless, and I’d hate for anything to…”

“Matsumoto-san?”

He turned, knowing that he was babbling at this point. “Yeah?”

Sho’s eyes were kind. “You should rest, too. I appreciate all the effort you’ve gone to here. I really do.”

He scratched the back of his head. “It’s no big deal…”

“You know that isn’t true.”

Their eyes met for a few moments before Jun looked away. “Okay,” he mumbled. “Well. I’ll come wake you before we cross. I won’t let you miss it.”

“Good night,” Sho said, not moving from where he was standing. “Rest well.”

“You too.”

Jun let out a heavy breath once he’d shut the door behind him and was back in the corridor. He headed for the flight deck, checking in with Captain Moriuchi and his crew. “Oi, Taka,” Jun called out, walking much more slowly and allowing himself to limp a little more now that Sho wasn’t around. He was going to need to start his extra painkiller regimen tonight. “When are we getting airborne, huh?”

He’d flown with the man several times, trusted him to see this ambitious journey through. He’d been in the Test Corps too, joining up a few years after Jun, before signing on with his freelancing flight company to make more money and take different types of risks altogether. Taka was running through the pre-flight checklist, holding it out for Jun’s inspection. “We’re all set here, boss. Fueled up and cleared for the earlier departure time. You sure have us zig-zagging our way around once we’re across the barrier.”

“Just wanted to keep it interesting for you all.”

Taka laughed. “Whatever you say. Weather looks nice and clear all the way out, but we might hit a storm on the way back, if we keep to the route.”

“We’ll keep to the route,” he decided, smiling. “He’s probably never flown through one before.”

“Thought you liked this guy?”

“Oh, I do.”

Taka leaned over, smacking him with his clipboard. “Go get some sleep. You look like shit.”

“So everyone keeps saying,” Jun complained, heading for the door. “Thanks for your hard work everyone. Good night, and if we crash, I’ll kill you all.”

A chorus of “good night”s followed him out to the corridor, and he headed for his master suite, popping a few painkillers and setting an alarm. Everything he’d done finally started to catch up with him, and Jun was out only minutes after his head hit the pillow.

The alarm going off hours later startled him, but he recovered as quickly as he could. He took a quick shower, dressing in casual clothes for the long day of travel ahead, zipping up a thick jacket. Returning to the flight deck, Taka assured him that they were on target timing-wise, that thus far nobody in Torenomachi had followed up with them about their Starside-bound trajectory. Jun was happy to hear that the money he’d spread around was so far well-spent. In thirty minutes, they’d reach the dusk barrier and would take the approach nice and slow.

Jun moved to the guest cabin, knocking sharply until he heard an irritated groan from Sho within. “Good morning,” Jun called through the door. “Get your ass up! You need to be up on deck with me in twenty minutes. There’s a jacket in the closet, be sure to wear it.”

He waited until he heard drawers open and close, knew that Sho was up and about. One of the hired crew soon passed him, nodding in acknowledgment as he carried a massive covered tray up the stairs to the covered observation room. They’d have breakfast inside after crossing over. Jun followed him upstairs, leg feeling a bit better now after a few hours of rest and after a few hundred milligrams of the really good stuff. He’d need to keep taking it the next few days to ensure he didn’t really hurt himself with his ambition. But with shorter distances to cover on board the Supersonic, at least he could go without his cane.

While the crewman headed inside, Jun remained out on deck, finding his way to the forward rail and slipping one of his security cuffs around his wrist, securing it in place and giving it a few tugs to test its strength. It was a long, thick bungee cord, designed to give him freedom of motion but to keep him from falling overboard. Taka already had them flying low, speed nice and slow. Jun needed Sho to be outside for this, needed him to feel and see the change, feel the wind in his face. Flying at the skyliner’s usual cruising altitude made it impossible to be out on deck. The wind combined with the ship’s velocity would blow them off the deck, bungee cord or no. Even with the warmth of the sun on Starside, it was still too cold that high in the air. To give Sho the experience he deserved, they’d cross the dusk barrier less than fifty meters off the ground. It would require steady hands, but Jun knew Taka could manage anything.

They were still on Nightside for a short time, but fortunately the deck outside was heated. They’d flown high during the night and it had iced over, but it was melted by now, the heating panels leaving things damp rather than soaking wet. It was still bitterly cold, especially up in the air with nothing to block it, but there were both lights and heat lamps to keep things manageable for the crossing, and they’d be inside again soon enough until it was warm enough to come back out.

He heard footsteps on the stairs a short time later, turning to see Sho had worn the Matsumoto Air Company branded windbreaker Jun had gotten for him, was zipping it up with an involuntary shiver as he realized that there were no Torenomachi climate controls here. The wind had picked up, Sho seeming a bit disoriented as his hair unsettled itself. “Good morning,” Sho called over to him, clinging to the top of the staircase railing.

“Morning. Well, come over here. It’s perfectly safe.”

Sho hesitated. “I looked out the window, but obviously I couldn’t see much. How…uh…how high up are we at the moment?”

“Two hundred meters by now. And very slowly descending. Hurry up, we’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“I’m fine over here,” Sho said, holding tight to the railing.

“This is the better spot.”

Sho’s voice cracked a little this time. “No…no thanks, this is perfect…”

“Sho-san…”

“I don’t want to look down.”

Jun chuckled softly, learning something brand new about his traveling companion. “Wait, are you afraid?”

Sho nodded.

“How can you be afraid of heights? Don’t you live in that huge tower? And on the top floor of it?”

Sho didn’t seem surprised that Jun had found that out, still clinging to the rail. “That’s…that’s not the same thing.”

“Okay,” Jun decided, holding up his left arm, pointing to his wrist. “You see this? There’s one for you too. You’re not going to fall over, and even if you did, we’re going slow enough that you won’t splatter on the ground. The cord will hold you. It’s perfectly safe. And besides, you’ll be looking ahead, looking forward, not down.”

“Please…do I really have to?”

Jun detached himself from the safety cuff, heading over to him. “I’ll be with you.” He held out his hand. “Come on, I’ll be right next to you.”

Sho’s hand was really sweaty when he allowed Jun to take it, and Jun did his best not to laugh. Everyone had their phobias, he supposed, gently leading Sho over to the railing. He held up one of the safety cuffs, letting Sho inspect it with shaky hands before taking it back, lifting Sho’s wrist and putting it on him. Sho’s breathing was rather heavy, and Jun did feel kind of bad for him. But he suspected that his fear would fade once they were out of the dark, and there was a brand new world to see. He tightened the cuff on Sho’s wrist, ensuring it was fully secured before putting his own back on.

They stood there at the rail together, and Jun pointed out into the distance. “You can already see it, we’re almost there.”

He heard the slightest squeak of Sho’s sneaker as he slid just a bit closer to him, the sleeves of their jackets brushing. “That orange light…?”

Jun nodded. “It’s only a few miles across at its widest point. The band on the other side of the planet is about the same. I’ve been to both.”

“The settlers here called it a dusk barrier from the start, although it’s not accurate,” Sho explained. “Color-wise, light-wise, it’s closer to what back on Earth would have been called the civil twilight, the time just after sunset when light was still visible in the sky. Dusk came after, when it was already darker. It was a mathematical thing, an astronomical thing based on when the sun there passed a specific point below the horizon.”

“Thank you, professor,” Jun teased. He knew this very well, or he’d never have received a piloting license, but if it eased Sho’s anxiety to ramble on about terminology, then he’d let him do it. “The light will arrive fairly quickly once we’re across, so we’ll go inside for breakfast. The glass is treated so the brightness won’t be too harsh, but since you’re not used to it, I’ve got a pair of spectacles for you there too, if you left them in your room.”

“Oh…” Sho suddenly gasped as they drew even closer, as a few clouds drifted away, the beautiful pink and orange colors on the horizon lying just ahead as they left The Great Empty behind. It was only a minute or two away now.

He leaned over, linking his arm through Sho’s. “Enjoy it, okay? I’ve got you. You’re safe.”

Jun could feel the ship sink just a bit lower, could feel her slow down. He’d plotted this route perfectly. They were crossing through the Iifa Valley, the Mist Hills to both the north and south, the Iifa River that flowed from Starside through the barrier into Nightside a thick ribbon of light below and ahead. The color of the skies here at the dusk barrier made the river and the forested hills that surrounded it glow in a pinkish gold. The lands all along the dusk barrier were largely marked off for preservation, one of the only good things the Empire had done and the shogunates had upheld. This was land that was untouched and would remain so.

It was beautiful beyond words. Jun had crossed over the barrier dozens of times, so many times he’d forgotten how truly lovely it was, this narrow band that separated the planet into always light and always dark. He turned, looking away from the Iifa Valley to watch Sakurai Sho experience it all for the first time.

He was squinting already, against the wind and against the change in light, but Sho refused to look away. His grip on the railing was tight, but his eyes were darting in every direction. The river, the hills, the sky. They weren’t even halfway through when Jun saw tears form in his eyes, saw the unguarded, honest smile spread across his face. Jun had only seen Sho in the lights of Torenomachi, every single one of them artificial. Seeing him now, the way his skin seemed to glow the same as the river valley below, the way the light caught in his hair, Jun wished he’d done this all differently from the start. The auction, Virgo, all of it. He wanted to see that smile every day. He never wanted to cause Sho a moment of unhappiness again.

All too quickly the light started to grow stronger, and Jun could feel the skyliner start to rise again as they emerged from the dusk barrier and into Starside. They were flying against the current, and they needed to fly higher to make up for it. Jun finally looked away, removing the cuff from his wrist. “I know it’s your first time in the light, but it’s safer for you inside. I’ve had breakfast prepared for us.”

“Please…” Sho asked, fingers leaving the rail to take hold of his wrist. “Just another minute?”

Jun nodded. “Okay then. One more minute.”

They stood there together at the railing, Sho’s hand still around his wrist, as they emerged into the sunlight.

///

.libra.
the scales

///

For Sho’s entire life, heights had bothered him. And yet Jun had nearly had to drag him away from the railing, away from the light and into the covered half of the Supersonic’s upper deck. “Put these on,” Jun had demanded, shaking the spectacles case at him. “And keep them on.”

As part of Torenomachi and Nightside’s agreement with the Empire long ago, they’d agreed to never leave the dark. Even the dusk barrier had been a forbidden place Sho had seen only in photographs, in media filmed on location. No photo or even a video could compare to standing there outside in the cold air, wind starting to dry the tears in his eyes almost as soon as they formed, crossing to a world that was entirely new, entirely foreign. To say he was feeling overwhelmed was a bit of an understatement.

And yet, their trip together was still just starting, wasn’t it? The night before, Jun had said that it would be another eight hours to their true destination after crossing the barrier. Sho wasn’t sure anything here could top what he’d already experienced, but he was eager to be proven wrong. Last night Jun had been bragging about all the money and effort he’d spent on planning this forbidden excursion. For all his concerns about breaking the law, Sho had only needed to see the glow of the Iifa River Valley to decide that he was fine with being a criminal now.

As they had their breakfast together, they spoke very little. Sho had a bite here and there only to lean back against the cushions of Jun’s sofa, tinted spectacles on as he looked up through the observation glass and into sunlight. Honest to goodness real sunlight. Even with the specs on, even though the skyliner glass was treated with some sort of protective coating, it still hurt, looking up into the full force of it.

He heard Jun clear his throat again, reminding Sho that staring directly into the sunlight would cause him permanent damage. Regretfully, Sho looked away, blinking and seeing spots. It was a bit of a struggle to readjust to the light level within the cabin, hearing Jun snicker a little as he struggled to lift his chopsticks and continue eating. When their meal was finished, Jun informed him it wouldn’t be safe to be out on deck until they were closer to their landing time.

“I still need to confirm a few things, so I’ll be in my cabin if you need anything,” he explained, getting up from his seat, pushing his own specs up the bridge of his nose. “Rest up today, because there will be some hiking involved once we’re on the ground. We can’t land as close as I’d prefer.”

Sho perked up. “Hiking?” He’d assumed Jun was somehow sneaking him into a Starside city, likely one without an aerodrome or airspace to monitor, given how proud he seemed of all his planning and lawbreaking. Wherever they were going, there’d be no aircabs or z-carriages to whisk them away. Maybe they weren’t going to a city after all. An archaeological dig or a preserved parkland, perhaps? What could it be?

“You’re welcome to stay in here,” Jun told him, “but no matter how tempting it is, don’t look directly at the sun, okay? Leave the specs on. Even with the tinting in here and on the other windows, you better put on that lotion I gave you too, just to be on the safe side…”

He gave Jun a condescending salute. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

Jun made an annoyed face. “Speaking of royalty, what’s that phrase you weirdos use? Getting kissed by Queen Garnet? Ignore me if you want, Sakurai, but you’ll definitely get sucker punched by Queen Garnet. I’m not going to feel bad for you when you end up looking like a lobster.”

He smiled. “I’ll do it, I’ll do it. Promise.”

Jun headed for the stairs back down to the middle deck, his steps slow but steady enough without his cane. Sho wondered how tough a hike might be for him.

“Matsumoto-san…” Jun paused, looking back at him. “Thank you. For breakfast. And for everything with the dusk barrier…it was perfect.”

“You’re welcome.”

Left to his own devices, Sho eventually headed downstairs for a short nap, waking again for a shower and a shave. He put on the lotion just as advised, looking for every spot of exposed skin now that he’d taken off the jacket Jun had given him. He moved to the window in his guest room, sliding the blackout curtains aside just a sliver. It was so bright, he still found it incredible to experience it right outside his window.

They were much higher off the ground now, the skyliner smoothly flying over fluffy white clouds. Certainly there were clouds on Nightside, clouds that passed over the dome, some even releasing rain from time to time, most of that water sucked away in seconds and into Torenomachi’s recyclers to be given a new purpose within the city water supply. Sho had flown from one dome to another several times, but nothing could compare to this calm, flying in the light, clouds stretching off as far as he could see. He lifted the spectacles the slightest bit, laughing at how quickly the brightness forced him to put them back on.

For the first time in his life, Sho really understood why it was so difficult for Starsiders to come to Torenomachi and the other domes of The Great Empty. No candle, no lantern, no lamp was ever going to be on par with the natural light that poured down on their lands here, the star overhead that Sho had always known was here but had never experienced. He understood why it bothered Jun to live in Torenomachi against his will. Sho was used to it, Sho had known Torenomachi’s darkness and artificial lights his entire life. Jun, like most Starsiders, had only ever come to Nightside on a whim, for a bit of fun.

Coming from this light, feeling the warmth of it even through a thick layer of treated glass, Sho realized how distressing it would be to give it up and live in the darkness. And he realized, too, how courageous his ancestors must have been. Their hatred of the Empire, their commitment to Torenomachi…somehow they’d found the strength to walk willingly across the dusk barrier. They’d found the strength to build their city, to turn away from all of this beautiful light. To exchange that warmth for their freedom. Sho lived a life of comfort, but he was only able to do that because of what his ancestors, his family, had sacrificed. He doubted that Jun had any of that in mind when planning this excursion, but Sho was certain this experience would stay with him for a long time.

He eventually made his way back to the upper deck under the glass hours later, lying on the floor on his back with his eyes shut and arms outstretched, simply enjoying the warmth of the sunlight. If this was the only visit to Starside that he’d ever have, he had to enjoy it fully. Even hearing footsteps on the stairs, he didn’t budge.

“You remind me of this cat my sister had when we were little,” Jun said, coming to stand nearby, looking down. “Momo-chan always liked to go outside and lie out on the patio just like this, soaking it all in. Cat got mad because we kept the curtains closed in the house at night like normal people. She’d yowl until somebody let her out.”

“Have I turned into a lobster yet?”

“Nope, which means you listened to me properly.”

“I did.”

“We’re about forty-five minutes out,” Jun explained. “I’ve got a backpack for you, will make it easier to carry things to our campsite.”

He opened his eyes, looking up through the tinted lenses. “Campsite?”

“I’m not one for the great outdoors. We’re not going to be in tents or anything, but it’s still a bit primitive. There’s a small structure we’ll use for the night. We’ll spend a few hours at our destination, and then we’ll return there this evening, spend the night. Then we’ll have to get back to the Supersonic to return to Torenomachi. Wish we could stay longer, but it’s too risky.”

“I understand,” Sho said, unable to keep the disappointment from his voice.

“When we land, we’ll meet up with the guide I’ve hired who will bring us where we need to go and then come fetch us in the morning. As for you, Sho-san…hat, lotion, specs. And no excuses. You’re going to be out in the sunlight directly, and there aren’t any trees. The guide will mostly be carrying water for us.”

Sho sat up, nodding. Still wondering just where the hell they were going. “If we need a guide, I’m assuming we aren’t visiting a city.”

Jun shook his head. “Nope, not a city.”

“And somewhere that requires a hike, meaning no other transportation is allowed. So my guess is a shogunate preserve, of which you have at least three dozen on this continent.”

“Backpack’s on your bed downstairs, get it sorted out and leave it outside the door. I’ll meet you on the observation deck, you’ll want to be there for the approach.” Jun gave him a little nudge with his foot. “Trust me…if you think the dusk barrier was impressive…”

Sho, still wrapping his head around all of the light he’d experienced that day, stumbled down to his room in a bit of a daze. He knew there were canyons here, massive freshwater lakes deep within Starside territory. It had to be a nature preserve, right? He packed quickly, and unlike earlier that day where he’d gone up to the open deck with trepidation, he now took the steps two at a time, finding Jun waiting for him at the railing again.

The ship was already coming down from the clouds, and almost as though Jun had timed the approach perfectly, the skies cleared and revealed what Sho had never in his life expected to see.

He stumbled as soon as he got close, Jun keeping him from falling, laughing at him as he made it to the railing. He couldn’t speak, feeling Jun attach the security cuff to his arm once more. Jun had an arm around him to keep him safe and steady, his body warm. “We have to stay back this far if we’re flying low like this, but I’m having my pilot circle around a few times before we land. Enjoy.”

This was no nature preserve, no forests or geological wonders or roaming animals. Only gently rolling fields, tall grasses blowing in the wind. Empty for miles and miles around, save for what remained. In the history books published on Nightside, Sho had learned that this open expanse had been designated as Site Alpha for decades before it had even been used. It was named that by the representatives from Earth who had come before the settlers, planning for where it was best for those massive incoming ships to go. There was a Site Beta for Garnet South, but nothing of that site had been noted in any records Sho had access to. Site Alpha, however, was still here. Largely unchanged for almost a millennium.

Most everyone else knew it as the Ship Graveyard.

The first ships had landed here more than nine hundred years ago. It was a large, open plain - suitable for landing but not suitable for long-term habitation. That was further north, in the richer soils and tree-filled lands that would become Orunitia and the other first settlements. The ships that arrived from Earth had been enormous, each the size of Torenomachi’s dome. They’d come to this planet on a one-way trip, had landed here to let the passengers and supplies out. And here those ships had stayed. For at least the first century after their arrival, the settlers on this new planet took parts and components, things they could carry and things they could haul away, taking anything they could salvage to construct their settlements in the north. But some things were too heavy to transport.

The hulls of the ships from Earth had been built to withstand interstellar travel. No farmer’s tool was going to make a dent in them. And so they’d been left here, the carcasses of those ships that had landed over the course of several years, all of the ships sent from Japan for settlement on the northern continent. To the people of Starside, there was little point in ever coming back here. There was limited value to the land itself at Site Alpha. Poor soil for farming, no sources of fresh water to sustain a population. Much like The Great Empty had been before the domes, there had been no point in trying to settle the area. The Ship Graveyard was just that, a graveyard. A large monument to a time long before, to a planet they’d left behind, to a past that didn’t matter when they’d created a new way of living here.

In the hours Sho had spent trying to figure out where Jun had decided to bring him, he’d never even considered it. The land was owned by one shogunate or another, but there was no infrastructure here. No roads, only the ruts from centuries-gone wagon wheels from the last few trips out here to claim anything else they could bring back to their settlements. Land that was simply abandoned. Largely forgotten. Sho had never been more excited to be somewhere in his entire life.

Just as Jun said, the Supersonic slowly circled the fields, granting Sho a view from every conceivable angle. The dark hulls of the enormous ships had mostly been picked clean. Jagged, broken bits of metal thrusting upward from the grassland and into the sky. Many of those artificial peaks had plants already grown over them, the abandoned metal rotting and baking under nearly a thousand years of unending sunlight.

“How…” Sho muttered, “how did you manage this?”

He knew the answer was money, so Jun didn’t respond, only letting his hand run down Sho’s forearm slowly, gently undoing the cuff. “Come on, we need to be inside for the landing. Safety first.”

He followed Jun down to the middle deck, bracing themselves with some metal handles attached to the interior bulkheads as the Supersonic gradually landed, a gentle rumble confirming that they’d once again made contact with the ground. “Be right back,” Jun said, moving to the flight deck and shutting the door behind him.

It was a few minutes before Jun returned, disappearing briefly into his master suite and returning with a hat of his own and two pairs of hiking poles. He held out a pair for Sho. “The ground is a little uneven. Our overnight accommodation is about an hour from here, then another thirty or forty minutes to the ridge. It’s not safe to try and board any of the ships here. Too much scattered metal, too much risk of something breaking off and crushing you to death. But we’ll be watching the whole valley from the best vantage point.”

Sho accepted the hiking poles, following Jun to the airlock. The combination of sunlight and humidity on the ground was enough to have him sweating after only a few minutes’ walk from the Supersonic. The Ship Graveyard area, even at this time of the year, was scorching. Sho felt like he’d stepped into a sauna. No wonder they’d never settled here permanently - this was near the southernmost edge of the northern continent, the closest to the equator they could get without being in the ocean. He looked off into the distance, could see an almost shimmering effect against some of the old metal as the sunlight hit it, like a mirage as the curved, empty shells of the old ships reached into the sky like fingers or paws.

A man in light-colored clothing and a wide-brimmed hat was approaching on foot, had probably been waiting at a distance for the Supersonic to land. He too wore tinted spectacles, a heavy pack on his back. “Helloooooooo!” came a shout from across the field. “There you are, Matsumoto!!!!!”

Jun was putting lotion on his face, shaking his head in irritation. “Breaking dozens of laws and he’s out here screaming my name.”

“Our guide?” Sho asked, adjusting his hat, suddenly very grateful for it. The sun was even more intense here on the ground without any shade to lessen its impact.

“Unfortunately, the best one available.”

The man approached. He seemed close to them in age, maybe a little older, with a noisy voice and an even noisier personality. He wrapped Jun in a big hug as soon as he was in range. In reply, Jun gave him a little swat in the leg with one of his hiking poles. “You never change, do you?” their guide said, letting out a bark of laughter as he rubbed his leg.

Jun turned, looking at Sho apologetically. “This walking loudspeaker is Yoshimura.”

“Sakurai Sho, nice to meet you.”

Yoshimura came over, shaking Sho’s hand vigorously. “Don’t hear from somebody in over a year and then I get the call. ‘Oi Yoshimura,’ he says. Never Yoshimura-san, or perhaps Yoshimura-sama after everything I’ve done for this guy. ‘Oi Yoshimura, you’re getting me and my buddy into the Graveyard,’ he says, like it’s so easy to do…”

Jun hoisted his pack. “Well, shall we be off?”

“Hey!” Yoshimura protested, removing his hat and fanning himself with it. “I haven’t finished my introduction…”

“Nobody cares about your introduction,” Jun remarked, clearly this teasing relationship between them long-practiced.

Sho laughed. “Come on, I’ll listen.”

“Thank you very kindly, Sakurai-san. Yoshimura Takashi, at your service. My family founded the illustrious Yoshimura Outdoor Gear Company.” Yoshimura gestured reverently to the skies with his hat, making Sho smile. “Your partners in camping, fishing, hiking…certainly our goods are sold in the stores of Torenomachi as well, yes? You can at least play at camping under your domes, right? Hmm. Ah. Well. For over one hundred years, Starside lovers of the great outdoors have turned to us…”

“At least until they didn’t. You had some illustriously plummeting market share,” Jun interrupted, “until I got you connected with our bank.”

Yoshimura’s scowl was still friendly. “We merely repositioned our brand after a few tough years, and we already had solid connections with Oguri Bank, so stop exaggerating. Sakurai-san, listen, your traveling companion and I go back at least ten years, and he actually likes me very much. He bought three of his best racing ships from me, won the Night and Day with one of my babies and everything. Of course all he really seems to care about today is the fact that I am the nephew of Shogun Yoshimura Yusuke, who oversees this territory.”

“The Night and Day?” Sho asked, and Jun gave Yoshimura another swat in the leg.

“Oh right,” Yoshimura grumbled, seeming to remember something. “Forget I mentioned those transactions. The only transaction that matters is the one that hit my bank account just last night. Thank you very much.”

“You’re welcome very much,” Jun snitted. “Now can we get a move-on? Sakurai-san is not used to this weather. Or any weather quite frankly. We need to get into some of the shade from the ships.”

“Right, right. Anyhow, I’ve been out here nearly a week now scouting around, I’ve got it all sorted and plenty of ideas to take back to the company, too,” Yoshimura said. “Onward, gentlemen.”

Night and Day, Sho wondered. Racing ships? Wouldn’t the Matsumoto Air Company’s racing ships be supplied in-house? Jun had overseen that division for years, why would they need to buy a ship from someone else?

Sho had a sip of water, shaking the thoughts away, before the three of them got moving. Luckily the beginning of the route was mostly flat, and Yoshimura admitted he’d been back and forth over their walking path the last few days to try and flatten the grass. He was a chatty guy, but Sho supposed that if he’d been out here alone with only old spaceships for company for nearly a week, he’d be thrilled to see another human again too. It was hot, but as they continued to walk, the massive hulls of the long-abandoned ships drew closer, the sunlight hitting many of them in a way that cast long shadows over parts of their walking path, obscuring the full force of the sun.

Yoshimura led the way with Jun in the middle. Sho watched him carefully, the tight grip he had on the hiking poles as he eased his way over rocks and pebbles. Even this far from the hollowed-out ship carcasses, there were scattered metal bits everywhere in the grass, long forgotten parts and components that had likely fallen out of packs or off of wagons en route to the northern settlements. It was still dangerous, several fall hazards to avoid here and there, especially for someone with the type of injuries Jun had.

It was difficult not to look up, to take in the sights of the massive ships, but he had to keep his focus mostly ahead or downward to keep from tripping and falling himself. Gradually the path sloped upward, Yoshimura leading them as best he could along the path he’d tried preparing for them. They rested a few times, drinking plenty of water. Again and again, Jun approached him during these breaks, coming close and making Sho’s heart beat quicker. Jun lowered his own tinted spectacles, examining Sho’s face and arms, looking for any hints of redness. Sho’s skin was already slick and greasy from the protective lotion. He didn’t think adding more was going to do anything to help, but Jun’s concern for him warmed him nearly as much as the sun far overhead.

They came around a curve in the path, revealing an old metal structure that had been cobbled together from one of the ships. “So this must be our campsite?” Sho called out.

Yoshimura nodded, leading them slightly off the path. “Used to be a bunch of these out here, these little shelters that scavengers used ages ago. They’d come grab things from the ships until there was nothing worth risking life and limb to pull from them anymore. Most collapsed after decades of sitting out here baking in the sun, but luckily this one’s still in pretty good shape.” One of the doorways from a ship had been repurposed, though there was no power out here. Sho stood back, watching as Yoshimura lifted a pole from the ground, physically forcing the door open. Inside was a one room cabin of sorts, the walls metal and fused from various disparate parts to form a solid structure that would keep the light out.

“I’ve got a camp light in here, futons from our Super Comfort line…” Yoshimura’s eyes were nervous when he looked over. “But obviously no running water out here. I’ve got the camp toilet around back so you don’t have to shit where you sleep. As you said, it’s just the one night though.”

Jun nodded. “We’ll manage. Let’s drop off the things we don’t need and continue on.”

Sho emptied his pack of everything but water, a few snacks, and the lotion. He appreciated the quick break, although he had only counted the two futons inside the shelter. It appeared that Yoshimura-san would not be spending the night here with them. It meant that he and Jun would be alone until it was time to head back to the Supersonic.

Sho tried not to think too deeply about that, hoisting his pack again and drinking some more water. They set out once more, heading to their observation point. It had no name, Yoshimura explained, since few people even bothered to come down to this area. His uncle, the shogun, had marked the territory as off limits ages ago, if only because of how dangerous the empty ships might be, how fragile they might be after years of sun exposure.

“Usually calling something off limits will bring the risk takers in the hundreds,” Yoshimura said, leading them uphill once again. “But quite frankly, nobody seems to give a shit about the graveyard. It’s not like it’s bandit territory or anything. No point in bandits coming to set up a camp when they’d have nobody to steal from.”

“They can’t make any money off the land, no strategic importance in battle. Can’t flush a toilet or take a shower. Thankfully the graveyard stays a graveyard,” Jun said, arms shaking a little as the path grew a little steeper and he had to use more leg muscle power to get himself up the hill. But still he pushed forward, working hard to keep pace behind Yoshimura, ignoring any pain he might be in to reach their destination. All because he wanted Sho to come to Starside.

Yoshimura stopped again just before rounding another curve. “It’s the best from the top of this hill,” he said. “You’re a little exposed out here, but you won’t get a better view than this. I’ve cleared a spot in the grass already. Sakurai-san, why don’t you come up and go first?”

Jun turned back, smiling at him, even though his face was red from exertion in the heat, the exertion he was putting in all for Sho. “Go on, go have a look.”

Sho moved, breathing a bit heavily as he took the last few steps upward, using the poles to support his weight as he finally crested the hill.

The view from the air had been incredible, had given him a sense of just how many ships had brought them here, how much sheer hardware had been required to bring their ancestors across the galaxy to their new life. But now he could see the details up close. The gaping, cavernous places in the rear of the hull where engines had once lived, burning fuel for months to get them here from Earth. The portholes where there’d once been glass, allowing the passengers to look out into the emptiness of space. From here, from this height, Sho was eye to eye with the flight decks of at least a dozen ships, stretching off into the distance in a haphazard line.

This was history. This was their shared history, before there was a Starside or a Nightside, before an Empire and the dome, before the shogunates. The metallic hulls before him, as far as he could see, all these scattered parts and pieces. These materials were older than civilization here. These materials had been manufactured on a planet millions of miles away, the land of all of their ancestors. Japan, a land that had given them their language, their identity. There was something so incredible about that, so amazing about that, that he stabbed the poles into the soil beside him, setting his pack down. Sho could only sink to his knees, wondering how a place like this could have no value to the people here.

How could anyone think something like that when everything that defined them, everything they’d come from, was right here? The vessels that had saved them from a dying world, enabling them to start anew. Here it was, everything that was left from that miracle, sinking into the soil under their own weight, grass and plants and life itself interwoven among the metal.

He could feel Jun approach, felt his hand patting his head through the hat covering his sweaty hair. Sho let his tears of gratitude fall, wishing he could share this with his parents. With his grandfather. With the entire Sakurai line, with the family that had cobbled together everything they could for centuries to keep knowledge and their history on this planet alive. But he knew he couldn’t do that. He knew he couldn’t share it. These views were only for him.

Jun had only been able to give him these few hours here, had spent more money to achieve it than Sho wanted to know. All so Sho could be here now, looking out at these fields. There was nothing in the Garnetian Museum’s vault that could compare to this. Not even the Zodiac coins could.

He took the tinted spectacles off, needing this, needing to see how they looked, just as they were.

“Sho, don’t…” Jun chided him softly.

But he held up a hand, shaking his head. “Don’t worry about me. It’s fine, if only for a minute.”

“I’ll come back at the time you requested in the morning,” Yoshimura eventually called out, voice kind. “Told ya it was a good view! Enjoy!”

Their guide departed to enjoy a more comfortable night aboard the Supersonic. Jun opened his pack, bringing out a small tarp and finding some poles that Yoshimura had already left here for them a while back. “Come on,” Jun said quietly. “If you’re going to keep staring without your specs on, I’ll need your help with this.”

Together they constructed a small shelter to block out the harshest of the sun’s rays. Jun set a blanket down and had a seat under the tarp, stretching out his left leg, rubbing it as he had when it was sore before. Sho couldn’t find anything to say, sitting down heavily at his side, looking out across the open valley, unable to take his eyes away no matter how bright it remained. Time passed and the sunlight grew no less severe, no less strong. Sho had grown up knowing only darkness. And here, Jun had grown up knowing only light.

They drank their water, they had their snacks. Sho diligently obeyed when Jun threw the lotion bottle at him, forcing him to apply it yet again. They took in the view. Aside from his own and Jun’s breathing beside him, Sho had never known quiet like this before. Had never known peace like this before.

“Why?” Sho eventually asked, staring straight ahead, trying to burn every inch of the view before him into his memory.

Jun’s response was only a soft laugh, shy and gentle. Saying it without words.

///

Though the sun overhead gave little indication that time had passed, the exhaustion Jun eventually felt helped inform him that it was time to rest. He looked over, wishing he’d been able to give Sho more time. “You won’t believe me,” he said quietly, “but it’s nearly midnight.”

Sho nodded. “Will we be able to look again in the morning? I’d like to take some photos. I left my camera at our shelter though.”

“I’ve got Yoshimura taking us back on a slightly different route. We’ll come here again, then double back toward the ship. You’ll get shots of these things from every conceivable angle.” Jun reached for the hiking poles, slowly getting back to his feet. His leg was killing him, and the hike back tomorrow wouldn’t be much easier. “Let’s head back down for now.”

Together they took down the tarp, Sho insisting on carrying the poles back down by himself. They couldn’t leave a trace of their visit behind. It took a few minutes to get back into the rhythm, and Jun bit the inside of his cheek, the hike back down the hill much harder on his knee and hip than he expected. He was never so happy to see such pathetic accommodations when the shelter came back into view. He had an appointment with a few hundred more milligrams of his pain pills.

Thankfully Yoshimura had left the shelter door open. The metal interior wasn’t much of a lure for the insects in the area, and Jun went ahead inside, getting the light on. It was a tighter fit than he’d anticipated, mostly room for their futons, the camp light, and their bags. He’d been so focused on getting Sho to the top of the hill that he’d barely paid attention when they’d first arrived. The ceiling was high enough that he could stand up without having to hunch over, but it was still on the claustrophobic side.

Sho seemed to come to this realization too, hovering in the doorway as Jun was easing his pack off of his back. “What time will Yoshimura-san be returning?”

“Sometime after 7:00. We’ll be able to rest better on the Supersonic on the way home, so hopefully this won’t be too unpleasant.”

Sho nodded. “I need to use the…I’ll be back in a moment.”

He headed around the shelter for the toilet, leaving Jun alone. He eased himself down to the futon, finding it was indeed quite comfortable. Unzipping his bag, he downed his pills and some water, wishing they’d kick in quickly or he wouldn’t be able to sleep. The doctors and physical therapists had told him it would be at least another year or two before the titanium bones and joints would be as settled as much as they’d ever be, the rest of his body finally accustomed to their foreign presence within him. The pain would lessen, so long as he avoided doing activities like what he’d done today and would do again tomorrow. Still, Jun decided, it had all been worth it.

Taking advantage of Sho’s absence, knowing that it was intentional, Jun pulled a pair of more comfortable pants and a t-shirt for sleeping from his bag. By the time Sho returned, he was already changed, wiping the sweat from his face, neck, and arms with a disposable wet cloth. He tossed the package onto Sho’s futon. “We’ll be able to shower properly back on the Supersonic, but you can use those for now.”

“I’ll be closing the door then,” Sho announced, putting all his weight into sealing them inside and removing the tinted specs from his eyes once the sun was gone. There were vents here and there to bring fresh air in without bringing the sunlight along with it, but Jun would be far happier come morning when he could get out of this tight little space.

Jun turned onto his side to give Sho privacy, hearing him dig around in his own bag for a change of clothes. But eventually Sho’s preparations were complete, and things became a little awkward once more.

“Would you prefer to keep the camp light on?” Sho asked him.

“That’s up to you,” he replied.

“I’ll put it on the lowest setting, just in case one of us has to get up during the night.”

Jun was used to sleeping with blackout curtains, but after a few months of Torenomachi living, he’d usually slept with at least one light on somewhere in his hotel room. He was grateful for Sho’s suggestion, the shelter soon plunging into darkness save for the faint glow in the corner. Jun listened as Sho got under the covers, only an arm’s length away.

He tried to relax, tried to listen to Sho’s breaths beside him. But even with the meds inside him now, his leg chose the most inappropriate time to spasm.

“Fuck,” he hissed, turning from his side and onto his back.

“What’s wrong?” Sho asked, covers rustling as he sat up. “Are you alright?”

He groaned, feeling it mostly in his hip and thigh, sharp like a knife. He kneaded against his leg with his fist to try and stop it, but he’d really earned this one today. “It’s…it’s fine…”

“You don’t sound or look fine,” Sho said quietly. “Can I do anything to help?”

“No, no,” Jun insisted, eyes shut as he tried and failed to ignore the pain. “I took something for it, they’ll eventually kick in…”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s nothing.”

“I disagree with you.” He opened his eyes, looking over and seeing Sho was still sitting up beside him, looking over in the faint light, eyes full of concern that made Jun feel all the more upset. “You shouldn’t have forced yourself, just for this. You could have stayed back and let me and Yoshimura-san deal with the last part of the trail. It was much steeper than it looked.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“You chased after me in the gardens and then did this strenuous hike a day later.”

“It was worth it.” Another muscle spasm hit and he bit his lip hard enough to draw blood, groaning in frustration. “It was worth it, okay?”

“It’s none of my business, I know that, but you’re clearly in a lot of pain right now. You’re stubborn enough to run and hike on that leg, but why don’t you take it easy tomorrow?”

“I can take it easy back in Torenomachi.” He could feel tears threatening in the corners of his eyes. “I’m not looking for pity or sympathy.”

“Then I won’t offer either one.” Sho was quiet for a few moments before finally asking the question Jun had been waiting for him to ask for weeks now. He was surprised how long he’d been able to keep it to himself. Just one more reason why Jun liked him. “If you want to talk about it, though…whatever you’re going through. I just want you to know that I will listen.”

Jun wanted to talk about it, almost as much as he didn’t want to. Those feelings warred inside him all the time, after a year of so few people knowing what had happened to him. His family forcing him to hide what had happened, to hide how his entire life was changed for good. He wiped his eyes, looking over to see Sho still wouldn’t look away. Maybe talking would be a good distraction.

“When I told you before that this trip wouldn’t be the first time I’ve broken the law, I wasn’t lying,” he admitted, staring up toward the ceiling of their structure, anything to avoid looking at Sho’s face while he began to explain it, all of it.

He spoke and Sho listened, the words nearly bursting from him. He started back, way back, talking about the Test Corps and how his parents had resented his choice to pursue his risky passions until they were able to arrange his “promotion” to the Racing Division, doing everything in their power to get him out of the cockpit. If they’d just left him alone, left him where he was, maybe he wouldn’t have gone underground, looking for his thrills elsewhere. He explained how he split himself in two, if only so he could both please them and please himself.

He was a company man, everything that was expected of him as yet another Matsumoto in the family business. He worked hard, took care of his team, built the Racing Division into a profit maker. But then there was the other part of himself, the part his family and most of his friends never got to see. The Jun who snuck around, paid people off, entering race after illegal race, just for the challenge. Just for the rush of it. What had he been aiming for, he wondered aloud as he babbled at Sho. To be the fastest? To be the best? Because it was something more than loving to fly.

All those years flying prototypes had gotten him addicted to the possibility that something might go wrong. That he could either save himself or fail in the attempt. With the illegal racing, with the Night and Day there was always the chance that something might go wrong with his ship. The added thrill, the added danger, was the threat of the shogunate finding them. Every race, every flight might be the last one. Didn’t he owe it to himself to treat every race like it was the most important flight he’d ever undertake?

The painkillers did eventually kick in, letting him sit up instead of lying there. He could feel the spasming start to subside, but he couldn’t stop talking. He couldn’t stop, he had to get all of it out after being silenced for so long. He told Sho about the Night and Day, about his prior victories and how somehow they still weren’t enough, leading him to enter the race one more time. Maybe that’s why he made the stupid choices he did when developing his flightplan, thinking only of skimming a few hours, a few minutes, maybe just a few seconds off of his previous time. Thinking only of how he could feel that high again, not the high of victory but the high of surpassing what he’d done before.

“I was never racing against other people,” Jun realized, admitting it out loud, hands trembling. “I never was. I was always racing against myself. If I couldn’t do better, if I couldn’t top what I’d pulled off before, what was the point of doing it?”

He told Sho about the crash. He told Sho about the pain, knowing his leg was crushed under the equipment. Feeling every part of him that was broken and trapped, each minute stuck there feeling more like an hour. He told Sho how it felt when he could feel his air running out, how in order to keep breathing he had to let in the Nightside air. The real Nightside air. How cold it was, how fucking cold it was. Sitting there in so much pain, tasting blood in his mouth, pissing in his flightsuit because he couldn’t free himself. Hour after hour after hour, alone in the dark, realizing as his teeth chattered and his breaths grew ragged that he was probably going to die there, so far from home and so far from the light. He’d die slowly, painfully, without anyone else around.

He’d never believed in anything, not really, only himself and what he was capable of doing. Only looking forward to the next time he’d be able to cheat the system, cheat death. He’d finally run out of luck, stuck in that small cockpit, crying for the friends he’d never see again, for his parents, for the years he would have still had if he wasn’t so fucking stupid. He would die there, alone, and nobody would know what his final moments had been like. The regret, the fury, the terror. At some point during his recollections, he could feel Sho shift closer, nearly sitting on the futon with him, reminding him that he wasn’t in that cockpit now, wasn’t alone.

He hadn’t been conscious when they’d found him, so he hadn’t had to feel the release in pressure as they extracted him and his shattered leg from the cockpit. The flight back, they’d kept him knocked out too. If he thought he’d been miserable, alone in the cockpit waiting for death, that didn’t compare to the days and months ahead. Surgery after surgery, looking down at his body, looking down at the stitches and the staples and eventually the scars they became, the scars he’d given himself because he’d been so stupid. They’d kept him alive, restored him as best they could physically, but the cost had been too high.

He’d never race again, no matter how much titanium composite they stuck inside him, no matter how hard he fought to get back. His father’s bans on flying aside, his body wouldn’t be able to handle the pressures of a race, or at least not enough where he’d ever come close to winning something again. The Jun that fought so hard to surpass himself with every race, every flight, he’d died in The Great Empty, bleeding and crying.

There’d been a plan, of course, in Estogaza. A path forward at least to heal. To get on his own two feet, to walk again. Incremental improvements, the muscle learning to be muscle again, metal fused to bone whether the bone liked it or not. But once he could do that, once he could walk, what was the point? All he’d known and all he’d believed in his whole life, that he was invincible, that he could always reach higher, it was a lie.

Who was he, without flying? Who was he, without his own prior performance to chase? He’d eventually been sent back to the dark, back to the cold that still gave him panic attacks and nightmares, even if it was prettily packaged within a massive dome. He’d been sent away to Torenomachi, pushed out of the way so his sins could stay in the shadows. Who was he now, with everything gone?

“I don’t know,” he said, voice finally about to give out on him, turning to look at Sho with tears in his eyes. “I don’t know what the fuck I’m even doing.”

At some point, Sho had reached out, taken Jun’s hand without him actively realizing it. He’d sat there, letting Jun speak for so damn long and letting Jun squeeze as hard as he could. Seeing how tight his grip on Sho was, Jun murmured an apology, tried to let go. Sho refused, watching him gently.

“I think it’s okay,” Sho said softly. “After everything you’ve been through, it’s okay not to know for a while.”

He shook his head. “You know exactly what you want, Sho-kun. You want to continue your family’s legacy, you want to keep pursuing your love for history. You haven’t staked your entire existence on something that could disappear in a snap. History’s not going anywhere, I think the view just outside this crappy little box is proof enough of that.”

“It might not disappear in a snap, but it could still disappear someday,” Sho continued. “I don’t have a family of my own, I haven’t trained anyone to take over when I’m gone. Everything I have could die with me unless I start thinking about it more seriously. Instead I spend most of my time hosting cocktail parties at the museum and waiting for coins to pop up in Nino and Aiba-kun’s auctions.”

“Sure, but…”

“Look at what you’ve done these last few days, everything you’ve planned the last few weeks I’m presuming,” Sho interrupted. “You poured all of yourself into showing me something amazing, and I don’t know how to thank you or put into words what this experience has meant to me. My opinion certainly doesn’t matter as much as your own, but let me tell you what I see. I see someone who is passionate about more than just flying or racing. I see someone who is passionate about everything and probably doesn’t understand people who don’t think as hard or plan as hard or dream as hard. Someone who cares deeply about everything he does. Someone who refuses to quit. Whatever you take on next, Jun, and I know you will eventually find out what that is, you’re going to run toward that goal until you absolutely crush it.”

He met Sho’s eyes, could see how sincere he was. It probably caught him a little off guard when Jun had to look away, chuckling quietly.

“What?” Sho mumbled. “What did I say?”

“I’m just a little astonished with myself,” he admitted, his cheeks still wet from crying.

“Why?”

Jun looked at their joined hands, grinning. “I let you say all those nice things about me, and I haven’t kissed you yet.”

“Ah,” Sho said when he was able to find words again. “I’ve been wanting you to do that for a long time now, but since you bared your entire soul to me only a few minutes ago, well…it feels like I’d be taking advantage of you at a vulnerable time.”

“I see.” Sho was probably right about that, Jun admitted. His throat was scratchy from speaking so long, from telling him every little thing. From letting Sho see and know his heart, all of it, in a way he’d never shown anyone else before.

But like Sho had said (and fuck, he’d been spot on), Jun ran toward his goals until he was able to crush them. And right now, the goal ahead of him was Sho, in every conceivable manner that might be achieved.

Sho’s smile when Jun leaned in to kiss him anyway was rather cocky, and he wasn’t surprised when he found Sho’s fingers pressed against his mouth, preventing him from getting what he wanted. He relished the little tickle there as he moved his lips, speaking again despite Sho’s interference.

“Sakurai Sho, you don’t know what you’re missing.”

“It pisses me off when you say shit like that. It pisses me off even more that I like it. But I’m going to have to insist about the timing. You trusted me enough to tell me these things about you, and I don’t want this time we spent together tonight to be lost or ignored.” The way Sho looked at him then nearly made him dizzy. “I want you to know that you mean something to me.”

“One little kiss is going to ruin that?” he shot back, even as he realized how wonderful it felt to hear these things, to know that Sho wanted so much more with him. That Sho genuinely cared for him.

“You know it wouldn’t stop there.” Sho slowly dragged his index finger across Jun’s lips, tracing his mouth. “You’re a betting man, aren’t you?”

“Sho-san…”

His finger slipped away, and he released Jun’s hand. “I bet you can’t make it all the way back to the Supersonic without giving in.”

“Giving in?”

“Kissing me.”

“Ah,” Jun grumbled, not liking this sort of game as much as he’d enjoyed bidding on Virgo, seeing the fire in Sho’s eyes.

But it had a certain charm, knowing that Sho wanted him just as badly. Knowing that Sho wanted their first kiss, their first everything, to be when they could meet one another again on equal footing rather than after all the things he’d confessed that night.

Sho had raised, so Jun decided to call. “I bet you can’t make it all the way back to the dusk barrier without giving in.”

“I bet you can’t make it all the way back to Torenomachi,” Sho replied in an instant.

Jun crossed his arms, irritated at the thought of the long flight back, the bed in his master suite empty. They’d have hours and hours, plenty of time to do everything Jun had wanted to do to him from the moment Sho had approached him at the auction all those weeks ago. Those tight red slacks, that appraising look. Jun had been fantasizing about a Starside fuck from the moment he’d started planning this trip. Sho in his bed, beneath him or on top of him, sunlight angled perfectly across his face as Jun made him come.

But Jun knew he could do it, knew he could make it. He knew that mostly because he still had one card left to play.

“I bet you can’t make it through dinner with me,” Jun teased. “That’s what you said back at Sobu Hall right, that I should have just asked you out from the start? So when we get back to Torenomachi, let’s have that dinner.”

“I’d like that,” Sho said. “Your place or mine?”

“You’d cook for me?”

“Only if your taste buds don’t function properly,” Sho laughed. “I can order in from my favorite place.”

Jun held out his hand. “Then we have our wager. No need to bet any credits, I’m sure your loss of pride from finally giving in to my irresistible charms will be all I need to feel like a winner.”

Sho’s handshake was tight this time, not the gentleness he’d shown earlier. “We’ll see about that, Matsumoto.”

By silent, mutual agreement, they let go of each other. Jun’s leg wasn’t feeling perfect, but their conversations had gone a long way to helping him ignore how he’d overexerted himself. He lay back down, pulling the covers over himself. Sho dimmed the camp light, turning over onto his side, facing away from Jun and away from temptation.

Jun had never been so excited to return to Nightside.

///

.scorpio.
the scorpion

///

After those few perfect days in Jun’s company, Sho was disappointed to learn that their schedules weren’t a match upon returning to Torenomachi. Sho had events at the museum he couldn’t afford to cancel. Jun had messaged him apologetically as well, saying that his uncle had reached out to him for a meeting, calling him home to Orunitia for a few days. Whatever the meeting was about, it required Jun to go in person.

Sho knew that the relationship Jun had with his family was not the best, especially since the accident. Perhaps the meeting with the uncle was a step in the right direction. Hearing Jun’s story that night in the Ship Graveyard, hearing him explain every terrible thing he’d gone through since the crash, Sho felt his family’s punishment was too much. They cared more about saving face than they cared about how close Jun had come to dying. They cared more about the family’s reputation than they cared about being by Jun’s side while he worked to heal. Instead they’d sent him away to recover alone with only paid-off strangers and sporadic attention from his mother.

It was a wonder he’d managed to sleep after learning what Jun had been through, how lost he felt. Sho didn’t know how to help him other than being there for him, and he supposed that a stubborn person like Matsumoto Jun wouldn’t want more than that anyway. He wanted to support him, more than ever. The hike back to the Supersonic had been slower as they’d gone downhill, Sho walking behind him once again, seeing the way Jun gripped the hiking poles, working to keep pace. He worked so hard at everything. Sho didn’t want him to feel alone ever again, didn’t want him to feel like a disappointment ever again.

They’d made their wager, and perhaps Sho had pushed it a little too far. The flight back to Torenomachi had been slow, designed intentionally to skirt around the airspace of other shogunates, to avoid patrolling routes and transport lanes. It had taken them even longer to make it back than it had taken them to get there, flying through a storm that rocked the ship, hour after hour ticking by where they might have done so much more than they ended up doing, all for a silly bet. Sho had spent most of the flight home back on the observation deck, soaking in as much sun as he could once they’d made it through the rain. Jun had mostly busied himself elsewhere, likely with work, only emerging from his master suite to join Sho for a meal. It had been absolutely ridiculous, sitting across from him, remembering their bet, neither of them wanting to be the one who gave in first.

It was ridiculous, certainly, but Sho still believed it had been the right call. Jun had shared his pain, shared every dark thought and every bit of his self-doubt. To have taken advantage of him in that moment, even if Jun said it was no big deal…Sho would have never forgiven himself for it. But that was how he’d found himself in his present dilemma, days going by now that the adventure was over and they’d returned to their responsibilities. When they could finally have their dinner date, Sho knew that it wouldn’t really be about dinner at all.

It had the possibility of being the most unsatisfying sex either of them would likely ever have, Sho thought bitterly. Jun had him so worked up, so focused on taking that next leap together that he’d probably come in his pants before they really got anywhere. He’d spent the last few evenings after the events at the museum looking around his apartment, wondering what they would do and where they would do it, touching himself, jerking off just to get it out of his system. They really shouldn’t have waited so long.

It was nearly two weeks after their return from Starside when Jun messaged him again, and finally the stars had aligned. Ueda had clearly been concerned by how jumpy Sho had been since he’d returned from the trip, a little annoyed when Sho gave him the night off, telling him not to come by until the following afternoon. He wasn’t sure if it was because Jun was a Starsider or because Ueda didn’t know how to handle Sho when he was out of sorts like this.

Sho left the museum that evening in a bit of a daze, allowing Ueda only to fly him home. Can’t I go pick up your dinner for you, Aniki? Isn’t there anything I can do for you tomorrow before we meet up again? Sho declined every offer, and Ueda dropped him off in the Tower Zero parking garage. He wasn’t surprised to see that Jun was already there in the lobby when he headed for the elevators, holding a bottle of wine and waiting for him. He was smiling, suave, appearing confident, but Sho could see the way he was tapping his cane against the tiled lobby floor.

He felt a little underdressed, having spent the entire day busying himself with the collection. He’d stayed locked away in the vault on purpose, gently cleaning a few old vases simply because it took a lot of time and took all of his concentration. He’d gone to the office in nothing more than a button-down shirt and jeans. Jun, however, had come in a well-fitted dark suit with light pinstripes, a black dress shirt beneath open at the collar to show a thin silver chain around his neck. His hair was slicked back away from his forehead, and he was in a pair of specs Sho hadn’t seen before, thick black frames that probably wouldn’t work as well on someone else’s face.

“Welcome back to Nightside,” Sho said.

“It’s good to be back,” came Jun’s reply, and Sho thought his voice sounded a little sad.

They walked to the elevator together, Sho keying in the code for his floor, hearing the usual greeting. “Welcome home, Sakurai-san.”

Now that they were alone, with nobody to overhear, he looked over. Jun didn’t look as upset as he’d first sounded, but Sho couldn’t help asking. “Everything alright in Orunitia?”

Jun shrugged. “I’d rather not talk about it right now. So. What’s for dinner?”

He respected Jun’s wishes, deciding not to prod him about the visit with his family. “I whittled it down to two final places, but I wanted you to have a look at the menus first before we called in an order.” He suppressed a smile. “Both of them are open late. In case you’re not hungry yet.”

Jun looked over at him with amused suspicion. “How considerate of you.”

Sho merely scratched at the back of his neck, aiming for nonchalance. “Of the two of us, you seem to be more particular about what you eat. Wouldn’t want to order something you didn’t like.”

The elevator chimed as they reached the top of Tower Zero, Jun following him down the corridor to his door. They entered, leaving their shoes behind, Jun hooking his cane onto the closet doorknob and deciding to go without it. He let Jun go on ahead, walking toward the windows. Sho didn’t own something as fancy as the Supersonic, but he could tell that Jun was impressed by the floor-to-ceiling glass, the view of the dome overhead and the sprawl of Torenomachi beneath it.

“Nice place,” Jun said, standing at the glass.

“Thanks.”

“Still can’t believe a scaredy cat like you lives on the top floor, especially with a balcony,” Jun pointed out.

Sho laughed. “Well, I don’t go out there too much, and when I do I’m usually sitting in a chair with a book and a drink. I’m not usually looking down.” He held out his hand. “Let me open that for us. The menus are on the table there.”

Jun handed over the bottle of wine but made no move to walk away from the window. Sho took that in stride, heading for the kitchen and a corkscrew. Sho was more of a whiskey drinker than a wine person, but he saw the G-882 stamp on the bottle, saw that Jun had deliberately chosen a wine from the year Sho was born. What a romantic. He opened it carefully because of its age, pouring two glasses. Jun had gone ahead and slid open the balcony door, was looking out at the city.

“It’s chilly up here, how the hell can you concentrate on a book?” Jun murmured when Sho handed him the wine glass. He stayed a little further back. Unlike Jun’s skyliner, he didn’t have any security cuffs on his balcony railing.

“I’m just accustomed to it,” Sho replied. “At least it’s not windy like it was on the Supersonic.”

“The benefits of living in a big bubble. Cheers,” Jun said, and they clinked their glasses together. It was a dark red, more dry than sweet. He liked it quite a bit, though he knew very little about wine. “I’ve seen what I needed to see, but it really is too cold for me, especially after Orunitia. Can we go back inside?”

Sho gestured for him to go ahead, letting Jun go back in first. He slid the door closed, moving to the panel on the wall and putting the temperature up a few degrees, dimming the lights just a touch. They made their way to his sofa, sitting at opposite ends, sipping their wine and waiting for the other to speak. It was Jun who went first.

“So, how are things at the Garnetian Museum?”

“Good for now. We had two weddings and two meetings the last week or so, all of the profits going to my acquisitions fund. Feels good to have a bit of a cushion there. But I have to admit, it was a little difficult coming back, seeing the scattered bits and pieces of history after getting to see those ships up close,” he replied.

“I imagine it would be pretty strange. It’s too bad you won’t be able to add the photos you took to any exhibits,” Jun remarked. “You’d have a bit of a challenge explaining how you got a hold of them.”

“Indeed. I suppose they’ll just have to be my treasures for now. Thank you again.”

“You’ve thanked me multiple times with your words, Sho-san.” Jun had another sip of wine, staring him down. “I’m also very receptive to being thanked in other ways.”

He snorted rudely. “As though I’ve forgotten our wager.”

Jun smiled in reply. “I’ve spent almost two weeks now trying to develop my strategy to defeat you.”

“Is that so? And what did you come up with that you think is going to work?”

“Oh, I’ve been torn between a few things,” Jun continued, “no different from you and your restaurant menus, deliberately avoiding placing any orders because you assumed I’d walk through the door and kiss you senseless right away after all these days apart. And you’re definitely the type who’d hate to let a perfectly good meal sit out here uneaten while you were busy with…other things. I knew it was a home date, which called for something a little more casual, but I’ve always liked the cut of this suit and figured you’d like it too. That you’d like having to get me out of it.”

Sho narrowed his eyes, irritated at how well Jun could read him by now. But he still couldn’t afford to give Jun the victory, his competitive streak flaring up the same as it had at the auction. “Anything else?”

“Well, I considered sitting here just like I am now, drinking wine with you and telling you what I wanted to do to you until you had no choice but to put words into action.”

Sho swallowed, seeing the deliberate way Jun was watching him. “You’re not afraid that strategy will backfire? That you won’t get yourself worked up with all your ideas about me?”

Jun nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, there’s definitely the risk of self-sabotage with that plan. Knowing how hard I’ll get if I tell you I’ve spent the past two weeks thinking of how you’ll say my name when I make you come. Will you shout it? Whisper it? You always seem so tightly wound, I don’t know what option I’d like more.”

Sho took a deep breath, seeing Jun watching him as he ran his finger along the rim of his glass to capture a droplet of wine, moving it then to his own mouth. “There’s only one way to find out. Come over here and get me to say it.”

Jun grinned, setting down his wine glass. “Ah, but like you said, that strategy is really too risky. So in the end, I figured I should just make things fair between us.”

Sho watched as Jun reached into his pocket, pulling out a small bundle of cloth, a handkerchief. He didn’t even have to open it. Sho knew exactly what was wrapped inside it. The one thing Jun still had over him.

“What happened to demanding a hundred million credits for it?”

“I like you much more now than I did when I made that demand.”

“So instead you’re going to tease me with it? You brought it here tonight knowing how badly I want it. Knowing that I’ll give in to you, do anything you want me to in exchange for it?”

Jun shook his head. “No, Sho-san, I’m just giving it to you.”

Sho watched, speechless as Jun set the handkerchief down on the sofa cushion that separated them, delicately moving the cloth aside to reveal the Virgo coin.

“There,” Jun said, sitting back. “Take it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I just told you why I’m doing it. To make things fair between us.” Jun actually sounded sincere, their odd little game interrupted. “I told you I’ve been miserable here. Messing with you, bidding on that coin just to get a rise out of you, it was the first time I’d had any fun since I came to Torenomachi. But there’s no reason for me to have it, I’ve never had a reason that didn’t revolve around hurting you for my own entertainment. Take it. Please. It’s yours.”

He hesitated, waiting for Jun to snatch it away at the last second. But Jun didn’t make a move to stop him as Sho tugged at the edge of the handkerchief, drawing it closer to him. He lifted it, still with the handkerchief around it, inspecting it up close. Jun wouldn’t go so far as to make a copy or a forgery, not after everything. But just giving it to him? Something he’d paid so much for and he was just giving it to him?

“Will you show me? Your collection?” Jun asked. “You said you keep it here.”

Sho set down his glass, nodding, still stunned by what Jun had done. He brought the coin, letting Jun trail him to his bedroom, into his closet. He set it down on top of his case of watches, turning to see the curiosity in Jun’s face. Sho lifted the portrait from the wall. “It’s my grandfather,” he explained quietly, setting the portrait aside and not bothering to conceal the movements of his fingertips as he typed in his passcode. He knew Jun had no interest in the Zodiac coins, that he never had. The panel opened, revealing the collection he’d spent so many years building. He could feel Jun come a little closer, could hear him breathing behind him.

“You really do have ten of them already.”

He smiled. “Can you see now why I was so pissed off with you?”

“Enough to hire private detectives to stalk me?”

“I was very pissed off.”

Jun laughed. “Go ahead, put it where it belongs.”

Gently, Sho lifted the coin from the handkerchief, placing it in the notch that had been waiting so long for it. There, he thought, looking at it. Welcome home, Virgo. Now only one notch was left. The final son, the one who’d only just been born when his father was overthrown. The coin that still eluded him. Pisces, Sho wondered, where are you hiding?

He turned, halfway through a thank you only to find Jun was suddenly in his space. He shut his eyes, feeling Jun’s hands move to his face, pulling him close. It was nothing like he’d expected, nothing like he’d anticipated all these weeks, the first kiss that he and Jun would share. It was one of the softest, gentlest kisses he’d ever received, feeling Jun’s thumb stroke his cheek before he pulled away.

“You lost on purpose,” Sho muttered.

Jun slipped his specs off, leaning around Sho to rest them on the case beside his watches and the handkerchief. “Are you disappointed?”

He shook his head, feeling the heat between them as he wrapped his arms around Jun’s middle, pulling him back to him. Sho watched Jun’s eyes slowly close, those long eyelashes drawing him in. Their second, third, and subsequent kisses grew longer, harder, Jun’s hand in his hair, Sho demanding more and Jun returning with equal intensity. It wasn’t a place Sho had imagined they’d find themselves, having Jun in his home for the first time. He’d never imagined them here, coins and clothes as their backdrop. But it didn’t matter where, in the end. All that mattered was that Jun was here, that Jun was close, Sho hearing the softest little gasp from him as he deepened their kiss.

It had been so long since he’d been with someone, feeling their body pressed close against him, hearing their shaky breaths mixed with his own. He’d never waited like this before either, waited until an absolute breaking point. Sho had never cared about anyone he’d been with enough to bother, always giving and taking on impulse. But in the end, he didn’t regret it, their drawn out dance with one another. It made this moment feel all the more special, the need between them forcing his hands into action, reaching to help Jun remove his suit jacket, their fingers colliding to try and unbutton Sho’s shirt.

He stopped for a moment, leaning back and watching Jun slowly open his eyes, saw him smile. “What do you want from me tonight?” Sho asked him quietly, trying to catch his breath.

“What are you offering?”

“Don’t answer my question with another question,” he grumbled, stroking Jun’s cheek, feeling him lean into his touch, eyes dark and needy.

“What I want…” Jun replied, leaning forward to kiss along his jaw, down his neck. “What I want is to know how good it feels to be inside you.”

“How interesting,” Sho replied, fingers drifting down, teasing along Jun’s leather belt. “Because I want nothing more than for you to find out.”

They left the coins where they were, half kissing, half stumbling together on the way to Sho’s bathroom. They stopped in the doorway, Jun pressing him back against it hard, kissing him and finally getting all the buttons on his shirt open. Sho let Jun pull it off him, tossing it out of the way. Jun’s mouth drifted across his collarbones, Sho’s head knocking back against the doorframe when he continued kissing his way down, hair tickling his chest as he kissed every bit of exposed skin he could. Sho could only respond in kind, grabbing Jun by the hair and bringing his mouth back to him. Jun seemed to like the rougher handling, leaning back against the other side of the doorway, letting Sho hurriedly undo the buttons of his black dress shirt, pulling it from his slacks, finally getting the belt off of him. Sho kissed along Jun’s neck, along his collarbone where the thin chain he wore rested.

He got out of his own jeans, out of his socks, standing there in only his boxers, no surprises about how badly he wanted Jun. He looked up, seeing Jun’s fingers hesitating at the zippered fly of his slacks. “I haven’t been with anyone, not since the accident,” Jun admitted. “Nobody’s…nobody’s seen…”

His scars from the crash, from all of the surgeries. He was obviously self-conscious about them. Sho gave him space, let Jun go into the bathroom and sit on the toilet so he could finish undressing by himself, removing the chain from his neck with trembling fingers. Sho moved instead to the shower, turning it on for both of them and letting Jun take the time he needed to feel comfortable enough to be bare before him. Jun slowly unzipped himself, bending as best he could to let the slacks fall from him. Sho could already see the heavy pink scars where they peeked out from his trunks, saw the scarring around his knee. They’d opened him up, replaced what had been broken. Those scars were proof that he’d lived, proof that he’d endured the pain and fought hard to get back to where he was. There was nothing ugly or unsightly about them, but still, he didn’t say it. He doubted Jun wanted to hear it out loud.

Instead Sho took off his boxers and waited for Jun to do the same. It took him a few deep breaths, but soon he found the will to do it. With slow steps he came over, finding Sho’s hand extended to him. “Is it too cold?” Sho asked once they were inside with the door shut. He’d turned it up more than he usually did, knowing Jun was sensitive to temperature.

“It’s fine,” Jun replied. “It’s perfect.”

It felt impossible to stop kissing him, to stop running his fingers up and down Jun’s arms and back as the shower spray pulsed against them both. Sho loved the contrast he’d found, getting to enjoy a Matsumoto Jun without clothes. The soft sweetness of Jun’s mouth, the firmness of his body. Jun eventually had to be the one to turn them, pushing Sho to the wall of the shower compartment, Jun’s body flush against his back. He shut his eyes, bit his lip in nervous anticipation. Knowing things could only escalate from here, feeling the water run down his body, pooling at his feet. Jun’s mouth was at the back of his neck, ticklish and hot along his shoulders, his hands running up and down his ribcage, fingers drifting along his spine to eventually tease along the curve of his backside.

Jun positioned them so Sho could feel how badly he wanted him, his erection pressed against the cleft of his ass. Jun moved his right hand around, Sho’s groan echoing off the tile as Jun firmly took hold of him. Sho brought his hands up, bracing himself on the slick compartment wall, soon finding the fingers of Jun’s left hand intertwined with his. They said nothing, Sho nudging his ass back, encouraging Jun to rock against him. He sighed in contentment when Jun did just that, slowly moving, stroking Sho’s cock in time with his movements. Eventually their bodies moved in tandem, Sho’s hips sliding forward and back, forward and back, Jun’s hand slicking him up and down.

The water was warm, but Jun was warmer. “Please,” Sho eventually said as their movements became less synchronized, as Sho’s own desperation caught up with him. “Please Jun.”

Jun stopped moving against him, pressing a kiss to his shoulder. “I want to be with you, I want to be there with you.”

It took a little maneuvering, but Sho turned, brushing the wet strands of his hair out of his face. He kept his back to the compartment wall, Jun leaning forward, kissing his temple before pressing their foreheads together, Jun’s left hand behind his head to hold him close as their heavy breaths met the hiss of the shower spray. Sho held on to Jun’s shoulders, feeling the strength in him, gripping tight enough to make him groan in obvious need. Jun’s other hand found his cock again, pumping him harder, faster, not relenting until Sho had no choice but to give in to him, sighing in contentment as he came. Wishing he could have gone longer, let Jun touch him for hours upon hours. Jun stroked him all the way through it, finally letting him go.

“You’re not a screamer then,” Jun finally said, voice teasing but gentle.

“No,” he replied with a soft laugh. “Not usually.”

Sho presumed Jun would only take that response as a challenge.

They turned the water off, barely toweled themselves dry. Sho was happy, almost floating, as he took Jun by the hand and led him to his bed, not caring that they were dripping water onto the sheets from their still wet hair. They lay back together against his pillows, side by side, Sho feeling goosebumps as Jun kissed him, stroked his fingers up and down his arm.

“It’s the drawer on your side,” Sho eventually told him.

It took a few moments before Jun could bear to break away from him, turning over to tug open the drawer. Sho lay there, still in a bit of a happy daze as he watched Jun take out the bottle of lubricant and one of the condom packets Sho had put there, anticipating that they’d end up here much later in the evening, after their dinner. They could order breakfast instead if they had to.

Sho had spent a few nights that week anticipating how this would end, using a vibrator to get his body used to the intrusion after so long without being with someone. He was concerned when Jun got him onto his back, kneeling before him. He wanted to ask Jun if it was comfortable for him, to kneel, knowing that Jun had already shown a foolish tendency to push himself in order to make Sho happy. But Jun’s face showed no pain, only satisfaction as he slicked his fingers, working one and then another into Sho, his movements almost too delicate. It felt so good, but he knew he could handle more. He needed more, wanting Jun to get everything he wanted, feel everything he wanted.

“Jun,” he said quietly, seeing him look up, seeing the question in his eyes.

Sho nodded.

He waited, letting Jun decide what would be most comfortable. The result was them moving, Jun onto his back, Sho moving to get on top of him, Jun’s body between his knees. He was worried that his weight might be too much, but Jun silenced his questions with a long, needy kiss before Sho could even ask them. Jun shut his eyes, gasping quietly as Sho took him in hand, stroking him a few times before helping him put the condom on. It took a moment to maneuver, but Sho put a hand to Jun’s shoulder, the other finding his erection, guiding him into place. He sank down slowly, seeing Jun’s mouth open as they came together, neither of them able to find words.

He leaned forward, kissing Jun softly. So, he wanted to ask, now that Jun had gotten what he wanted. How does it feel?

He was surprised by how slowly they moved, Jun on his back letting Sho set the pace to start, smoothing his hands up and down Sho’s sides, along his hips, eventually squeezing his ass. Refusing to stop touching him for even a moment. Sho braced himself against the mattress, a hand to each side beside Jun’s shoulders. They said nothing, eyes making contact for a few seconds here and there before one of them looked away. He rocked gently, keeping Jun’s cock deep within him, trying not to laugh as droplets of water fell from his hair onto Jun’s face, onto Jun’s chest beneath him.

He groaned when Jun’s grip on him tightened, strong hands slowing his movements. Before Sho could protest, Jun started to move instead, the mattress complaining with their weight as Jun started to bend his knees a little, arching up and into him with more force. Sho gasped in surprise at the change in pace, the rougher sensations getting him hard again. He leaned closer, trying to kiss him as Jun’s right hand squeezed his ass, his left stroking Sho’s back. Their faces were close, lips brushing here and there, eyes shut and breathing unsteady as Jun moved.

Jun eventually tired, his movements slowing until they came to a shaky stop, Sho’s arm trembling as he moved a hand to Jun’s face, brushing a few strands of hair out of his eyes. “Are you alright?” Sho asked, seeing how Jun was sweating a little, eyes a bit pained. He’d pushed himself again.

“I’m fine,” Jun lied, “but how about we try something else?”

Sho moved away, the both of them letting out a soft moan of disappointment as Jun pulled out. Jun leaned back on his elbows before eventually moving to sit up fully, stretching out his bad leg and putting a few pillows behind his back. He motioned for Sho with a quick flutter of his fingers. Sho returned to him, settling a knee to either side of him again, feeling the heat of Jun’s body beneath him once more. He eased himself back down, joining their bodies, welcoming a different angle. As Sho started to move, rocking against him again, Jun put his arms around his back, hugging Sho against him.

There was an intimacy to the movement that caught Sho by surprise, a neediness that Sho soon realized he shared, wanting Jun even closer. Jun’s mouth found his, their lips coming together and parting again as Sho braced himself with a hand to the wall above his headboard, letting it steady him as he started to move, getting a hand between them to stroke himself unsteadily as he rode Jun as hard as he dared. It felt so good, being with Jun. When had he ever had it this good? Sho’s head tipped back, listening to their ragged breaths, feeling Jun’s sloppy, desperate kisses against his neck, against his throat.

“Sho, I can’t…” Jun suddenly gasped. “Fuck…”

As Jun came, Sho slowed his movements, hovering over him rather than forcing his full weight on top of his thighs. He waited for Jun’s breathing to calm again before he moved more deliberately, easing himself off of Jun to kneel beside him, resting his elbow against the headboard, staring down at him. They were quiet a few moments, Sho unable to look away from those dark eyes, the mussed hair, the beauty marks that dotted the skin of Jun’s face and neck.

“What?” Jun mumbled.

Sho grinned, still transfixed. “Don’t let it go to your head, but you’re absolutely perfect, you know.”

“Are you saying that because I’m a good lay or because I gave you Virgo?”

“Those are my only two options?” Sho asked, shaking his head in disappointment. “I’ll leave you in suspense on that one then.”

Jun’s smile was unguarded, beautiful.

“You’ll have to give me a moment before ordering dinner.”

Sho laughed. “I told you earlier, didn’t I? The places I picked are both open late.”

“Hmm,” Jun wondered, offering Sho a rather wicked expression. “How late is late?”

///

It was after 1:00 in the morning when they finally called in a food order for sushi, if only because every other place that was still open in the neighborhood made things in a fryer with lots of oil. It felt surprisingly comfortable, sitting together on the sofa, talking Sho into leaving all the anago for him. Jun never thought he’d ever be comfortable in Torenomachi, but he’d found that here with Sho, sharing a meal, having no intention of going home until morning.

He was exhausted, they both were. In the very best way. He was sitting there in a borrowed tee and shorts, as there was no point now in hiding his scars away. Jun watched Sho’s swollen mouth close around another piece of salmon nigiri, pleased to know that he was the reason for the swelling in the first place, all the kisses he’d demanded and stolen from him over the course of their evening together. They’d stayed in Sho’s bed a while, talking about nothing until they drifted off, waking the other with a kiss or a ticklish poke until finally Sho’s stomach had growled and they’d decided to leave the bedroom for a while. Sho seemed different around him now that the game between them had ended. He seemed lighter, softer. He smiled so easily, just from looking over and seeing Jun beside him.

Jun knew this was something more than either of them had bargained for. Something more than a flirtation, more than a competition to see who might give in first, more than sex. Jun found himself hoping that Sho might be falling in love with him, if only because he was feeling that itch himself. He’d felt it for a while now, had confirmed it the moment Sho had wrapped his arms around him, returning that first tentative kiss Jun had given him with one that had nearly brought him to his knees.

He’d known for a long time that Sho wanted him, known for a long time that he wanted Sho. The trip to the Ship Graveyard, everything Jun had done to get them there, had pushed things beyond that simple want. Being with Sho tonight, letting him see his scars…it wasn’t just a one-night thing, and they both probably knew it. Tonight wasn’t an end to their curiosity about one another, but the beginning of something entirely new. It was impossible to imagine it never happening again. He needed Sho close like that again, his skin warm to the touch, the way he smiled when they kissed. Jun didn’t just want it. He needed it. Jun knew now that this was something that had the potential to last, so long as he didn’t fuck it up.

Which was still a possibility. Especially with what he’d learned back home. He was waiting for Sho to broach the topic again, to ask him what had happened when he’d gone back Starside. How would he begin to answer?

Jun hadn’t known what to expect when his uncle had called him home to Orunitia for a “secret” meeting. Only Uncle Koichiro and his father had been in the office when Jun had arrived, walking slowly because he’d left his cane behind in case there were any journalists around to spot him entering Matsumoto Air’s headquarters. His uncle had a large viewscreen in his office, and Jun had barely sat down before the images were up there on the screen, all familiar faces.

Uncle Koichiro had out his laser pointer. “Shogun Yoshida’s second son. Councillor Harada’s nephew. The chief of police’s grandson.”

“What about them?” Jun asked, wondering just how much they knew.

Turned out it was a lot. Someone newer to the underground racing scene, someone Jun only knew in passing from a race or two, had decided that he’d lost too much money betting on races, had sunk too much into buying ships of his own only to finish in seventh place here, ninth place there. The pathetic guy had broken the unspoken rule, was attempting to blackmail all of the participants. Jun’s yearlong absence meant that the blackmailer hadn’t even thought to include him in his scams, but that didn’t matter. None of that mattered. He was targeting enough important people that something had to be done about it.

Apparently that something wasn’t throwing the blackmailer in prison or paying what he asked but instead legalizing underground airship racing entirely. Getting their shogunate bureaucratic fingers all over it, regulating it, taxing it. It had been in motion almost since Jun had been sent away to Torenomachi in disgrace. And now here they were, the nobles of Orunitia and likely a number of other cities, deciding that it was better to grant it legitimacy than to see their families embroiled in scandal. Matsumoto Air had had its officially sanctioned Racing Division for years, so certainly they’d be the best government partner for tackling this new endeavor.

Jun had fumed silently, listening to his uncle rave about what an opportunity this was, expanding its ties with the government, new revenue streams. He’d looked over, seen his father’s stony expression. He’d go along with whatever his older brother decided, Jun knew he would.

“This is still in the early stages,” Uncle Koichiro had said, “so it may be another few months before we bring you home.”

“Bring me home?” Jun had interrupted. He’d only been living Nightside for a couple of months, had assumed his punishment would last years.

“To head up the division again. Making something illegal into a for-profit enterprise will definitely have its detractors, and I can’t think of anyone more well-suited to tackle these challenges than you,” his uncle said, completely fucking serious.

Jun had just sat there, wondering if his uncle knew how hypocritical he sounded.

“R&D was never going to be the right fit for you, Jun-chan. It’s best that you use the time you have left over there to try and build some connections. If we’re going to help the Orunitia shogunate legitimize this nonsense, we may as well aim for global support and sponsorship.”

He’d waited for his father to react, to remind his brother that Jun had nearly gotten himself killed in an illegal race. That the only reason Jun was heading up Torenomachi R&D was because the family had not wanted to be blackmailed the same way the shogun’s son was now. Jun waited and waited and then the meeting had ended, and he’d been dismissed. Told to keep his eyes open for some Torenomachi “mining money.”

He’d flown back to Nightside in a confused rage. It was insulting, infuriating to know that his racing had been foolish and shameful but the racing done by the shogun’s son and the chief of police’s grandson was a potential moneymaker for both the company and the shogunate.

But wasn’t this what he’d wanted? To do his time in Torenomachi until all was forgiven? To claw his way back into the light and out of the Nightside darkness? No matter the blow to his pride, wasn’t it better to know that his little isolation here would end far sooner than he’d anticipated? He still had trouble with the constant darkness, with the chill in the sterile, recycled air. His friends were all back home on Starside. Everything was back home on Starside.

Everything but Sakurai Sho.

They finished their food, Sho busying himself with cleaning up, refusing to let Jun help. He sat on the sofa alone, staring at nothing, upset with the timing. Upset with himself because he knew there was a not insignificant part of him that wanted to go home to Orunitia.

Eventually he could sense Sho returning, heard him sit down on the arm of the sofa just beside him. He shut his eyes when he felt Sho’s hand on the back of his head, his fingers softly stroking his hair. How could he just go home and give this up? Getting Sho into Starside for less than two days had cost Jun millions. The shogunates could legalize racing all they wanted, but they would never budge on Nightsiders. Sure, they’d take Nightsider money, but they’d never let them walk among them. Didn’t want Starsiders getting any of their strange ideas about freedom.

And even if he could, Sho wouldn’t join him anyway. His entire life was here, wrapped up in his museum. Jun would never ask him to give any of that up, to change anything about how he lived. How was any of this going to work?

“I changed the sheets,” Sho said softly. “You’ll stay, won’t you?”

He knew Sho just meant “overnight,” but the question made Jun anxious. He got to his feet, leaning down and pressing a quick kiss to Sho’s forehead.

“Of course I will.”

He woke in the morning, realizing over the course of the night that he’d encroached onto Sho’s side of the bed, onto his pillow and everything. Sho hadn’t pushed him away, sharing his space without complaint. It felt too perfect, being here in Sho’s bed, watching him sleep so peacefully beside him. After everything they’d shared and everything they’d done, he didn’t know how to talk about it, what had been discussed back home in Orunitia. He’d told Sho everything by now, every minute little thing about him, but he didn’t know how to say they were probably going to be over just when they were getting started. The flight from Torenomachi to Orunitia was ten hours in good weather and favorable winds. It just seemed so impossible.

Once Sho woke, he made excuses to leave, getting dressed, declining Sho’s offer to have his driver bring him back to the Sumire Hotel. He headed for the office at midday, Mao-chan understanding his moods well enough to leave him alone. He lost himself in budgets and proposals for the rest of that day, then another day, and eventually a third.

The company-hired aircab brought him back to his hotel on that third night, and he found a green envelope with a gold ribbon waiting for him. The last thing he needed was another visit to Sobu Hall, another ridiculous party, but there was only a note inside, directly from Ninomiya and Aiba, pretty much ordering him to their house that night. There were apparently “important matters” to discuss. Jun would have never been able to pull off his Starside trip for Sho without their help, so he did his best to shake off his melancholy and accept the invitation.

He soon found himself heading up the mansion steps, the butler holding the door for him before escorting him through the large, empty rooms. It was strange to be here again, without the press of bodies, without the scents of cigarillo smoke and sex perfuming the air. It was quiet, although there was still no denying the hideousness of the interior design. The mishmash of artwork and decor and rugs and chandeliers.

“They’re waiting for you in Ninomiya-san’s private dining room,” the butler informed him. “Sakurai-san only arrived a few minutes ago.”

Wait, Sho was here? There’d been no mention of that in their invite. Jun had assumed this was a private meeting, but sure enough, the butler opened the dining room door, revealing a more simply appointed room with a large, round dining table in the center. Aiba and Ninomiya merely nodded to him in acknowledgment, but Sho got to his feet, only to end up standing there awkwardly since his friends hadn’t moved. The open, honest smile he had for Jun made him feel wonderful, wanted. It also made him feel worse for hiding from him the last few days.

“There you are,” Ninomiya complained. “Sho-chan wouldn’t let us put in the order until you got here.”

Sho looked a bit embarrassed, slowly easing back into his seat. “All I said was that you can be particular about what you eat,” he explained before looking Ninomiya’s way. “He’s not as bad as you though.”

“Sure, sure,” Ninomiya replied, waving Jun over to the empty seat. “Nakamaru-kun, just order a bit of everything. I’m sure Jun-kun and I will manage.”

“Yes, sir,” the butler said, pouring Jun a glass of whiskey to match what the others were already having before leaving the four of them alone. Jun sat down, Sho to his left and Aiba to his right. Ninomiya across from him with his default wry expression.

“Ninomiya-san, Aiba-san,” Jun said as he got settled in. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Aiba looked across to Sho nervously. “Well, maybe we should wait until after dinner.”

“I’m not sitting here making small talk for an hour,” Nino grumbled. “Best to tell them now and then let Sho-chan eat his feelings afterward.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Sho asked, scowling at his friend.

“It means that we have good news, but mostly bad news,” Aiba admitted. “Buying you dinner is kind of our apology.”

“Stop being vague,” Jun chided them both. “Clearly it’s something important to the both of us, or you wouldn’t have invited me too.”

“Very well,” Nino said. “Sho-chan, you are now in possession of ten Zodiac coins, yes?”

“Eleven,” Sho said a little too quickly.

Aiba and Nino both offered Jun a sly look. “Eleven, then,” Nino continued. “Well, it just so happens that after much monetary investment and effort, we found where the last one has been hiding.”

Jun looked over, saw how hard Sho was working to not react.

“We actually got wind of this one first, the Pisces coin. Almost a year ago, actually. We managed to find Virgo and get it here while we were still chasing leads on Pisces. We’ve hired all sorts of people. Bounty hunters, private investigators, trackers, conspiracy theorists, you name it. We bought information from anyone we could in hopes of triangulating a location so we could send someone in,” Nino explained. “We were finally able to narrow it down to a pawn shop in a rather rough neighborhood of Buranbaru a month ago…”

“Buranbaru,” Jun muttered.

That backwater? It was about as close to the dusk barrier and as far from Orunitia as you could get, just as hot and miserable as the land near the Ship Graveyard, but right on the ocean. A port that had been established mainly for invasion fleets centuries ago, it was mostly obsolete now that the airship had been invented. Sho could probably tell him more about Buranbaru than he had ever learned as a native Starsider, but it was just one of those cities that had never seemed worth a visit.

“We sent our agent in to make an offer on it once we found out about it,” Aiba continued, “but unfortunately someone got the jump on us. We’re assuming that the folks we hired to make quiet inquiries weren’t as quiet as we hoped. The guy who purchased Pisces had probably been observing our operation for weeks, maybe even months. We had no idea this guy was even in play. So when the agent went to the pawn shop, he was told that someone had already purchased it hours earlier.”

“It’s gone?” Sho choked out.

“But who else would even want it?” Jun asked bluntly, seeing Sho look over at him pointedly.

Nino held up a hand to silence them, to finish the elaborate tale. “It took a while for our agent to get a hold of us, but once they did, we wired additional funds for them to try and track this guy down. Guy that good at sniffing around, we kind of wanted to hire him on, you know? We figured he’d go high on Pisces just to show off that he got one over on us, but instead of lingering around Buranbaru waiting for us to come after him with a counteroffer, he left.”

“Left the city? Where did he go?” Jun wondered.

Aiba nervously shuffled the ice around in his glass of alcohol. “For someone who was able to hide in the shadows for all that time, intercepting the experts and trackers we hired, he actually didn’t bother to conceal himself as he got out of town. Our agent sent us multiple photo and video angles of the guy, no real luggage or equipment on him, but he had a fishing boat docked in Buranbaru Harbor as his cover story. He’d been there a while apparently.”

“Gotta appreciate the irony though,” Nino admitted. “Guy with a fishing boat snatching the Pisces coin right from under our noses.”

“I’m not seeing much reason to appreciate it,” Sho snitted. “Well, where is he now? Did you find that out?”

“We did, sort of, if only because other fishing boats and trawlers he passed tried to signal him and ask where the fuck he was going, but he never responded and never changed his route,” Nino said. “This is the part we’re hoping isn’t true.”

“Why?” Jun asked. “Where’d he go?”

Nino and Aiba exchanged a disappointed look. Nino gestured for Aiba to be the one to break the worst of the bad news.

“South,” Aiba said.

“South?” Sho repeated, crossing his arms. “Now it’s not like I’ve got a map in front of me, but there’s nothing south of Buranbaru. He probably turned around and doubled back once he was out of sight of the fishing fleets.”

“That’s what we thought too, until we saw the pictures come through of the boat itself,” Aiba explained, getting out of his seat to pull a folder from a drawer nearby. He set it down, pushing it across to Sho, who opened it up. “You can see there’s no shogunate’s registration number on it. Even smugglers and pirating types have to chisel it off of the boats they acquire, and that effort leaves a mark, but this one doesn’t have a number and never had one.”

“Could he have built the boat himself?” Jun inquired.

“Maybe,” Nino replied. “We were surprised he was able to dock at Buranbaru without a reg number, but apparently he spread some money around and nobody ratted him out to the shogunate. Didn’t mean they weren’t snapping his picture. And pictures of the boat.”

Sho was going through the pictures in the folder, scrutinizing them closely. “Looks like a normal guy to me.” He met Jun’s eyes, sliding a few of the pictures over, mostly black and white shots captured by security cams at various places throughout the city, along the docks and in the narrow streets. Not very tall, round face, t-shirt and shorts, sandals, backwards cap. Jun didn’t really know professional fishermen, so he couldn’t tell if this guy was one for real or just as a cover.

“No matches for his face in any databases, and we’ve been really thorough so far. We’ve spent weeks now gathering as much info as we could,” Aiba said. “He’s not a Nightsider, people got a good enough look at him to know he wasn’t, but he literally doesn’t exist in a Starside registry. So put it together, Sho-chan. Use that big brain of yours and put it together so you can tell us it’s not true.”

Jun was confused, watching Sho lift the photos from the folder, holding them to his face and squinting. The room grew quiet, only the shuffling sound of Sho going through the photographs. Finally, Jun heard Sho inhale sharply.

He pushed a photo out so they all could see, one of the few photos in color, tapping on it. The guy had a necklace on, a bold blue gem on a silver chain against his dark shirt. “Is that real?”

“You tell me,” Nino replied. “We’ve never found one to put up for auction. We’ve only ever seen the ones you have.”

Sho was clearly in a state of shock, but finally he was able to speak. “If it’s real, it’s a blue topaz.”

“And?” Aiba prodded him.

Sho could barely get the words out. “A man arrives in Buranbaru on a boat that’s never been registered. He’s not pale like a Nightsider, but he’s not in any Starside registries either. There’s a dozen photos of him with a gemstone on a chain around his neck and when he buys up the Pisces coin, he takes it back to his boat and sails south.” He looked up, almost as excited as he clearly was devastated. “He’s…this man is from Garnet South.”

Jun held up a hand. “Hold on, hold on, that’s impossible.”

“I know,” Sho said, “but while we can find topaz on Starside, blue ones have only ever come from the southern continent. We have no mines that have ever found it here on Nightside either. I’m not a gemologist, but I’ve read enough books to help me put exhibits together, and that there…that thing around his neck is probably not a fake. My great-grandfather acquired the only known blue topaz gemstones that had ever made it here to the northern continent, all of them from trades with the south when that was still possible. They were so rare my great-grandfather nearly bankrupted himself and the museum to get them all…”

“It runs in the family, you see,” Nino stage-whispered across the table to Jun, but Sho ignored him.

“Jun, I showed them to you when you visited. So if this guy has one,” Sho continued, “it means he had to have acquired it at the source.”

Nino and Aiba seemed even more upset now that Sho had confirmed what they’d already suspected.

“Okay,” Jun said, “supposing this fishing boat and the guy driving it is from Garnet South. Why would he come north just to buy the Pisces coin?”

“That part we don’t know,” Aiba replied. “But he clearly wanted it. And he had to have known he’d be photographed or caught on some cam or another. I think, personally, that he wore the gemstone just to make it all the more clear to us, since he knew we’d try to track him. I think it’s, you know…um…well…”

“He’s saying you’ll never catch me,” Nino interrupted, voice solemn. “You can see where I’m from and where I’m going with this coin. So don’t even bother trying.”

Aiba looked across the table. “Sho-chan, we’re really really sorry.”

Sho was still looking at the pictures, clearly torn between the knowledge that Pisces had been lost and the realization that people, or at least one person, was alive in Garnet South. Jun could see tears in his eyes, could see his lips trembling a little.

Jun could see him giving in and giving up. And he hated it. Sho’s dream shouldn’t end like this.

“Thank you for your honesty and for all of your efforts,” Sho finally said, wiping his eyes. “You guys have both done so much for me over the years. It’s an interesting finale for this journey, huh?”

“I mean, you always planned for those coins to be an exhibit, right? You’ve got a great story now for why the collection’s incomplete,” Aiba told him. “That might draw in even more visitors.”

Their food arrived, the four of them spreading everything out on the table, helping themselves to grilled fish and chicken, an array of salads and side dishes. As they ate, Nino and Aiba eventually coaxed Sho into discussing other topics with them, upcoming auction items, their family’s company, other things that went in Jun’s ear and out the other. He sat there eating, upset for Sho, wondering why he’d even been invited. All that had been discussed so far was the loss of the Pisces coin, which was relevant to Sho but not necessarily to Jun. But there had to be a reason he was here at this table with them tonight. In the short time he’d known Ninomiya and Aiba, known how much they loved Sho and wished for his happiness, he knew there had to be a catch. So what was it?

He made it all the way to dessert, fuming about the coin and this strange fisherman who’d stolen it away for reasons that would never be known. And that’s when it hit him.

He set down his fork with a heavy clang, his brain quickly overloading with ideas. When he looked up, Sho seemed worried about him, but Nino and Aiba looked almost victorious. This was why they’d asked him to come. They’d exhausted their own ideas and now they were counting on his.

“We can’t get to the southern continent by sea because of the currents, and we can’t get there by air either,” he said.

“Indeed,” Aiba said, not doing a very good job masking his amusement.

“But this guy can,” Jun realized. “A boat has to dock somewhere, right? It’s got an engine and a motor, and he’s gotta refuel it somewhere.”

Sho’s concern slipped into confusion. “Well, certainly…but…”

Jun got up out of his seat, unable to keep still. He started to walk, back and forth, his knee happy he’d finally gotten up to move after sitting for so long. He’d already told Sho what Matsumoto Air Company had uncovered, the realization that there was likely some very advanced technology available to those who lived in the south. Whatever it was surpassed anything the north had been able to come up with, and it allowed them to hide themselves away. Jun trusted Ninomiya, trusted Aiba, and so he told him what he’d explained to Sho before, seeing the shock on their faces.

“So they do all that to keep people out, to stay cloaked or whatever you’d like to call it,” he continued, picking up one of the photographs of the mysterious man’s fishing boat. “But like I said, a boat has to dock somewhere. Somehow, this guy knows how to navigate through the traps they set, so if we can find where he docks his boat, we can find him and find Pisces.”

Aiba held up a hand. “You literally just said it’s impossible to sail or fly there.”

“That’s very true,” Jun said, letting out a breath. “Unless I’m flying there in one of my company’s prototypes.”

Sho got to his feet, setting down his napkin. Looking only at him, as though it was just the two of them in the room.

“No.”

“Why not?” Jun challenged him.

“I could spend the next hour explaining why not,” Sho spat at him. “It’s not worth it.”

“Why isn’t it worth it?” Jun asked. “This is something you’ve wanted for years, to have the full set of your Zodiac coins. I’m telling you to at least let me try and get it for you. The prototypes I’ve told you about are designed to withstand insane pressure on their hull, I’ve read the reports as best I could understand them, I’ve observed some tests, and the technology is solid. And besides, I’d stay at a distance to run scans before I’d even attempt to get close to the mainland. I can get the Covert Ops team to install some of their tech in the cockpit. They wouldn’t fight me on it if they knew what kind of data they could get out of it. They’ve got smart software, all it has to be able to do is be taught to scan for this boat and…”

“Jun,” Sho interrupted him. He’d walked over, was resting a hand on his shoulder. “Stop. It’s okay. Really it is.”

If Orunitia and the rest of Starside were making underground racing legitimate, then Jun’s father had no excuse to block him from flying. He’d threatened to disown Jun if he ever flew again, but the company apparently needed him now. Needed his expertise. His father couldn’t both disown him and keep him employed at the company. The cockpit on the prototype wasn’t tight like a racing ship’s, he’d be able to manage even with his leg, so long as he took it slow, relied on auto-guidance systems to allow for breaks to get up and stretch. It was starting to fall into place, every step to take, everything he needed to do to make this happen.

He had to make this happen for Sho. He had to. This might be the last thing he’d be able to do for him before the company called him home, before he lost Sho for good.

“You’re not listening to me. I can do it, I can figure out how to do it. I just need time and…”

“I listened when you told me about it at the museum before. It’s too dangerous. The government would never sign off on it, and you told me your company would never attempt something so risky. You told me so many people died trying to get close to the southern continent, just trying to find it. One lousy little coin is not worth it to me.”

“Sho-chan,” Aiba said, voice calm. They both looked over to him. “If you’ve learned anything the last few months, it ought to be that this guy will do anything to get what he wants.”

“I’ve learned that lesson very well,” Sho replied, looking at Jun with a hurt expression. “And that’s why I’m telling you to stop before you get yourself killed.”

“I would take every precaution,” Jun pleaded with him. “It’s not the same as a race. I got you to Starside and back without any issues. I’d approach this with the same degree of seriousness. Please, I need you to trust me. Let me do this for you.”

“You’re not doing this for me. The coin is just a fucking excuse,” Sho snapped at him, a dark and intentionally hurtful edge to his voice. “You’re doing this for you.”

No, he wanted to shout. No, it’s for you, it’s for you, it’s for you…

But was it? Was it really? He was already imagining himself behind the controls, the thrill of flying something untested again, the thrill of flying south, somewhere he’d never been before. Sho was right, he realized. He’d always been selfish. But it was too late. The seed had already been planted in his head, and he had to pursue it. He had to. All he could do was try to get Sho to understand why. He tried to take Sho’s arm, but Sho pulled away.

“Thanks for dinner,” Sho told their hosts. “I’m heading home.”

“Sho-chan, you don’t have to go,” Aiba said, getting out of his chair, but Sho wouldn’t be dissuaded. The three of them watched him leave, pulling the door closed behind him, Jun unable to chase after him this time. He knew Sho wouldn’t listen, no matter what he said.

The room fell silent with Sho’s absence, Jun’s mind still screaming with ideas. He sat back down heavily in his chair, thinkng about the coin, thinking about flying. Thinking about Sho.

“He’ll come around,” Aiba said a bit awkwardly. “He’s always been kind of hotheaded.”

Nino looked over, eyeing him carefully. “Do you really think you could pull this off? Is there anything Sobu Trading could do to help?”

Jun’s eyes went to the folder of photographs that Nino and Aiba had compiled. Sho had just left them there on the table.

“Giving me access to those and anything else you have on our mysterious fisherman would be a good start.”


part three
 

Comments

[selvage]

I read this section last night and I'm OBSESSED WITH EVERYTHING THAT IS HAPPENING RN. I'm so glad Ohno has arrived! FROM GARNET SOUTH ohohoho. Can't wait to finish!