Lines Not Yet Crossed
A few days later. Morning.
"The drones are a lost cause. They won't open. Unless we physically smash our way in and pick through the machines one by one, but..."
Soyeon was staring at the terminal screen with a faintly tired expression.
"Ah..."
"Mm."
That soft murmur of agreement was remarkably effective at sinking the meeting room's atmosphere first thing in the morning.
"Riding rovers or mules would be the most efficient, but... unfortunately. Yeah."
"Mules — they're like wearable robots."
Exoskeletons, I supposed. A helpful little addendum from Dahyeon.
"...Looks like each person will need to carry about twenty kilograms."
I flinched.
For me, that was devastating news. Sure, I'd been working out hard lately, but twenty kilos — basically full combat gear — and then walking a hundred kilometers? That seemed close to impossible.
"...What about the Administrator?"
Sure enough, a woman raised her hand and cut in. The curly-haired one I'd seen before. Hyun? I couldn't quite remember her name. We hadn't crossed paths since that day.
"If we go, she has to come with us. No exceptions. As you know, unless we smash our way in, there's zero external route to bypass the systems."
Security — Yujin answered. Her gaze found me a moment later and she winked, and then Soyeon wound an arm around my forearm.
What was that? Trying to make someone jealous? Or planning to have security kill me for her?
"Mm... haah. If there's nobody over there, or something close to that, and we assume we're bringing back food and resources... it could go up to thirty kilograms. So—"
Soyeon thought for a moment, then glanced around the room.
"If we head out, facilities, security, the Administrator, at least two from medical... and circulation, drones, and the whole exploration team should probably all go. It'd spread the load. What do you all think?"
"Huh."
...At some point, these meetings had long since turned into prep sessions for the escape ship.
If it were up to me, I'd have been content to live out the rest of my life like this with nothing ever happening — but unlike me, everyone else was desperate.
And of course they were. Human beings can't be satisfied with what they have. Better food, better beds, more entertaining diversions — of course they needed those. Or if not luxury, then at least something resembling a human life.
Looking at it that way, our current life was pretty grueling.
"Us too?"
"......Yeah, it's going to be a pretty large group."
A woman whose name I didn't know muttered.
"Isn't that too many people..."
Another voice chimed in—
"I still agree more people is better. If someone gets hurt on the way, we either have to carry them or turn back. Factoring that in..."
"I guess so..."
While everyone tossed in their two cents, I had absolutely nothing to contribute. So I sat in a chair where my feet barely touched the floor, staring at the faint scratches left on the table from all the wiping over the days.
"Um..."
"Ah. Yes. Go ahead."
Unlike the others trading opinions, this woman raised her hand like she wanted a formal Q&A, and every eye in the room turned to her.
"About the food, how will we..."
She was fidgeting, asking as if she were embarrassed. Soyeon answered with a faint smile.
"Preserved rations, of course. Looking at the calorie situation, we don't really have a choice."
At that answer, energy rippled through the meeting room.
Even I, who'd already had a few meals of them, felt a spark of anticipation — so of course everyone else would. If anything, I was the weird one for having eaten them more than once.
Come to think of it, the chocolate Soyeon had given me as an apology had been a pretty authoritarian move. Temporary or not, she'd used her power as leader to hand over a sweetness no one else was allowed.
Just thinking about it made me want more...
Maybe it was that shared craving for a sweetness everyone had forgotten — the meeting didn't drag on much longer after that.
It wasn't such great news for me personally, though the good mood helped, but—
Because the workout session with Dahyeon that had become routine was about to start. Spending time with her was genuinely happy-making, of course... but at the end of the day, if it was torture that tore muscle and stitched it back together, it was still torture.
I followed her to the gym with a miserable face, and was huffing and puffing on the treadmill like I might actually die when—
"Right. You're dating Soyeon, aren't you?"
"…!"
Sweat-soaked Dahyeon came up to me and asked.
Honestly, for a simple fitness regimen, there was no need for someone to stick by your side all day. She'd finished her own routine and come over. She'd clearly poured out that much sweat, and yet somehow she didn't smell bad at all.
More than anything, it was violent.
We were wearing the same kind of outfit, after all. That body of hers was nothing like my scrawny frame — hips aside. Very much so. Yeah.
No matter how practical the gear was, objectively speaking it was a sexy outfit. At least, nothing you'd ever see in ordinary daily life. It wasn't just tight. It was the kind of clothing that showed every single muscle striation — a dream outfit for people who posed in front of full-length mirrors every day, but for me it felt more like a costume.
...Anyway, even with a food shortage on the horizon, plenty of people still worked out. They said you could reach climax from exercise alone, so maybe it was a kind of addiction.
So I brought a hand to my lips — shhh — signaling her to keep quiet, but Dahyeon just tilted her head like she had no idea what the problem was.
Except for the few people with earbuds in, everyone's ears were definitely open.
Of course I couldn't control whether rumors spread. I mean, I couldn't stop Soyeon from gossiping something like I did it with the Administrator, but... still, if I had a choice, I wanted to keep it secret.
There were plenty of reasons, but first of all I was embarrassed, and I was terrified of what someone who knew about my relationships with Minseo, Jiwoo, and the security team would think if they heard that rumor.
"Q-quiet..."
"Hm? Oh, it's a secret? Heh heh."
Dahyeon's expression lit up. Such a contrast to Soyeon, I thought.
"......"
Looking at that face, I went blank for a second. My heart gave a little ache, and I wanted to meet her eyes but mine kept sliding away...
"Let's see. You've run about six kilometers?"
Realizing I didn't want to talk about that, Dahyeon changed the subject so obviously it was almost funny. She stepped closer and looked at the monitor.
"...Three kilometers?"
"Ah, th-that's..."
She stared at the treadmill monitor, then narrowed her eyes like she couldn't believe it.
"I-it's, b-bumpy, and, it's, too hard, t-too hard..."
How was a person supposed to run ten kilometers? Even walking that far wasn't easy. I'd assumed the goal was just set high on purpose as a method.
"...Mmm."
Apparently Dahyeon had been serious. And there was nowhere for me to run.
Seven more kilometers it was.
"What are we going to do about Yeoreum?"
Night, most people already asleep. Two dark silhouettes sat facing each other inside the Control Room.
Soyeon, slouched a little rebelliously with her hips scooted forward and legs crossed, and Dahyeon, spine ramrod straight.
What was going on between them? From the atmosphere, it looked like Soyeon had called Dahyeon in to give her a talking-to, but...
"...Yeah."
Hearing Soyeon's voice open the conversation with a sigh, it didn't quite seem that way.
Soyeon thought of Yeoreum, asleep in her bed. Soft and cute — poke her now and then and she'd react like a guinea pig, adorably — it was just nice to watch someone you loved gasp at even the smallest tease. But if someone was tormenting a girl like that, that was a different problem entirely.
"Security's going no matter what."
"Yeah."
Soyeon nodded at Dahyeon's question. In the light from the terminal screen, the two of them looked almost like dolls.
Soyeon stared at the screen. She was a half-baked temporary administrator with no real authority, but she still had work to do. The oldest person aboard the ship was barely about to turn thirty — a young group — and so Soyeon carried a sense of duty not unlike that of some nation's military.
She tapped a profile. Among photos of people looking stiff with nerves, she pressed the face of a woman in a fairly free pose, and Yujin's smiling face popped up. She swiped through the screen and read her information again — she'd already read it many times, but she read it once more.
The surprising part was that her evaluations were all very positive.
"...I never thought it'd turn out like this."
"The stress must be severe. For everyone."
She hadn't been the kind of person who'd torment others. You could ask whether she'd been hiding it all along, but during a training period designed with almost perverse thoroughness by supposedly brilliant people, concealing that kind of nature would have been nearly impossible.
"I'm worried. You're planning to look the other way, aren't you?"
"...Haah."
Soyeon sighed at Dahyeon's question.
Meals so bad you resented your tongue for existing, and a miserable environment where you only got about an hour of warm water total per day. The structure allowed for harsh punishment, sure... but even if everyone complied at first, how long would that last?
If they'd been tormenting someone completely innocent, that would be one thing. Even Soyeon found the current situation frustrating...
Facilities? We have them. Knowledge? Overflowing. Intelligence and knowledge had been the bare minimum requirements just to board the ship that was now a heap of scrap. All they needed was a combination of a few words.
It was like owning a grand mansion and losing the key. Of course discontent would erupt one way or another.
"...I'll have a proper talk with them. They haven't crossed the line yet, at least."
"And that is?"
Dahyeon furrowed her brow. This was something beyond the vague solidarity people of the same gender sometimes felt. In other words, she was still far more accustomed to life on Earth.
"The worst case is them abandoning Yeoreum on the way back."
"…"
"Honestly, just abandoning her would be lucky. If it gets even a little worse, they might just kill her and come back."
Soyeon furrowed her brow too. She had plenty of things she wasn't proud of herself, but even so, she believed she truly loved Yeoreum.
Seeing that, Dahyeon stretched out a hand and pointed at Soyeon.
"……Honestly, I've got some issues with you too."
"What?"
"Of course Yeoreum is a completely different person now, so I get it, but you know too. If it were the old Administrator... could you have dated her?"
"We were pretty clo—!"
Dahyeon leaned forward, closing the distance a little, and cut her off.
"I don't care. Just treat her well. From what I've heard about what Minseo, Jiwoo, and those security bitches are doing, that level of it seems like its own kind of love, so that's why I'm saying this."
"…"
"I'll talk to Yujin, Haebin, those bitches myself. You just look after Yeoreum's mental state. Even without that kind of thing happening, she looks like she's about to kill herself soon. You know that, right? She's been a little off lately."
At that cold tone of Dahyeon's — something Soyeon had only heard back on the main ship — she shuddered. The muscles hidden under her clothes, the ones Soyeon had seen when they showered, probably played a part too. And it was also true that she'd pretended not to notice Yeoreum's recent poor condition and taken advantage of it.
"……Yeah."
Soyeon nodded.
"...Sorry. Anyway. So about the personnel?"
"Aside from security and Yeoreum, basically in order of height."
"Hoo. You and I can't go, right?"
"No matter how I look at it."
There was no justification. No excuse that could overturn the premise that two reserve administrators leaving their posts was dangerous.
So between the two of them there was nothing but sighs, and the only real winner was Yeoreum, snoring and moaning through her muscle soreness in her sleep...
Two days full of muscle pain passed, and people began bustling about as the plan finally started taking shape.
If not for Soyeon's hold, these people would clearly have packed up and left long ago — so of course the progress was blisteringly fast.
"Look this way, please."
Same space as before, but the atmosphere was different. My first memory of coming here was of being dragged along, so even setting aside the tension the word "infirmary" brought, my body felt a little heated somehow.
The feeling of having my pupils scanned was always strange. How to put it. It made me feel even more unnecessary, somehow. Of course I knew that without my biometric signals the whole thing was useless — but the thought kept creeping in that maybe just my eyeballs would be enough.
...People moved busily, pulling out transparent medicine containers one by one and setting them neatly on a desk they'd brought from somewhere.
This was the future. Of course medical advances — drugs, that is — were terrifying too. I'd predicted as much from the moment they talked about "filling" cartilage the way you'd get a glucose drip...
Take the Remover, for example. The day I'd been treated that way. I'd heard the name while being dragged a considerable walking distance with my underwear half-pulled down, my ass on the verge of showing.
I'd vaguely thought it was called Remover because it removed pain — but it wasn't like they didn't have the word "painkiller" here. Re as in RE. Mover as in MOVER. Something that made you move again.
When I first heard the explanation, that intuitive name had seemed a little odd... but painkillers, anticancer drugs — aren't those all pretty intuitive too?
How it worked was simple. Like a mix of stimulant and painkiller, I guess. Anyway, living was a real disadvantage. Without knowledge, I could only understand about half of any explanation I got. It seemed to be something that cut the signals while still letting you control things. Like dental anesthesia where you can still move your lips, maybe.
There was a whole truckload of drugs like that. Ones that temporarily ramped up your metabolism, sleep aids you could time down to the minute, injections that couldn't reconnect nerves but could keep a body part attached...
Wasn't it a wondrous world? This was an age that sent this many people — and originally twice this many — to the far side of the universe.
"...Administrator."
"Y-yees...!"
"I'm sorry. About back then. I just haven't had the time since..."
It was Jia. I didn't know her last name. All I'd ever caught was what I'd overheard when Soyeon was talking.
"Ah, ah... i-it's fine! Y-you were really in a h-hurry, and I, I was being d-difficult..."
"...Yes. Thank you. We're all done now. You can rest."
"If I could, um, h-help a little—"
I was scared, sure. My first impression of her had been of someone grabbing my body however she liked and dragging me off, so of course — but expanding my human connections somehow was still useful to me, so I asked.
A button that paid you money every time you pressed it and killed someone — the closer that someone was to you, the less you'd use it, right? "Abandoning the amnesiac Administrator Han Yeoreum" would be harder to choose than "leaving a woman you know to die."
"Ah, in that case—"
"Yeoreum!"
Fortunately she seemed to have something for me to do, and just as she was about to point somewhere, Soyeon's voice called from a short distance away.
"Ah, hello—"
"What are you doing? Busy?"
Soyeon came over at a quick little trot and stared at me as she asked.
"Ah, I, I was, there was something I could h-help with..."
"Yeah? It'll only take five minutes."
"Ah..."
I turned my head. Five minutes probably wasn't "I suddenly got horny" or anything, so there had to be a reason — I looked at Jia—
"It's fine. Go ahead. It wasn't anything major! You don't even have to come back."
she said. Whether that was a relief or not...
I pushed down the inexplicably sinking feeling and followed Soyeon.
It was a simple talk. She'd firmly told them not to fight, so don't worry — the same kind of thing an irresponsible teacher would say.
All I could do was nod. I mean, saying thank you would have been weird, right?