“I hate the way I look,” Seungri said, as he stared at his ID card photo. He was lying somewhat reclined on his single-sized cabin bed, the pillows propped beneath his back as he flipped the card between his fingers, cringing at how he had posed with so much aegyo for the photo, what with his hands curved beneath his chin and that big goofy smile plastered across his face. “I look stupid,” he said. After a moment, when he realized that he was apparently talking to no one, he looked over at G-Dragon, who was sitting cross-legged on his own single-sized bed, continually swiping his finger across the screen of the tablet he was holding. “Hyung, you listening to me?” Seungri asked.

“Yeah, yeah,” G-Dragon said, not once looking away from the tablet as he continued to scroll through the screens. “You’re ugly. I know.”

“Yah, what?” Seungri sat up in a huff and threw his legs over the side of the bed so that he was facing G-Dragon. “That’s not what I said!” He folded his arms across his chest and pouted for a moment, but when he realized that his sulking wasn’t getting G-Dragon’s attention, he gave up. Curious about what his hyung was so engrossed in, he walked a few steps over to G-Dragon’s bed and eyed the tablet he was holding. “What are you looking at?” he asked.

“You haven’t seen this?” G-Dragon asked, glancing behind him at Seungri, who was peering over his shoulder. Turning his attention back to the pages opened on the tablet, he said, “It’s the alien directory. Look, you can even narrow the search. Right now I’m looking only at females with more than two arms, a heightened ual libido, and no vocal chords. Here, check this one out.” He brought his finger up to the drop-down menu and found the species that he had been looking at earlier. The screen displayed a rotating image of a sample female from the Janex species.

Seungri squinted at the screen, seeing that the Janex species was somewhat human-like in that it had two eyes, a nose, and a mouth, but its skin color was a ghastly gray and instead of hair, it had these small fleshy mushroom-like growths all over its head. “Ew,” Seungri said, pointing to the growths.

“Yeah, but Seungri-yah, think about it,” he said, his eyes full of wonder as he glanced back at his maknae. “You know what a heightened ual libido means? It means they want . Like, all the time. , , .”

“But hyung, you’d really want to have with that? What if you accidentally touch one of those… things on its head?”

“Ai, they’ll be doing all the touching, Seungri-yah. They have four arms!” Closing his eyes now, as if fantasizing, he said, “All those hands… all over me. I’ll just lie back and…” He let out a moan-like sigh. “Ah, anyway… oh! Oh! And the best part… no vocal chords, Seungri-yah! They can’t talk! No whining. No complaining that I never call them back. Nothing! It’s like… the perfect female.”

Seungri shrugged. “What about Dara?”

“What about her? I mean, she’s great and all, but…” He pointed at the image on the screen. “Need I remind you that this species can’t talk?”

Seungri, unable to get over the mushroom-like growths, reached over G-Dragon’s shoulder and swiped for more information on that strange feature. As he read through the description, he began to laugh. “Those things on its head are sensors!” he said. “Telepathic sensors!”

“So?”

“So, they can’t talk out loud, but they can talk through thoughts!”

“What? No…”

Seungri, still laughing, said, “They won’t complain about you not calling them because they can just invade your head whenever they want!”

G-Dragon’s mouth hung open a bit. “No, no, that can’t be right,” he said, as he scrolled down to read more. “Damn it, maknae! Why’d you have to go and ruin my fantasy?” He whipped his hand back and smacked Seungri away from him. “Aish, just… just go back to your bed and stare at your ugly picture the rest of the day and leave me alone.”

Seungri stopped laughing and started sulking again. “I’m not ugly,” he said. He looked down again at the ID card in his hand. “You think they’ll let me retake the picture?”

“Leave me alone, Seungri-yah!” G-Dragon yelled, his gaze focused on the screen. Mumbling, he added, “I’m going to find the perfect female eventually…”

Seungri stomped away and plopped back down on his bed, where he sat for a while examining his ID card. He noticed something strange then. Where it should have said Species: Human, it instead said Species: Unknown. “What the…? Hyung, look. They screwed up my information!”

G-Dragon ignored him.

“Hyung, seriously. Go look at your ID. What does it say your species is? Does it say Human?”

“Of course it says Human, maknae! Stop with these stupid questions.”

Seungri’s heart raced as he read the word Unknown over and over again. “Hyung, mine doesn’t say Human. It says Unknown. What does that mean?”

G-Dragon finally stopped staring at his tablet and looked over at Seungri then, a smirk on his face. “Well, that certainly explains some things.”

“Hyung, be serious! What does… what does this mean?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care,” G-Dragon said, returning his attention to the tablet.

Seungri sat on his bed for a while, trying to make sense of things. He thought back on how, when they had first left for this tour just a few days earlier, they had stopped at that intergalactic space station near Earth for processing, which is where they were issued their IDs. He remembered that their DNA had been taken there and wondered now if that was how their species was identified. Did he not have human DNA? Was he… an alien?

Seungri gasped at the thought and looked over at G-Dragon again. He desperately wanted his help but knew that he wouldn’t receive it. Not knowing what else to do, he got up from his bed and walked toward the door. Thinking that he would leave in search of answers, he placed his hand against the ID sensor, waited as the door retracted into the wall with a hydraulic whoosh, and then stepped out into the ship’s corridor, the door reclosing behind him.

He saw Dara down the corridor, her skin tinted somewhat blue from the fluorescent lights above.

She waved at him. “Is Jiyong in there?” she asked.

Seungri nodded. “Yeah, but he’s busy with… erm…” He bit his lip and smiled now. “Yah, Dara-ah, you should steal that tablet away from him and check out his search history.”

“What? Why?”

“Oh, I just think you’d find it interesting,” he said. He didn’t feel bad at all about betraying G-Dragon. In fact, he felt that it was due justice. He was tired of being pushed around and relished any opportunity for revenge. “Is Chaerinni still upstairs?” he asked.

“Yeah, she was in the shower when I left,” Dara said.

Seungri breathed in deeply, thinking about CL in the shower, and then refocused his thoughts back on his ID card. If anyone would take his issue seriously, it would be CL. She had spent all these months prior to leaving on this tour studying different alien customs and languages. Surely she would be curious as to why his species was listed as Unknown.

He said goodbye to Dara and then walked down the corridor, passing T.O.P.’s room first, which reeked of that stuff he smoked every day – some sort of hallucinogenic alien tobacco that he had bought from a couple of shady creatures back at that intergalactic space station.

T.O.P. was the only one to have his own room. He had practically demanded it when the tour was first announced, long before they even boarded the ship. No one wanted to room with him anyway, not with the way he’d been acting lately… so dark and introspective, always reading philosophy books or watching art house films, and only talking about the emptiness of life or some other dreary subject.

Seungri brought his shirt up to his nose to block the smell and continued on, passing the room that Taeyang shared with Daesung as he made his way to the elevator pod at the end of the corridor.

“Destination?” a robotic voice asked.

“Fourth floor,” Seungri said. He was then beamed up a floor and began making his way down the girls’ wing, passing Bom and Minzy’s room and stopping just in front of Dara and CL’s door.

He stood outside the door for a moment, imagining CL inside wearing only a towel, her wet hair dripping down her bare shoulders, her legs glistening…

Suddenly, the door retracted open.

“Yah!” CL yelled, clutching her chest at the sight of Seungri. “I just lost ten years off my life.”

Seungri’s eyes traveled down her body. Just like he had imagined, she was wearing only a towel, her hair dripping wet, and those legs…

“You just going to stand there staring at me or what?” CL asked. “What are you doing here?”

“It’s fate,” Seungri said.

“Fate? What? What are you talking about?”

“You opened your door at the same time I arrived. It’s like we’re connected. We’re just…” He gazed somewhat dreamily at her. “We’re just two lost souls swimming in a fishbowl... year after year…”

“Is that Pink Floyd? Are you quoting Pink Floyd? Seriously?”

Seungri looked confused. “Who’s Pink Floyd?”

“Aish, Seungri-yah,” she said, brushing past him now and walking out into the corridor, leaving wet footprints as she headed down the way Seungri had come.

“Wait, where are you going?” he asked.

CL ignored him and held down the intercom button outside Bom and Minzy’s door. “Bommie, it’s me. I need to borrow your blowdryer.”

After a moment, Bom opened the door and let CL in, but then she saw Seungri standing behind her. “Eek!” Bom yelled. “No boys allowed!”

“Wait!” Seungri placed his hand in the doorway, stopping the door from closing. The door now jerked back and forth from the wall, letting out a partial whoosh each time it tried to close. “Can I come in, please?” he asked. “Pleeease?”

“Just let him in already!” Minzy yelled from her bed.

Bom rolled her eyes as she held her hand to the sensor and let him in. “Just make it quick,” she said.

“Whoa,” Seungri said, as he walked into their room. He hadn’t been in either of the girls’ rooms yet. He could tell that it was the same layout as the boys’ room, what with the two single beds separated by a steel nightstand, but rather than the starched white sheets that G-Dragon and Seungri slept in, the girls had what appeared to be dark blue satin sheets with glow-in-the-dark stars, which matched the view outside the window on the far wall. “Where’d you get that?” Seungri asked, pointing to the bedding.

“From the store down on the second floor,” Bom said, as she sat down on her bed.

Seungri looked around at the walls, which were covered in photos of the girls and posters of groups they liked. “Yah, can you two help decorate my room? I mean, Jiyong-ah probably won’t let you touch his side, but I wouldn’t mind my side being–”

“What exactly do you want, Seungri-yah?” CL asked. She was waiting to blowdry her hair and was growing impatient.

Seungri breathed in and out deeply and then lowered his head as he passed his ID card to CL.

CL looked at his card. “Yeah, so? It’s an ugly photo. So what?”

“What? No! Not the photo! I mean, it is ugly, but that’s not why I’m here. Look at where it says my species!”

CL looked down at the card again. “Unknown?”

“Let me see that,” Minzy said, jumping from her bed. “Yah, it really does say that!” She looked at Seungri with wide eyes. “What… oh my god, what are you?”

“What? I’m me! You know me! I’m… I’m human!”

Minzy slowly backed away from him. “Not according to your ID,” she said.

“Yah, come on!” Seungri said. “It’s some sort of mistake, right?”

“Let me see,” Bom said, kneeling on her bed as she reached over to where Seungri was standing and grabbed the card from him. “Hmm… so, what does this mean?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out!” Seungri yelled.

Bom gave him back the card and then sat back down on her bed, hugging her stuffed hippo. “You’re an alien,” she said.

“I am not!” Seungri yelled.

“Weird that it doesn’t say what species of alien,” CL said. “I guess whatever you are hasn’t even been identified yet.”

Seungri’s mouth fell open. “But… but…” Tears welled up in his eyes as he backed away from the girls, bumping into the door. “Can… can one of you let me out? I need to go… think.”

Bom got out of her bed then and held her hand to the sensor. “It’s okay,” she said, as the door retracted open. “We’ll still love you… even if you are an alien.”

Seungri stared at Bom, blinking back his tears, and then walked out, having never felt more alone in his life. He ran his hand along the wall as he made his way down the corridor and then practically collapsed inside the elevator pod.

“Destination?”

“I don’t know,” Seungri said, whimpering.

“Repeat. Destination?”

“Third floor,” Seungri said, not knowing where else to go but back to his room.

He was beamed back down a floor and then stumbled out of the elevator pod, his cheeks streaked with tears. As he walked down the corridor, he saw Dara up ahead storming out of his room.

“Aish, that Jiyong-ah!” she yelled, her face red with ire. “Four arms? Really!?” She huffed past Seungri and rushed toward the elevator pod, disappearing inside.

Seungri realized then that he couldn’t go back to his room, not unless he wanted to experience G-Dragon’s wrath, which of course he didn’t. He thought about asking Daesung and Taeyang if he could stay in their room, but then he smelled the smoke seeping out of T.O.P.’s room. Normally, he couldn’t stand that smell, but he was drawn to it now and made his way to T.O.P.’s door, where he pressed the intercom button down. “Hyung, it’s me,” Seungri said. “Please let me in.”

T.O.P. didn’t answer.

Seungri held the button down again. “Hyung, please. I want to try that wacky tobacky,” he said. “I just… I need something.”

The door suddenly retracted open, the smoke pouring out along with the sounds of some gothic synth rock music.

Seungri coughed and waved the smoke away from his face. He could barely see inside the room at first, not until the smoke cleared a bit. After taking a few steps inside, he saw T.O.P. sitting on his bed. He was dressed in his usual attire – a long black silk robe tied at his waist with pink fuzzy bunny slippers hanging off his feet.

Seungri tried to yell over the gloomy music. “Hyung? Can you turn that down for a minute?”

T.O.P. sighed and reached over to his tablet on the nightstand, pressing pause.

“What music was that?” Seungri asked.

“Depeche Mode,” T.O.P. said, his voice deeper than usual.

“Dep…what? Ai, whatever. Listen, I… I need to talk to someone. I don’t know who else to talk to.”

“Talk with,” T.O.P. said.

“What?”

“You don’t talk to someone, you talk with someone.”

“Yah, hyung, what are you saying?”

“Forget it,” T.O.P. said, fidgeting with the pipe in his hands. “You want to smoke or what?”

Seungri bit his lip. “Erm, yeah, okay.”

T.O.P. packed the pipe and then passed it to Seungri. “Take a long deep hit,” he said. “And then hold it in. You should feel it instantly.”

“Feel what?” Seungri asked, as he put the pipe in his mouth.

T.O.P. smiled as he clicked his lighter on and held the flame to the bowl. “You’ll see,” he said.

Seungri began to on the pipe, seeing then that, as he inhaled, the substance inside the bowl was glowing green. He took his mouth off the pipe and tried to hold the smoke in like T.O.P. said, but it burned his throat and he coughed it out then, heaving afterward with such force that he felt dizzy. “Yah, that stuff…” he croaked, his throat too parched to speak. He waved the smoke from his face and saw T.O.P. smiling.

“Feel it?” T.O.P. asked.

Seungri rubbed his eyes and looked around. Not feeling any differently, he shrugged. “Hyung, what if I told you I was an alien?”

T.O.P. took the pipe from him and set it down on the nightstand. “We’re all aliens,” he said.

“What? What the hell does that mean?”

“To us, they’re the aliens. To them, we’re the aliens.”

“Oh,” Seungri said. “But I mean, what if I wasn’t human?”

T.O.P. arched his eyebrow. “Ah,” he said. “What does it mean to be human anyway? We are all just momentary microbes whirling through the unimaginable immensity of space, or at least, that’s what the great Stanley Kubrick once said. Do you know his films? He said that if we were to sit back and actually think about that, about how we are really nothing in the great scheme of things, then we would go insane. I think that’s what you’re really asking, Seungri-yah, right? Like, not what if we’re not human, but what difference does it make if we are or are not human? All life is pointless…”

T.O.P. was still talking, but Seungri had stopped listening. He was staring at the words coming out of T.O.P.’s mouth – literally, he was seeing the actual words T.O.P. was speaking come rolling off his tongue, the rainbow-colored letters swirling and twirling around in the air, as if dancing.

“Letter party,” Seungri quietly said.

“What?” T.O.P. asked.

“The letters,” Seungri said. “They’re having a party.”

T.O.P. waved his hand in front of Seungri’s face. “You okay?” he asked.

“I think… I think I need to go,” Seungri said, but as he tried to stand from the bed, he felt his legs give out underneath him and he then fell to the floor, which didn’t seem to be a floor anymore but some sort of mushy substance that he began desperately wading through, trying to swim his way toward the door.

“Yah, just stand,” T.O.P. called out from the bed.

Seungri heard T.O.P.’s words like a deep echo. Just stand, just stand, just stand.

“I have no knees!” Seungri yelled. “I’m a… a worm!” He began squirming around on the floor then, believing that he had just discovered his true species. “I’m a worm alien!” He squirmed even faster now, quickly approaching the door. “I’m unknown! Hurry, let me out of here before they discover me!”

“Aish, Seungri-yah,” T.O.P. said, as he walked over to the door and held his hand up to the sensor.

The door slid open, the whoosh louder to Seungri than any other sound in the entire galaxy. He wriggled out the door and then lay flat on his back in the middle of that corridor, completely out of breath. As he gazed up at the fluorescent blue lights, he suddenly saw Daesung and Taeyang’s faces peering over him.

“What did you do to the maknae?” Taeyang asked, looking over at T.O.P.

T.O.P. shrugged. “He just took one hit,” he said, before sneaking back into his room.

“I’ll go get him some water,” Daesung said.

“Ai, is that Seungri on the floor?” G-Dragon yelled from down the corridor.

“Yeah,” Taeyang said.

“I’m going to kill that maknae,” G-Dragon said, jogging over.

Taeyang held his arm out, blocking G-Dragon from Seungri. “Just wait a minute. He’s all messed up, man. Just let him be.”

G-Dragon peered over Taeyang’s arm and sneered at Seungri on the floor. Angrily, he asked, “What’s your problem, Seungri-yah?”

“I’m… I’m an alien,” Seungri said, sobbing loudly now.

“What? You stupid maknae! You’re not an alien! Yah, I paid some guy at the space station to put that on your ID as a prank!”

Seungri suddenly stopped crying and sat up, feeling as if he had just snapped out of a trance. “What?” he asked. His eyes began to fill with tears again. “Why… why would you do that?”

G-Dragon shrugged. “Thought it would be funny. It’s called a joke, Seungri-yah.” Crinkling his nose, he asked, “Why did you go and tell Dara that I’m looking at alien chicks online?”

“Thought it would be funny,” Seungri quietly said, looking down at his lap.

“Yah, how is that funny?” G-Dragon yelled.

“What alien chicks?” Taeyang asked.

G-Dragon calmed down a bit then. “This… directory. You haven’t seen it?”

Taeyang shook his head. “Are they ? Is it like… alien ?”

“What? No. But…”

“Oh, ‘cause I know a good site for that,” Taeyang said.

“Really?” G-Dragon asked.

Daesung came back with water then and Seungri gulped it down.

“Can you stand?” Daesung asked, offering his hand.

Seungri grabbed his hand, feeling his legs wobble a bit. “I’m okay,” he said.

“I’m still mad at you, maknae,” G-Dragon said. “What I did was funny. What you did was mean.”

Taeyang moved between them again. “Yah, you messed with him, he messed with you. Let’s just call it even.”

G-Dragon and Seungri stared at each other for a moment, still with some tension between them.

“Can’t we all just get along?” Daesung asked, reaching for G-Dragon and Seungri’s hands and bringing them together. “We have a long, long tour ahead us. Can you two just shake hands and promise not to kill each other just yet?”

“Fine,” G-Dragon said, shaking Seungri’s hand. “I promise not to kill you...”

“Me too,” Seungri said.

“…yet,” G-Dragon added.