Moonbyul felt like she was swimming in shark-infested waters.

Wherever she went on-board the Unity, whether it was the kitchen or the gym or the cockpit, she felt like Hyoyeon was one step behind, waiting, watching, lurking. She was rational enough and self-aware enough to know that that wasn’t the truth, that the paranoia was all in her head, but still realistic enough to take steps to avoid her.

It was a delicate balance.

She didn’t want to make a big deal out of her history with Hyoyeon, didn’t to draw any unnecessary attention to herself when there were such big things afoot, but it was impossible not to feel the cold heat of contempt every time she and Hyoyeon were in the same room.

Luckily, it didn’t happen very often.

Hyoyeon was avoiding Moonbyul just as actively as Moonbyul was avoiding Hyoyeon.

But the Unity, however luxurious, was only so big. Crossing paths was virtually unavoidable and whether that happened personally in the galley or professionally in the common areas, the protocol was basically the same. They ignored each other, occasionally shooting angry glances or muttering less-than-kind words under their breath, and then they went their separate ways.

Neither was very happy about being forced to live and work with the other, and one of the only things that united them was how much they hated the fact that Elly and Hyuna were together on the Termite.

And since a mutual hatred for the other’s best friend wasn’t a very good foundation upon which to build a new friendship, they stayed away from each other, both altering their course when they heard the other coming.

But there was another inevitability looming over both of their heads. Just like how they couldn’t avoid each other forever, they couldn’t keep a lid on their feelings forever, and it took four days in the air, four days of stepping carefully and walking on eggshells around the Unity, before all their history, resentment and bad feelings finally came to a head.

It happened in the kitchen, during one of Yoona’s off-shifts, when both of them had gotten hungry at exactly the same time. Moonbyul had gotten there first and Hyoyeon arrived a few seconds after, just in time to see her arch-nemesis digging around the inside of the fridge for something to eat.

Hearing her footsteps, Moonbyul looked over her shoulder, saving her grimace for when she was safety blocked by the fridge door.

“I’ll be done in a second,” she mumbled, reaching for a container of leftovers.

“Whatever,” Hyoyeon said, not sounding particularly interested either way.

Moonbyul exhaled before closing the fridge, steadying herself so that she could keep her feelings in-check. She took a few careful steps towards the microwave, popping the lid off her food and considering how long she should heat it. Hyoyeon headed towards the fridge to take Moonbyul’s place, and Moonbyul stared down at her food, hoping that staying focused on spaghetti would take her mind off things, hoping that occupying herself with her dinner would keep her from saying the thing that was burning and tongue, hoping that–

“Did you hear that Elly got hurt?” she asked, pushing her food away from the edge of the counter so that she could lean against it, facing Hyoyeon and hoping to see some sort of reaction.

But there wasn’t one. With Hyoyeon, there never really tended to be.

“Yes,” she said, emerging from the fridge with a sports drink in her hand. She twisted off the cap and threw it sideways into the trashy bin. She took a long sip, apparently expecting Moonbyul to say more and when she didn’t, Hyoyeon raised an eyebrow. “Hyuna said that she’ll be fine.”

“Did Hyuna mention that it was her fault?” Moonbyul spat, not bothering to hide the spite in her tone, and not bothering to try shying away from conflict. Not this time. Not anymore. Not when Elly was lightyears away, trapped inside a ship a fraction the size of the Unity, trapped with her dragon of an ex-girlfriend and shock-dart wounds on her legs. She was looking for a fight. She wanted to take out what she was feeling on Hyuna but Hyuna wasn’t around. And Hyoyeon? She was the next best thing.

Hyoyeon looked around the empty kitchen like she expected to find an audience. Her expression was incredulous. She could rarely believe the things that came out of Moonbyul’s mouth but this accusation felt particularly insane.

“How the do you figure that?” she asked, narrowing her eyes. “They got ambushed. It could have easily been Solji or Taeyeon or even Hyuna who got shot. Someone else wanted the tracker. Everyone in the ing universe is looking for Jiyong. It’s possible that someone else cracked the code and went to get the tracker, too. Hyojin just happened to be the unlucky soul holding it at the time.”

“First of all, don’t call her that. You don’t get to call her by her first name.”

Hyoyeon rolled her eyes and said, “Elly will be fine. She is a big girl, Byulyi. She knew the risks. She knew the dangers. She made her choice. Let it go.”

“You let it go,” Moonbyul countered petulantly. She was trying to bait her, trying to poke and prod Hyoyeon into fighting with her. They’d hated each other back when Elly and Hyuna were together, they’d hated each other when Elly and Hyuna broke up and they hated each other now. Why should they keep skirting the issue? Why beat around the bush? Now was as good a time as any to hash it out. Maybe if they cleared the air, they’d be able to move on. (At the very least, Moonbyul thought she’d feel better once she opened up and told Hyoyeon what a she was.)

“You’re being childish,” Hyoyeon said, her tough guy stoicism beginning to thin. “You really want to do this now? In the middle of a ing space odyssey?”

“We’re not doing anything,” Moonbyul fired back, gesturing at the space between them. “We’re parked on Geum Haneul. Yuri, Sunny and Krystal are trying to figure out who ambushed the Termite and the captains are following the tracker signal. We have absolutely nothing better to do.”

“You want me to stand here and tell me all the reasons I hate your friend Elly?” Hyoyeon asked, putting her drink on top of the fridge so that she could cross her arms over her chest. “Or all the reasons I hate you?”

Moonbyul smirked and scoffed and opened her arms like she was ready to accept Hyoyeon’s embrace.

“Hit me,” she said. “Do your worst.”

Hyoyeon laughed, humorlessly, dryly, disbelievingly. She looked around again, hoping to find someone else who was listening and couldn’t believe Moonbyul’s bull. But when she found no one, she cocked her head to the side, cracking her neck, and bit the corner of her lip.

“I think you’re an arrogant try-hard who’s wrong about literally everything and your ridiculous love affair with Elly makes you completely blind to what a -up she is,” Hyoyeon said simply. “You have these blinders up about Elly and it borders on weird hero-worship. You might think she’s the hero of this story but I promise you, Moon Byulyi, she is the villain in Hyuna’s.”

Moonbyul took a few seconds to process this but she was unable to shake off the base amusement that she felt. This was how it always was between them, a back-and-forth that almost felt like a game, like they were playing chess or table tennis, taking turns making moves. There was malice and spite and resentment and borderline hated between them but it still felt like a game.

Moonbyul wondered if either of them would ever win.

“You can call Elly whatever you want,” Moonbyul said after a moment, her voice even and low, “but she is the one who cheated, Hyoyeon. Try as you might, even you can’t twist that around. Even you can’t change the past.”

“Oh star-ing Christ,” Hyoyeon said, rolling her eyes so dramatically that her entire body moved. “This again? Really? You’re a broken record, Byulyi! Get over it! Nana had been watching them for months, waiting for them to weaken, waiting for the right time to strike, and then she did! If you’re still that pissed, take it up with Nana.”

Moonbyul scoffed, recoiling slightly at what Hyoyeon was implying.

“So you’re saying it was all Nana’s fault? That Hyuna has absolutely no responsibility in this? She’s a grown- woman, Hyoyeon. She couldn’t have said no? She couldn’t have remembered her girlfriend of two years and decided not to someone else?”

“You have this completely made-up image of Elly,” Hyoyeon said, taking a step closer to Moonbyul without realizing it, “where she was the perfect, most attentive, most devoted girlfriend in the entire Cosmos. She wasn’t. She was an . She ignored Hyuna, she took her for granted, she missed dates and forgot anniversaries and went with weeks without calling her back. She was a ty girlfriend and it wore Hyuna down. So, yeah, when Nana showed her a little attention and a little affection and made her feel like she was loved and she was wanted, Hyuna acted on it. So what? Is that so bad? After being treated like garbage for months, was it so bad for Hyuna to want someone to take care of her. Where was Elly that night, Byulyi? What was she doing that was more important than spending just a little ing time with the woman who loved her?”

“You’re delusional,” Moonbyul said, blinking through her shock. “You really think any of that makes what Hyuna did okay? Why didn’t Hyuna talk to Elly? Why didn’t she reach out and tell her how she was feeling? Why didn’t she do anything besides taking Nana home and ing her in their bed?” She shook her head, feeling her cheeks growing flushed.

She’d been the one to walk in them that night. She’d gone to borrow something from Elly’s closet and found instead Hyuna with Nana’s head between her legs. Even thinking about it now made her want to cry. She remembered everything so vividly – how she’d caught Hyuna’s eyes before she her heel and walked away, how it felt like something was crushing her chest as she tried to find the words to say to Elly, how much it hurt to stand there and listen to a hysterical Ahn Elly call her every name in the book, accusing her of being a liar, accusing her of being jealous, accusing her of hating Hyuna before finally accepting the truth and collapsing on the floor in a puddle of tears.

It had easily been one of the worst nights of her life, and Hyoyeon had the audacity to stand there and tell her it all could have been avoided if Elly had been a better girlfriend?

“Maybe it doesn’t make it okay,” Hyoyeon continued, “but it makes it something.” She opened to say something else but bit her cheek. Maybe Moonbyul was okay with flying off the handles and making an emotional fool out of herself, but Hyoyeon wasn’t. She took a deep breath, considered her next words carefully, and lowered her voice when she spoke. “Hyuna isn’t the demon queen you think she is, Moonbyul. She is a human being, flesh and bone just like us, just like Elly. Unlike you, I don’t think my best friend is perfect. I know she’s ed up but with Elly, she was trying her best. And Elly let her down. Time and time again, Elly let her down. And Elly knew Hyuna. She knew what she’d been through and she knew what she needed. Or, at least, we all thought she did. But you can’t love somebody and cut them off like that. She never really loved her, Byul. If she did, she wouldn’t have done that to her.”

“You’re full of ,” Moonbyul said. At some point, she’d pushed herself off the counter and gotten closer to Hyoyeon. She hadn’t realized it when she was doing it but suddenly, she found herself just a foot away, looking Hyoyeon dead in the eyes as she spoke. This had been a long time coming. It had been two years since Moonbyul had seen Hyoyeon and Hyuna, and she’d spent more sleepless nights than she could count practicing what she’d say to them if she ever saw them again. But now, in the moment, her well-rehearsed words failed her, and all she could do was speak the truth as she felt it. “Elly loved Hyuna with everything she had.”

“Hyuna loved Elly,” Hyoyeon went on, ignoring her. “She loved her so much. She still does. She told her everything, things she doesn’t tell anyone. She opened up her heart to Elly in a way that she’ll probably never do again and you don’t get to stand here and negate all that just because you think the sun shines out Elly’s . Grow up, Byulyi. Realize that life isn’t so black and white.”

“Just as soon as you realize that your friend is a ,” Moonbyul said coldly. “She was one two years ago and she still is now.”

her lips and resisting the urges burning up the base of her neck, Hyoyeon took another small step forward, bringing her face closer to Moonbyul’s.

“You have no idea what Kim Hyuna has been through,” she said lowly. “You don’t know anything about her. You think you know everything but, like I said, you tend to be wrong a lot. No hateful bull you throw at her can change the fact that she’s been through hell and home again. She needed Elly to love her, to really lover her, and Elly couldn’t do it. What happened after that? It wasn’t Hyuna’s fault. Not by a longshot. I know it. You know it. Even your friend Elly knows it.”

Not one to back down to a challenge, Moonbyul straightened up her and leaned in even closer.

“I don’t give a  what Hyuna’s been through,” she hissed. “Her past does not excuse away the rest of her future. She doesn’t get a pass, Hyoyeon. I don’t care if she was tied up and shipped to a labor camp on Byeongsa. I don’t care if she was sold off to a Berm-fighting ring on some ty outlier rock. I don’t care what she’s been through. She doesn’t get to break other people’s hearts just because–”

Moonbyul didn’t see the punch coming. She was so engrossed in her rant that she didn’t notice Hyoyeon cocking her fist back and letting go. Before she’d registered any of it, Hyoyeon’s right hand connected with Moonbyul’s left cheek, sending the younger girl down to the floor in a heavy heap.

Moonbyul landed on her , her hand immediately coming up to touch at the trail of blood streaming from the corner of . Hyoyeon was above her in a matter of seconds, pointing down at her with a certain authority burning in her eyes.

“Watch your ing mouth,” she said, shouting for the first time since they’d joined forces on the Unity. “Do not say another ing word to me about Kim Hyuna. You know nothing, Moon Byulyi. Absolutely nothing. Do not speak to me. Do not come anywhere near me. When this is all over and we finally go our separate ways for good, that’ll be the last ing time we ever see each other. And until then, keep Hyuna’s name out of your goddamn mouth. Next time, I won’t let you off so easy.”

Hyoyeon stormed out with a rage that Moonbyul had never seen before. It would have been unsettling if she hadn’t been so surprised and baffled. She didn’t know what she’d said to set her off, sure that she’d said a lot worse earlier in the conversation when she’d purposely been trying to provoke her. She was so stunned, in fact, that she didn’t notice Solar in the doorway until the engineer was on the floor beside her.

“Moonbyul,” she said, sounding stricken. “Are you okay? What the was all that about?”

Moonbyul was still staring at the door. She touched her lip again and examined her hand, unsurprised to see crimson blood on her fingertips. She’d definitely have a fat lip in the morning. She knew that she should probably peel herself off the ground and go get something from the freezer to help slow the swelling, but she couldn’t get herself to stand back up.

 Maybe Hyoyeon was right and she really didn’t understand anything at all.

“I honestly don’t know,” she said absently. And then, after a few seconds, she looked to Solar, wishing she had less questions and more answers. “I really, really don’t know.”

Solji’s off-shift happened to align with Hyuna’s and that was how they’d ended up in opposite bunks of the tiny, tiny dorm just a handful of hours after Elly had taken a shock-dart to the leg.

It was awkward.

Hyuna had managed to scrounge up some decent painkillers and a bowl of soup and after Elly was fed and medicated, she’d been taken back to the engine room to recover privately. That had ben Hyuna’s idea. Apparently the floor-bed was a worse kept secret than anyone realized. Solji found that to be somewhat selfless, Hyuna willing to take herself out of the equation as soon as it was safe and reasonable to do so. She’d gotten Elly out of danger and treated her wounds and once she was stable, Hyuna stepped back and let Elly have the space she deserved.

Still, a lot had happened. Between Elly’s wounds, Hyuna’s own scars and the tracker itself, Solji’s head was spinning. When everything had calmed down (if only slightly), Taeyeon ordered Solji and Hyuna to bed. Naturally, they put up a fight but Taeyeon shut it down, immediately pulling rank and declaring herself the true captain of the Termite. As such, she was the boss and she needed them to rest.

As for the tracker, things hadn’t quite been as straightforward as they’d been hoping. They fashioned the two halves together, breathing a collective sigh of relief when the screen lit up and the thing powered on, but it didn’t work the way they’d been expecting. Instead of displaying Jiyong’s coordinates, it gave them a limited scope of directions – so many lightyears this way, so many degrees that way. It was like following a trail of breadcrumbs. They only learned more as they got closer. They knew what direction to fly but wouldn’t know anything else until they got to that next point.

It was frustrating.

Still, Taeyeon insisted that she fly the next shift solo. She wasn’t tired and she was perfectly able to read the tracker for next few hours. It had been a hectic shift and she wanted Hyuna and Solji to be well-rested and alert when it was their turn to shine. Unanimously, they agreed that Elly would take a few shifts off to recover whether she liked it or not. (And Solji had been nominated to break the news to Elly once the painkillers wore off and her head was clear.)

That was how Solji and Hyuna ended up in the dorm together. They’d each taken a bottom bunk, both content to lay there in the dark, unspeaking, but two hours into their off-shift, neither had fallen asleep.

It was around that time that Hyuna began to get restless.

“Hey, Red,” she said softly on the off-chance that Solji had passed out. “You awake?”

Solji swallowed hard and said, “Yeah.”

“Me, too,” Hyuna sighed. “Obviously. What’s keeping you up? Is it the stuff with the tracker? Taeyeon seems confident enough that it’ll lead us to Jiyong. Our next shift, we can call Seunghyun and make sure it’s working right. Frankly, it seems like a huge ing design flaw, but maybe it’s just a security measure. That wouldn’t surprise me. Don’t be too worried about that.”

“I’m not worried about that,” Solji said.

“Well if you’re stressing about Elly,” Hyuna continued, putting her arms comfortably behind her head as she stared up at the top bunk, “don’t be. Maybe my word’s not worth much to you but I do promise that she’ll be fine. She’ll sleep it off. She might be sore tomorrow but in a few days, she’ll be good as new. Don’t sweat that. She’s tougher than she looks.”

Solji took a breath.

“I’m not thinking about that either.”

Hyuna exhaled, blowing her bangs out of her eyes.

“So, my scars, then?” She laughed under her breath. “You can ask, you know. You won’t offend or upset me.”

The truth was that Solji didn’t want to get involved. Hyerin wouldn’t have wanted her to. Hyerin would have wanted her to mind her own damn business and focus on the work and get herself home as soon as possible. But while Hyerin was definitely on Solji’s mind, she also wasn’t around to talk her out of talking.

“I know I’m not a doctor,” Solji said after a pregnant pause, “but I remember hearing Hyerin and Sooyoung talk about shock-darts once. You need to be hit with dozens of darts to end up with scars like yours, Hyuna.”

Hyuna smiled a little, though she wasn’t sure why.

“It was definitely more than a few dozen times,” she said. “But you’re right. It takes a lot for scars to form. Like I said before, Elly will be fine. One won’t hurt her. Hell, ten wouldn’t hurt her.”

Solji didn’t move. She bit the inside of her cheek and then, after another beat, asked, “What happened to you?"

Hyuna nodded slowly even though she knew Solji couldn’t see her. It had been a while since she’d told this story but now – hurtling through space looking for a treasonous fugitive while her wounded ex-girlfriend slept on the dirty engine room floor of a strange ship – seemed like as good a time as any to open up.

“Do you remember what I told Seunghyun that day on Jaesan?” she began, shifting slightly so that she could get more comfortable. “About my parents?”

Solji did. The Cosmos had effectively killed both of Hyuna’s parents, orphaning her.

“Yeah,” she said quietly. “They were both killed. You said you went to a group home in Daedosi.”

“That’s the part of the story everyone knows,” she said, nodding. “That part is common knowledge. It’s what happened after that. That’s the part nobody knows.” Hyuna stopped speaking and considered this for a moment before adding, “Well, almost nobody. Hyoyeon knows and–” Hyuna paused and thought of Elly. Elly knew. Elly knew everything. She just didn’t want to admit that part out loud. “Nobody really knows what happened next.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Solji said, suddenly feeling vulnerable on Hyuna’s behalf. “Not if you don’t want to.”

“What good has keeping secrets ever done me?” Hyuna said more to herself than Solji.

There was another long pause. Solji had never cared for tense silences.

“I won’t tell anyone,” she whispered but she didn’t think Hyuna heard her.

“When I got to Daedosi,” Hyuna began thoughtfully, “I truly had no idea what I was in for. I sat next to some older kids on the ship. They were all considered wards of the Cosmos and their parents had all been killed or captured under suspicious circumstances. Basically, they were all in the same boat as me. They were kids whose parents got caught up in some Cosmos bull and suddenly, they were orphans.

“Because of this, we were basically blacklisted. Sins of the father, you know? No one wanted us. We were the bad orphans, the bottom-of-the-barrel kids. It wasn’t like we were nice, wholesome kids from Geungyo whose parents were doctors who died in a freak accident. We were the offspring of people considered to be traitors to their system and so we were outcasts. Nobody would want to adopt us. That was what the government social workers told the older kids and that was what the older kids told me.

“To most people, Daedosi is just another planet. When you think Daedosi, you probably think of a bustling metropolis, a huge cultural hub with lots of diversity and lots of social exports. But there’s a dark side to that planet that nobody ever talks about. The older kids? They knew about it already. But me? I was only twelve and I’d never even been to Daedosi, much less knew anything about the dark and twisted underbelly of what really goes on there.

“Daedosi is home to the Cosmos’ largest orphanage and foster care system. Everybody knows that part. But orphanages aren’t one big building with lots of bunk beds where kids stay until someone shows up and adopts them. As soon as you arrive, you get a physical and once you’re assessed, they outsource you to various group homes. I was sent someplace called the Happy Family Home but Solji, I assure you, there was nothing happy or family about it.

“The home was run by a group of four adults and words can’t express, in Korean or in English, how sleazy they were. In a way, I was really lucky. I was pretty even back then. I’d hit puberty early. By all accounts, I should have been one of the kids they pimped out. I was twelve, attractive. I should have been bringing in big bucks for Happy Family. Someone like me, fresh-faced and completely alone with absolutely no way to support myself or ask for help? That’s a hot commodity in Daedosi. But Ralph – he was probably the worst person at Happy Family, mind you – he saw something in me. He saw fire, he saw fight. When it came time for me to ‘earn my keep’ and make them some money, Ralph sent me to the ring.

“This was nothing like the fight clubs you see on TV. This was two starving teenagers with chains around their necks thrown into a ring and only one unfortunate sole emerged victorious. It went by age and by weight class and then, as you leveled up, it became a real blood bath. Beginners fought until someone was unconscious. In what they called the A-League, the doors didn’t open back up unless one person was dead or dying. I started out with the rookies, fighting other little girls in what they called the Cat Fight circuit. And then, as I learned the game, I worked my way up the A-League.

“See, if you won, you were in the clear. You got to eat. You got to sleep inside. If you really impressed the Happy Family, you got extras – medical care, internet access, new clothes. But if you lost? If you lost when Ralph had placed a special bet on you? God help you. Again, though, I was lucky. Ralph had a soft spot for me. When I lost, or even when I won but didn’t perform up to his standards, I got a shock-dart in the thigh. Sometimes one, usually more. When some of the other kids lost, boys or girls, they’d go into the basement with Ralph. Those kids never came out of the basement the same kids they were when they’d gone down.

“I was fifteen when they put me in the A-League. Ralph told me I was ready. By then, I’d become a skilled fighter. Because it was my debut fight, Ralph put even more money down than usual and he made it very clear to me that if I lost, it wouldn’t just be me that got punished but all the other kids I cared about. So I won. While most teenagers were taking tests in 10th grade, I was in the ring, killing another kid with my bare hands. But every time I won, things got just a little bit better for me and for the rest of the kids at Happy Family. I hadn’t asked for them, hadn’t ever really wanted them, but those kids were my family. Because of that, it was a really easy choice. Much easier than it should have been.

“Sixteen is considered ‘legal’ in Daedosi. Once you’re sixteen, you’re an adult. They kicked me out of Happy Family the day after my birthday. All I had was the clothes on my back, a suitcase full of a few random personal items and a cash card with $250 on it – a gift from Ralph. Don’t get me wrong. I thought about killing him before I left. I thought about killing every last one of them. But it wasn’t that simple. In a way, Happy Family was all these kids had. And some of them were young. Alone in Daedosi, they would have gotten murdered. Or worse. In a way, at least Happy Family was feeding them and keeping a roof over their heads. Maybe through fight rings and trafficking, we were all learning survival skills that would help sustain us later in life. I know it’s a really lame justification but I was sixteen and traumatized so it was the best I could come up with. Self-preservation is a powerful thing, I guess.

“I left Happy Family and never looked back. I moved to a different part of Daedosi and competed in private fight clubs until I had enough money to put myself through flight school. It was hell before that. I have a lot more scars than just the ones on my leg and there were a few times where I legitimately thought I was going to die but, damn it, I did it. I went to flight school on Jugeo and eventually I graduated, got a ship, met Hyoyeon and everything sort of fell into place.”

Hyuna took a deep breath, aware that she’d just said an awful lot without stopping. Somewhere along her way, she’d met Elly, fallen in love, had everything she could’ve ever hoped for and then squandered it all but she didn’t feel the need to say that part. Besides, Solji already knew all that.

“Anyway,” Hyuna said with a sigh, “I’m not telling you all this so you’ll feel bad for me. I actually don’t know why I’m telling you at all. I guess I just want someone to know. Someone who isn’t my best friend and someone who isn’t laying on a mattress on the floor, hating my guts. I just wanted someone else to know what goes on in Daedosi. Sure, they’ve got beautiful architecture and incredible universities but they also help the Cosmos throw away the children of criminals, letting them be beaten and and killed all because their parents did something to piss off the government.”

It had been a long time since Hyuna had spoken of any of this. She knew it was cliché but she suddenly felt lighter, less tense. Sometimes talking about it really did help. It would probably take another two years and another potentially galaxy-altering catastrophe to get her to open up again, but she had to admit that she felt better. Maybe there was something to this opening up stuff.

“Sorry,” she said when Solji’s silence was too loud. “I know that was probably a lot. You don’t have to say anything. I wouldn’t know what to say either.” She paused again, staring up at the bunk above her. “I’m going to get some sleep. You should do the same. Big things are afoot for us this week. We should rest when we can. Good night.”

With that, Hyuna turned over, pulled the covers up to her shoulders and fell asleep.

Aside from the tears streaming down her face, Solji hadn’t moved an inch. She hoped that Hyuna didn’t think that she was rude or cold or judgmental, hoped she didn’t misinterpret her stunned silence for anything other than it was, but she knew that if she’d opened , she would’ve started sobbing. And who would’ve benefitted from that?

She took a deep breath, trying to swallow the lump in . Thanks to the levity she felt following her impromptu confession, Hyuna had fallen asleep in just a few minutes, but Solji knew that she wouldn’t be so lucky. Hyuna had spoken with such ease, telling the most incredible horror stories without flinching or even pausing to collect herself. How had she survived that? How had any kid on Daedosi?

Hyuna was only twenty-five. Less than ten years had passed since she’d escaped Daedosi. Those orphanages were all still open. Happy Family was still open. Ralph was probably still sending kids to the A-League and torturing them if they couldn’t hold their own against other starving, terrified children. As Solji laid in the bottom bunk of a stuffy dorm, there were kids being and killed all because the Cosmos didn’t like their parents.

Perhaps indulgently, she thought of Hyerin. They’d had so many Code Pink fights over the topic of having kids. It would’ve been so easy for them to get pregnant and raise a healthy, happy, well-adjusted kid surrounded by love and luxury. But there were kids on Daedosi being forced to fight to the death, hoping against hope that killing another child would earn them something to eat.

She didn’t know how to accept a reality where any of that could be true. She didn’t know how to fold it up and lock it away. She didn’t know how to rectify any of it in her head.

Her hands were shaking and she squeezed them into fists trying to make them stop.

Desperately, she wished she could talk to her wife. Hyerin was compassionate and street-wise. Maybe there was something she could’ve said to make this all better.

But she couldn’t talk to Hyerin. Not yet. Not now.

Instead, Solji pulled her blanket up to her chin and closed her eyes, the stale air of the barracks doing little to help dry the tears still on her cheeks.