7. CHAPTER SEVEN #2
“Wow, so many options. What’s good?” I asked.
“Everything,” Lyn said.
She punched in a code, and a tray slid out. It held a wide bowl of something thick and golden, with chunks of soft-looking vegetables floating in it, a side of bread-like food, and a cup of Nebs because apparently that was non-negotiable.
“Starlight Stew. Trust me.”
I punched in the same code as Lyn and added a couple of the glowing dumplings because they looked too interesting to pass up.
Yuki appeared at my elbow, his own tray stacked dangerously high.
“You got the dumplings,” he said, as if I’d passed a test. “Good choice. You never know what flavor you’re getting, which is kind of a nice surprise.”
He darted to a nearby crate and lifted the lid with the kind of reverence usually reserved for religious artifacts.
“Also—limited-edition Nova Crisp Chips. You’ve arrived on a blessed day.”
He pressed his hands together as if he were praying.
“So, this is Yuki,” Lyn said. “He’s on keys. Ignore the enthusiasm. It’s a medical condition.”
Lyn shot Yuki a glare and rolled her eyes.
“I feel honored,” I said to Yuki. “Did someone warn the snack gods, or is this just good karma?”
“Dune predicted a twelve percent increase in salt intake after the Lumara show,” Yuki said. “We have to listen to her when she does math.”
“I don’t know what that means, but I can’t wait to try them.”
“Finally, someone respects my contributions,” Dune said overhead.
I jumped, my bones nearly leaving my body.
“Oh my stars,” I said. “She’s everywhere.”
“She likes to feel included,” Lyn said.
Yuki held out a bottle, and I took it from him. Inside, liquid swirled in lazy loops of violet, blue, and rose, catching the light like moving glass. Tiny bubbles drifted upward through the shimmer.
“Oh, pretty,” I murmured.
“Ever had a Nebula Cosmo?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“It’s way better than Starlust, if you’ve had one of those,” he said.
“I’m sure I’ll love it.”
I twisted off the cap and took a sip. The fizz hit my tongue and sent my taste buds straight to outer space.
“Oh my stars! This is really good. Way better than Starlust!” I exclaimed.
“Oh, so you have tried Starlust? Glad you love it. We have cases of it. Help yourself anytime you need a drink or something to eat.”
“Thanks, I will!” I nodded and smiled.
Lyn shouted from across the room, “Hey, if you guys are done getting wet over fizzy drinks, come sit.”
Yuki snorted.
“She means me,” he said, bumping his shoulder against mine. “I love my fun drinks. Come on.”
We wove through the tables and slid into the seats across from Lyn. She had one boot up on the bench, a bowl of noodles in front of her.
“Welcome to the cool kids’ corner,” she said, pointing at us with her chopsticks. “Orientation time.”
Lyn and Yuki filled me in on the actual important stuff between mouthfuls of Nebs.
Sound-check schedules. Sleep cycles that weren’t really cycles at all, just brief collapses whenever the bus’s hum lulled them into sleep.
Shipboard legends about which cabins were haunted by feedback echoes from a concert three tours ago.
A running bet on how many times Sira would threaten to quit before the end of the tour.
The current count was eleven, and they were only three cities in.
“You’ll want to stay out of engineering,” Lyn said. “Not because they’re mean, but because they don’t stop talking and showing you all their projects.”
“Uh, okay. Noted.”
“If you get lost, ask Dune,” Yuki added. “She’ll pretend to be annoyed, but she likes showing off the shortest routes.”
“I do not pretend,” Dune said. “I am annoyed.”
“You love us, though,” Yuki sang under his breath.
There was teasing, but there was also something real underneath it—the kind of shorthand you only got from living on top of each other through a hundred shows and a thousand small crises.
These people knew each other’s bad days and good days. They knew the weird food habits and the sounds they made in their sleep. They were a family.
Not the kind you were born into, but the kind you built by showing up over and over until the showing up became the thing that held you together.
And I had just been dropped into the middle of it—this whole chaotic, orbiting pop star life—while also trying not to short-circuit over whatever was happening between me and Zhari.
Midway through my stew, Lyn pointed behind me with her chopsticks.
“Ah, look who decided to join us. Here comes your little girlfriend.”
She puckered her lips in an exaggerated kissy face over my shoulder.
I turned.
Zhari had appeared in the doorway of the mess. She’d changed into soft pants and a cropped top, her hair half pulled back, light threads braided down one side. She looked normal.
Or she would have, if you ignored the way the entire room shifted a degree toward her the second people noticed she was there, as if she had her own gravity and nobody was immune to it.
Her gaze moved across the room, found me, and stopped.
For a second, everything else went quiet. The way her face changed when she saw me—it wasn’t her stage face or her camera smile. It was a genuine smile, and it sent butterflies through my stomach.
As she walked over to us, her eyes locked onto mine. She stopped at my side and leaned her hip against the edge of the table. Her hand dropped to my shoulder and rested there.
“Uh,” Zhari groaned. “I am exhausted.”
“You’ve only been gone for, like, fifteen minutes?” Yuki scrunched up his eyes in confusion. “How are you exhausted?”
He rolled his eyes.
“Women.”
“Shut up, Yuki!” Lyn and Zhari snapped at the same time.
“Yeah, well, those fifteen-minute interviews and live streams add up. Anyway, I had to change back into something comfortable.”
She gave my shoulder a small squeeze.
“May I steal our cultural guest?” she asked Lyn.
Lyn made a show of thinking about it.
“Depends. Are you bringing her back in one piece?”
“I need all of the pieces,” Zhari said. “She has to explain many human things to me. Earth boy bands. Memes. Human dating rules.”
“Then sure,” Lyn said, smiling. “Go do whatever mysterious star stuff you do.”
“Hey!” Yuki shouted, startling us all. “Get down from there, Nova! How did you get out of your tank again?”
We all watched as Yuki jumped up and dashed across the mess hall. Nova had climbed onto the ceiling, trailing along just above the buffet laid out on a table conveniently below her.
“Don’t you dare drop down! You do not need this food!” Yuki yelled, cupping his hands above his head for her to fall into.
Zhari pushed lightly off the table, her bare feet quiet against the floor.
“Ship tour?” she asked me. “Before more rehearsals eat my day.”
“Thought you’d never ask,” I said, grabbing my Nebula Cosmo.
She showed me the ship like someone giving me a tour of their house who was proud of it but also slightly embarrassed by the mess. It kind of felt like I was on some sort of reality TV show.
“This is the main rehearsal space,” she said, sliding open a door to reveal a wide room with a low stage, marks on the floor for camera positions, and rigs hanging from the ceiling.
“We practice new arrangements here. Sometimes I come in here just to catch my breath. It feels like the whole world stops sometimes, and I am the only one here.”
“Well, I like it already.”
I reached out and brushed my fingers against her hand. She glanced down with a soft smile before pulling away.
“The viewing bubble,” she said, gesturing toward a short ladder leading to a glass-walled pod that jutted from the ship’s side. “Good for pretending we are small and the only ones in the universe.”
I climbed a few steps and poked my head up. The glass curved around in a full dome. Inside sat two comfortable-looking benches across from one another and a small side table bolted into the wall.
The entire roof was essentially just sky.
It was the kind of place where you could sit for hours and forget you had a body, a job, and a mother who was probably composing a very long text message right then.
I immediately knew I would be spending a lot of time up there.
“It is one of my favorite places to go to relax. When Sira has to rent these shuttles, I always make sure they have a viewing bubble,” she gushed.
I climbed back down, my feet hitting the deck with a soft thud. Zhari stepped back to give me room, then fell into step beside me without a word.
Together, we turned away from the ladder and headed down the hall.
We passed the bunk section—pods built into the walls on both sides, each with a privacy curtain in a different metallic shade and name panels glowing softly. I caught glimpses of fiber-optic star lights embedded in the ceilings above the beds.
Someone had stuck plushies everywhere, while another bunk had a string of tiny moon-shaped lights draped across the curtain rod.
“So,” I asked eagerly, “where’s mine?”
“Ah,” Zhari said. “About that.”
She kept walking. We passed the last of the bunks and a supply closet before reaching a door at the very back of the bus that required a palm scan.
The corridor here was quieter, the lighting warmer. Private, despite being just down the hall from everyone else.
We kept walking and stopped at the last door. Zhari pressed her hand to the panel, and a few seconds later, it slid open.
The suite was small by Zhari Lumis standards, but massive compared to the pods we’d passed in the corridor. It felt almost indulgent, like stepping into a secret meant for someone far more important than us.
A real room, not just a compartment. Walls that didn’t press in. A ceiling that didn’t hum quite so close overhead.
An actual bed was built into the far wall, wide enough to stretch out without brushing the edges, layered with a thick, cloud-soft duvet that looked too pristine to touch.
Pillows were scattered across it in careless abundance, as if someone had tried to make the space feel lived-in and given up halfway through.