That morning, Mike made tea.
Two cups, as always.
But he didn't dig through his toolkit, didn't check the calibration logs, didn't mention the sensors or the anomalies from last week.
He just sat there, watching the steam rise from his cup. His eyes drifted, listening to the birds - a cheerful melody.
The morning sun crept across the yard tiles. No urgency. No thoughts. Just light.
Then his phone buzzed. A message from Kuro: "I'm passing by. Got anything to eat?"
Mike replied: "Still got the box of pizza from last night.", Kuro reacted with a like icon.
Mike didn't get up. The tea was warm. His favorite old song played in the background. And still, he wondered, Why would Kuro come this morning?
An hour later, Kuro showed up.
There was something bright in his face. A shimmer of joy, as if he'd biked through the whole town just to breathe.
"What's with the smile?" Mike asked, not unkindly.
"A new day, man," Kuro said, laughing. "You should come outside. The morning air - it lifts something."
Mike offered a faint nod. Then, softer - Kuro added, "Still thinking about Mr. Than's story?"
Mike nodded, closing his eyes briefly. "It's not about believing. It's just... it won't leave my head."
Logic had always been Mike's anchor. He trusted machines, repeatable outcomes, things that could be built, taken apart, improved.
But that didn't mean he was blind to uncertainty. He didn't worship data. He searched for patterns. The quiet overlaps between a hunch and a measurable shift.
And that's what unsettled him.
Mr. Than's story, the anomalies, data of coordinates, an undefined hollow. It didn't contradict his knowledge, but it poked a hole in the map he'd built inside. Even stranger, the tiny signals from Kuro's earlier episodes oddly aligned with the direction Mr. Than had described.
That overlap unsettled him. Part of him wanted answers. Part of him felt uneasy.
If it was real, then maybe his worldview had been missing something essential all along.
His father was strict but supportive. Mike's older sister lived on the outskirts of Luxios proper, her life unstable, changing jobs often, rarely messaging, just the occasional blurry photo of a new apartment.
His family had order, but also gaps no one ever filled.
Ezra, Mike's twin, was quiet, moody. Not strange, just… distant. No official diagnosis, yet everyone in the district knew he didn't move through the world like other people.
Like emotion had built up in his chest too long, Mike whispered, "Let's go," forcing a smile.
"Yeah, but let me grab something to eat first" Kuro replied.
…
At the windplain, only a few children were playing with kites, their voices swept up by the breeze.
Mike finished tweaking a broken circuit, snapped the casing shut, then looked toward Kuro. "Kuro, could I… tell you something?"
Kuro shifted under the shade of a lone tree, drowsy. "Sure."
Mike exhaled, the breath slower than he intended.
"I never called Ezra a burden," Mike began. His voice didn't crack, but something behind it did. "He sees the world differently. Sometimes I wish… I could see it like that too."
Kuro didn't interrupt. Just nodded slightly. A listener. He knew when to stay quiet.
"One evening, I came back from the library," Mike continued. "And I heard shouting from inside. My sister again, arguing with Dad. She wanted to leave the suburbs, move to central Luxios. He told her to learn to settle down, to stop running."
"I didn't go in. Just stood outside the door, still holding some scanned documents. The whole house felt like it was holding its breath."
"Then I walked toward Ezra's room. Just to check on him. Like always."
He paused. Looked at the horizon.
"But the room was empty."
Kuro said nothing, sensing more was coming.
"There was a sketch on his desk. Fresh, A3 paper. At first, I didn't get it. Cold hues, spiral shapes, fractured angles."
"But the longer I stared, the clearer it became. It wasn't a drawing of a place. It was an emotional map - of the argument."
"Not a blueprint. A portrait of pressure. One corner was knotted, crushed. Light fractured across the desk. The space bent inward, like it couldn't hold itself together."
Mike swallowed. His hands fidgeted with the edge of his sleeve.
"I stood there for five, maybe ten minutes. Not moving. Just… feeling what he must've felt."
He looked up: "Am I making any sense?"
Kuro blinked slowly, his voice soft. "You are."
…
A pause settled between them - light, but unshaken.
"Sorry..." Mike continued, his eyes somewhere else now.
"Ezra mapped the emotion in that room, down to where people paused mid-sentence."
"For someone like me, that kind of drawing can't be measured. Can't be broken into clean values. I didn't understand it logically... I just felt it. The tension. The misalignment. Even the light felt... compressed by long-held exhaustion."
And then a quieter thought surfaced.
if I trusted devices couldn't register experiences others swore were real, was I clinging to a limited system?...
Was I living inside a closed system without even knowing it?
The idea didn't frighten him like danger. It scared him like rust. Like slow erosion. Like something underneath had already started to break.
It was a small fear. But it began to color every decision afterward.
Kuro stood and dusted his sleeves. "Wanna come over? I'm cooking."
Mike hesitated, then smiled, tired but not distant. "Maybe next time. I... I need to think. Just a little."
…
In class, Mike couldn't hear the lectures.
He watched signal lights blink, as if they held cosmic answers.
In a midday nap, he dreamed of a data desert, every machine dead silent, only wind howling across static.
I should go, he thought.
I will go.
That evening, Mike showed up at Kuro's place carrying a cloth bag. He waited outside the door, not his usual gear. He left most machines behind.
Kuro, relaxed as always, leaned out from the second-floor corridor and called,
"What's the wind blowing you here for, Mike?"
"I wanna talk," Mike said quietly.
"Come in," Kuro replied, unlocking the door with one hand while balancing a small basket of laundry in the other.
Mike stepped in. He sat down slowly on the edge of the mattress, then paused.
His hand hovered over the top of his backpack, but didn't unzip it.
Kuro disappeared to hang clothes out under the fading light, then slipped into the shower, leaving Mike alone in the soft hum of the room.
Outside, water hit tile.
Inside, silence pressed in.
Then Mike spoke - not loudly, just into the space between them.
"I want to understand," he said. "Not just what silenced Mr. Than... but what's happening to me."
"I want to find out, Kuro."
From behind the running water, Kuro's voice answered: "Then stay here tonight."
"I believe we both want to go now."
Later, when the house had stilled and Kuro stepped outside to fetch a book from the common shelf, a faint sound drifted from Mike.
Electric guitar.
Mike had left it there last summer. Hadn't touched it since.
Now, it felt like meeting an old friend. Mike picked it up. No rehearsal. No soundcheck. He just played.
Just loose notes, some on-key, others bending off, feeling their way toward something undefined.
Kuro froze.
He remembered when Mike first picked up the guitar, playing boldly, not to impress, but to believe in something.
Now, the notes wavered. The air didn't feel still anymore. Like thought itself was drifting. Not huge. Just enough to tilt old habits by a thousandth.
Night fell.
That night, Kuro woke suddenly. Mike was still sitting there, unmoving, fingers resting on a Rubik's cube. Lost in a swirl of thought.
Sensing Kuro awake, his gaze drifted to the window, toward the pale lamplight outside.
He whispered:
"Do you think... this trip is a bad idea?"
Kuro, still half-asleep, blinked.
Mike's voice was soft. But clearer than anything else that night.
"I don't know," Kuro replied.
That memory stayed with Mike. He wasn't just anxious about the trip. He was anxious about himself.
Would I be brave enough to chase it?
...
The next morning, Mike brought a paper map, not digital, but the official planetary one they'd copied from the library.
In the center, where space had once been left blank, a small red circle had been added. The lines were steady. Intentional.
Kuro looked at him.
Mike said. "I just think… we don't need a mission. Just a step. A test. If nothing reacts… we leave"
Kuro nodded slowly.
"Then each of us should prepare - everything we can."
They said nothing more. But in that silence, a current passed between them. The kind of silence that doesn't pause a conversation, but completes it.
The journey had already begun.
…
Midday, Mike stopped by the electronics store where he used to work. Then by home - brief, quiet. He didn't stay long. By afternoon, he was already back at Kuro's place.
Together, they visited the tech market to pick up basic supplies, mostly backup fixes. Mike added a roll of crude sensor paper - a tool he once dismissed as "too imprecise."
"No primary sensors?" Kuro asked.
Mike shook his head.
"You trust this scrap now?" Kuro teased.
Mike smiled. No answer. The tools weren't ready.
It sounded light. But to Kuro, it felt like crossing a line. They didn't call it an expedition. Didn't label it a mission. Just... a trip.
To find out what's there, and why it made someone like Mr. Than stay silent for half a lifetime.
…
The night came, the sky was unusually clear. No clouds. No dust. No traffic.
Later, Kuro stepped onto the porch. Mike sat alone, not quite asleep. Lights off. Gear cases stacked by the door.
"What if there's nothing out there?" Kuro asked.
Mike didn't look up.
"Then we treat it like a field trip. Better than standing still, guessing."
Mike had sketched out half a dozen alternatives, each messier than the last. Resistance coils, simple resonance traps, ink loops. None of them calibrated. None of them tested.
Still, he hesitated. Then reached for the comm device.
Not the lab one - his personal line. A frequency his father rarely answered, but sometimes checked late at night. He typed a short message.
"Need a D53 field sync or equivalent. Personal project. Not urgent, but I'd like to try something before the weekend, staying at Kuro room. Sign M."
After sending it, Mike tossed the device aside and leaned back. He'd decided to stay with Kuro for a few nights.
No reply.
Mike didn't expect one.
But late that night, just past one a.m., a delivery drone pinged the outer hatch. Inside the pod was a plain black case, no label, just his name etched on a corner tab. He opened it. A base-field synchronizer. Model D53. Clean, new, untouched.
"What's that?" Kuro asked from the hallway, half-awake.
Mike glanced at him, then back to the gear.
Mike said, half-smiling: "It's what I asked for."
No note. No message. Not even a "Be careful."
Just a second case beside it, containing a few spare coils and a backup reader unit. Mike stared at the gear for a long time. Then, a buzz on the same device.
It was a voice message. Brief.
"I don't have time to ask what you're chasing. Just don't get burned again. If you need better shielding, ask earlier next time."
His father's voice. Not cold, not warm. Flat. Efficient. But not angry.
Mike listened to it twice.
That was the closest thing to support he'd had in months.
He turned off the device and set the synchronizer on the table, next to the crude sketch he'd made with loops and paper. For a second, he considered reworking the plan. Make it clean. Precise.
Then he paused.
And slid the crude one forward instead.
Some part of him still wanted to try the messier method first.
To see if chaos would answer before order had a chance.
That night,. No music. No design sketches. Just the sky.
"Do you think... a vague feeling is enough to start a journey?" Kuro asked.
Mike was silent for a while. Then, he said:
"No... but maybe I've ignored it too long."
"I just don't want to freeze up again."
...