Chapter 25: Their Reasons

The uneven rocking of the boat causes Celia to bump her head on the top of her bed, waking her up from her sleep as she groggily opens her eyes with an annoyed expression on her face.

The cruise trip from Madron to Rio de Brasilia was a 17-day trip, and it had only been a little over a week at this point. Celia had already gotten used to the swaying of the ship on a daily basis, but it still woke her up in the middle of the night like this from time to time.

She tosses the blanket over face, trying to go back to sleep, but just as she was about to drift off, she bumps her head again. The occurrence almost made her want to cry out of frustration, but she instead takes a deep breath and sits up in her bed. Her head was sore from being hit over and over again and her mind was filled with too much annoyance to feel tired anymore.

If they gave us more than one pillow to sleep with I would’ve definitely added some padding up there, Celia thinks to herself, but well… there’s nothing I can do about it now… I should at least get some fresh air before I try to sleep again.

She jumps out of bed, slipping into the empty hallway, up the stairs, and out onto the deck of the massive cruise ship. At the highest floor, she gazes down at the rows upon rows of larger floors below her, admiring the soft glowing lights they emitted and watching as the few other people who also seemed to have trouble sleeping hang out on the deck.

She watches a lone person swimming in the pool at the center of the boat, a group of friends hanging out at the arcade, a couple sitting together at a table, and… Hikaru standing alone next to a railing and staring up at the sky…?

Celia shakes her head and blinks a few times to make sure it wasn’t just her lack of sleep getting to her as she does a double take to confirm that it was indeed Hikaru.

What’s he doing up so late at night?  she wondered, did he also get woken up by the constant rocking of the boat?

Nevertheless, seeing the groups of people hanging out with each other while she watched from afar made her feel lonely, so she decided to climb down to the level Hikaru was at and meet up with him.

“Hikaru!” she calls out his name after she climbs down from the ladder, “what are you doing up so late?”

Hikaru turns around, and a part of her was relieved that her tired brain didn’t get the wrong person even after already doing a double take.

“I could ask you the same thing,” he says, “but I just can’t seem to sleep tonight for some reason so I decided to go outside and stare at the stars for a little while.”

“Haha… I’m actually up for the same reason as well,” she softly laughs, “I kept bumping my head on the wall because of this stupid boat, so I decided to get some fresh air before I go back and get my head slammed again.”

Hikaru lets out a little chuckle.

“I could lend you an extra pillow if you want,” he offers, “I brought some extra ones because I usually can’t sleep without having more than one, but I should be fine with only two. You can use the extra one to protect your head.”

“...you sleep with multiple pillows?” she asked.

“Hey we’re not judging here,” he said in a defensive but joking manner, “now do you want the pillow or not?”

“Yeah, yeah sorry,” she apologized as she laughed.

“I’ll give it to you on our way back,” he said, “I just want to stay out here a little longer to clear my mind.”

Celia nodded and said, “I still need to recover from the bumping as well.”

The two of them then lean over the railing of the deck, staring out into the obsidian blue waters underneath a sky full of artificial stars. For a moment neither of them said a word, seemingly entranced by the tranquility of the waves, however, whilst staring up at the stars above, a question suddenly strikes Celia.

“Hey Hikaru,” she asks, “what do you think about the fake stars in the sky?”

He blinks twice as if taken aback by the strange question.

“I think they’re pretty, why?” he asked.

“Hmm…” she murmured, “I don’t think so. I mean… kind of? They’re beautiful, but in a disgusting kind of way that makes me hate it. Even though they’re designed to simulate the beauty of the real stars, there's just something artificial about it that makes me hate it.”

Hikaru stares at her with a blank expression, which causes her to feel awkward.

“Sorry…” she apologizes, “that was a weird question with an even weirder response.”

“No, it’s fine,” he says, “I get what you mean. Sometimes it's hard to like things that aren’t real regardless of how beautiful they are. Real things feel safer and more natural; they’re less confusing and don’t feel like they’ll disappear at any given moment.”

Celia looks at him with a surprised expression. She had never felt as understood as she did now.

“What?” he asks, mistaking her expression for confusion, “I thought I’d say something a little philosophical too while you were at it.”

“Oh, it’s not that,” she said, “it’s just… I never felt anyone understood what I meant until now. Anytime I told that to someone else, they would just tell me that in the city where I lived in, we wouldn’t be able to see the real stars at all due to the light pollution, so it was better just to be able to see them in the first place. But I disagree. I wanted to tell them that if the stars I saw weren’t real, then I would rather not see them at all, but I felt like I would seem weirder to them if I said that sort of thing.”

“You’re not afraid to seem weird to me?” he asked.

“No, because you’re definitely weirder than me,” she said half jokingly, “and because no matter how weird you think I am, you’re still stuck with me on this project anyway, so you’ll have to get used to it at some point.”

Hikaru chuckles and says, “hey I’m not that weird. In fact I’d say we’re both pretty normal compared to how some people can get.”

“Comparing how weird we are to other weird people only makes us weirder though,” Celia points out.

Hikaru shrugged and said, “then I guess we’re both weird, nothing wrong with that.”

She smiles, and another moment of silence falls between them. She began to realize that as time went on, the silences between them became less and less awkward, as if it was becoming okay to not have to talk to each other when they’re around. The feeling made her happy, as if she found someone she can finally be real friends with for the first time.

“Now here’s a less weird question for you,” she suddenly says, “something that’s a little bit late to ask but, is there any specific reason why you're interested in space?”

“Hmm… it’s a bit hard to explain, but I guess it’s because I’m tired of taking pictures of Earth,” he answered, “which is weird because I haven’t explored all of it yet, or at least that’s what my grandma told me. She used to be a photographer, and I guess that’s why I like taking pictures so much. She told me that I still haven’t visited the other countries yet, and I still have the entire ocean to explore. Oddly enough, she’s the only one that believes I’ll actually go through with my word to build a rocket; my other family members don’t believe me, but she’s been trying to convince me to become a submersible engineer instead.”

He pauses and thinks for a moment as if contemplating something.

“But she’s not considering the fact that I don’t want to take pictures of the ocean… it’s just not interesting to me I guess,” he continued, “I do want to take pictures of other countries though, in fact, I’m excited I get to see an airship for the first time. I still want to see the national parks of the U.C.A, the weird animals of the Oceanic Alliance, and the oasis cities of Ubuntara, but all of these are things that I’ll surely get to see within my lifetime. I keep thinking to myself that at some point I’ll get bored of all of it; but then I saw the old pictures of galaxies and planets that we used to take with the giant telescopes, and I realized that space is so expansive and random that I’ll never get bored of exploring it.”

Hikaru then points up to a star in the sky and asks, “if we were to take a picture of everything in the direction of this finger, how many pictures do you think we’ll get?”

“An infinite amount,” Celia answers, understanding what he means.

“Exactly,” he said, pointing to another star in the sky, “and there’s an infinite amount there too. And there. And there, and there, and there. There’s so many cool things to see out there, but here we are stuck inside of a dome.”

He then turns to her and asks, “what about you? What makes you want to explore space so much?”

“Well… the most obvious reason is because I’m tired of seeing those fake stars,” she replied, “but the main reason is because despite all the cool advancements we’re making, it doesn’t feel like we’re actually progressing. There’s only so much we can do on Earth, and every advancement we make, it feels like we’re progressing to a limit, which… feels wrong to me. It’s why I’m sick of building robots and drones, because we can only improve them so much to a point, but a rocket — a rocket is something that represents going past that limit — towards infinite possibilities that exist in space… I remember when it used to be called the ‘final frontier’ but now that we've stopped advancing towards it, I wonder what our final frontier is now.”

“Hmm... I would’ve said ocean, but we’re slowly uncovering all of it with the submersible technology we have,” Hikaru replied, “saying we’ve ‘finished exploring the final frontier’ feels so wrong, especially when there’s another place we can still explore. So maybe the final frontier never actually changed; we just need to remind everyone exactly what is again.”

Celia nodded and rested her head on her arms above the railing as Hikaru let out a big yawn.

“I think that’s enough philosophizing under the moon for tonight,” he jokes as he stretches his arms, “let’s go get you your pillow so your brain doesn’t turn to mush by the time we reach Gran Andes. You can’t get an airship license with a mushy brain after all.”

The rest of the night was filled with Celia’s angry complaints and Hikaru’s laughter as the two of them head back to their rooms.