[Omake] SLIM

Author's note: The start of this year has been very busy for me, but I couldn't help but write down a few words in celebration of Japan's SLIM lander making a soft landing on the moon. Hopefully, I'll be back to normal operations soon.

Ridiculous. Even for the shippers, this scenario was just too ridiculous.

Rubbing her hair with one hand, Yasu held her tablet at length to scrutinize her drawing. No good. No matter how hard she tried, if she couldn’t imagine it in real life, she couldn’t produce a realistic sketch.

Fighting with Sachiko over Erika of all people was just absurd. Besides, in zero gravity, just how did the shippers imagine it would go if they each grabbed one of Erika’s arms and tried to pull her towards them? Grabbing her floating stylus, Yasu started making adjustments to the lines on her face, trying to make herself look more determined, less angry.

“Hey, what are you drawing?” Oh shit. Erika—the real Erika—was only an arm’s length away. Jamming the emergency button in the corner of her tablet, the drawing changed to a mostly-finished sketch of the SLIM lander from the year 2024.

Erika frowned when she saw it. “More space stuff?”

“It’s just something to pass the time.”

“And you drew it from memory? Impressive.”

“Of course not.” Tapping a few buttons on the tablet, she pulled up photos of the lander.

As Yasu switched back to the drawing, Sachiko entered Kibou and approached the two of them. “Oh? What’s going on over here? Something interesting?” She grabbed the tablet from Yasu. “Oh, SLIM. Did you draw this? You’re surprisingly talented.”

“What’s so surprising about it? Just because I’m a bookworm, I can’t have an artistic side?”

Sensing the tension between them, Erika changed the subject. “It’s a very detailed drawing. How can you stand to think about space exploration when we’re all stuck up here?”

Yasu shrugged. “This craft wasn’t stuck in low-Earth orbit. It actually landed on the moon. Makes it feel different somehow.”

An evil grin spread across Sachiko’s face. “Would you say it feels…”

“Don’t you dare,” Yasu warned.

“…so Moon?”

Yasu playfully tapped Sachiko on the head with her tablet. “I hate you so much right now.”

“Yeah, well, we’ve been stuck up here for a while. Only natural that we’re getting on each others’ nerves.”

“Go get on my nerves somewhere else. I’m trying to draw here.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Sachiko tapped Erika’s shoulder. “Come on, JAXA sent us some new movies.”

“You recognized her drawing pretty quickly,” Erika said as they floated away. “Was it famous or something?”

“In the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t that significant,” Sachiko answered. “But it was important to JAXA. Ancient JAXA, I mean. Japan became the fifth nation to soft-land on the Moon. After that…”

Yasu couldn’t help but nod to herself. Maybe it hadn’t changed the course of history, but it was an amazing feat, something no country could pull off in modern times. Perhaps no country ever would again.

If ancient Japan could do the impossible, who was she to give up? Sure, the landing hadn’t been perfect, but this drawing didn’t have to be either. Maybe she had been approaching it all wrong. Fighting for Erika was still ridiculous. Fighting against Sachiko though? Now that was something she could easily imagine.