Voyager's head jerked upward as something hard struck his skull.
White chalk clattered across the desk, rolling toward the edge. His eyes snapped open, vision unfocusing for a moment before the classroom came into sharp relief around him. An old man stood at the front, the teacher, his voice still droning on about multiplication tables and fractions. His weathered hands were still raised, ready to throw another piece of chalk if necessary.
"Voyager," the teacher said flatly. "Outside. For the rest of this period. Or until you remember what sleep is for."
The classroom was ordinary in every way. Wooden desks arranged in neat rows. Sunlight streaming through windows that needed cleaning. The walls are covered in student artwork and educational posters. The air smelled like chalk dust and old wood and the particular mustiness of a building that had held generations of children.
Voyager sat in the bottom row, his seat positioned near the window on his left. The view beyond the glass showed an ordinary schoolyard with ordinary trees.
"I'm so sorry," Voyager said quietly, standing up. His voice was small, apologetic. "I didn't mean to—"
"Apologies don't solve the problem of disruption," Mr. Keisuke interrupted, gesturing sharply toward the door. "You should have slept at home."
The girl sitting at the same table as Voyager chuckled.
She had the same blond hair as him. The same shape to her face. Something in the way she smiled held a familiarity that didn't quite register as strange—the way dreams hold contradictions without questioning them.
"That's not funny," Voyager said to her, but there was no real reproach in his voice. Just tiredness. "You knock it off too."
The girl's smile widened, but she stood up when the teacher glanced at her, moving toward the door with exaggerated innocence.
Voyager followed, stepping out into the hallway. The door frame above them had a nameplate: "Class 5J." Grade 5. His final year before moving to the middle school building across the courtyard.
Footsteps echoed down the hallway.
A tall man walked past, broad shoulders, muscular build, dark blue hair slicked back neatly. He wore a simple suit, the kind that suggested authority without demanding attention. He held a stack of books under one arm.
"Good morning, Principal Rowbotham," Voyager said quietly, offering a small bow of his head.
Rowbotham stopped.
"Why are you standing outside your classroom?" he asked. His voice was calm, measured. The voice of someone who asked questions because he genuinely wanted to know the answer.
"I was sleepy," Voyager admitted. "The teacher said I had to stand out here."
Rowbotham looked at him for a moment. Then he reached out and lightly tapped Voyager's head with the edge of the books he was holding. Not hard. Just firm enough to make a point.
"You deserve to be punished for disrupting class," Rowbotham said. "That's the rule. But you still need to learn." He paused. "How much longer does this period last?"
"Maybe five minutes?" Voyager offered uncertainly.
"Then come with me," Rowbotham said, turning back toward the classroom door. "Break time is almost here anyway. It's better if you stay inside rather than stand out here alone."
He pushed the classroom door open without waiting for a response.
The Teacher looked up from where he'd been writing on the blackboard.
"Principal," the teacher acknowledged with a slight nod.
"Mr. Keisuke," Rowbotham said, his tone friendly but carrying an undeniable weight of authority. "Break begins in a few minutes. I think it would be better if Voyager remained in class rather than standing in the hallway. He's had his punishment."
The teacher considered this for a moment, then shrugged.
"Very well," he said. "Voyager, return to your seat."
Voyager moved back inside, sliding into his desk. The girl was already back in her seat, pretending to pay attention to the lesson, though her eyes kept drifting toward where Voyager sat.
Rowbotham lingered in the doorway.
"Remember," he said, looking directly at Voyager. "Sleep at night, not during class."
"Yes, sir," Voyager said softly.
The principal closed the door and walked down the hallway, his footsteps fading into the distance.
The girl leaned over slightly.
"He always saves you," she whispered.
"I know," Voyager whispered back. "But I don't understand why."
The bell rang.
Sharp and sudden, cutting through the air of the classroom like a knife. Within seconds, chairs scraped across the floor as students jumped to their feet, eager for the break period. The sound of footsteps thundering toward the door was almost louder than the teacher's voice telling everyone to line up properly.
The girl grabbed Voyager's arm.
"Come on!" she said, already pulling him toward the door. "The hot menu sells out super fast on days like this. If we don't run, they'll be gone by the time we get there."
Voyager let himself be dragged along, his shorter legs working hard to keep up with her pace. They navigated through the hallway crowded with other students, dodging slower walkers and weaving around clusters of kids chatting in the middle of the corridor. The cafeteria was on the ground floor, a short sprint from their classroom if you knew the right way.
They made it to the serving line with about thirty other students ahead of them.
Voyager pulled out his wallet and counted the bills. 8000 Ahn. Enough for what he wanted.
"Two of the special meat and cheese burgers," he told the cafeteria worker, a round-faced woman who'd been working there long enough to recognize most of the regular students.
She smiled and began wrapping them up in white paper, the grease already starting to seep through. The smell of grilled meat and melted cheese wafted up, making Voyager's stomach rumble. He handed over his money and took the wrapped burgers, passing one to the girl.
They found a table in the outdoor section of the cafeteria, a covered area with long benches and tables scattered around, open to the courtyard on one side. The sun was bright overhead, and a light breeze carried the smell of the school grounds, grass, dirt, and distant flowers from the gardening club's plot.
The girl unwrapped her burger and took a big bite, closing her eyes in satisfaction.
"So good," she mumbled through a mouthful of food.
Voyager took a more careful bite, chewing slowly. Around them, other students laughed and talked, their voices creating a comfortable background noise.
"We only have two more classes today," the girl said, swallowing. "After break, we can basically go wherever we want until morning class ends."
"I know," Voyager replied quietly.
"So," the girl leaned forward conspiratorially, "want to go to the library and speed-read through that new comic series they got? The one with the pirates?"
Voyager shook his head slightly.
"It would be better to read something more informative," he said. "A book about science, maybe. Or history."
The girl rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. "You're such a nerd sometimes."
They finished their meal in comfortable silence, watching other students move around the cafeteria. Some were racing to finish before the bell rang again. Others were sprawled across benches, savoring their break time.
When they were done, they threw away their wrappers and walked toward the courtyard.
The school was split into two sections, the elementary building where they spent most of their time, and the middle school building across a wide open courtyard. The path between them was lined with trees and benches, a transitional space where students sometimes lingered between classes.
Voyager and the girl made their way across the courtyard, their footsteps echoing slightly on the concrete. A few older students, middle schoolers, were sitting on benches or standing in small groups, and they barely glanced at the two elementary students walking past.
The middle school library was quieter than the one in their building.
Fewer students used it during break time. The shelves were taller, the space more open, with large windows letting in plenty of natural light. The smell of old paper and binding glue hung in the air, the familiar scent of libraries everywhere.
The girl immediately headed toward the manga section, but Voyager wandered toward the non-fiction shelves, his eyes scanning the spines of books about astronomy, biology, and world history.
He pulled down a book about stars and constellations, the cover showing a photograph of a night sky full of glittering points of light. He stood there for a moment, staring at the image, his expression thoughtful and distant.
The girl appeared beside him, holding a thick manga volume.
"Found something?" she asked.
"Yeah," Voyager said softly. "This one."
Voyager flipped through the pages slowly, his eyes tracing over diagrams of constellations and explanations of stellar formation. Every so often, he'd pause and read a passage aloud.
"Listen to this," he said. "Stars are formed from clouds of gas and dust that collapse under their own gravity. It takes millions of years."
The girl was sprawled across one of the library chairs with her manga, flipping through pages rapidly. She barely glanced up.
"That's cool and all, but did you see this?" She turned her manga toward him, pointing at a panel. "The captain just found out the treasure map was fake the whole time. Can you believe that?"
"That doesn't make sense narratively," Voyager said, still looking at his book. "Why would they carry a fake map for that long without noticing?"
"Because it's dramatic," the girl said, as if that explained everything.
Voyager didn't argue. He just turned back to his constellation book.
The library doors swung open.
A group of students entered, loud enough to make the few scattered readers look up briefly. They wore the middle school uniform, and they moved with the easy confidence of people who belonged in the space. One of them, with black hair and bright eyes, immediately spotted Voyager and broke into a smile.
"Oh!" Curiosity said, walking over. "You like this place too?"
Voyager looked up from his book, unsurprised.
"Yeah," he said simply. "It's quiet."
"Mind if we sit here?" Pioneer asked, already pulling up chairs. She had white hair that caught the light as she moved.
"Sure," Voyager said.
The rest of them settled around the small table, Imogen with her white hair and red tips, pulling out a notebook; Opportunity leaning back in her chair with the kind of posture that suggested she was calculating something; Curiosity sitting directly across from Voyager with obvious interest.
"What are you reading?" Curiosity asked, gesturing to the astronomy book.
"Stars," Voyager answered. "Formation. Classification. That kind of thing."
"Boring," Opportunity said, but not unkindly. She was already flipping through her own materials, something that looked like a budget spreadsheet for the student council.
"Actually interesting," Pioneer said, glancing over Voyager's shoulder at the diagrams. "We're doing an event next month. Stargazing night. You should come."
"I'll think about it," Voyager said.
Imogen was writing something in her notebook, her pen moving quickly. She didn't look up, but she spoke.
"Your sister mentioned you like reading about space stuff," she said casually.
Voyager didn't respond immediately. He just turned a page of his book.
"She talks about me?" he asked quietly.
"Sometimes," Imogen said. She finally looked up, meeting his eyes. "Says you're the quiet one. The thoughtful one."
Curiosity leaned forward, his chin resting on his hands.
"Do you want to know something cool?" he asked. "The library here has a whole section on astrophysics that the elementary library doesn't have. It's upstairs. Second floor, far corner."
"Really?" Voyager perked up slightly.
"Yeah. I found it last month when I was looking for stuff for the science club." Curiosity pointed vaguely toward the stairs. "You should check it out."
Pioneer was already pulling out her phone, probably checking something for the student council. Opportunity was making notes on her spreadsheet, her expression focused. Imogen had returned to her writing.
But Curiosity stayed watching Voyager, waiting to see if he'd get up and go explore the upper shelves.
The girl with blond hair was still reading her manga, occasionally glancing over to see if Voyager was paying attention to the older students. There was something protective in the way she sat, angled slightly toward him, as if ready to intervene if needed.
Time stopped.
Everyone froze mid-motion. Pioneer's hand hung suspended above her phone. Opportunity's pen paused mid-note. The girl with blond hair remained perfectly still, her manga open to the same page. Even the dust particles in the air seemed to hang in place.
Only Shmuel, Voyager, and Imogen continued to move.
Shmuel stepped forward, his battle-scarred coat still showing the wear from the fighting. His mechanical arms caught the library light as he positioned himself behind Voyager's chair.
"A life like this," Shmuel said quietly, "would cease to exist if you erased what made each person individual. If you combined everyone into a singular mind, you'd lose all the meaning of life."
Voyager didn't turn around. He just sat there, listening.
Imogen walked over, her expression serious before it cracked slightly.
"Those gentle worlds deserve to exist," she said, "even if other worlds are cruel. Because…" She paused, and her mouth twitched. "Because... uh... they're like really good ice cream flavors that you can't get anywhere else?"
Shmuel stared at her.
"That was terrible."
"I know," Imogen admitted. "But also, you're doing this too soon. We should let this fathom last a week. Let him sit with it. Not throw him into it headfirst like…" She gestured vaguely at Shmuel. "Like this."
"It's only been three days," Shmuel said. "And we spent a lot of time making this place. All of us. Me, Imogen, Kamina."
"Exactly," Imogen said. "Which is why you should let it breathe for…"
"He needs to face it now," Shmuel interrupted. His voice wasn't harsh. "The longer this dream lasts, the harder he'll wake up. If this goes on too long, he'll fall into Distortion. He'll collapse into what could have been instead of what actually is."
The library door creaked open.
A figure in a janitor's outfit pushed a mop bucket inside, a blue cap on his head. He started working, moving the mop in slow, methodical strokes across the floor. It was only when he looked up that anyone would recognize Kamina's face beneath the cap.
He took in the scene, Shmuel behind Voyager, Imogen standing to the side, and everyone else frozen like statues.
"Even I'm not that impatient," Kamina said, leaning against his mop handle.
Imogen turned to face him.
"Shmuel might be learning those traits from you," she said pointedly.
"Absolutely not," Kamina said, shaking his head. "That's all him."
Shmuel looked at Kamina directly.
"I learned it from you," he said simply.
Kamina's expression fell. He opened his mouth, closed it, then just shrugged in defeat.
Voyager's voice was small when he finally spoke.
"If my plan to unify the world doesn't matter... what becomes of me?" He was quiet, barely audible. "I'm scared of being alone. And when I'm old enough to get out of the orphanage... what then?"
The time freeze rippled.
For just a moment, it weakened and the blond girl broke through it.
She was moving before anyone could react, her small hands reaching out and grabbing both of Voyager's hands. Her grip was firm, real, present.
"Human connection can't be severed that easily," she said.
Voyager jerked his head up, startled. Her face was close to his now, and there was something in her expression, familiar and impossibly distant at the same time.
"Who are you?" he asked. "Why do you make me feel so close yet so far? Like I could never touch it?"
The girl smiled, and it was sad and knowing all at once.
"Silly," she said softly. "I'm your sister. Your twin soul."
Recognition flickered across Voyager's face. Not sudden, but like a memory surfacing from deep water, something he'd always known but forgotten how to remember.
Kamina set down his mop.
"It's hard to connect with someone who isn't here in this world anymore."
Kamina sighed.
"We're ditching the plan," he said, dropping his mop. "Shmuel kinda ruined it."
"It was necessary," Shmuel said.
Kamina looked down at the mop in his hand, and the wood began to shimmer. The bristles dissolved into liquid light. The handle elongated, edges becoming indistinct and flowing. The mop became the liquid sunlight blade, longer, brighter, dripping golden radiance that vanished before it touched the ground.
He drove it into the library floor.
The impact shattered the tiles. Cracks spread outward like spider webs. The frozen moment collapsed. Time rushed back in all at once, clocks ticking, dust falling, the world suddenly alive again.
Curiosity placed a hand on Voyager's shoulder.
"Can you make fathoms based on our description?" he asked Kamina. "Opportunity and I... we have something we want to show him."
Kamina nodded, waiting.
Opportunity stepped forward, her expression serious in a way that suggested she was choosing her words carefully.
"A backstreet," she said. "T Corp territory. It's... monochrome. Gray. Colorless. Everything is sterile, controlled, lifeless. The stenches are everywhere, industrial waste, decay, despair." She paused. "A place as heartless as anywhere else in the City."
"But," Curiosity continued, his voice shifting, "there's a mural. A beautiful one. Colorful. Vibrant. Someone made it using self-made technology, a way to bypass the colorlessness that T Corp's singularity enforces."
He looked at Kamina directly.
"Can you show him that?"
Kamina smiled. It was a different kind of smile than before—not the grin of someone about to fight, but the expression of an artist understanding the assignment.
The fathom shifted.
The library dissolved around them. Reality rebuilt itself in shades of gray and despair. The air became thick with industrial smells, rust, chemical burn, something acrid that caught in the throat. The buildings around them were monolithic, colorless, pressing down with the weight of a singularity's will.
And then…
A wall burst with color.
The mural covered an entire side of the alley. Reds and blues and yellows that shouldn't exist in this place. A scene of children playing, of birds flying, of a sun that the singularity had tried to erase. Every brushstroke was an act of rebellion.
Curiosity placed his hand on Voyager's head, gently, like he was steadying him.
"Me and Opportunity," Curiosity said softly, "we knew about your sister. About who she was. We lost contact with her after... after a certain event happened. No one really remembers it anymore because the nature of that event caused forgetfulness. It's classified as a Star of the City level threat."
Voyager's eyes were fixed on the mural, but his body had gone very still.
Opportunity moved closer. Her expression was harder to read, but there was something gentle beneath it.
"Your twin soul," she said, "would never give up on you. Even if the world forgot her. Even if she exists only as a feeling you can't quite name." Opportunity paused. "A part of her will always connect to you. That's not something the City can erase, no matter how hard it tries."
Voyager turned to look at his sister.
She was there, present, real, holding his hands. But there was a translucence to her now, as if she existed in the space between memory and dream.
"If I voyage through aimlessly through every world," Voyager asked slowly, "will I meet a version of you that is alone?"
His sister didn't answer immediately. She couldn't, really. The unpredictable nature of how these worlds worked, the infinite Mirror Worlds, the chaos of possibility, it all made certainty impossible.
"I don't know," she said finally. Her voice was honest, fragile. "But I do know this, human connection isn't easy to get rid of. It's not something that just disappears because a world is different or because we're separated."
She squeezed his hands tighter.
"The answer," she continued, "is based on how much you want it to be true. On whether you're willing to believe that somewhere, in some version of everything, I'm out there looking for you the same way you're looking for me."
Voyager looked at her face so familiar, so impossibly distant.
"So it depends on me?" he asked.
"It always does," his sister said.
Kamina watched from where the mural stretched across the wall, the liquid sunlight sword still held loosely in his hand. The City's colorlessness pressed in all around them, but the mural stood defiant, beautiful, real.
"Connections are like that," Kamina said quietly. "They don't die just because the world changes. They become harder to see."
Kamina glanced over his shoulder at the empty air.
"Aren't our ways of showing him the way similar yet so different?" he asked.
Carmen materialized.
She appeared behind him, standing so close that he could feel the presence of her without touching. Her back was to his, but there was an intimacy in the proximity, two beings who understood each other precisely because they opposed each other.
"Since I lost this one time," Carmen said, "but since you failed the other two times, which means it's a tie now."
The world shifted.
The mural, the backstreet, the T Corp territory, all of it dissolved. There was only white now. Absolute, endless white. Just Kamina, Carmen, and Voyager standing in a space that didn't technically exist.
Voyager's eyes widened.
He recognized the presence immediately. The voice that had been in his head, the one whispering about the ease of merging, the comfort of surrender. Carmen herself.
Kamina didn't hesitate.
He reached out and pressed his hand against Voyager's face. For just a moment, contact. Then he gripped something, it didn't have a physical form but was there nonetheless, and yanked it out.
Black distorted goo came free. It writhed in Kamina's hand, formless and hungry, the remnants of Hermes's influence trying to cling to Voyager's mind.
Kamina's liquid sunlight blade flashed.
He slashed through it. The black goo dissolved into nothing, scattered like smoke.
"That should take care of the unnecessary information," Kamina said.
He turned back to Voyager and extended his arm.
"So," Kamina asked, "what is your world view?"
Voyager was quiet for a long moment. His blond hair caught the white light, making him look younger and older simultaneously.
"My world is beyond my own view," he said finally. His voice was small but certain. "But I will reach it. I can see the other's worlds intertwined with each other." He paused. "And I want to appreciate the world of others."
Kamina smiled.
"You always like it all," he said. "But you didn't realize it until now."
Voyager looked at Kamina's extended hand. Slowly, carefully, he reached out and took it.
"I love how colorful this world is," Voyager said.
Their hands connected.
Carmen watched silently before she faded. The white space dissolved around them.
And Voyager transformed.
Light bloomed across his body. An astronaut's suit materialized, white and pristine, designed for the vacuum of space. But across every surface, square mirrors erupted. Sharp, geometric, catching light and scattering it in a thousand directions. They covered his shoulders, his arms, his chest, each one a prism, each one reflecting something infinite.
[Effloresced E.G.O :: Pale Blue Dot]
The fathom shattered.
They were falling.
All of them, Kamina, Voyager, Shmuel, Imogen, Rowbotham, Curiosity, Pioneer, and Opportunity plummeting through sky toward the ground below. The wind screamed past them. The earth rushed upward.
Voyager spread his arms.
The square mirrors on his suit caught the light, and the vast and gentle emanated from him.
A force.
The falling stopped. They hung suspended in the air, gravity temporarily irrelevant.
Then they rose.
Higher. Faster. The school building shrank beneath them. The city became a pattern of streets and rooftops. Higher still, the clouds came up to meet them, then parted like curtains as Voyager pushed them upward, past the cloud layer.
And beyond.
They emerged into the upper atmosphere where the sky turned from blue to the deep purple-black of space. And there, below them, curved against the infinite dark, the planet. Entire continents visible at once. Swirling clouds. Oceans of blue. A fragile sphere suspended in nothing, beautiful and alone and full of countless worlds, each one someone's home.
Voyager held them all there, suspended above it all, letting them see.
The city below was so small. The backstreets, the syndicates, the Five Fingers, all of it was just one small part of the vast world.
Kamina looked down at the pale blue dot beneath them.
"Welcome back," he said quietly to Voyager.
Voyager didn't respond. He just held them there.