Dinner With Family by Hiroyuki Morioka (best novels for teenagers TXT) 📕

disappeared. The places where they got swallowed shone in rainbow colors. Ecryua looked with fascination at the rainbow shafts of light on either side. And she had every right to — the circular rainbow that manifested when large amounts of space-time particles collided blew the rainbows over the surfaces of planets out of the water. As the bands of light spread, the colors progressively faded, until at last, they became indistinguishable with the gray. But that whole process was breathtaking.

“Hyde Portal in E-minus one. Accelerating.”

“Ah, hold up!” Heeding Sobash’s warning, Jint tried to check whether his seatbelt was securely fastened.

“No.”

The conveyance ship commenced acceleration. Jint’s body dug into his seat. His delicate Lander bones started creaking in short order. He tried to object, but his voice died in his throat.

“Thirty seconds... twenty seconds...”

Ecryua’s countdown was the height of serenity. It couldn’t be clearer this level of acceleration was as nothing to her. On the contrary, she seemed to be enjoying it.

“Ten, nine, eight...” With each passing second, she started sounding more amped.

Oh, she’s enjoying this all right.

“Passing through!” In that moment, she shouted with pure joy.

Suddenly, Jint’s body flew to the right.

In a small corner of his mind, Jint recalled the modest battle he’d been a party to in the Febdash Barony. Lafier’s piloting had been rather more delicate back then, compared to this rough-and-tumble ride.

Thankfully, his seatbelt had been on right. Otherwise, Jint would have been bouncing around the steerer’s room like a rubber ball. At the center of his blood-engorged field of vision was the bow of a giant warship. It was a raid ship, and it was rotating. Jint could tell it was Ecryua’s strange trajectory — he might not have frocragh, but he could still feel the acceleration forces. In fact, Jint had always had a feeling his sense for levels of acceleration surpassed that of the Abh, who were mostly unaffected. Otherwise, why would she be going overboard on this gravity control system-less ship?

The raid ship’s prow drew closer.

We’re gonna collide! he tried to say, but his tongue was no longer cooperating.

Then, as suddenly as it began, his punishment came to an end.

“This ship has exploded. This ship has exploded,” repeated the machine voice, which was even more monotonous than Ecryua’s voice.

“We got hit?” asked Jint.

“Yes. We’ve failed the mission,” she replied, utterly calmly. “So unlucky.”

I dunno, you did get awfully close. I guess it is pretty unlucky that we happened to emerge from the portal near the ‘enemy,’ though, he thought, as he stared at Ecryua. She seemed no different than usual. Was all that in my imagination? When the acceleration halted, he’d heard obscenities the meaning of which a guy like him, who’d learned Baronh in school, only vaguely understood. And even as he sat there in the steerer’s room, he heard the lingering echoes of the bizarre song whose meaning he didn’t understand at all, but through which he could tell she was enjoying herself. There was no way Ecryua could be the one singing that song, was there?

Without exception, Abhs had perfect pitch. And it would be impossible for somebody with perfect pitch to stand such off-key noise escaping their own throat.

“Uhh, so, what’re you gonna do now?” Stupidly, Jint hadn’t considered the possibility they’d get shot down during the recon trek. “Guess we return to the Flicaubh?”

“We’re killed in action,” she declared solemnly. “The dead can’t return anywhere.”

“Then what’ll we do?” said Jint, out of sorts. He’d been planning to return to the Flicaubh as soon as he could after seeing the situation.

“We float here on standby.”

“Just the two of us?”

“Don’t like that?”

“No, it’s not that... you know what I mean...”

“Yes. It’ll be extremely boring.”

“We really can’t do anything besides wait here?”

“What do you want to do?” said Ecryua, cocking her head.

Jint verged dangerously close to saying let me hear that song again, opting instead for: “Can we find out how the landworld’s doing?”

“Only a little.”

“A little’s fine. C’mon, let’s probe the planet.”

Ecryua gazed at him, as though in anticipation.

“Uhh... what is it?” asked Jint, confused.

“Say ‘please.’”

“Huh?”

“You’re being bossy.”

That was when he realized his request had come across as a command.

“Please,” he tacked on.

Ecryua nodded without another word, unequipped the control gauntlet, and began working the controls. The main screen zoomed in on Martinh. Unfortunately, night obscured the hybrid-functionality buildings of the city of Crandon.

The look and feel of the landworld hadn’t changed from what he remembered. It was a globe of ferocious green, covered in specks of white.

A communication piped in: “Calling the spirit world. Greetings to a wandering soul.”

Many Landers believed the Abh were cold rationalists due to their complete lack of religion. Others thought the Abh class system was so held together by unrefined superstition that it may well be called a religion. And, as extreme views tended to be, both takes were false. While the Abh didn’t believe in life after death, they were familiar enough with the concept of the spiritual to mine it for humor.

“This is the wandering soul speaking,” said Ecryua. “What is your business?”

“No ‘business,’ just want to tell you that you can dock. Or are you planning to cruise through inertial navigation until the exercise ends? Please reply quickly; the exercise is ramping towards the main stage, so if you want to dock, it’s now or never.”

“No need. The dead rest in the dead of space.”

“As you like. Enjoy your dally with death. Over.”

The line dropped.

“Why did you turn it down?” asked Jint.

“Because I want to be alone with you,” said Ecryua, looking him in the eyes. “If I said that, would you be happy?”

“I suppose,” he said, not taking it at face value for a second. “But why, actually?”

“Because it’s not fair.”

“What do you mean?”

“Our weight will hamper the ship’s mobility.”

“Our weight? Have we been putting on the pounds?”

Ecryua looked at him scoffingly. “The conveyance ship,” she grumbled.

“Ohh.”

Just as she’d brought to his attention, the mass of the conveyance ship was non-negligible even for huge raid ships. Of course, the