Chapter 13: “The Spark Test”
Scene 1: Morning Training
—-: Ren Kisaragi
The rings hovered like halos over the green haze of the practice field — massive fabric hoops tethered to mooring lines, rotating slowly in the breeze. They pulsed faintly with pressure indicators and glowed different colors depending on team assignment.
Three points for your color. Two for someone else’s. One if you just got close and didn’t die.
“Easy math,” Ren muttered, wiping fog from the inside of his goggles.
Not that anything about flying the Dart felt easy today.
The whole chassis was tighter than usual. He could feel the strain through the yoke, the way a violinist might feel a hairline crack in the bow before it snapped. Hana had been up way too late last night, muttering equations to herself and chewing through cables like candy.
Now she crouched on the scaffold beside the hangar stairs, her goggles smeared with copper grease, arms folded and watching intently.
Rin flew ahead of him in her personal ship — the Crimson Vow — sleek, arrogant, deadly. She dove through the first green-ring cluster like it had insulted her ancestors, barely flexing her ailerons.
Jiro’s voice echoed from the comm pipe.
“C’mon, Ren! You’ve got more thrust than that in your breakfast kettle!”
“Your kettle blew up yesterday!”
“And it taught me respect!”
Ren throttled forward. The Dart surged — and this time, he felt it. Less lag. Less weight. The new stabilizer was holding.
Hana’s mod… whatever she did, it’s working.
The ship sliced through the first ring — not gracefully, but faster than he’d ever managed. The second came up. He tapped the left rudder tab and felt the nose swing without overcorrecting. A perfect crescent arc through the second hoop.
He glanced down at the pressure dial.
The needle had risen.
“Uh, Hana?”
Crackle.
“It’s holding. Mostly. Just… don’t cut throttle all the way.”
“What happens if I—”
The engine coughed. Then whined. Then hissed.
Ren yanked the yoke. A sudden venting scream echoed behind him, and a volcanic burst of steam blasted backward out of the left manifold — just as Rin was swooping in behind to tail-curve her formation.
“REN!”
There was a WHUMP and a CRACK. Then leaves. So many leaves.
And Rin’s glider snagged in the lower branches of a sakura tree — hanging sideways, steam trailing off her exhaust fins like a sigh of pure rage.
On the field, a few second-years gasped.
A moment of silence.
Then—
“HAAAHAHAHAHA— Rin got flowered!!”
Taiga collapsed. Jiro dropped his wrench.
Saki, already halfway to sketching the scene, muttered,
“I live for moments like this.”
Ren, still hovering midair in a lopsided wobble, slowly brought the Dart to a hover.
“...Oops.”
Scene 2: Public Embarrassment
—-: Rin Aoyama
The world had gone very, very quiet.
Rin dropped the last two meters from the crooked belly of her ship and landed with a thump in the soft moss. Her boots slid slightly on the slope, and the bark of the sakura tree caught her shoulder before she straightened.
Every eye was on her.
Steam still clung to her sleeves. A twig was stuck in her hair.
She plucked it out with the grace of a surgical strike and flicked it to the ground.
Behind her, the Crimson Vow dangled from the tree like a silk scarf caught in a fan — tangled, embarrassed, and above all, visible.
She exhaled slowly. Deliberately. Her hands didn’t shake, but her teeth pressed together in the tight, silent fury of a cracked porcelain doll.
I trained. I tuned. I knew that ring sequence.
She looked up.
Ren hadn’t even landed yet. He was hovering thirty meters away, the Dart sputtering and wheezing like it was trying to decide whether it was a ship or a sauna.
And he had survived the stunt.
She brushed flecks of ash off her collar and started walking.
Not toward him.
Not toward the hangar.
Just straight through the field.
Around her, whispers started blooming like weeds.
“Did you see her face?” “Is she okay?” “She’s never crashed before—” “She didn’t even yell at him. She always yells—”
Rin kept walking.
Every step was perfect. Precision-marched. Her boot heels hit the cobblestone with such even spacing, it could have been measured.
At the edge of the field, she paused only once — just long enough to meet eyes with Hana, who had half-risen from the scaffold with wrench in hand.
Rin’s eyes narrowed. Not in malice.
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In calculation.
Then she walked off.
Back straight. Voice silent. The pride of House Aoyama packed tight into her clenched fists like coal compressed into diamond.
She didn’t slam the locker room door behind her.
She didn’t throw her gloves.
She just sat, quietly, and unbraided her hair with hands that didn’t stop trembling until they were empty.
Scene 3: Ren & Hana Talk Honestly
—-: Ren Kisaragi
The Dart hissed softly beside him, cooling under the open hangar louvers like a dog sulking after a long run. Condensation dripped from the lower struts, ticking against the stone floor like impatient footsteps. The scent of metal fatigue and overworked crystal lingered like burnt tea leaves.
Ren leaned against a tool chest and sighed.
“Well, that went... sideways.”
Across the workbench, Hana adjusted a tiny pressure spring with tweezers. Her shoulders were hunched so tight she looked like a coiled boiler.
She hadn’t said a word since Rin stomped off.
Not one.
Not even when Saki wandered by to “see if she needed an emotional quote for the article.”
Ren finally broke the silence.
“You did tell me not to cut throttle.”
Hana didn’t look up. Her jaw tightened. The pressure spring snapped out of the tweezers and bounced into the Dart’s undercarriage.
Ting-ting—plonk.
Ren grimaced.
“...That’s fair.”
He stood, brushing his hands off on his oil-splotched jacket.
“Look, I wasn’t trying to show off. I mean—I was, a little. But mostly I just didn’t want to disappoint you.”
She finally looked up.
“Why would I be disappointed?”
“Because you’re the one who’s been fixing everything. Making it all work. I’m just the guy who points it in the wrong direction and crashes impressively.”
Her eyes narrowed, but not angrily. More… warily.
“You think that’s all I do? Fix things?”
Ren blinked.
“I mean—”
“Because it’s not. I build things. I design. I calculate. I don’t just clean up everyone else’s broken mess.”
She tossed the wrench onto the table. It hit the crystal housing schematic and slid off the edge.
“You think I’m scared of the engine breaking? I’m scared that if I don’t make it perfect, everyone will think I’m useless. Or worse — that I almost made it, and it still wasn’t enough.”
Ren froze.
Something clicked in his chest — not mechanical. Something soft, and off-balance.
He stepped around the bench slowly, like approaching a fragile gear mechanism mid-spin.
“Hey. I don’t think you’re just fixing messes.”
She didn't move, but her lip quivered just enough to betray her.
“I think you’re the only reason this thing even got off the ground.”
He placed a hand gently on the Dart’s undercarriage, beside hers. Grease-stained fingers. Parallel smudges.
“You’re not fixing what’s broken. You’re building something no one else can see yet.”
Silence.
Then—
“That was… kind of poetic,” she mumbled, cheeks darkening.
“I read half a book of haiku on the toilet once.”
Hana snorted. Laughed once. Then sat down hard on the workbench.
“Still gonna blame you for the steam burst.”
“Fair.”
They sat there. Breathing in the scent of oil, heat, and possibility.
And for once, the Dart didn’t hiss.
It just... waited.
Scene 4: Saki’s Rumor
—-: Saki Himura
Saki leaned back in her rolling chair, balancing on two wheels and a reputation sharpened like a scalpel.
The second-year journalism lounge—officially titled “Student Communications and Creative Publishing Annex”—was a cluttered haven of ink-smudged paper, sputtering pneumatic typesetters, and scandal.
And she had just finished writing the headline.
She clicked her tongue as the latest issue slid out of the steam press behind her.
"The Rise of the Silver Dart: A New Queen of the Sky?"
Subhead:
Is Rin Aoyama grounded… or just overshadowed by Hinode’s newest engineering ace?
She waved it once to dry the still-warm ink and pinned the prototype to the hallway bulletin board—dead center between the lost-and-found notices and a poorly-drawn flyer for the tea club’s “Fizzy Friday.”
Behind her, her assistant blinked.
“You’re really going with that?”
Saki grinned, flicking her fountain pen like a duelist might spin a blade.
“It’s not libel if I use a question mark.”
Students began to gather. Murmurs. Footsteps. A flash of camera from the photography club.
She leaned her shoulder against the board, watching the buzz spread like gas catching a match.
“Stirring steam keeps the engines hot,” she said to no one in particular.
Then—heels clicked down the hallway.
Silence parted like silk.
Rin Aoyama walked up to the board, hair still slightly damp from a recent rinse, her flight gloves tucked under one arm.
She didn’t flinch.
She didn’t sneer.
She just read it.
The whole thing.
Top to bottom.
Saki held her breath.
Rin’s expression? Blank. A practiced neutrality honed from years of being watched.
Then Rin reached out… and straightened the page.
Just a touch.
Made sure it hung level.
She turned to Saki.
Their eyes met.
And then Rin smiled. A smile not of agreement or surrender — but of challenge.
“Print a follow-up,” she said. “You’ll want the update after our next flight.”
And with that, Rin turned, walked away, and left Saki standing in a hallway suddenly too quiet.
Saki pressed a finger to her chin.
“Oooh. That’s going in the next issue.”
Scene 5: Grandpa Talks to Rin
—-: Rin Aoyama
Rin found him exactly where she'd suspected.
Perched like a gargoyle atop a rusted utility pipe, sipping tea from a chipped tin mug and watching the sky change colors. The rooftop smelled like old wrenches and wet moss, and the breeze tugged at the ends of her jacket like a child begging forgiveness.
She didn’t announce herself. She just sat.
Grandpa Genzō didn’t look her way. Not immediately.
“Still mad at the steam pipe?” he asked casually, voice thick with gravel and mischief.
“I don’t get mad,” she said, crossing her legs at the ankles. “I reroute the system.”
A beat.
Then, a dry chuckle.
He took another sip. “That’s what your mother used to say too.”
Rin stiffened, but didn’t turn.
“You knew her?”
“Knew her? I helped install her first combustion regulator. She nearly blew my eyebrows off.”
“...Maybe she should have tried harder.”
That made him laugh, full-throated and sudden. A laugh born of something deeper than just amusement — more like grief that had learned to wear a silly hat.
“You’ve got her fire. She hated when the wind didn’t listen.”
He glanced over at her then. Not smiling anymore.
“But wind doesn’t have to listen, Rin. That’s the point.”
She looked down at her gloves. Her fingers were still sore from the earlier crash. Her pride worse.
“Everyone thinks I’m jealous.”
“Aren’t you?”
“No.” She paused. “...Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Then don’t answer yet,” he said. “Flight’s like crystal. If you hit it too hard, it shatters. If you treat it too soft, it leaks.”
He tapped his temple. “You’ve got the balance. Just don’t let the weight of your own story clip your wings.”
She didn’t respond. Just stared out across the school grounds, where lanterns were beginning to flicker on beneath the hangars like tiny constellations.
“Ren’s not trying to take your place, you know,” Genzō added, rising to his feet with a grunt. “He’s just trying to find one.”
Rin remained still, thoughtful.
“...Did you know the Dart was hers too?” she asked finally.
He stopped.
Nodded.
“That’s why it flies like it remembers.”
Scene 6: Co-Pilots
—-: Ren Kisaragi
The hangar had mostly emptied out.
Lanterns flickered low and gold in the rafters, casting long, mechanical shadows across the ribbed metal floor. The Dart sat alone beneath its canopy, scaffold arms pulled back like wings at rest. It smelled of oil, brass polish, and the last breath of steam from the cooling pipes.
Ren sat cross-legged on the floor, back to the bulkhead, a crystal lantern beside him.
He wasn’t tinkering.
He wasn’t measuring.
He was thinking—which was, arguably, the most dangerous thing you could let him do unsupervised.
His hand rested on the flight yoke, eyes tracing the etched grooves in the leather grips. Tiny finger-marks not his own. The kind that told stories without ever speaking.
He heard the footsteps before he saw her.
Rin’s steps were always crisp. Direct. You could calibrate a torque gauge to them.
She didn’t speak. She just stood there for a moment, arms folded, looking at him like she wasn’t sure if she was about to punch him or forgive him.
Ren gestured to the bench beside him.
“This one’s not booby-trapped. Probably.”
She didn’t smile. But she sat.
The silence stretched between them—not awkward, exactly. Just full. Like the air before a storm.
He exhaled.
“Hey. About the steam burst—”
“Wasn’t your fault.”
“I mean, technically—”
“It wasn’t your fault,” she repeated, eyes forward.
He glanced at her.
“...Did Grandpa get to you?”
“He said you fly like you’re afraid of the ground.”
That earned a snort.
“He say what you fly like?”
“My mother.”
Another pause.
He didn’t push. Just nodded slowly.
Then he stood, dusting off his hands, and stepped toward the Dart. His fingers brushed the edge of the access hatch, then paused on the co-pilot’s harness. Still dusty. Still unused.
“We’ve been flying like rivals,” he said, voice low but steady. “But maybe we don’t have to.”
He turned.
“Maybe the Dart flies better when we’re not pulling in opposite directions.”
Rin tilted her head slightly. No sarcasm. No heat. Just… curiosity.
He reached out a hand.
“One flight. You don’t have to prove anything. Just... fly with me.”
She stared at the hand for a long second.
Then rose.
Brushed past it.
And climbed into the co-pilot’s seat without a word.
Once seated, she looked over, helmet in her lap.
“If you crash us,” she said, strapping in, “I’m haunting your wrench set.”
“Fair.”
He smiled.
And for the first time since he arrived at Hinode Academy, the sky didn’t feel so far away.
