Chapter 10: “Letters and Loyalties”

  Scene 1: Letter from Ren’s Parents (Opening)

  —-: Ren Kisaragi

  The letter smelled like old paper, machine oil, and just a hint of home.

  Ren sat cross-legged on his dorm bunk, the spring creaking softly beneath him. Outside the window, steam curled lazily across the academy courtyard as morning bells rang in layers — distant, chiming, overlapping like a chorus of brass-throated birds.

  He unfolded the envelope slowly, careful not to tear the thin airmail crease. His name was written in Mom’s handwriting, full of sharp corners and unnecessary flourishes. The back was sealed with a little red wax mark: a gear-shaped heart.

  Dear Ren,

  We saw the article in the International Academy Aeronautics Digest.

  Is that really you? In that photo? With half your shirt burned and a wrench in your teeth?

  Your father says it reminds him of your first hoverboard incident. He still has the dent in the garage ceiling.

  We’re… proud. Alarmed. But mostly proud.

  Try not to set anything else on fire. Or crash into any more "experimental scoring rings." What does that mean, exactly?

  We’re watching from overseas. Your mom’s coworkers are already taking bets on your next stunt.

  Love,

  Mom.

  P.S. Don’t let that girl with the serious face scare you. You’ve always had a knack for finding trouble and talent. Sometimes in the same person.

  Ren couldn’t help the small laugh that escaped. It bounced once off the copper radiator and disappeared into the ceiling vent.

  They actually saw it. Across the ocean. That picture really got around...

  He held the letter loosely in his hand, eyes drifting toward the window.

  From here, he could just barely see the corner of the hangars. The Silver Dart slept there. Not quietly. Not peacefully. But… still intact. Still theirs.

  Scene 2: Ren Reflects

  —-: Ren Kisaragi

  Ren stared at the blank page for a while.

  Not in a dramatic, poetic way. Just... tired. The kind of tired that comes from two weeks of near-misses, over-torqued bolts, and eye contact with too many girls while covered in soot.

  The paper felt weirdly smooth against his fingertips. Brand new. Not like the salvaged scraps and binder backs he used for blueprint sketches.

  How do you even start a letter to parents you haven’t seen in over a year… when the last thing they know about you is “took a wrench to the nose in a drone lab mishap?”

  He sighed. Clicked his pen twice. Started to write.

  Dear Mom (and Dad, even though I know Mom's doing the reading first),

  Yes. That was me. The shirt was already torn before the race — I swear. The wrench thing was a tactical maneuver.

  The scrimmage went... better than expected. We didn’t win, exactly. But we didn’t lose either.

  Fourth place in time. Second in points. One broken stabilizer, two bruised egos, and probably a new arch-nemesis in the Crimson Gale captain.

  (He wears eyeliner. I don't trust him.)

  I think… I’m learning.

  Not just about engines — though I rebuilt a crystal-to-steam thrust chamber from scratch last week, so please high-five Dad for me. But about racing. Real racing. With other people. Strategy. Timing. Trust.

  The Dart's holding together. Barely. But she's starting to feel like more than scrap now.

  So am I, maybe.

  He paused, glanced at the window again.

  Down below, Hana crossed the quad holding a stack of diagrams too big for her arms. Rin paced just behind her, arms folded, saying something sharp — probably about lift vectors or death.

  Jiro jogged past them, waving his lunch tin like a baton. Mei trailed behind, silent, unnoticed… but watching everything.

  And somewhere, no doubt, Grandpa was elbow-deep in something flammable.

  Ren smiled faintly and wrote:

  We're not just flying anymore.

  We're learning to race.

  And maybe… to belong.

  Love (begrudgingly),

  Ren

  He folded it once. Twice. Slipped it into the envelope and pressed the seal.

  Then leaned back on his bed, hands behind his head, eyes on the ceiling fan whirring slow above him.

  Scene 3: Grandpa’s Repair Surprise

  —-: Ren Kisaragi

  The hangar door creaked open with its usual groan — part rust, part complaint, part melodrama. Ren stepped inside, blinking as the sunlight filtered in past the iron trusses and stained-glass skylights.

  The Silver Dart sat exactly where they’d left her after the scrimmage. Or… mostly.

  Something was off.

  Wait. Why’s the rudder linkage glinting like that?

  Ren jogged closer.

  The stabilizer mount was polished. The gear shaft behind the cockpit housing was re-threaded. And mounted dead center under the cockpit console was a completely foreign gear system — sleek, blackened brass, etched with unfamiliar ratios, and gleaming like someone had hand-buffed every sprocket with affection and a shot of espresso.

  On it, in Grandpa’s horrible blocky handwriting:

  “NOT TESTED. PROBABLY ILLEGAL. HAVE FUN.”

  –G.G.

  Ren’s jaw dropped.

  “Wh—what is this??”

  “That,” said a voice from behind, “is the very bleeding edge of ‘please don’t die.’”

  Ren spun to see Grandpa Genzō, holding a pipe in one hand and a steaming mug in the other. His shirt was half-buttoned, his toolbelt sagging like it had lost a bar fight with gravity.

  “This wasn’t here yesterday!” Ren pointed at the shimmering array of chain gears and shifting ratchets. “This looks like a transmorphic phase clutch!”

  “Is a transmorphic phase clutch,” Grandpa said proudly. “Or it’ll explode. Fifty-fifty.”

  Ren opened his mouth. Closed it. Pointed again.

  “Why—how did you even—?”

  “Used to run one of these on the old Prototype Dart. Back when racing meant welding your seat down and praying.”

  He walked over, knocked the gear housing twice. It chimed like a bell.

  “Thought you’d like it. Gives you three additional tension ratios mid-flight. No more stuck in neutral on a vertical loop. And—” he sipped his mug, “—she hums like a cat with ambition.”

  Ren crouched beside the system, fingers ghosting over the controls.

  “It’s not safe.”

  “Nope.”

  “It’s not tested.”

  “Correct again.”

  “…I love it.”

  “I raised you well.”

  Above them, the skylight opened on its own — old gears creaking as fresh spring air spilled into the hangar. Light played across the Dart’s hull, glinting off the new gear like it belonged there all along.

  Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

  “Thanks, Grandpa,” Ren murmured.

  “Don’t thank me yet. Just don’t crash before the qualifiers.”

  Scene 4: Homeroom Tension

  —-: Rin Tachibana

  If tension had a sound, it would’ve been the metallic tick-tick-tick of the wall-mounted chrono behind Ms. Shiraishi’s desk — steady, sharp, and just a little too loud.

  Rin sat at her usual seat, second row from the front, hands folded over her notebook like she was about to receive a war strategy. The classroom buzzed with muffled chatter, steam-hissing thermoses, and the occasional mechanical clack of someone reloading their pencil-inkers.

  Jiro was slouched sideways behind her, sketching propeller angle variations into the margins of his math book.

  Ren was… late. Of course.

  If he walks in covered in soot again, I swear—

  The door slammed open.

  “I’m not late!” Ren gasped, completely late, goggles still on his head and half his uniform shirt buttoned wrong.

  “I was… inspecting my gear ratios! For safety!”

  Half the class laughed. Rin did not.

  Ms. Shiraishi didn’t even glance up. She calmly picked up the chalk and wrote one word across the board in looping script:

  KYOKUTO.

  The room quieted instantly.

  “That,” she said, turning, “is the name of the academy you’ll be racing in the first regional qualifier.”

  She tapped the word once with the chalk tip.

  “They’re fast, conservative, and known for calculating their flight paths down to the tenth of a second. They’ve already qualified for Nationals twice in the past five years. This is not a casual scrimmage.”

  All eyes drifted toward Rin… and then, inevitably, toward Ren.

  “What?” Ren whispered to Jiro. “Why’s everyone looking at me?”

  “Because the last time you raced, you almost caused a scandal and a fan club.”

  “It wasn’t a scandal. It was creative scoring.”

  Ms. Shiraishi cleared her throat and the room snapped to attention.

  “The match will be in three weeks. Location: Kyokuto’s floating field. Altitude adjusted. Ring patterns randomized. Top three finishers proceed to bracket two. Fourth place sits out the season.”

  Rin’s stomach tightened.

  They had no room for error. No time for mistakes. No patience for wild-card mechanics with bright eyes and bad bed hair.

  This isn’t about winning anymore, she thought.

  This is about staying in the sky.

  As if on cue, Ren raised his hand.

  “Do they allow onboard crystal-phase toggling midflight?”

  The class collectively facepalmed.

  “Sit down, Kisaragi,” Ms. Shiraishi said, without looking.

  Scene 5: Team Briefing

  —-: Hana Morikawa

  The workbench was chaos, but it was her chaos.

  Hana’s fingers flew across the draft sheet, her pencil practically vibrating with the rhythm of adrenaline and precision. She paused only to push her goggles up and take a breath — smudged graphite now painting the tip of her nose.

  “Okay, listen up,” she muttered, more to herself than anyone.

  “If I get one more variable wrong, Rin’s going to start using me as ballast.”

  The sliding door creaked open. Heavy footsteps. Voices trailing in.

  Jiro walked in first, snack bag in one hand, already mid-chew.

  Ren followed, hair damp from a shower, sleeves rolled like he was ready to install something or explode — possibly both.

  Mei drifted in last, quiet as a shadow, arms crossed loosely.

  Hana didn’t look up.

  “You’re late.”

  “Technically,” Ren said, “we were fashionably behind schedule.”

  “Technically, that’s still late.”

  She spun the blueprint around and tapped the upper corner with the precision of someone who'd skipped lunch for three days straight.

  “This is the multi-stage thrust vector re-synchronizer.”

  Silence.

  “…The what-now?” Jiro asked.

  Hana inhaled. Her voice sharpened, like a scalpel of intellect ready to cut through their confusion.

  “It adjusts the steam-crystal pressure balance in microbursts across both side channels. That means when you turn, the inner-side prop gets a slight boost in spin — creating tighter cornering without sacrificing forward momentum.”

  “It means sharper turns,” Mei translated softly.

  “Right.” Hana’s eyes gleamed. “Sharper, cleaner, faster.”

  Ren stepped closer, squinting at the array of thin crystal pipes and tubing connectors she’d laid out.

  “That’s… brilliant.”

  His voice wasn’t teasing. It wasn’t surprised, either. Just genuinely impressed.

  Hana felt heat crawl up her neck.

  “It’s still in prototype. If the steam pressure runs too hot, the feedback valve could—”

  “Explode?” Ren offered.

  “Crack the mount housing.”

  “Cool.”

  She groaned. “Not cool.”

  Mei tilted her head slightly. “Doable.”

  “Very doable,” Hana said, a little too fast.

  There was a beat of silence, just long enough to let the weight of the invention settle over them all. The air smelled of solder, ink, and oil — like something ancient and new was being born at the same time.

  “Three weeks,” she said, voice calm again. “We don’t have to be the fastest. Just smarter.”

  From the corner, Rin leaned against the doorway, arms crossed.

  “Let’s win before we crash.”

  Scene 6: Rin’s Reaction

  —-: Rin Tachibana

  Rin didn’t speak immediately.

  She leaned one shoulder against the frame of the open doorway, watching the rest of the team gather around Hana’s blueprint like it was holy scripture, a map to some sacred treasure of speed.

  Steam curled up from the back corner of the bay, where a tired radiator puffed irregularly like it needed a nap and a stern talking-to. The shadows of brass support beams stretched long across the floor. Afternoon light flickered across the polished stabilizer of the Silver Dart like firelight dancing over armor.

  The invention made sense.

  Too much sense.

  Rin hated it.

  Not because it was wrong — it was brilliant, terrifyingly so — but because it wasn’t hers.

  Since when did this become a group project?

  Since the ship stopped crashing every twenty seconds, her own brain shot back.

  She pushed off the doorframe and walked into the room. Every step echoed.

  The others turned. Ren glanced up, hands still smudged with sealant. Hana blinked once but didn’t shrink back. Not anymore.

  Good.

  “Thrust rebalancing sounds great,” Rin said, folding her arms.

  “But let’s win before we crash, yeah?”

  Hana opened her mouth to respond, but Rin raised a hand — not angrily, just… flatly.

  “I’m not against the plan. But we’ve had one race. One. And we barely held altitude through half of it.”

  She pointed to the crystal piping mockup.

  “This goes wrong mid-turn? You don’t get to test again. You get to explain why your cockpit is embedded in a ring tower.”

  Jiro gave a low whistle. “Harsh.”

  “Real.”

  Ren stepped in, wiping his hands on a towel that used to be white and now qualified as “battle-worn.”

  “You’re not wrong. But we’re not winning without risks either.”

  Rin’s eyes locked with his. She expected the usual half-joke, the crooked smile, the shrug.

  She got determination instead. No grin. Just grit.

  It unnerved her more than she'd admit.

  “I’m not trying to ground us,” she said. “I’m trying to make sure we cross that finish line with more than clever tricks and steam.”

  “Then help us test it,” Ren said.

  That stopped her. Cold.

  He didn’t mean it like a challenge. He meant it like a team.

  That made it worse.

  Rin exhaled through her nose, turned back toward the hangar doors.

  “Three test flights. Then I’ll consider letting that thing near my ailerons.”

  “Fair,” Hana muttered.

  Jiro raised a brow. “Is that code for ‘she likes us now?’”

  “It’s code for ‘no one dies on my watch,’” Rin snapped.

  But as she stepped into the light, her fingers flexed — itching for the control yoke, the wind, and the taste of forward motion.

  Let’s see if the Silver Dart can earn her name.

  Scene 7: Taiga’s “Mission”

  —-: Jiro Taiga

  This was a bad idea.

  Scratch that. This was a great idea wrapped in terrible execution.

  Jiro’s legs dangled awkwardly from the ventilation shaft, knees jammed against a copper beam and one foot pinned under a rotary fan that absolutely didn’t meet school safety regulations. The vent was tighter than he’d calculated, his jacket was caught on a rivet, and his last protein bar had fallen two floors down... right into enemy territory.

  “Recon,” he muttered to himself. “They’ll thank me later when I uncover some top-secret stabilizer mod or explosive-core cheat system.”

  A bolt dropped from his pocket and pinged off the ductwork.

  Ting. Ting. TING—

  CLANG.

  He winced.

  Somewhere below, someone cursed in a very formal Kyokuto dialect.

  He tried to shift forward. The fan clanked. His belt loop snapped.

  “No-no-no-no—” thud.

  He dropped out of the shaft and landed face-first in a pile of protective padding, which smelled strongly of lavender oil and old prop grease.

  A flashlight beam hit his face.

  “Intruder!”

  “Researcher!” Jiro gasped, throwing up his hands. “I'm a very lost researcher!”

  Two girls in matching dark-blue Iron Blossom tracksuits stared down at him. One held a wrench. The other had a clipboard. Both looked unimpressed.

  “Taiga,” said the taller one. “From Hinode, right?”

  “That depends,” Jiro wheezed, “on whether this is the part where I get beat up or recruited.”

  The one with the clipboard squinted at him.

  “You’re the one who tried to rewire a scoring ring mid-flight last semester.”

  “Allegedly.”

  A beat.

  Then the wrench-wielding girl sighed. “Come on. Before someone really finds you.”

  They dragged him to his feet, not gently.

  “You didn’t see our new servo design.”

  “What servo design?” Jiro said quickly.

  They shoved a bottle of water into his hand and pointed toward the side exit.

  “Get out before our vice captain gets back. If she finds you, she’ll weld your boots to the deck.”

  “You’re surprisingly chill for being infiltrated.”

  “You fell through a vent and apologized midair. No one trains for that.”

  As they shoved him out the side hatch, one called after him:

  “Tell Rin we still want that rematch. And maybe fewer boy scouts next time.”

  Jiro stumbled into the night air, bruised and proud.

  “Mission... complete.”

  Scene 8: Ren on the Rooftop

  —-: Ren Kisaragi

  The sky was huge tonight.

  Ren lay flat on the rooftop, arms behind his head, the rough tiles warm from the day’s sun and faintly smelling of grease — probably from Grandpa’s lunch incident last week. A breeze stirred the hem of his jacket, cool and clean, with that faint metallic tang the wind always carried this high up.

  Above him, the stars flickered like a circuit board made of galaxies — flickers of potential, scattered light and pattern just waiting to be mapped.

  The rooftop was off-limits. Obviously.

  So naturally, it had the best view.

  He took out a fresh piece of stationery — not the kind he used for class notes or diagrams. This one was thinner, softer, like the sort you used when you wanted something to be remembered.

  He clicked his pen twice and began to write:

  Dear Mom and Dad,

  Today, Jiro got stuck in a vent. Rin threatened to throw me off a catwalk. Hana made a propulsion model that probably violates three safety codes.

  And I think I learned something.

  It’s not just about flying anymore. Anyone can build an engine that pushes air and hopes the sky catches it. That’s not racing. That’s falling with flair.

  But when we fly together… when the machine hums with the same rhythm as the people holding it together… that’s when it becomes something else.

  Something better.

  We’re still rough. Still learning. Still arguing. A lot.

  But we’re starting to become a team.

  He paused. The ink from his pen pooled slightly, like it was thinking too.

  From the distance, he could hear the faint ping-ping of someone testing pressure valves in the hangar. Probably Rin. Or maybe Hana couldn’t sleep again.

  He let the silence settle. Then finished the line:

  We’re not just flying anymore.

  We’re learning to race.

  Love,

  Ren

  He folded it, tucked it into his inner jacket pocket, and leaned back again.

  Above him, a single shooting star carved a white-hot line through the sky.

  He didn’t make a wish.

  He was already chasing one.