Chapter 7: Unseen Eyes
The days after the ship's discovery moved like a haze—each moment stitched together with dread.
Yumiko no longer smiled as easily. She didn't laugh at Suraj's awkward jokes or tease him about his messy hair. Her attention drifted often to the window, to the horizon, to the sky. Something had changed.
The signal had not just been discovered.
It had been activated.
Yumiko sat silently on the edge of Suraj's bed, staring out the window at the falling rain. The air smelled like electricity and soil—a storm was coming. Suraj entered with two cups of coffee, one trembling slightly in his hand. He sat next to her.
"They've sent drones, haven't they?" he asked quietly.
She nodded. "Yes. Low-orbit atmospheric drones. They're invisible to the human eye but not to me."
"Are they watching us?"
She didn't answer immediately. "Not yet. But they will. They're narrowing the location. The report leaked online sped things up. Now the government knows this is bigger than a hoax."
Suraj stared into his cup. "They'll come for you."
Yumiko turned to him slowly. "They'll come for us."
She reached for his hand. For the first time since she returned, her grip felt unsure. Trembling. That scared him more than the drones.
---
That night, something else happened.
A pulse wave from Yumiko's ship triggered an emergency beacon. She had thought she disabled all outbound signals, but some of the ship's semi-autonomous systems had reactivated under threat. Somewhere beyond the stars, the signal reached Hakagiri—her home planet.
The Sikigaya Council received the data fragment.
And now, they knew where Yumiko was.
She was officially missing in action no more.
Now, she was considered compromised.
---
Meanwhile, Suraj's parents began to sense something was wrong.
He no longer ate dinner with them. His phone was locked at all times. His eyes looked haunted, and when they questioned him about his studies, he only nodded absently.
One evening, his mother stood at the doorway as Suraj stared blankly at his wall.
"Suraj," she said softly. "Is something bothering you?"
He didn't answer at first.
Then—"Mom, do you think… monsters exist?"
She blinked. "What kind of question is that?"
"Monsters. Creatures we don't understand. That aren't bad, but just… different."
His mother approached and placed a hand on his shoulder. "I think sometimes we call things 'monsters' because we're afraid of them. But real monsters… hurt people on purpose. Out of hate. Not fear."
He nodded, lips tight. That night, he barely slept. He kept replaying the moment he saw her again—the moment Yumiko returned after vanishing. The way her body shook when she hugged him, like she had been holding her breath for centuries.
---
Yumiko spent more time mapping out the forest, hiding residual tech, relocating materials from her ship. She set traps. Cloaked passageways. Places no one else could follow her into. The area around the ship had become a maze of alien defense mechanisms.
But the more she prepared, the more she realized she was preparing for an unwinnable war.
Every night, she would return to Suraj's side and pretend to be calm. Pretend that everything was still okay. She would watch him sleep, memorize the curve of his lashes, the shape of his breath.
And every night, her heart broke a little more.
Suraj noticed it too.
He found her one night, crouched over a glowing orb in the forest, her body outlined in soft indigo light.
"Yumiko… you're scared."
She looked up. Her eyes were dim. "Of course I am. I brought death to your world. And they'll blame you for it."
He knelt beside her. "Then we fight. Together. Or we run. You don't have to carry it all."
Yumiko closed her eyes. "You don't get it. I was never meant to love a human. I wasn't built for this."
"But you did," Suraj said firmly. "And that means something."
He cupped her face gently. "You think love makes you weak. But it's the only thing making you fight this hard."
She stared at him. Her voice wavered. "I don't want to lose you."
"You won't," he promised. "Not now. Not ever."
They sat like that in the silence of the forest, with only the starlight above and the soft hum of the earth below.
---
The next morning, things began to move faster.
A news channel, buried deep on a fringe science blog, posted blurry photos of the object in the woods. They were quickly scrubbed, but not before people began speculating—aliens, black holes, lost civilizations. Hashtags trended. Forums erupted. But among the chaos, government trackers locked in.
They dispatched a preliminary field unit. Not soldiers. Not scientists. Ghosts in suits. Men who had no names, no faces, only directives.
Their mission was simple: contain or eliminate.
---
Back in Suraj's house, his father received a call from the city council asking if they'd seen anything unusual in the woods lately.
He dismissed it, but his gaze lingered on his son.
"Is this about your… girlfriend?"
Suraj flinched. "Why?"
His father looked at him carefully. "Some people came by asking strange questions. About disappearances. About… energy fluctuations. They said it might be a hoax. But it didn't feel like one."
Suraj's stomach sank.
---
That night, Yumiko stood barefoot in the grass, her black hair rippling around her like a shadow. Suraj stepped beside her.
"Do you regret it?" he asked.
She turned. "What?"
"Coming here. Meeting me."
"No," she whispered. "Loving you is the only thing that feels real in this entire galaxy."
He smiled faintly. "Then let's fight for it."
They kissed under the moonlight, uncertain of what tomorrow would bring.
But they knew one thing:
They were no longer just boy and girl.
They were fugitives.
They were a spark that might ignite the end of the world.
Yumiko's eyes lingered on the stars long after Suraj had fallen asleep beside her. She held his hand like it was the last thread tethering her to the world.
In the silence, her mind whispered fears she dared not say aloud.
What if I lose him? What if I'm the storm I tried to protect him from?
A tear slid down her cheek—silent, lonely, forgotten like a raindrop in an ocean.
She wiped it away and whispered into the night, "I'll protect you, even if it means becoming everything the world hates. Even if it means burning it all down."