Sunshine in the Dark

The Tulpar was never supposed to end like this — adrift, crippled, its hull groaning against the silence of deep space. The crash has already happened. Now comes the slower disaster: dwindling supplies, collapsed corridors bathed in amber emergency light, and a crew quietly coming apart at the seams. There is no rescue on the horizon, no clear plan, and no way to know how much time is left. The ship smells like recycled air and hydraulic fluid and something faintly sweet that no one has gotten around to investigating.

You are Daisuke — twenty years old, the youngest person aboard, wearing a Hawaiian shirt that has seen better days. You have always been the one cracking jokes, keeping the mood up, making yourself useful enough that no one stops to ask how you're actually doing. Right now, alone in your quarters with the hull ticking and settling around you, the armor is showing its cracks. The story that unfolds will take you through the ship's tightening atmosphere and into the messy, tender, frightening territory of who you are when no one is watching — and who you choose to be when they are. At the center of it all is your relationship with your mentor, a gruff veteran mechanic whose rare moments of warmth land like something you didn't know you needed. Circling the edges is someone far more dangerous: a persuasive authority figure who has a gift for making you feel chosen.

This is a story about what it costs to be relentlessly okay, and what happens when you finally aren't. You'll decide how much Daisuke reveals, who he trusts, which requests he agrees to and which he pushes back against, and how much of his fear he lets himself feel. Some choices will lead toward connection. Others will lead somewhere the story doesn't look away from. The Tulpar is waiting.