Horizon || ATEEZ Space AU

Chapter 1: Seoulites

It's just after 2 A.M. and Hongjoong's rubbing the bleariness out of his eyes. The gaslit pinpricks of light he inspects through his telescope smudge together until he blinks his vision back into focus. Stargazing when you should be sleeping is always a bad idea, although stargazing isn't really the best word for it.

This is studying, not stargazing.

Hongjoong shifts the telescope slightly to the right until a very familiar celestial object comes into view. The mid-orbit space station suspended in the blackness shines at him from afar. It's a man-made celestial object, not a natural one. He doesn't need to check his notes to know what he's looking at; that's the Citadel. Like many others his age, it also happens to be his intended destination.

Due to what the united governments of the world call "worsening natural disasters" and "increasingly uninhabitable living conditions" an organisation called the IPF (Interplanetary Federation) formed long before Hongjoong was born to begin the long and painstaking process of moving out. According to the voices on the megaphones scattered through the streets of Seoul, the process is coming along nicely.

But to the people still on the ground, apocalyptic anxiety is very real, and cutthroat competition for access to the Citadel is a way of life. Tomorrow is the date of the annual IPF Horizon Project acceptance exam, when all the studying and rivalry will come to fruition. Or today, Hongjoong realises as he blinks at the numbers projecting from his wristband.

His mother went to bed hours ago and the house is silent save for the occasional beeps of various machinery. As Hongjoong peers at the aft quarters of the distant space station, he registers a smudge on the glass of the window his telescope is pointed at. Sighing and scooting his chair back, he whispers to himself that going outside wouldn't be too much of a risk and collects his equipment.

The housecleaning android beeps up at him disapprovingly but he shushes it, pulling his cloth air filtration mask up and flashing his wristband in front of the scanner next to the front door. He winces at the chirping sound it makes when it scans his band, but hearing no movement upstairs where his mother is, releases his breath. With a faint whoosh, the door slides open and Hongjoong quickly silences the automated warning from his wristband.

Air sieves through his mask and he steps out onto the grass, lugging his telescope behind. Hongjoong has never breathed in untreated Earth air, but his grandmother has. He asked her about it once when there was a dust storm outside and she recalled its dirtlike musk. She always talked about how the soil smelled after it rained, but when it rains now all Hongjoong smells is the inside of his mask, just like always. Fresh fruit, crisp pine, salty ocean, fetid livestock... all descriptions and pictures. More like a fantasy.

Hongjoong only knows what things smell like inside his metal box of a house, so he trusts his eyes and his ears instead. Once the legs of the telescope are firmly planted in the ground, he resumes his work. He's supposed to be studying the stars for the navigational section but his gaze keeps wandering to the station's hangars, all suspended below the floating utopia. Once he gets to the Citadel, that's where he'll be. Being accepted into the Horizon Project has been his goal since he was young, and piloting a ship of his own has been his dream for even longer. His father always said, "Diplomats and gunners won't be necessary once we make peace with all the alien nations in the galaxy. But pilots will be important and inspiring forever."

Important and inspiring is enough, but being able to support his family... that's a different matter. That is what keeps Hongjoong's eyes open at 2:16 A.M.

The distinct feeling of moisture gathering in the air prompts Hongjoong to pull his face away from the telescope for a moment and look at the horizon. All the other houses on the quintessential suburban street are still quiet, but clouds are gathering with alarming speed behind them and Hongjoong frowns in confusion.