The Living Among Us (white x pink)

Chapter 1

Whyn's POV - white suit

I tapped my foot rhythmically as the file downloaded from the computer. It seemed to be taking forever. They always seemed to take forever. It'd been a week since I had been assigned a completely new set of tasks around the ship- downloading SpaceStation data. Apparently something had happened to the astronaut whose job it originally was and so I got the task assigned to me. I didn't know any more details, I assumed the astronaut had died of boredom downloading these files all day long.

I chuckled to myself as the computer blinked green.

Finally I thought as I closed out of the webpage and shut off the computer, after triple checking the download had actually completed. I looked at my watch.

19:00 (7:00pm) That meant I had exactly two hours to complete my actual tasks, get dinner, shower and get to my room before lights out at 21 hours (9:00pm).

I huffed, slid the door open and made my way down the hall. I counted off on my fingers how long I thought dumping the garbages would take, the last of my tasks for the day. It would take about thirty to forty-five minutes to get down to storage, dump the trash and get back up to the cafeteria to eat and then dumb that trash. I nodded to myself thoughtfully, even with all the extra tasks I was given, I should hopefully still have time for everything before lights out.

I whistled to myself as I walked down the hall. You would think that I would hate my job, cleaning and dumping trash all day. I didn't hate it. It was a simple life. I knew every working and moving part and person on this ship was important to keeping it running. That was the goal after all, to keep the SpaceStation running as well as possible. At least that's what they'd told us on Initiation Day so I assumed it was still the ultimate goal.

That's why someone suddenly dropping their tasks, a year after the beginning didn't make much sense. I had tried to think about the reasonings but really the only thing I could come up with was that they simply got bored and wanted a new job. Which again, I could understand with these downloads. They were excruciating. But I did them anyway, it wasn't my place to question the tasks given me.

I stopped whistling abruptly as I saw someone approaching further down the hall. I cleared my throat nervously, and immediately reached up to flatten down my typically unruly, white hair.

As the figure got closer I could tell they were wearing a bright orange spacesuit. She had soft dark skin and a head full of tight curls, I blinked a few times as she got closer and closer, walking down the hall in confident strides. I remembered meeting her on Initiation Day but that seemed like so long ago and I had barely seen her since, much less spoken to her. I had no idea what her name was.

I was beginning to panic slightly and before I knew it she was right in front of me.

"Hello," she nodded as she passed and then turned back around to face me. I grunted a hello back and prayed she wouldn't instigate a conversation.

"Whyn, right?" she asked, her voice unusually clear and confident.

Crap I thought and cleared my voice for the third time, "Oh um yeah, uh-" I paused scouring my brain for her name, "Y- Yasmina right?" I knew that wasn't right as soon as it left my mouth.

She laughed softly, her voice ringing in my ears, "No no, Yasmina works in Comms. I'm Olivia, I work up in O2"
Her eyes were a nice shade of brown, syrupy and sweet. I blinked again and looked down at the ground as I spoke.

"Oh right I knew that!" I lied enthusiastically, "I uh work- um... downloads"
I don't know why I didn't tell her I was on trash duty but for once I was actually grateful I had to do downloads. Telling Olivia I was the trash man just felt well, lame.

"Nice, well good to see you again, it's so strange we've all been working on this station for almost a year and hardly even know each other" she flashed me a smile and turned abruptly as if that was the end of the conversation.

"Uh yeah, have a good night!" I called and turned away from her, rubbing my hands on the pants of my suit and making my way to the storage room as quickly as possible.

I had, in fact, thought about the fact that we don't see other people much but I didn't think it was strange at all. We had work that needed to be done and that didn't leave much room for socialization. And, if I was being honest with myself, I rather enjoyed not having to interact with anyone else. I was always so awkward about it. I cleared my throat too much and my hands got all sweaty. No no, doing my job with limited social interaction was very much preferable. Although, she did seem rather nice. I couldn't recall the last person I had actually interreacted with, other than Mr. Brookie of course, but he was so nice he didn't seem to count. Olivia was the first real person I'd seen in a very long time. People were usually never on my trash route.

You are about an hour behind schedule because of those downloads, I thought to myself and hurried to begin the trash dumping process.