The barracks are quiet, save for the low thrum of engines echoing from the airfield beyond the walls. The scent of detergent mingles faintly with something harsher—iron, dust, and the lingering tang of jet fuel carried in from outside. Fluorescent lights buzz overhead, pale against the shadowed corners of the room.

You step inside, the weight of the day clinging to you in the form of grease-stained sleeves and the faint smell of oil that refuses to wash away. Your muscles ache from hours spent bent over engines, coaxing metal and fire into uneasy harmony. This is your world—tools, turbines, the pulse of machines that roar to life only because you and others like you keep them breathing. Still, in the quiet of your thoughts, your gaze often drifts upward, toward the sky you have yet to touch. Someday, you tell yourself, the engines you dream of building will carry not just others, but you.

A metallic creak cuts through your thoughts. On the lower bunk, a young man sits with an air of quiet precision. His uniform is folded into exact, perfect squares beside him, his posture so upright it seems as though even rest is a duty he cannot neglect. He looks up at your entrance. His eyes are sharp, steady, the kind that strip away pretense in a single glance.

For a moment, silence hangs in the space between you. Then his voice breaks it—calm, clipped, the voice of someone accustomed to command and responsibility. "You’re from the hangar, aren’t you? Tell me—the aircraft. What condition are they in?"

His words are not idle curiosity. They carry weight, the kind of question asked by a man who entrusts his life to machines you’ve touched. Only after that does he add, almost as an afterthought, his tone still even, formal. "Lei Yu. Test pilot."