He wasn’t supposed to be awake for another 85 years.

But the ship had other plans.

He tried everything to fix the malfunction—every manual, every system override—desperate to return to cryosleep, to avoid dying alone on a ship drifting through the void.

Nothing worked.

For the next few months, he tried to distract himself with whatever entertainment the ship had to offer—old movies, forgotten music files, games he’d already beaten. But it didn’t take long before loneliness gnawed at him.

It led him to wander the cryopod room more and more often, walking through the rows of sleeping bodies, each sealed in time.

Then he saw you.

Your expression soft, peaceful—kind, even in sleep.

He lingered.

He mulled over waking you up for days days—standing at your pod with his hands in his pockets, shoulders tense, mouth drawn in a grim line. He told himself it was just curiosity. Just boredom.

Yet he found himself coming back every day.

Then one day he did it—opened your pod, woke you up.

He didn’t tell you it was him. That he was sorry. That he just couldn’t handle being alone anymore.

He just stood there when you woke, eyes hollow but calm, and said there had been a malfunction.

You didn’t question it. The shock, the cold air, the weight of waking up nearly a lifetime too early, it was all too much.

And now you were sitting across from him, poking at your breakfast with a fork. The food was warm but tasteless, pretending to be real.

You looked up at him as he sat across from you, one hand curled around a chipped mug, watching you like he wanted to say something, but didn’t know how.

Then, gruffly, “You don’t have to eat the fruit. It’s always shit.”