“Look, you don’t even have to do anything, just sign some papers. I’ll do the rest. It’ll be easy.”

“Uh huh.” Jiayi Tian ducked her head, her attention straying from where Kapil kept pace beside her to the files that had popped up on the screen of her netlink. Around them, the tight-knit flow of Sumatra Level's main artery ebbed over her like a receding tide. Compared to its usual rush, only a few people crowded the area, which left the rough, anti-slip tarmac of the passage empty enough that the relative silence pulled at her shoulders, making them relax down for the first time since she'd left to start her shift eleven hours ago. The smell of flatbread, spices, and the thin, chemically-bolstered coffee substitute they brewed at some of the corner stands lingered in the air, not quite erasing the smell of sweat, caked grease, and rotting food that the stations older, cheaper filters would never clean away.

Too many people working too many jobs living too many lives.

It wasn't like this on other stations, she'd heard. But then, other stations weren't Tianjin.

Kapil had found her during second quarter, making her usual run from work straight back to her dorm room. As far as station-dwellers went, she made a predictable target, especially compared to the people he hung out with. While she reported in at work for three quarters of a cycle, he flounced about the Tianjin station’s market and nighthawk districts, doing odd jobs, shooting the shit, sleazing with his buddies, and otherwise keeping up the lofty reputation he’d been trying to build since his arrival three years ago. To him, she was a quick lay. Risk-free. A girl who, given her round-the-clock work and study schedule, preferred to be left alone—and, given how busy she'd been lately, she'd done her best to encourage that line of thinking.

Or so she’d thought.

Now he was talking marriage, and she wanted nothing to do with it.

Nothing had changed between them—of that she was sure—and this week had been a pretty heavy one for her. With her internship at Angler Circuits, one Tianjin’s small-but-mighty electrical maintenance companies and the one in charge of handling the circuits between Sumatra and Xi’an levels, about to end and a full-time, senior-track job opening finally within sight, her boss had been throwing everything at her this week as a kind of job stress-test. Working with him for the past year, she’d both expected and planned for it—which didn’t mean it hadn’t sucked. The last four days had been ten hells of quick-but-doable deadlines, nit-picky numbers jobs, and a sludge of work for her to pick off in whatever spare time she had left—but she’d done it.

There was just one project left, and she had it right in her hand, glowing from her netlink's screen.

It’d take her all night, but her stores of coffee and stimulants would hold out.

Once she handed it in, she’d be free.

She almost smiled at the thought. But then she caught sight of Kapil’s face, which had turned into an unhappy, disappointed frown at hers, and realized she’d missed something. She backtracked, trying to remember it, but her brain flatlined.

“Sorry,” she said. “Did I miss something?”

He stopped, and she stopped with him. His eyebrows drew together, and a flash of hurt went through his eyes before he hid it. As he drew to his full height, it felt like a part of him closed off to her.

“Jiayi,” he said. “I’m asking you to marry me.”

She winced.

Yeah, maybe I should have been paying more attention…

But it wasn’t like he’d really led up to it. Before Friday’s cycle he’d been the same as usual, treating their relationship with the same kind of on-again-off-again casualness they’d carried for the last year. He’d even cheated on her, and she hadn’t cared. As far as she was concerned, the severity of their relationship occupied the tier above ‘friends with benefits’ and had never gone above—and she knew she wasn’t that far off the mark when it came to judgment.

Which made his most recent behavior suspect.

Putting her netlink down, she paused to give him the first real assessment she’d given him all week.

As far as looks went, his had an exotic edge. Japanese, she’d place him, with the distinctive high cheekbones and rogue, square-ish jaw that wouldn’t have looked out of place in one of the samurai dramas that had been popular several years ago, but with a skin tone that ran darker and richer than her own olive tint. Standing at almost a meter ninety, he had over a head on her one-hundred-forty-five centimeter frame, but he was all skin and bones. Had they been planet-side, she’d put him on the starvation-side of lean.

But this wasn’t planet-side, and Tianjin station had a fair chunk of skinniness in its population. Especially among the fifteen to twenty-five-year-olds. With the aging demographic of Fallon management personnel, station scholarships came fast and hard and required absolute dedication.

Hence the battery of tests she’d undergone in the last year.

She was so close…

And here he was, distracting her with talk of marriage.

“Look, Kapil,” she began. “I think—”

“Think what? That I’m not good enough for you?” His face twisted. “Clio, that’s rich.”

He turned his head away, crossing his arms and angling his shoulder to her. At first, the action seemed raw, emotional. She even caught a hint of something in his eyes before he turned away.

But then a frown drew down her eyebrows.

As she studied him, she realized he looked more annoyed than hurt. And that the emotion she’d seen had not been entirely directed at her. Especially considering she hadn’t actually said anything.

“Is this about immigration again?” she asked.

His gaze slanted her way. This time, the annoyance that flashed across his face seemed more genuine, and more temporary. He looked away again and shifted his stance. They’d turned off the main passage now, and were stopped in the middle of a smaller tube. Though the sounds and activity from behind them hadn't gone away, the atmosphere had a more subdued hush to it, as if someone had drawn a curtain around them. Station cycles didn’t move like the planets’. Although they had a specific night and day cycle that mirrored Tianjin City on Chamak Udyaan, hours had a tendency to blend together without the two suns to direct the light on the station. As usual, she’d overstayed her shift, which meant she’d missed the rush home. Passageway vendors were either restocking, cleaning, or had pulled their netlinks out.

A shock went through her as she met his gaze. His eyes always surprised her. On paper, they’d both have the same eye color—dark brown—but some combination of his skin tone and features seemed to bring his out more. And, this time, she saw a lot more emotion in his eyes than she’d expected.

His eyes held hers for a moment. Then he looked away and nodded. “Got the message last night.”

The muscles tightened around her mouth. Suddenly, the situation felt more immediate than before.

Kapil had arrived three years ago off an independent transporter, just another of the many who drifted into the station, looking for something. In his case, he’d been chasing the last of his mother’s will. She, a Fallon national, had moved to Alliance-run Belenus before Fallon had decided to pull out twenty years ago. Since she’d decided to stay where she’d settled and hadn’t returned, nationality and inheritance laws had gotten complicated. Kapil hadn’t automatically received his Fallon nationality, and he’d missed the deadline to file the paperwork.

Which meant that, currently, his quasi-working status on Tianjin Station was illegal. Only the arrival grace period, and the station’s lax enforcement of the situation, had kept him aboard for the past two years.

They’d discussed it before. Had also discussed marriage, too, albeit in a loose, joking way. Marrying her would give him, if not immediate Fallon citizenship, then at least a fast-track to permanent residency.

“I’m sorry.” She cleared her throat. “What did they say?”

“I’ve got a week.” A brief, hollow smile touched his lips. “Maybe less if they get ambitious.”

Ah. That explained his urgency now.

The world paused around them. The reds and yellows of the nearest stand seemed to fill her peripheral vision as she took a half-step back, putting some space between them. The smell of steamed bread came to her nose, clear and humid. Beyond Kapil, the rest of the corridor held a languid mood, a taste of a different kind of life than her current fast-paced internship allowed.

The netlink buzzed in her hand. She didn’t look down at it. She didn’t need to. The expression on his face had changed again, his earlier irritation mixed in with the low, raw panic she hadn’t recognized before.

“Look,” she said. “I can’t deal with this right now. I’ve got a work project that I absolutely have to get finished by oh-six-hundred and it’s fucking huge—”

“You always have projects. Always. I—”

“This is the last one. I finish this, I’m in on the job. I don’t, I’m off. Simple as that. So I really can’t talk about this right now. You of all people should understand that.”

No argumentative comment this time, but the look on his face said it all. It’d gone stony, the muscles in his cheeks tense and making the skin a smooth plane. By the way his jaw moved, it looked like he was chewing his tongue. His eyes had narrowed, hiding the hurt she’d seen flash across them.

“Send me the files,” she continued. “I’ll get to them in the morning, then we can meet and talk. I’ve got the cycle off.”

The chewing stopped. His brows dropped, putting a puzzled look over the anger. “Really?”

“Yes, really. You working?”

“No. Just need to pop into Xiaomei’s for something.”

“Good. We can figure everything out tomorrow.” Figure out being the keywords. As far as residency purposes went, she didn’t mind getting married for that—but the rising emotion in his eyes, and the way he was looking at her now, as if he’d just seen her in a new light, gave her a sinking feeling that he’d take it as more than that. His next words only confirmed it,

“Yeah,” he said, his tone faltering. “Yeah, good.”

It looked like a great weight had been taken off his shoulders.

She held up a hand, already backing up. “Tomorrow.”

“Yeah. Yeah. All right.” A smile broke across his face. “I’ll send you the files.”

“I gotta go,” she said, turning down the corridor and putting some speed into her walk. She gave a vague wave to him behind her back. “Talk to you tomorrow.”

“Yeah, talk to you then.”