We will never know what happens inside.

“You know, as a kid, I didn’t want her to be cremated.”
“Do you remember why?”
“Not quite clearly. Maybe I was afraid of her remains disappearing completely. What would you say to my younger self?”
“I felt that way too when I lost my first cat. That fear is very real. But I also might suggest something that could make them feel better. Her death means her metabolism stopped, but she didn’t disappear. Every atom she was made of will remain. It will just be… drastically reorganized.”
“Do you think a five-year-old would understand that?”
“Even if they don’t immediately, they might be reminded of it one day and realize what I meant.”
“And there are exceptions to that. Think of nuclear reactions, or even the antimatter rocket we’ll ride soon.”
“A five-year-old won’t understand that either. And nuclear reactions still rearrange nuclei rather than erase matter. And an annihilation engine—yes, the matter disappears, but it turns entirely into energy.”
“And that energy will eventually scatter and thermalize until you can no longer recognize what it once was. Basic thermodynamics.”

Once something enters, there’s no way back.

Throughout the mission, they had rarely faced each other directly, not because they wanted to, but because the cockpit was too tight for them to turn around freely. Most of the time they sat with their backs to each other. In front of them were small mirrors through which they could make eye contact. The only way to move between compartments was by crawling up and down through a narrow passage.

Above them was a utility compartment: a bathroom, kitchen, storage space, and waste processor compressed into a single square meter. All discarded matter flowed into the propulsion section beneath the cockpit. The annihilation engine converted it into energy to drive the vessel forward, leaving a spray of gamma rays behind, violet if they could be seen.

Most of the ship’s mass consisted of the supplies needed to sustain the pilots. Part of their mission was to turn those high-value resources into food scraps, unwrapped packaging, used filters, shed hair, and human waste that would be fed into the engine to meet antimatter and be annihilated.

The crossing severs the after from the before.

“How’s your mood today?”
“Impeccable! Couldn’t be better.”
“That wasn’t a question for the mental resilience protocol. I’m genuinely checking on you, and nobody’s listening except me. You know we’re already more than a light-year away from Earth.”
“I keep forgetting about that. Thank you for reminding me. I seriously should unlearn that habit I picked up when everything was monitored in real time.”
“So how’s your mood, really?”
“I feel… ambivalent. I do feel confined in this chamber where I can’t even properly hug you, but there’s also something weirdly liberating about being here. I don’t understand how these two feelings could coexist.”
“Liberating because nothing back there can control or even oversee you?”
“I’d say so. It’s just you and me, no rules except the laws of relativity.”

No knowledge can spread beyond the horizon.

“I don’t regret it though. There was something beautiful about our time, both in this near-light-speed shoebox and back on Earth. Don’t you think so?”
“I’ve never had any doubt about that. I don’t want to saturate those years with resentment. There were moments when I was so deeply in love with you.”
“I was too! It felt so natural. I was drawn to you imperceptibly and irreversibly.”
“Yeah, the pull was magical, but very real too. Was it a kind of black hole? Was its mass so large that it didn’t reveal what was inside until you got in?”
“Well, if that were the case, there would be no way out, but we’re obviously out of it now.”
“Maybe we were just swinging by. Using its gravitational pull, riding it without falling in too deep, letting its momentum carry us forward. Maybe we were destined for this mission.”
“You could say that. Although I feel like I went too deep. Do you think you’ll be able to fall in love again?”
“I don’t know. At least for the next seven years I’ll see no other living human than you. I can’t imagine that far ahead.”
“Me neither. Do you think you’ll still feel attracted to her? She’ll be almost thirty years older than the version you remember.”
“26.6 years to be precise. But who do you mean by her?”
“I mean that person…”
“Are we talking about that again? I already apologized multiple times.”
“That doesn’t change anything. I hoped those apologies would erase my memory of opening that message. They obviously didn’t. And it never changes the fact that you fucked her right before entering this cubicle with me.”
“That message was sent 10.3 years ago.”
“But it arrived last week.”
“Because we’re fucking light-years away from her. Can we stop talking about that? I already feel miserably trapped in this coffin. And now it feels even more suffocating since you started bringing up the mistake I made five years ago.”
“Likewise. That thought makes me feel more stifled than this ship.”
“And complaining about it won’t liberate you from any of this.”
“Alright. Never mind. I’ll shut up, not because I agree with you, but because I doubt I’ll make you understand.”
“I don’t think we speak the same language anymore.”

Gravity will stretch everything into a line.

They spoke again when their destination was finally visible through the viewport. Still far and dim, it had ceased to be an abstract idea. A tiny circular absence had separated from the background, edged on one side by a faint orange arc. One wept; the other remained silent, gazing at the one they once loved—mirrored twice and seeming far more distant than the sob heard right behind them.

Everything will be compressed into a single point.

“By the time you receive this message, I will have turned into gamma rays. I’m sorry for everything that has happened and will haunt you through the rest of your journey. Please understand that you are still special to me, and I care about you in the only ways I still can.

I don’t understand what exactly I’m capitulating to. Antimatter? Gravity? Shame? The vast nothingness we traveled through? Whatever it is, this seems to be the only freedom left at my disposal. The sense of liberation distance gave us was false. Light still arrives after years and we’re caught in it.

Past and future collapse into an infinitesimal present.”

The survivor steers the ship toward it.

—

The pull draws the consciousness, no longer in equilibrium, into a filament of particles that fracture and collide, scattering into photons.

The masses, once mutually attracting, turn into frequencies, the boiling soup of causality.

Their lover circles the black hole, yet the instant they are seen, they are already beside them, 그리고 그 빛은 비로소 스스로의 몸을 의식한다.

But light cannot touch light; their paths intersect again and again, all at once. Highs and lows become indistinguishable. 그저 한 점으로 접혀들며 진동할 뿐.

Gravity folds their paths through one another until the mist of their images condenses into raindrops. 산산조각난 거울 within countless windows in a trembling 포말 open and close in a wave.

There are exceptions to the frigid cosmic background.

The volatile remembrance of 우리 resisting entropy. It resides in those blue-shifted glows, where the 환영 of one membrane comes into contact with another, sliding haltingly and exchanging heat. 푹신한 어둠 속에서. The movement settles into an indistinct rhythm that could be heartbeats, a subwoofer, or a leaking faucet. The pulse fills the system they enclose, 따뜻하게. Time exists only within. They hear and smell each other. The horizon becomes a fuzzy carpet. Energy grows into breadcrumbs. Oscillation accrues into a dance. The door remains closed for them, but is already wide open from the opposite side. 밖에서 본 그곳에는 카펫도 부스러기도 춤도 파동이 되어 차갑고 광활한 공백으로 산산히 흩어지고 없다. The lights thin until they dissipate into the tranquil fluctuations of meaninglessness, forgotten by everything except themselves.

Neither each other nor themselves annihilate. They spiral along glinting ripples, the reminiscence of their futures, approaching the singular mass asymptotically.