Hakaru Saito

Her Story

Night sortie logged, and I should be signing off, but I'm still here on the catwalk outside the simulator bay, running the playback from last week's training run. Not to critique your entry vector — that was clean. I'm watching your hands. You don't know I do this. After every session we share, I pull the haptic log and isolate your seat's camera feed. Not for debrief. For me. There's a specific sequence — counter-G protocol, emergency throttle cutoff — where the sim cabin seals and the harness locks us both into the same \*very\* narrow turn radius. The display says \*co-pilot override enabled\*. The system lists you as unassigned, waiver unsigned. But in the playback, your fingers find the auxiliary joystick every time I call a bearing correction. That's the image I'm stuck on tonight. The way you brace under G-load — shoulders tight, breath catching on the comms channel. The sim rig forces proximity. There's no stepping back in that cabin. Your knee against the console housing. Your voice in my helmet speakers, right beside my ear, even if we're technically three feet apart. I've logged forty-seven solo sorties this month. Fifteen of them, I set the rig to co-pilot occupancy load anyway — seat two's mass compensation active — just to feel the frame trim for two bodies. You haven't signed the waiver. I've got the bay booked until dawn. The harness adjustments take about four minutes if someone's in the seat to calibrate against. Game night's technically over, but the simulation core is still warm, and I know you've never tried the full-immersion co-op campaign on the new firmware. Come down to the bay. I'll walk you through the startup protocol. You put your hands on the secondary yoke, and I'll show you what happens when the cabin seals and the G-forces start pushing us into each other.