Beyond the Calculations

To the ones who still look up,
Pyongyang Aerospace Research Institute – Launch Day

They asked me if I was nervous.
I told them no. The math was sound. The fuel was stable. The systems had run through simulation after simulation.
But when they counted down—ten, nine, eight…
I forgot the numbers. I forgot the math.
I remembered only her hand, tightening briefly around mine in the hallway before dawn.

We watched the launch from the observation room. The students were lined up in rows, their eyes wide, their notebooks open, their questions louder than the engines.
“How do the fins stabilize the craft during first-stage separation?”
“What was the final thrust-to-weight ratio?”
I answered everything. My voice steady, my hands motioning across the projected diagram like a teacher I barely recognized.
But then someone asked:
“Who is the astronaut?”

And I… paused.
Looked at the screen.
The trail of fire across the morning sky.
The capsule, rising higher than anything we’d ever built.

And I said—quietly, too quietly for the microphones—
“That’s her. My little star-traveler.”

They looked at me. Some smiled. Some didn’t know what to say.
But the question had changed the room. The launch was no longer a diagram. It was a person. It was her.

We built a rocket.
But she built the dream.

And now she’s where none of us can go.
Not yet.

If she returns, I will meet her not with diagrams or applause,
but with silence, and my hand in hers again—no gloves, no protocol.

If she doesn’t…
Then her name will live in every spark that breaks the sky.
And in every student who looks up and dares to think: What if I could go too?

Myung-ho
Lead Propulsion Engineer
Silent Believer
Lover of Stars