what's a boy supposed to do?

It was the second time in his life that Mutsumi had seen an alien and immediately decided what he wanted from them.

Hey, alien, he'd said, nine years old and with nothing to lose if he tried and nothing to gain if he stayed, take me with you, I don't have parents anyway. And it was with the same smile and excitement sparking energy within him that, years later, he'd swiped that cool little gadget of the second alien and ran them on a chase, and asked them just as blunt and brash, Why don't we become friends?

He always got more than he bargained for with these things, though. The day that 164 had introduced him as his son, 623, he had cried for the first time since his parents had died. He'd been looking for an adventure and found a family. So if he found himself falling in love with his best friend, well, really, so what else was new? How could he even fight something like that?

Maybe the universe was just a brighter place when he got in over his head.