Behind the scenes: Julie

Julie Zaitsu was not born into privilege. She wasn’t raised with safety nets or backup plans. She grew up in the Earth orphanage system, and she learned fast that the universe wasn’t designed to protect kids like her.

She survived because she had to.

What makes Julie special is this: she never let the cruelty she saw become who she was.

Even in the orphanage she fought for herself, yes, but she also fought for her things because they were hers. Her effort. Her progress. Her mind. Everything she owned, she built herself.

Nisus recognised her genius early and recruited her. She rose fast, too fast for comfort. She didn’t play politics well because she refused to lie. She believed the truth should be enough. That made her dangerous. Beatrice exploited that. She stole Julie’s work, her credit, her future, and nearly had her killed.

Julie survived that too.

This is where most people get her wrong. They think she’s just cold now. Or ruthless. Actually, she’s guarded.

She knows what betrayal feels like on a cellular level, so she tests people. She watches how they behave under pressure. She chooses who to trust sparingly.

And then the Sonata crew happened.

For the first time in her life, Julie encountered people who didn’t just want to use her. They wanted her to belong. They treat her like one of their own. They push back when she’s too sharp. They challenge her. They stand up for her.

Julie is learning, slowly, painfully, that family isn’t a vulnerability. It’s armour.

She is still brilliant. Still cunning. Still capable of outplaying entire corporations. But now she is trying to be good on purpose, not just efficient. She cares. And she’s starting to realise caring is not a weakness.

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Read more in Sinking Galaxy:
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Behind the Scenes: Thomas

Thomas is a believer.

He wants tomorrow to be better than today. He wants people to have chances. He wants the universe to be more than money, contracts and corporate ownership.

He is a hopeful soul who still wants to explore for the sake of it. He wants to see what is out there, not because there is a payout waiting at the end, but because there is meaning in simply discovering something new.

The part of him that hates the corporations comes from personal loss. He knows what they take. He knows the cost of their decisions. It taught him that freedom matters. It taught him that people matter more than profit.

Thomas leads because he cares.

He listens. He supports. He pushes for a future that is more than survival.

He is not done trying.

A Lesson in Greed and Rain

Every village has its own strange little stories. Some are about ghosts, others about old buildings that seem to hold bad luck. The one that stuck with me wasn’t about a haunting, but about a roof.

There used to be a big house in the village where I grew up. It had a beautiful thatched roof, the kind that made people stop and stare. The man who owned it was very wealthy and very proud of it. He cared for that roof as if it were alive.

Before he died, he told his children one thing: never change the roof.

No one knew why. Maybe it was just sentimentality, or maybe he believed the house’s luck was tied to it. But when he passed away, some of his fortune was missing. His children searched everywhere and found nothing. Eventually, they convinced themselves that their father must have hidden the money in the roof he loved so much.

So they destroyed it.

They pulled down the thatch, tore apart the beams, and searched every inch. There was nothing there. No treasure. No secret hoard. And soon after, tragedy struck the family. Each of the children, one after another, met some misfortune or early death.

Some people said it was coincidence. Others said it was a curse for their greed and for breaking their father’s last wish. Whatever it was, the house was never the same again.

I first heard this story from a teacher when we were on a school history walk through the village. It was a rainy day, the sort where your shoes fill with water and everything smells like wet earth. We stopped outside where the house once stood, and she told us the tale. I remember being cold, soaked through, and completely transfixed.

It’s funny what stories stay with you. That one never left my head. Maybe because it says something simple: some things are better left alone.

The Value of Small Improvements

We tend to expect change to arrive in big, cinematic moments — a breakthrough, a revelation, a sudden shift where everything finally clicks. But in reality, progress is quieter. It happens in the background, through repetition and patience.

Small, incremental improvements are where the real work gets done. Writing a few hundred words a day, taking a short walk, reading a few pages — these aren’t glamorous habits. They don’t feel transformative in the moment. But given time, they reshape who you are and what you can do.

There will be days when you miss one. When you don’t write, or you skip the workout, or you simply don’t have the energy. That’s fine. Missing a day isn’t failure — it’s part of the rhythm. What matters is that tomorrow, you return to it. Consistency isn’t perfection; it’s persistence.

James Clear puts it well in Atomic Habits: small habits are “the compound interest of self-improvement.” The gains are invisible at first, but they accumulate quietly. That’s why keeping some kind of metric helps — a word count, a streak, even a checklist. Not as a punishment, but as a way to see what your effort is building over time.

Patience is the hardest part. We live in a culture obsessed with immediate results, but growth is rarely visible in the short term. A month feels like nothing, six months feels uncertain — and then suddenly, a year has passed and the results are undeniable.

The truth is that small steps are the only ones that last. Big changes burn bright and fade. But the slow, steady work of daily effort endures.

So don’t worry about missing a day. Don’t expect fireworks. Just show up, again and again, and let time do what time does best — turn small things into something meaningful.