First and foremost, Coran is a thief.
He has assumed many identities and badges of honor over the expansive years of his lifetime. A defender of the universe, the king’s most trusted advisor, and a chairman of Altea—how grandiose! The titles adorning Coran are so respectable that he’s often baffled at their association with him. Him? Coran, who had once spilled corrosive chemicals on his boss while trying to sneak them out of the lab. Coran, who raced through back alleys with scraped knees after being caught setting off fireworks for the umpteenth time. Coran, who danced brashly, laughed loudly, dug through trash bins, and stole. He stole all assortments of trinkets and valuables: medicine for the stray animals harboring illness, toys for the other streetkids, and books for himself.
Coran stole many, many books.
Storybooks, textbooks, comicbooks, and more. Whatever his nimble hands could grasp, he’d snatch. Coran would steal books and hide them in burrows of crumbling walls that no Altean officer would think to rummage through. Then, when the coast was clear, he’d toe his way around unkempt wreckage and feast on his goods.
Coran would peel the books open and stare. He’d stare until he could read, and he’d read until he could understand. This was another kind of theft; knowledge and skill were luxurious delicacies forbidden for the likes of a dirty orphan boy, even in an elite and pompous empire like Altea.
“What if you get caught?” A fellow streetkid asks Coran after he regales him with a Galran fairytale. “What happens to you then?”
Coran tosses him a blithe grin. “Then I start all over again.”
He nods firmly. “I can restart my life anytime I want.”
And it was true. When agitated officers spewed arrant curses at him as they kicked him out of the third school he snuck into, Coran started over. He escaped to a new part of the world. Redid it all. Rinse and repeat. He had nothing to lose except for his stolen goods—the knowledge tucked into the folds of his brain. That was okay. Coran had long since conciliated with the indigent nature of his life. He was rich in other ways. As long as Coran stole, he’d be forever rich.
Coran stole his way into the Royal Medical Academy through snatching another student’s ID. He stole his way into the Castle’s hospital by being in the right place at the right time. He weasled his way onto King Alfor’s council by protecting him from Galran jingoists.
It was all theft, wasn’t it? Everything Coran cemented into his life, from his byzantine surgical patents to his position as baby Allura’s godfather, had been placed on the wobbling foundations of his crimes.
It would be okay, Coran decided, because he could start all over again. Redo it all. Rinse and repeat. He could leave his prestigious occupation and become a space pirate. He could be a dancer, a painter, or a chef. A sportsman, an assassin, or a pilot. Coran could do it all.
Then, Coran commits the most tremendous theft of all times:
He lives on, while others don’t. He seals himself into quiescence while the rest of his planet is rampaged and expunged. It is Coran’s heart that beats on in place of King Alfor, other nobles, knights, doctors, criminals, or civilians. Coran, who has been chosen, perhaps as a salubrious blessing or saturnine punishment, to live. It could’ve been someone else in his place, guiding a princess and naive, doe-eyed aliens into war, while his ashes spread through the cosmos. No—it would’ve. Coran would not have been here were he not a thief.
It’s no matter pondering such fatuous concepts.
He starts over. Redoes it all.
Coran becomes an engineer. A medic. A strategist. A diplomat. He steals Galran soldiers’ lives. He moves through the universe as a pariah.
And when the debris settles and the winds of violence pierce through Allura’s heart before dying down, Coran finds himself with scraps of an ancient empire that don’t truly belong to him. Here he stands as a new and shiny leader, in place of the girl who lent her soul to the universe. Another theft.
“What do we do now?” Romelle pleads. She’s such a young girl. His heart twangs with sympathy.
“Now,” Coran says, “We restart.”
