▸ Column · Outer Rim smuggler's circuit — credits, comm logs, a busted ship compressor, and a deadbeat relative
HAN SOLO replies.
Replied to by Han Solo, with a rebuttal from Leia Organa.
The letter
Last cycle I floated my brother-in-law Derek 3,400 credits so he could put a deposit down on new quarters after the cargo depot let him go. He swore — and I've got the comm logs — he'd pay it back in monthly cuts starting two months on. It's now nearly a full year later and I've seen exactly one transfer: 40 credits, sent the morning after I mentioned the debt at a family meal in front of my wife's whole clan. Every time I bring it up direct, my wife says I'm "making it weird" and that Derek's "going through a lot." Sure. Meanwhile I was saving that stack to swap the busted compressor on my ship, and I've been limping along on a grinding sublight for eight months. I don't want to torch my marriage or get blacklisted from every holiday gathering till I'm dead. But I can't keep pretending 3,360 credits just vaporized. Is there a version of this where I get paid back and don't end up the bad guy in every family comm-channel forever?
Han Solo replies
Let me tell you something about debts, because it's pretty much my whole résumé. I owe a Hutt enough to keep me looking over my shoulder for life, so trust me — and yeah, I know how that sounds coming from me — I know the difference between a guy who can't pay and a guy who's decided not to.
Derek's the second kind. Forget the comm logs, forget "going through a lot." Watch what he did. The one time it cost him something — public, in front of the whole family — he coughed up forty credits. Forty. That's not a payment, kid, that's a guy buying quiet. The words are free. The behavior's the tell.
But here's where you stop reaching for the blaster: chasing him at the dinner table already failed once. Quit ambushing. Go to him alone, no audience, lay out a small fixed cut he can actually hit — automatic, off the top — and let him keep his pride while he digs out. You lent it in good faith. That was the decent move. Him welching doesn't make collecting the villain part.
And the one running interference for him? That's a conversation you're avoiding. We'll get to that.
— Han Solo
Leia Organa weighs in
He almost said it and then deflected, because that's what he does. So I'll finish it: Derek isn't your problem. Your problem is that you and your wife aren't standing in the same room on this. You keep going to collect alone while she guards her brother — that's not a marriage, that's two people negotiating against each other.
Spare me "the bad guy in the group chat." That fear is just a nicer word for doing nothing. The decision you're dodging is the one with her, tonight: is this a loan you both enforce, or a gift you both forgive? Decide it together. Then Derek hears one answer, not two. That's the order. Give it.
— Leia Organa
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