Chương 186: 70. You Are Soldiers 2

The room went so quiet I could hear ice shifting in someone's glass. Roy froze. Lan froze. Not oh no, a secret frozen. I ran full OPSEC and somehow there was a witness frozen. Military-grade rigidity. Roy's face was doing something unprecedented. Lan was holding surface composure by a thread, but his ears had taken direct fire. Aida produced a sincere "oh wow." D set his cup down. Even Akari's eyebrow moved. This is no longer a living room. This is a blast site.

"Jess!!" Roy's voice cracked.

"What the hell—""Am I wrong?" Jess was fully committed now.

"Then explain why you said you were getting documents and came back an hour later with Lan from outside. Were the documents on her person?" Roy: "..." Lan spoke, still working at steady: "That's a misunderstanding." Aida propped her chin, smiling like she'd gotten front-row seats: "Oh, even the line is perfect." The room had already inhaled collectively. Aida was practically on the table laughing. D turned away, covering his mouth. Evelyn looked like her dataset had just been completed.

Roy and Lan had passed beyond alive into some intermediate state. Looking at them—two people suddenly absorbing full aggro—I felt genuine, soldier-to-soldier respect. The kind reserved for units who eat the main salvo so everyone else can withdraw. I did the only thing that felt right. I squared my shoulders, raised my hand, and gave Roy Hartmann and Lan Weiss the most regulation-perfect salute of my life.

"Your sacrifice is noted. This officer is departing." Half a beat of stunned silence. Then Aida lost it completely. Jess gaped. Roy stared with I cannot believe you just did that. Lan closed his eyes in the manner of someone who'd lost all faith in the world. I didn't wait for full reactions. Field assessment: nuke detonated, shockwave inbound. One viable tactic: evacuate.

"Let's go." I grabbed Maki's wrist. She looked at me. Something flickered there—quick, faint—that looked suspiciously like amusement. Don't smile right now. But she didn't pull away. She turned with my motion toward the hallway. Behind us: Roy's breakdown, Jess's stubborn counterfire, Aida adding fuel, Akari providing deadpan commentary. The living room had become a chemical reaction—five incompatible compounds producing something no textbook would admit existed.

I pulled Maki out, moving fast enough to qualify as semi-panicked retreat. Only when the hallway wall finally muffled the noise did I exhale like someone who'd crawled out of live-fire training.

"... That was pretty disloyal of us, wasn't it?" I said quietly.

"You saluted them," Maki said.

"Does that count as loyalty?"

"Yes. The formal kind." I looked at her. She was already looking back. The hallway light was soft, casting her profile in thin, quiet glow. The faint disarray from the ridge hadn't fully left her eyes. And now, alongside it, something else—the very reluctant trace of being amused by my salute and not wanting to admit it. My heart jumped again like an idiot. Damn it. The living room had just collectively detonated, and I still had bandwidth to notice the way she was looking at me.

Maki watched me for two seconds, then said quietly:"Your tactical withdrawal was sound."

"... I'll take that as a compliment."

"You should." She looked away first and took a step forward. Just one step. But it pulled me straight back to the ridge—how after that kiss, her breathing had gone unsteady but she hadn't stepped back. My throat went dry. Behind us, the living room was still burning. Roy was probably attempting some completely unconvincing denial. Jess had clearly entered Phase Two meltdown: if I'm going down, everyone's coming with me.

Aida was likely laughing herself breathless, and Akari was almost certainly providing calm forensic analysis. No. 22 remained as dangerous, loud, and fundamentally unsuitable for normal human habitation as ever. But standing here at the end of the hallway, the sensation of Maki's wrist still ghosting against my fingers, I realized the thing I genuinely couldn't process tonight had never been Jess, or Roy and Lan's underground romance going public. It was Maki. She hadn't pulled away.

And I'd taken her with me like it was the most natural thing in the world. The next morning I entered the dining room in what could generously be called a functional state. I had technically slept. What I'd actually done was lie flat while my brain ran an all-night replay: the ridge at night, the second kiss, pulling Maki out of the living room, her quiet you already saluted them—high-risk material that makes you sit up at 0300 wondering if your life is fundamentally over.

By the time I reached the breakfast table, only my exterior maintained a recognizably human shape. Jess was already there. And predictably, deeply unnatural. She saw me, glared first, then wrenched her gaze sideways, then seemed to remember she was supposed to attack and produced a cold:"Sleeping in, are we." It was an attack. The targeting was completely broken. The wall clock clearly read 0720. I was ten minutes earlier than usual.

I glanced at the clock, then at her, and decided out of basic humanitarian mercy not to point it out.

"Yeah," I said, sitting down.

"You're up early too." Her face froze. Counter-damage confirmed. She opened her mouth, clearly loading another round, but Aida drifted past with her mug before it could deploy, smiling like a professional disaster accelerant. Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

"Morning, you two. The breakfast atmosphere is so refreshing today."

"Shut up," Jess and I said simultaneously. Aida laughed outright. At the other end, Akari looked up with her usual expression—two specimens recently recovered from last night's incident site, not yet fully operational. Maki came in shortly after me. Crisp uniform, hair tied cleanly back, wearing that particular calm I'd learned to recognize as actively dangerous. The calmer she looked, the more it suggested nothing had happened. The more it suggested nothing had happened, the more I thought about what had.

When she sat diagonally across from me, I nearly reversed my fork. Goddamn it. One look. Just a normal confirming seating position glance. Nothing extra. And I still somehow extracted from it: the wind on the mountain, how close she'd been breathing, what I'd done about it. This wasn't guilt anymore. This was chronic poisoning. Roy and Lan arrived together. Both unnaturally quiet. Roy, who usually had enough presence to hold a room, was operating in minimum caloric intake, immediate departure mode.

Lan maintained professional silence, though whenever Aida glanced meaningfully their way, something would tighten almost imperceptibly at his jaw. D materialized as always—unaffected by sleep, emotion, or last night's social wreckage—sat, hydrated, ate, and reminded everyone through her steady presence that the pudding incident remained on record. The table looked quiet. It was the quiet of multiple devices wired under the tablecloth, waiting on a fuse. The fuse wasn't Jess. It was Ash.

He was usually quiet in that particular way where if he didn't speak, you'd almost forget he was constantly watching, recording, evaluating. Like a well-maintained blade kept sheathed until the exact moment it's needed. When he set his utensils down, the sound wasn't loud. But it compressed the entire table's atmosphere like a hand pressing down.

"I don't care about your personal lives." No lowered voice, no senior posturing. He just placed the sentence on the table.

"Once you deploy, you'd better leave the field-trip mentality behind." No names. Everyone knew who he meant. More precisely—not who, but the general looseness that had been spreading through the group lately. My fork stopped moving. Jess stopped looking for fights. Even Aida pulled back her smile. Because Ash wasn't performing. He was stating facts. The kind he'd been sitting on long enough that not saying them would be irresponsible.

"Get this straight," he said, gaze moving steadily around the table.

"You're Federal reserve military personnel. When the country goes to war, you're in the first wave." Only the faint sound of cutlery against plates remained. Nobody spoke.

"At that point," he continued, voice flat, "romantic tension won't stop shrapnel. Having feelings won't execute orders for you. If you board that ship with half your brain still running personal drama, I suggest you pack up now. At least then you'll only embarrass yourselves here, not out there." Hard words. Too hard to deflect with jokes. Which was exactly why they didn't feel like a personal attack. They felt like a genuine warning. I glanced at Maki automatically.

She didn't flinch or look caught out—just lowered her eyes slightly, like she was filing each point away. That reaction made me feel worse, because the person who'd come undone first on that ridge had unambiguously been me. Though she hadn't pushed me away either, so innocence was relative. —Not what I should be thinking about right now.

"That's all." Ash straightened his cuff.

"Govern yourselves accordingly." He picked up a stack of papers from beside him. Not improvised—edges aligned, sequence organized. The top sheet bore the Yukikaze's insignia and radiated this is where the real trouble begins.

"Break's got a couple days left," he said, sliding the stack forward.

"But here's the Yukikaze's boarding protocols, shipboard regulations, watch rotations, and departmental training schedules. Read today. Questions tomorrow. Don't wait until you're on deck to start scrambling." Aida took a copy, flipped two pages, whistled low.

"Ash, you didn't compile this—you dissected the entire ship."

"If you don't understand something, ask," he said.

"Don't pretend you do." Pure Ash. No decoration, straight to the bone. When the papers reached me, I scanned the first page. Boarding time. Muster points. Equipment specs. Internal transit routes. Watch schedules. Restricted zones. Emergency signal identification. Personal item limits. Communications protocols... Dense. Not impressive-dense. The kind where missing a single line could legitimately kill you later. Something shifted in my understanding.

Until yesterday, the Yukikaze had felt partly like backdrop—a large objective we were approaching, a stage about to open. But seeing these regulations printed line by line changed that. It stopped being the ship sitting quietly in the harbor. It was a machine that would consume our free time, dictate our breathing rhythm, slot everyone into rotations and make them function inside that structure. It was where we were actually going. I raised my hand.

"Ash."

"Go ahead."

"When we went to the port, we met the captain," I said.

"He mentioned secondary school students would be aboard that day. Is that confirmed?" Ash looked at me.

"Yes. They're on an observation program." Then, without looking away:"You're on active practicum." I couldn't respond immediately. Same ship. Three words cut the difference in weight completely clean. Observation: you go to look. Practicum: you go to do.

"So," Ash said, scanning the table slowly, "don't embarrass the United Interstellar Military Academy. They'll be there to see the ship—which means they'll see you. Don't act like you got dragged on a field trip." This time Jess was first to raise her hand. Not exactly raised—half-lifted, signaling I'm not picking a fight, I just have an annoying question.

"What about sleep?" Her voice was stiff, but something tighter leaked through at the edges.

"If watch rotation crosses midnight, do normal drills still run the next day?" Ash nodded.

"They run. Unless there's a specific adjustment post-watch, the ship won't lower standards because you're tired. Once you're aboard, 'tired' isn't an excuse—it's a status report at best." Jess frowned, seemed to want to push further, then swallowed it and looked down at the schedule. Interesting. She talked tough and exploded easily, but she was one of the few who actually internalized operational details. When she asked questions like this, she wasn't spectating—she was calculating: how do I survive this.

Maki spoke next.

"The departmental assignments—are they fixed one-to-one, or adjusted based on ship conditions?" Exactly her kind of question. Zero waste. Ash flipped to a later page, tapped a column.

"Fixed in principle. But the Yukikaze isn't the Academy. If the ship redistributes personnel, you move with it. Master your primary assignment first—otherwise when they shift you, you'll stall out completely." Maki nodded, didn't follow up. That was her way. Ask about structure. Confirm points that affect the whole system. Watching her in moments like this always reminded me that her composure wasn't performance—she genuinely dismantled problems, sorted them, and moved forward.

Which was exactly why thinking about last night's kiss gave me a headache. You look so completely incapable of losing control with someone. D flipped through pages and asked, tone flat:"How many emergency signal types?"

"Three primary patterns, plus one ship-wide override broadcast," Ash answered immediately.

"Page two. Memorize today. I'll test tomorrow." D nodded, apparently satisfied. Roy finally spoke, voice still carrying last night's aftershock.

"Communications restrictions—are personal terminals completely off-limits?" Ash looked at him. That look felt weighted—like he knew exactly what had happened in the living room and was choosing to address only operational matters.

"Non-essential use, don't touch them. The ship has its own comms network. Different restrictions for living quarters versus operational areas. Once you're aboard, learning when to shut up is more important than learning how to contact people." Pretty sure he wasn't just talking about radio protocols. Lan followed with something practical:"How much hangar access during practicum?"

"Depends on your supervising officer," Ash said.

"But don't expect to gawk at impressive things. If they let you in there, you'll be hauling, logging, standing watch, and getting corrected." Aida couldn't help laughing.

"Ash, you're systematically killing whatever romance anyone had left about ship life."

"Romance isn't on the duty roster," Ash said. I nearly choked on my own breath. Jess produced a sharp "hmph" beside me—finally, someone talking sense. I looked down at the papers. Maybe it was my imagination, but as Ash spoke, something in the air slowly drew tight. Not cold—just pulling back from last night's interpersonal chaos toward something much larger. Nation. Academy. Yukikaze. Practicum. Survival rates. Institutional reputation. Words that usually sounded like slogans.

Put right in front of you like this, they suddenly had weight. Ash finished distributing the last few packets and said:"If you have objections, say them now. Don't wait until you're aboard to start complaining." Nobody spoke. Or rather, nobody said anything that could be mistaken for stubborn posturing anymore. Aida flipped through her materials, the easy laughter finally gone. Jess frowned at the watch rotation schedule, mouth working like she wanted to complain, but this time not just to cause a scene.

Roy and Lan both kept their heads down, eyes locked on their pages. Last night's living room detonation—enough to level a small building—had been quietly pressed back under the surface by morning. Maki aligned her copy perfectly, fingertip pressing lightly against the corner. For no reason I could explain, I suddenly wanted to ask her: Did you sleep at all last night? I didn't, of course. Not here. Not now. Because when I looked up, I noticed Ash still had one sheet of paper beside him.

Not the same format as what he'd handed out. He hadn't distributed it. When he'd been organizing the materials earlier, his movements had looked natural, but he'd kept that single sheet pinned underneath the whole time—never let anyone touch it. Just a corner showing, like a roster, or maybe a supplementary attachment. But the moment I saw it, something went wrong in my chest. Not the we might have extra homework kind of wrong. Something more direct.

Like someone had placed an unannounced variable at the edge of the table and was waiting for the right moment to turn it over. I stared at it a second too long. Ash seemed to notice my gaze. He looked up, met my eyes briefly, then casually flipped the sheet face-down and slid it back under his palm. The motion was light. But whatever unease had been building in me sharpened immediately. The breakfast table went quiet again. Morning light streamed through the windows, food still warm on our plates, No.

22 looking exactly like itself. But looking down at the boarding protocols in my hands, then back up at that sheet Ash hadn't distributed, I felt something come into focus with uncomfortable clarity— Last night's kissing, the escape, the embarrassment, the chaos—none of it had disappeared. It had just been filed into a smaller compartment. The larger one was opening. The Yukikaze hadn't sailed yet. We hadn't even boarded.

But something that moves ahead of boarding had already arrived and taken a seat at the breakfast table. And right now, it was lying quietly in Ash's hand.