Chương 189: 71. Personnel Allocation 3

Ash moved on.

"Roy. Lan." The moment the two names dropped together, I saw Roy's shoulders tighten a fraction. Couldn't blame him. Last night's living-room tribunal had been thorough enough that now, whenever those two names got called in sequence, my brain automatically assumed somebody was about to be executed.

"You two are on logistics-flow demonstration and cargo-transfer explanation," Ash said.

"The tour won't enter the main hold, but they'll see the outer offload line. You two handle the on-site explanation and coordination." Roy visibly exhaled. Lan nodded.

"Understood."

"One more thing," Ash added, glancing up.

"Keep your private understandings out of the work." The air over the table flash-froze. Aida made a small, tightly controlled sound of amusement. I stared very hard at my water glass. No. I could not laugh at that one too openly. That kind of laugh gets remembered — and held against you. Roy's ears went red. Visibly, measurably red.

"... We will." Lan sat very straight, his composure intact, his reply arriving half a beat faster than usual.

"Work is work."

"It had better be," Ash said.... Brutal. The man had a genuine talent for inflicting maximum embarrassment with the fewest possible words. And the worst part was that it wasn't malice — he simply had zero interest in laying carpet over anyone else's awkwardness.

"Harvey." Ash turned. Harvey had been broadcasting don't give me more work since his name was first called. Getting addressed again only confirmed it.

"Engine-room perimeter lockdown, hazard-zone signage verification," Ash said.

"No tours, no demonstrations. You just make sure not one overheated kid from that group wanders anywhere you don't want them wandering." Harvey let out a short, cold snort.

"Finally, something that isn't charity work."

"You'll have someone alongside you, though," Ash added. Harvey's brow furrowed immediately.

"Who?" Ash's finger moved.

"Jess." I nearly choked on my own spit. Jess herself slapped the table.

"Why is it me again?!" That single sound rattled the spiritual foundations of the entire breakfast table.

"I'm Supply!" She jabbed a finger at herself, wearing the expression of someone who suspected she was the target of a systematic institutional bias.

"I already swallowed CQC and marksmanship — now I'm doing perimeter lockdown outside Engineering? Am I a logistics cadet or a universal consumable?" Harvey turned slowly to look at her, the way a mechanic evaluates a part he suspects will drag down overall performance.

"I'd like to know that too."

"Don't act like you're the unlucky one here!" Jess snapped.

"I am the unlucky one," Harvey said, cold and flat.

"I have to work. And babysit someone who's going to ask why every five minutes." I was genuinely close to losing it. This pairing was inhumane. Ash, however, clearly had a reason.

"Because you're Supply," he said, evenly. Jess blinked.

"... What?"

"Supply isn't just balancing ledgers and counting crates." He looked at her.

"On a tour day, the highest-risk factor isn't tactical — it's foot traffic. Where people should stand, where they can't go, where you need a sign or a redirect on the fly — that's all logistics flow." Jess opened her mouth. Nothing came out. Ash kept going.

"And you never shut up. If something actually goes wrong, at least you'll be loud enough to stop people in their tracks." Half a second of silence. Then Aida was the first one to collapse.

"Hah — that is a brutally honest job description." Jess's whole face went dark.

"That's not a compliment, is it?!"

"It's a functional designation," Evelyn said, from beside her.

"I don't want a functional designation!"

"You can decline," Ash said, tone unchanged.

"And I'll reassign you to high-G conditioning drills with D." Jess shut up immediately.... Right. There are no genuinely free choices in this world. Just options that kill you faster, and options that kill you slower. Ash's finger moved down.

"D." D lifted her eyes a fraction.

"You're in the demonstration support detail. Emergency movement drills, low-G acclimation, close-quarters restraint drills." She considered it for half a second.

"Live?"

"Mostly," Ash said.

"With the tour group present, you shift to breakdown demonstrations. No full contact." D nodded.

"Fine." Her reaction was so calm it was almost boring — like this level of assignment only confirmed that nothing genuinely worth her attention was going to happen before lunch.

"Akari." Ash moved on. The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. Akari looked up.

"You're in the observation and precision-response demonstration detail. Sensor reading, target identification, precision-shooting procedure walk-through. No live rounds. Procedure only."

"Understood," she said. Not a single wasted word. A good fit for her. More than the performative kind of demonstration, Akari was the sort of person who could stand next to something genuinely alarming and describe it in a voice so flat and even it sounded like a textbook answer. For a group of middle schoolers, that type tends to produce two effects: immediate admiration, and a specific kind of chill that surfaces later, in the dark, for no clear reason. Then Ash read the name I'd been waiting for.

"Maki Kushima." Maki had been looking down at her papers. She raised her eyes at her name with the same naturalness as always. That was what made her formidable. When most people hear their name called, there's a flicker — a micro-adjustment, a bracing. She had none of it. She seemed to have understood from the start that no matter how the cards fell, she'd be the one holding the table together at the end — so there was nothing to brace for. Ash looked at her line.

"You're not locked into one demonstration," he said.

"You're the floater. Wherever a group stalls, wherever a handoff drops, wherever someone's suddenly short a body — you fill it." Jess turned immediately.

"There it is again. That's a privilege." I sighed inwardly. She really was committed — committed to finding one more way to lose at every turn she might possibly lose. Ash didn't even look at her.

"It's not a privilege," he said.

"It's insurance." Then he finally looked at Jess, voice as level as ever.

"Kushima holds mastery ratings across every subject. Fixing her to one slot is a waste." Jess: "..."

"And the people attending this tour aren't just a group of middle schoolers," Ash added.

"There are supervising adults. If the flow breaks down, the first ones to notice won't be you or me — it'll be them." That landed differently. The table pulled in, slightly, all at once. I understood. This wasn't a simple ship visit. There was face involved. The Academy's reputation. The ship's own standing. And some layer of mutual observation that nobody had ever written down anywhere. Maki being placed as floor-wide backup wasn't because she had nothing better to do.

It was because in this kind of situation, the thing you most couldn't afford was a gap in the wrong corner with nobody to fill it. And she was the kind of person who, once she stepped into a gap, made everyone else assume she'd been standing there all along. Maki listened to all of it and nodded once.

"Got it." No follow-up. Nothing extra. And somehow that absence of fuss was exactly what made it convincing. I thought, at completely the wrong moment: What a headache. Not because she was capable. Because every time she was, I remembered what she'd looked like the night before — standing in the wind, breath going unsteady, not pulling back even after I'd kissed her.... Stop. This was not the time. Ash's finger finally landed on my name. I sat up. Not nerves, this time.

Just a very clean desire to know which particularly inconvenient position he'd decided to slot me into.

"Hoshino Shimo," he said.

"Here."

"You're on the primary demonstration detail." Jess made an involuntary noise beside me. Something between a huh and a what. I kept my expression where it was and straightened my back a little more. Primary. Meaning: front and center. I knew what the word meant. Not because it sounded good, but because it usually meant: if something goes wrong, you're the first one seen. If something goes right, you're the first one remembered.

"Single-seat fighter simulation demonstration, standard emergency-response procedure display, close-quarters restraint demo if needed." Ash looked at me.

"Also — the standard bridge report when the Captain enters. You run that one first." Even I went quiet for two seconds. Not because I couldn't do it. Because — This assignment was very specifically designed. It took the parts I was least afraid of and bound them directly to the parts that outside observers would notice most. Fighter sim, no problem. Standard procedure display, fine. Bridge call-and-response — memorize it and it's done. The problem was that this wasn't for instructors or classmates.

This was for a group of tour students, supervising teachers, the ship's own crew, and the kind of adults who stand in the back and don't say much but remember exactly who performed how when they get back to their desks. In other words: high-visibility quality inspection. I thought, quietly: Ah. So that's it. That was the real reason this list made your stomach hurt. It wasn't just extra work. It was a semi-public weigh-in — before anyone officially boarded, a chance to find out exactly what everyone was worth.

"Any questions?" Ash asked. I looked up.

"No." Not bravado. Genuinely none. Before anything real happened, this was still within the range of manageable. Inconvenient, unpleasant, exhausting, visible — but not enough to make me step back. The part that actually gave me a headache was something else: I could already see it coming — Maki, somewhere nearby, filling in gaps with perfect composure, watching me do all of this. That pressure was larger. Considerably larger.

"Good." Ash nodded, as if my answer had matched his expectations exactly — which was not the same as being pleased. Jess looked at me sideways.

"How are you so calm about this?" I glanced back at her.

"What's the alternative? Ask to be reassigned to tea service?"

"I just think this arrangement is a lot to ask!"

"It is a lot," I said.

"That's a separate question from whether I can handle it." The words were barely out before I felt several sets of eyes move across the table. Aida laughed first.

"Oh, nice. That had some edge to it."

"I wasn't trying to have edge," I said, face blank.

"That makes it better," she said.... She really did have a gift for taking someone's completely ordinary sentence and turning it into a spotlight moment. Ash didn't engage with any of it. He moved to the final item.

"I'm taking overall bridge-ceremony oversight, full-group pacing, and direct intervention if needed." Jess muttered under her breath.

"That title sounds terrifying."

"It's accurate," Evelyn said.

"Why are you adding to that?"

"Because it is terrifying." I almost laughed out loud. Rare. Evelyn, who typically kept her emotions in some kind of cold storage, had just delivered a short, precise blade at exactly the right angle. Ash pulled the special-assignments sheet back toward himself, voice settling flat again.

"This isn't a discussion. It's a notification," he said.

"We run rehearsals starting this afternoon. Tomorrow: call-and-response, routing, gap-fill, and removal drills. We board the day after. Nobody finds out where they're standing for the first time while they're actually standing there."

"Wait." Jess raised her hand again.

"One last question." Ash looked at her.

"What if there's a genuinely difficult kid in the tour group?"

"Define difficult," Ash said.

"You know." Jess made a gesture — not particularly refined, but surprisingly accurate.

"The kind with the wow this warship is so cool I need to touch absolutely everything face." Ash was quiet for half a second.

"Verbal warning first."

"If that doesn't work?"

"Second warning."

"If that doesn't work either?"

"Notify me."

"What if you're not around?" Ash looked up, voice without inflection.

"Then notify Kushima." The table went still for half a second. I looked at Maki. Maki looked up. Then Aida laughed — quiet, just a breath — and the sound carried exactly one meaning: So even the military version of last resort knows precisely which name to put at the end of the line. Jess's mouth twitched.

"... Understood." She understood fast. Because everyone understood. Standard removal was procedure. Calling in Kushima was a guaranteed outcome. I looked down at my own line — primary demonstration detail — then at hers — floater — and felt something strange settle in. Last night we'd been on a mountaintop kissing. We'd come home to a living room that went up like a lit fuse.

And this morning, both our names sat neatly on the same shipboard assignment sheet — one of us stationed up front to be looked at, one of us covering every gap on the floor. Not romantic. Not even close. Too real to be romantic. Almost offensively real. But that was exactly why it sat heavier than simple tension. Like someone who knew perfectly well there was still a part of you running loose — and handed you the work anyway. Catch this first. And I had no choice but to catch it. Ash gathered the sheet and stood.

"Ten minutes, then we're done," he said.

"Finish what's left of breakfast. If you can't finish, at least bring your brain with you." Then he left. No send-off. No reassurance. Not even a good luck. Very Ash. In his framework, good luck was probably something you said to people who'd run out of time to prepare. When there was still time, those two words were beside the point. He walked out, and the pressure didn't lift with him. Jess sat staring at her assignment sheet like she was mounting a long legal challenge against an invisible fate.

Roy and Lan weren't looking at each other, but the effort of not looking was its own problem. Aida had already started annotating the margins of her page with a focused energy that suggested some deeply unhealthy enthusiasm for the CIC tour. Evelyn was reviewing the restricted-zone section, almost certainly already drafting the exact phrasing she'd use to remove people who touched things they shouldn't. D sat with the stillness of someone for whom all of this was simply the next item on a list.

And Maki sat quietly, fingertip pressed to the page, as if she'd already begun sorting the gap-fill sequence in her head. I watched her, and thought: I'm kind of unlucky. Not because of the ship assignment. I could handle that. Unlucky because at this particular moment, watching her look down at her papers from the side, I was thinking about the night before — about the way her breathing had gone unsteady after I kissed her, and how she still hadn't pulled back. Pathetic.

I told myself that, and ate the last bite of breakfast anyway. Then Maki looked up, as if she'd felt my eyes.

"Hoshino."

"... Yeah?"

"Before this afternoon's rehearsal — run through the first call-and-response." I blinked.

"Captain on the bridge?"

"And the status report after it," she said.

"You won't get it wrong. But running it once is cleaner than not running it." I looked at her. Her tone was level — the kind of level that meant she was simply flagging a workflow detail for a teammate. No subtext, none of the closeness that had short-circuited my nervous system the night before. And yet, somehow, that was exactly what made it clear. This is her. The same person who stood in the night wind and let me kiss her.

The same person who now sat at a breakfast table and told me, without any fuss at all, to go run my lines. Like neither thing contradicted the other. Like she'd already folded whatever contradictions existed somewhere out of sight.

"... Got it," I said. She nodded and looked back down at her page.