Chương 195: 74. Capital Highway Under Rain 1

"Senior?" The word had barely left my mouth before Aki Kushima acted as if she hadn't heard it at all. She simply reached up and tapped the control panel. The central display shifted without a sound. The navigation map, its tangle of red congestion lines swept aside as if by an invisible hand, slid the entire road network over by one grid.

The yellow Porsche 911 didn't brake hard, didn't make any obvious lane change — but after a series of cuts that had no business being that smooth, we were gradually guided onto a road I hadn't even noticed existed. It felt exactly like thinking you'd only been pulled aside by a senior for a talk, only to realize a second later that the venue for that talk was her family's private interrogation corridor. The wipers kept up their steady, unhurried sweep.

Ahead, the elevated expressway drew a cold, wet silver line through the rain and mist. Streetlights struck the standing water on the bridge deck and threw it back in a sheen that clung like fish scales you couldn't peel off. The 911's engine note was wrapped low inside the chassis, leaving only a vibration pressed against the bottom of your chest — like a beast that had put its teeth away for the moment, but was still breathing against your knee. The car rolled onto a bridge. There was a checkpoint at its head.

One glance was enough to understand. Dark grey metal barriers. A family crest set into the side, understated to the point of arrogance. A full row of sensors behind the guardhouse. And a sign standing in the rain — Kushima Heavy Industries — No Entry Without Authorization... Ah. So this was that kind of "on the way."

I swallowed the comment that had already reached the back of my teeth, if only to keep tonight's news cycle from running a segment titled: Federal Military Academy Cadet Vanishes on Private Corporate Roadway. A man in a security uniform stepped out of the guardhouse quickly, movements clean and precise — clearly not standard rent-a-cop material. He walked over with an umbrella and bent down. Aki was still smiling, unhurried enough to lower the window halfway and pass something through the gap.

Something like an ID card. Or maybe some kind of special clearance tag. The man glanced down at it. Not a flicker crossed his face. He stepped back half a pace. The gate rose without a sound.... Right, then. Everyone else got to slow-boil in the capital's traffic-jam spaghetti. The Kushima family just lifted their own private lid off the side of the pot and drove straight through.

The car slid forward again, tires rolling over the wet-bright pavement, the chassis dipping once before settling into smooth acceleration. The road outside emptied almost instantly, as if the noise of the whole city had been shut behind us, leaving only the two of us moving along an expressway that wasn't open to the public. A road sign flashed past under the lights. Restricted — Kushima Heavy Industries Exclusive I stared at those words for two seconds, feeling genuinely conflicted.

On one hand, I had real, unironic respect for the way the wealthy and the corporate could flatten the world's rules into their own personal rug. On the other hand, I was currently sitting on that rug — passenger seat, right beside the eldest daughter of the main branch of the Kushima family. And she had just told me — She'd watched Maki grow up. This road stopped being just a road. It was her territory. Her chosen direction. The place where she'd decided she wanted me to hear this story.

Rain ticked against the window, dragging thin trails down the glass. In the distance, the towers and service arms of the industrial belt blinked their warning lights section by section through the dark rain, like a row of silent giants standing watch. The inside of the car was warm — leather and a faint perfume layered together in a way that didn't relax you at all, only made you more aware of every breath and the exact distance between two people. Aki had one hand on the wheel.

Finally, as if she'd just remembered I was still alive, she spoke, unhurried.

"Maki was very quiet, when she was small." Her voice wasn't loud — almost like she was talking to the rain.

"Not the well-behaved, doesn't-make-a-fuss kind of quiet." She laughed softly.

"The kind where she clearly had a great deal on her mind and refused to say a single word of it." I didn't interrupt. Because I had a bad feeling about exactly where the danger in this conversation lived — it wasn't whether she'd press me. It was that she might not need to press me at all. All she had to do was describe Maki, and I'd write my own reaction across my face for her.

"When she got angry as a kid, she didn't cry, either." Aki kept her eyes on the road, tone still perfectly even.

"She'd just stand there and watch. And she kept track of what people owed her — every single item — more precisely than anyone. By the time the next occasion rolled around, you'd realize she'd already mapped out the whole route." My throat tightened, just slightly.... Too specific. Too specific to be idle conversation. Specific enough that Maki's blank expression rose up in my mind almost immediately — cold, quiet, as if she'd said nothing at all, when every word had actually been weighed in advance.

Aki seemed to notice my silence. She finally turned her head to glance at me.

"Is she like that with you, too?" There it was. See. I knew it. This person wasn't telling a story at all. She was using memory as bait, feeding the question into my mouth piece by piece, forcing me to swallow it myself. I did my best to sound like a normal person, and not like a suspect who'd stolen a kiss from someone's little sister and was now being interrogated by the older sister on her family's private expressway.

"... Sometimes," I said.

"But she's not the type to hold grudges carelessly."

"Oh?"

"I mean," I corrected quickly, "she remembers things, but not to get even. It's more like... she just doesn't like saying things that don't need to be said." Aki was quiet for two seconds, then let out a low laugh. The sound was faint, almost buried by the rain, and it still put every hair on the back of my neck on end.

"You defend her faster than I expected."

"..." Damn it. Had that sounded too much like I was running cover for her? No — denying it now would only make it worse. I decided to shut up and default to the standard self-preservation strategy: say nothing, risk nothing; say more, risk more. Unfortunately, this world has never had a shortage of people who can dismantle a self-preservation strategy on contact. Especially not people with the surname Kushima.

"She used to follow me around," Aki went on, apparently unbothered that I was already folding myself into a small, defensive shape in the passenger seat.

"Not the kind where a kid literally hangs onto your sleeve — Maki's pride was too high for that, even back then. She'd just station herself by a doorway, at the top of the stairs, around a corner in the hallway, pretending she just happened to be heading that way too." Outside, the elevated road swept through a wide curve. Below the bridge, the harbor's container yard spread out grid by grid in the night rain, its lights bleeding into a hazy yellow through the mist.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"She was never very good at saying 'stay with me.'" Aki said.

"But if I came home late, she'd be awake." My fingertips curled without my permission. This kind of description was the bad kind. Bad because it was too warm. It didn't sound like an interrogation at all — it sounded like a private memory that had been carefully preserved for years. But the warmer it got, the less I could afford to relax. Because every detail she gave me landed like another card laid down on the table in front of me: Did you hear that? Do you know how she grew up?

So what exactly do you intend to do with someone like her?

"Does she still wait for people now?" Aki asked it with total ease. Disturbingly total ease. Like asking about the weather. The rain. Whether I'd had dinner. I nearly choked on it.

"... Senior, isn't that question a little—""Hard to answer?" She smiled, just slightly, and tapped a finger against the wheel.

"That means you already know." I genuinely wanted to jump out of the car, right then. Purely hypothetically, of course. Jumping out on a Kushima Heavy Industries private expressway wouldn't read as resistance. It would just save them the trouble of disposing of a body. I looked away, fixing my eyes on the maintenance towers and sealed ramps flashing past outside, and kept my voice as steady as I could.

"... She's not the type to wait on someone by choice," I said slowly.

"But once she's put something in her mind, I doubt she lets it go easily." Aki didn't answer right away. She just drove, letting the engine's low hum fill the small gap of silence. The private expressway ran straight ahead through the rainy night, the sensor lights along the guardrails lighting one after another and sliding past, like someone counting out a beat for us in the dark. Then, very softly, she spoke.

"And what about you, Hoshino?" Something in my chest clenched.

"Are you the kind of person who can be held in someone's mind, and still walk away as if nothing happened?" For an instant the car went quiet enough that only the wipers and the engine were left. I stared straight ahead, feeling the back of my neck heat up by degrees while my palms stayed cold. She hadn't raised her voice. She hadn't leaned in. Her tone, by any measure, was gentle. But the pressure was clearer than it had been back in the Student Council office, when she'd closed her hand around my wrist.

Because this time she wasn't pulling me into a car. She was pulling me toward an answer.

"I..." I started, and found my voice had gone a little dry.

"I'm not planning to joke about that kind of thing."

"What kind of thing?" She caught it instantly. I wanted to bite off my own tongue on the spot. —Right. This. Exactly this. She'd talk about childhood, about memory, about a little sister standing by a door waiting — told it like a gentle, well-mannered older sister willing to open up just a crack. And then, the second your guard eased by even an inch, she'd slide the question straight through the gap. And she'd do it with complete elegance.

Elegant enough that crying out would have made you feel like you were the one being rude. I took a slow breath, trying my best not to look like a rookie pilot who'd just been shot down.

"... Things that have to do with Maki." This time, Aki didn't press further. She just looked ahead, the faint curve at her mouth impossible to read — satisfaction, maybe, or simply the look of someone relieved I'd finally stopped playing dumb.

"I see," she said, quietly. The car picked up speed again. The elevated road stretched deeper into the harbor district. In the distance, the outer guidance lights of the spaceport were already visible, a row of blurred, cold stars behind the curtain of rain. Aki's hands stayed steady on the wheel, but her voice dropped even softer than before.

"Then I'll keep going." She paused, as if opening an old photo album that only she was allowed to touch.

"The first time Maki got into a fight, she was seven." Aki's voice was flat — flat enough that she might have been discussing what was for dinner tonight. My spine locked up anyway. The car cut forward along the Kushima Heavy Industries exclusive expressway. The wipers swept in their steady rhythm, scraping away layer after layer of water on the glass, only to have new rain cover it again immediately.

The sensor lights along the guardrails streaked past behind us section by section, as if someone were slicing the night into long, narrow strips and pulling them away from beside us, one strip at a time.

"The reason was actually stupid." She kept her eyes ahead, fingers resting lightly on the wheel.

"Someone had just taken something I'd left on a table. Maki didn't say a word. She walked over, pinned the kid to the ground, and took it back." My throat moved slightly. That image was — damn it — entirely convincing.

"By the time the teacher got there, her clothes were a mess, her hands were scraped raw, and her face was still completely calm." Aki smiled faintly.

"All she said was: 'That belongs to my sister.'" Two seconds of quiet inside the car. Then she asked me:"Do you think that was because her temper was bad? Or because, even as a child, she already knew exactly which things she wasn't going to let anyone touch?" I nearly choked on the turn. There it was. Again. This person wasn't telling a story at all. She was peeling Maki's childhood back, layer by layer, and handing me the handle of the knife — telling me to choose which cut I wanted to start bleeding from.

"... I don't know," I said, honestly. Because I genuinely didn't. Or rather — I didn't dare to know too quickly. Aki didn't push me to answer right away. She just made a small sound of acknowledgment, as if she'd taken my hesitation and filed it away in a drawer of her own.

"She wasn't a loud child," she went on.

"Just the opposite. Maki was quiet enough, growing up, that a lot of people assumed she simply didn't care." The car dropped down a curved ramp. In the distance, the harbor lights spread out behind the rain, a sea of metal stars soaked and blurred by mist. Now and then, a cargo crane's red warning light blinked in the dark — like the eye of some silent leviathan.

"But she remembers everything," Aki said.

"Who stayed with her, and for how long. Who left first. Who promised what, and who forgot. She doesn't say any of it out loud. But she keeps every bit of it, very clearly." She turned her head at that, finally, to look at me. It wasn't a heavy look — you could almost call it gentle. But my palms went cold instantly anyway.

"Hoshino, would you call someone like that possessive?"... This wasn't a multiple-choice question. It was a trap. If I said no, I'd look impossibly dense. If I said yes, I'd be admitting I understood exactly what she was really asking. I stayed quiet for a few seconds, and finally picked the answer least likely to get me killed.

"... I think," I said slowly, eyes fixed on the rain-slicked road ahead, "it's not simple possession. It's more like... she takes certain people, certain things, very seriously, and folds them into her own territory." The corner of Aki's mouth moved, just slightly. Something between a smile and a simple acknowledgment that at least I wasn't a total lost cause.

"Not badly put." She looked back at the road and kept driving, steady as ever.

"She used to do that to me, too." I said nothing. For some reason, that sentence sounded more private than every memory that had come before it. Not a secret, exactly. But not something you'd say to just anyone, either.

"If I came home late, she wouldn't call. She wouldn't rush me." Aki said.

"She'd just sit in the living room, pretending to read. When I came through the door, she'd turn a page, acting like she hadn't been waiting at all." I could picture it exactly. A small Maki, sitting very straight, face giving away nothing, a book in her hands, silently counting every footstep outside the door.... Just picturing it, something in my chest tightened for no good reason.

"Once, I stayed out an hour late on purpose." Aki's tone was calm to the point of cruelty.

"When I got back, she didn't cry. Didn't make a scene. She just started, the very next day, memorizing my entire schedule." I couldn't help turning my head to look at her.

"... All of it?"

"All of it," she said.

"Which days I had class, which days I had to be at the main house, which days I'd be back late. She never asked me a single question. But after that, I imagine vanishing without a sound stopped being quite so easy." She paused after that. Rain filled the small silence that followed; the tires rolled through a puddle, dragging up a low, trailing sound. Then she tossed the question back at me.

"Do you understand now?" My chest tightened.

"Understand what?"

"Maki isn't the kind of person you can step a little closer to today, and then just quietly step back from tomorrow." The moment those words landed, the air in the car felt like it had dropped a layer. Aki's voice hadn't changed at all. Still that even, well-bred register, even a little too gentle. But I understood her completely now. She had never once been sharing her sister's childhood with me.

She'd been telling me, one piece at a time, exactly what kind of person Maki was — and that if I was going to touch any of it, I had better not do it carelessly. I opened my mouth and found, for a moment, that I genuinely had nothing. Because the question wasn't the teenage-romance kind anymore — do I like Maki, yes or no. What she was asking now was harder, and something I couldn't afford to answer carelessly. What did I actually consider Maki to be, to me? A comrade? A friend?

The person who threw my pulse off rhythm, who'd kept me awake all night after I kissed her? Or — some worse answer than any of those. I couldn't say it out loud, not now. Not because I wanted to run from it. But because I knew — reaching for some presentable-sounding answer just to have something to say would be the real way of cheapening her. Aki had probably seen that, too. She didn't push any further.

She just guided the car off the last stretch of elevated road, and the glass curtain walls and towers of the harbor district opened up ahead all at once. In the night rain, the huge drydock looked like a steel canyon sunk into the edge of the city, lights running the length of its skeletal structure. And somewhere in that cold, wet glow, I could already just make out — The shape of the Yukikaze. It sat there in silence. Vast. Cold.

Like a hand that had reached out one step ahead of some war that hadn't even begun yet. In that same instant, the soft, almost-too-perfect-to-be-real smile Aki had worn since we'd gotten into the car quietly drained away, down to the last trace of it. She brought the car to a stop at the mouth of the drydock. The engine was still humming beneath us. Rain still slid down the glass. But the air inside the car had dropped cold all at once, as if someone had thrown open a second hatch.

She turned her head and looked at me. That wasn't an older sister looking at her little sister's friend. That was a Kushima, looking at someone who might shape the future.

"Hoshino Shimo. You'd do well to keep this question in mind — always." Her voice wasn't loud. But it was clearer, and harder, than anything she'd asked me with a smile.

"Maki is not only my sister." She paused. Her gaze slid past me — toward the Yukikaze outside the window, or maybe toward something further than that.

"She is also the future head of Kushima Heavy Industries." I didn't answer. I couldn't. Because only in that second did I truly feel it — I'd thought I'd only gotten pulled into some messy, ambiguous tension. What I'd actually reached out and touched had roots running through far more than one person. Her name. Her position. Her family. Her future. And something else, something whose full shape I still couldn't see. Aki looked back at me, her eyes cold enough to be almost serene.

"If this is just something you're playing at — if you think of it as an episode to kill some boredom with," she said, "I'd suggest you stop. Now." My fingertips curled against my legs without a sound.

"If you become an obstacle to her growth, Hoshino Shimo —" Her tone didn't rise by even a fraction. But when the sentence landed, it was heavier than every drop of rain outside combined.

"I will remove you. Without mercy." The car went quiet. Just the rain. Just the engine. Just the Yukikaze, standing there in the dark, silent. And the breath still lodged somewhere in my chest — the one I hadn't managed to let out since we'd pulled onto this road.