Chương 198: 75. Shipboard Orientation 2

Harvey lowered his bag from his shoulder at his own unhurried pace, swept a look around the cabin, and delivered his assessment in the tone of a weather report.

"You're only just now finding out a warship isn't a resort. In its own way, that's impressive."

"Shut up, Harvey. I'm in a bad enough mood that I'd fold you up and see if you fit in that locker."

"You'd need to confirm my folded length meets regulation first."

"Are you fucking talking back to me right now?!" I almost laughed, but Maki was right beside me, quiet in a way that wasn't her usual cold. Not the everyday chill — the kind of quiet where you could tell she was listening hard, watching, probably thinking through a great deal, and had decided not to let any of it show. D crouched to check the bunk number plates, focused like someone about to defuse a device.

"Enough. The bunks have numbers. Go by the list, or sort it out ourselves?" Akari was already measuring locker dimensions, fingers tracing shapes in the air, visibly wishing she had a ruler.

"If we sort it ourselves, someone's throwing a punch within three minutes. If we go by the list, someone's throwing a punch within five. Conclusion: it's only a matter of time." Roy dragged his luggage in and nearly took the door frame off with his box. Lan followed, looked at the bunks, looked at us, and finally looked at the ceiling, as if trying to pinpoint exactly where human civilization had gone wrong.

"... We're really living here?" Lan asked.

"What else did you expect?" Jess spread both hands, smiling with a lot of gunpowder in it.

"Want to petition the Captain for a single cabin? Attach your pedigree while you're at it." Roy steadied his box and coughed.

"At least it's better than the fold-down hammocks on the transport."

"That's because your standards for life have dropped to something close to a religion," Jess told him. I pushed my luggage toward the wall, trying hard to look like a normal person. It wasn't working. Aki's voice was still lodged at the back of my skull, tapping like a thin needle — Maki isn't ordinary. She isn't just the girl who keeps a straight face, who looks at you like she's trying to freeze you solid, and then, for no logical reason, steps in front of you exactly when it matters.

She's the future head of Kushima Heavy Industries. And I'd just spent the car ride talking back to her sister.... Is it possible I already died once, and just haven't gotten the notification yet?

"Hoshino. Standing there zoning out — are you waiting for the room to expand on its own?" I snapped back. Jess stood with her arms crossed, glaring.

"What? No, I was thinking—""Thinking about how you got us stuck with this cabin from hell?"

"Wait, how is that my fault?"

"Every time you show up, things slide sideways. You not notice that about yourself?"

"That's called protagonist syndrome. You should respect the demands of the genre."

"Who gave you permission to just agree with yourself?!" Jess was winding up again when Maki finally spoke.

"Stop blaming everything on her." The room went quiet for half a second. Because it was Maki. She didn't usually explain things for people. Especially not for me. Especially not in front of an audience. Jess narrowed her eyes.

"Oh? Running interference for her now?" Maki's face gave nothing away. She pulled her case over beside a lower bunk.

"I just think you're loud."

"I'm loud?!"

"And unreasonable." She stood the case upright, voice flat as the back of a blade.

"Getting an eight-person cabin is a scheduling issue, not something she caused. If you want to be angry, be angry at ship allocation. Or at the fact that this vessel wasn't built to accommodate your princess moods."

"... Maki, you are genuinely insufferable," Jess said through her teeth.

"Likewise." I stood off to the side, feeling something in my chest do a small, involuntary lift. That counted as her taking a hit for me, right? That absolutely counted. Even if the delivery involved insulting me a little on the way there, she was still standing in front of me. Damn it, why am I a little pleased about that. Pathetic, Hoshino Shimo. Where's your spine. D clapped her hands once.

"Bunks. Decide now. Wait any longer and someone's going to be missing their socks at roll call and running the corridor bare-legged, and I refuse to watch that." Harvey raised his hand immediately.

"I nominate you to demonstrate the worst case."

"I can put you in the slot next to the head right now, Harvey."

"Good ventilation over there."

"You genuinely want to get hit." The final bunk assignment ran very military and not remotely democratic. Lower bunks generally went to people who moved in and out more often, or had too much loose gear. Upper bunks went to whoever didn't mind climbing. Roy, being the biggest, got unanimously assigned the outer lower bunk on the logic of if you roll off in the night, at least the body count stays low.

Lan hated the upper bunk on principle, but hated being visible from the corridor even more, and took the inner upper with a dark expression. Akari picked the bunk nearest the hatch, citing fastest emergency response. Harvey volunteered for an upper bunk of his own accord, on the grounds that "it's more like a viewing deck up here." By the time it was my turn, Jess had already claimed a lower bunk and lined the edge with luggage as a territorial marker.

"This is mine. Anyone who crosses this line gets treated as an invader." Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. I looked down.

"... Is that line your bra straps?"

"Yes. Problem?"

"I just think that's a legally shaky choice of national border." D laughed hard enough to nearly drop her pack. Maki, beside me, glanced at the remaining spots and pushed her box directly to the bunk next to mine.

"I'm here." I froze.

"What?" Jess spun around like she'd caught the scent of gunpowder.

"Why'd you pick that one?" Maki didn't look at her. She just latched her case shut.

"Do I need to file a request with you before choosing where I sleep?"

"No, it's just — you usually hate being disturbed more than anyone—""Which is why sleeping next to her is safer than sleeping next to you."

"Maki!!" I nearly bent double, biting the laugh down. Jess pointed at me, shaking with outrage.

"Look! She's laughing! She's actually laughing!"

"I'm not. I'm having trouble breathing."

"That's called gloating!"

"Good, precise definition."

"Hoshino Shimo!!"

"All right, all right," Roy said, shoving his box under his bunk like a diplomat mediating between two small, heavily armed nations.

"Structurally speaking, the room's stable now." Lan, from the upper bunk, added coldly:"No. This is an armed ceasefire." For the next twenty minutes, the cabin produced a truly spectacular collective disaster. Someone fought over the coat hooks. Someone discovered their locker was too shallow to hold books upright. Someone dropped their spare clothes all over the deck and called it a "tactical deployment." Someone kept up a running commentary while unpacking, as if silence would suffocate them.

"Whose shampoo is this?" Akari asked.

"Mine. Don't touch it. That's my last line of survival," Jess said.

"And the one labeled 'Arctic Cold-Damage Hair Repair'?" D asked. I raised my hand. Everyone looked at me. I coughed.

"... Shipboard air's dry. Basic maintenance seems reasonable." Harvey leaned down from the upper bunk, wearing the face of a man conducting field research.

"So that hairstyle of yours — the one that looks like it got hit by lightning and stubbornly refused to die — actually takes upkeep?"

"Harvey, would you like me to pull you off that bunk right now?"

"I'm just respecting the facts." Maki sat at the edge of her bunk, folding clothes into her locker with a precision that bordered on ruthless. Then, as I was fighting a dead-weight box under my bed, she reached over and pressed a hand to the corner.

"Move left."

"I can—""You could jam your fingers." She didn't look up.

"Left." I moved. She pushed once, and the box slid home clean, handled like something not worth spending more time on.

"... Thanks," I said, quietly. Her hand paused. For a fraction of a second, the tips of her ears looked less composed than usual. Then she turned her face away.

"You were in the way."

"Mm-hm. Understood. That's the Kushima family's specific dialect for tenderness."

"Hoshino."

"Okay. Shutting up." Jess cut in immediately.

"You don't get to shut up only for her. Shut up for me too."

"You first."

"I'm going to kill you."

"Get in line by rank order. There's a queue ahead of you." Real laughter came out that time. Even Lan made a soft sound from the upper bunk, reluctantly conceding it had been funny. And somewhere in that mess — boxes at odd angles, curtains half-drawn, socks and human dignity scattered equally across the floor — I understood something. Not a dramatic revelation. Something more inconvenient, more literal, smelling of metal and lived-in fabric. We were really going to live together. Not for one night. Not a stopover.

Not a just hold on for now arrangement. For a long stretch after this, these were the people I'd see first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Someone would hog the sink. Someone would roll over at 0200. Someone would step on a sore spot on purpose on a bad day. And someone would, in the most obnoxious way possible, stand in front of me exactly when I couldn't hold on anymore. I sat on the edge of my bunk, looking at the wreckage. Jess still ranting. Harvey still firing back. D laughing. Akari organizing.

Roy mediating. Lan sniping from above. Maki right beside me, mouth as hard as if she'd spent a past life racking up an emotional debt to the entire universe with no intention of repaying it. Then someone — I don't know who — said, quietly:"... We're really going to live like this for a long time, huh." Nobody answered right away that time. Because everyone understood. Yes. Exactly like this. For a long time.

Once we understood we'd be living together for a long time, reality delivered the second, more direct cut almost immediately. Showers. The communal wash block on a warship existed less for relaxation and more for please complete decontamination within the allotted time. Non-slip metal and heat-resistant panels on the walls, brighter light than the cabin, still carrying that particular shipboard cold white. The second the hot water steam rose, the whole space felt like a collective de-humanizing procedure.

Men and women separated. That rule was, easily, the gentlest thing I'd heard all night. No idea what the men's side looked like, but going by the I've accepted my fate look on Roy's face before he went in, it probably wasn't peaceful either. The women's side was its own battlefield.

Me, Maki, Jess, Lan, Akari, plus one duty crewwoman who stuck her head in, checked the signage, and quietly backed out to confirm she hadn't taken a wrong turn — together we formed a combination capable of generating its own pressure differential. Jess made an announcement the moment she walked in.

"I'm saying this now. Today's already garbage. If anyone starts something in here, I'm settling it with a showerhead." Lan, hanging a towel: "Is that a new dueling format?" Akari was already inspecting the racks and drains.

"Let's confirm water pressure first. If five units run at once, does one side drop to a tactical drip?" I stood off to the side, working hard to keep my eyes in the "normal" range. No drifting. No wandering. After all, this was the women's bath. I was a woman too. Theoretically, nothing to be nervous about.... Theoretically. The problem was that Maki was standing right beside me.

She pulled out her hair tie, and the moment her black hair fell loose, my first thought was — Aki had just spent a car ride interrogating me about exactly what I thought of Maki, and now I was standing in a communal shower less than a meter from the subject herself. Does the universe just enjoy watching me humiliate myself?

"Hoshino, your face is red," Lan said.

"Steam," I said instantly.

"We just walked in."

"... Pre-heating." Jess rolled her eyes hard enough to be audible.

"You heat up that fast, huh." Maki glanced at me. Nothing obvious in the look, but I was certain she was thinking something. What, I had zero interest in finding out. Because the moment I wanted to know, reality usually found some deeply humiliating way to tell me. Akari turned on a showerhead; the water hit clean and even.

"Temperature's fine. At least shipboard logistics aren't purely decorative."

"That compliment sounded like a threat," I said.

"Most of my compliments do," Akari answered, unconcerned. Lan hung her towel and laughed.

"Come on, hurry up. Isn't there evening roll call? I refuse to stand around in slippers while some Shōwa-throwback NCO barks the old drill commands at us." Jess snorted.

"I've been glared at so much today I'm numb. One more won't matter."

"You're not numb from being glared at," I said.

"You're numb from detonating yourself repeatedly."

"Hoshino Shimo, you are really asking for—""Quiet." Not me. Maki. Jess spun to glare at her.

"You're taking her side again?" Maki picked up her shampoo, voice flat as a barometric reading.

"I'm not taking her side. I just think you're loud, and this room echoes, so you're loud twice over." Lan laughed hard enough to nearly slip.

"Maki, that mouth of yours is genuinely built for interpersonal destruction in a sealed vessel." I ducked my head and pretended to be busy. The corner of my mouth was already losing the fight. Jess cranked her water up, as if she could rinse the anger out along with everything else.

"Fine. Great. All of you, ganging up on me now."

"That's not ganging up," I corrected.

"That's natural feedback from a long pattern of bad life choices."

"Hoshino!!" Her hand slipped. Water sprayed straight over onto me.

"Hey!"

"Sorry — slipped!"

"That was a deliberate strike!"

"Then take it to a court-martial."

"Executing you right here is faster!" Jess and I started dodging around the center row of shower stalls, Lan laughing and half-heartedly mediating beside us, Akari making one attempt to remind us about the anti-slip floor, and Maki standing cold-faced in the steam until she finally ran out of patience — grabbed my wrist and pulled me sideways.

"Stop being an idiot with her." I stumbled, nearly went into her shoulder. Too close. Close enough that I caught the faint smell of shampoo in her hair, and underneath the steam — the warmth that the hot water had stripped her usual cool down to, just slightly. Every alarm in my head went off at once.

"I wasn't — I wasn't being an idiot, she started—""You were." Flat. Final.

"... Oh." Lan made a very particular sound beside us.

"Somehow I feel like the most dangerous thing in this shower room isn't the water temperature. It's the atmosphere."

"Specifically," Akari added, "a localized high-pressure zone produced by two particular individuals."

"There's no such zone!" I said immediately. Jess snapped her towel and looked like she'd just found a new angle of attack.

"Oh — so that's it. No wonder Maki's been—""Jess." Maki's voice dropped. Not loud. Which was worse. Because that was her real warning voice. Jess's mouth twitched. She actually shut up for two full seconds. Then she looked away and muttered, just loud enough:"... Fine. It's not like you started playing favorites today anyway." I heard that, and my heart did something spineless and involuntary. Favorites? Wait — was that word too dangerous? And why wasn't anyone immediately pushing back on it? Lan didn't.

Akari didn't. Maki — Maki didn't push back right away either. She just turned her face aside, pulled her towel across her shoulder, and the tips of her ears went a very suspicious shade of red. I made an executive decision: all cognitive activity in this direction, effective immediately, suspended for the rest of the night. If I kept going, I wasn't going to sleep at all.