Chương 230: 90. Second-Class Cabin 1

Under Takenaka's own rules, there was still one very annoying loose end left to tie up. Put simply: the person who had actually been left without a team the whole time was me. That earlier scramble for partners had played out like disaster survivors fighting over relief supplies — everyone terrified that hesitating half a second would get them shackled to whoever was most likely to get them both killed first.

The result was me stuck in the middle, too much for one bracket and not enough for another, until Maki got half-nudged, half-drafted into pairing with me so we could go up first against him. Which meant that once we won, under his own rules, one of us had to go back out and fill the gap for the last round. Takenaka pointed at Maki. The reasoning was simple.

"You've already gone once," he said, looking at me.

"That last hit landed, but it also numbed your arm. Go up again and your movement slows." Then he turned to Maki.

"You. Go." Maki didn't waste a syllable. She just nodded once, picked the shield she'd just set down back up, and buckled it onto her arm. Watching her — that flat, I'm-already-soaked-so-what's-one-more-wet-pant-leg calm — I felt an odd urge to laugh.

"Sorry," I said, low.

"Making you work overtime." Maki glanced at me.

"I'm less worried about the overtime and more worried about our shower rights getting revoked tonight."

"... That's very pragmatic of you."

"Second class is worth being pragmatic for." Fair. So fair I couldn't argue with a word of it. For the rounds after ours, Takenaka really did what he'd promised — he went easy. Not the humiliating kind of easy, obvious enough that even a room full of rookies could tell he was faking it. The seasoned, thoroughly underhanded kind, the kind only an instructor who's done this a hundred times knows how to pull off.

Earlier, he'd been dismantling everyone's rhythm the way you strip a piece of scrapped machinery — clean, complete, no sentiment. Now he started leaving gaps. A half-step yielded on purpose. A half-beat slow. A shield angle dropped by exactly one degree. Instead of finishing someone off in a single stroke, he'd let their mistake sit there in a shape that said: catch it now, and you still can.

D and Roy — who'd gotten the most thorough lesson in humility the first time around — went up for round two wearing matching expressions of this isn't just a fancier trap, is it? This time, Takenaka actually let D find an angle. D opened with his usual mess of feints, mouth running the whole time. Roy anchored the line beside him, steady.

Instead of picking D apart like a live target, Takenaka let his centerline drift open by a fraction the second Roy drove his shield forward — a gap that looked, just barely, like a real mistake. D might be insufferable most days, but the moment there's an actual seam to slip through, his nose is as sharp as a stray dog's. He slid straight in and put a marker shot dead center on the sensor at Takenaka's ribs. The hit light came on.

D froze for two full seconds, then let out a howl like fate itself had reached down and patted him on the head. Harvey and Aida's round had the most "how not to die" training-video energy of the whole afternoon. Zero heroics from start to finish — just three things written plainly on both their faces: don't die, don't panic, don't sell your teammate out. And it was exactly that honest, unglamorous caution that caught the opening Takenaka left them. Akari and Evelyn passed too. Lan and Jess barely needed the help.

They'd already been a breath away the first time. The instant Takenaka eased off by even ten percent, Jess latched onto the gap like a wolf that had caught the scent of blood. When the hit finally landed, she didn't look happy. She looked like someone who'd just confirmed she'd been right all along — that he'd been screwing with them on purpose from the start. As for Maki — She ended up paired with Ash for the last rotation. It was a genuinely unsettling sight. Not because it was explosive. Because it was so quiet.

One steady. One steadier. One who doesn't talk much. One who talks even less. Standing together, the two of them looked less like students and more like a pair of mobile bulkheads Security Division had borrowed for the afternoon. Takenaka watched them and let one eyebrow rise, just barely — the exact expression of a man thinking, give this pair a few more sessions and you could genuinely park them on a hatch. Of course, sharp as they looked, they were still students.

So Takenaka, in his own deeply professional way, handed them a foothold. Maki cut the angle, Ash filled the line, and Takenaka let his trailing hand slow by exactly one breath. One breath was all Maki needed.

"Valid." Everyone cleared it. The mood that swept the training deck in that instant didn't feel like an assessment ending. It felt like eleven death-row inmates getting their sentences commuted on the spot. D sat straight down on the floor.

"Alive... civilized society really is worth fighting for..."

"You came about one hit away from getting beaten back to the Stone Age," Harvey said. Jess rolled her wrist out, still catching her breath, though the sharp edge was already back in her voice.

"He was obviously going easy on us." Takenaka tapped his shield against the floor once. Not loud. It flattened every murmur in the room anyway.

"Remember this." Silence. He swept his eyes over us — colder than the metal walls of that afternoon's simulator.

"You passed today because I let you." No one spoke.

"Imperial soldiers won't." When that landed, even D had nothing to add. Because everyone understood, right then: you're allowed to laugh at the setup. You are not allowed to forget the punchline. Takenaka racked the training axe and let his tone slide back into its usual infuriating flatness.

"So don't mistake today's pass for proof you're good. Take it as proof you're finally not too hopeless to teach." Right. Great. Security Division compliments come with barbs. Consistent, at least. But this time, nobody actually wanted to argue. Because as ugly as it sounded, there wasn't a drop of exaggeration in it. When the door to the second-class cabin slid open, my first thought wasn't we won. It was: so the Federal military does actually know how humans are supposed to live. The room wasn't big.

But measured against an eight-person berth — where everyone piles in, everyone's noise bleeds into everyone else's, everyone takes turns doubting their life choices in the shared washroom line — this wasn't a room anymore. This was a civilization-reconstruction project. Two proper beds. Not jammed-in bunks. Not the kind where rolling over means exchanging life philosophies with the person one arm's length away.

Actual beds — long enough to lie flat in, wide enough to turn over in, generous enough to leave a person a shred of dignity. A fixed desk against the wall, drawers, a reading lamp, the surface so aggressively clean I half-suspected it was a display model we weren't actually allowed to touch. Beside it, a full column of storage lockers, and behind the last door — a private bathroom. Private. Bathroom. I stood in the doorway staring at that door for three full seconds.

One second was all it took to understand exactly why Jess's eyes had lit up like that the moment Takenaka named the prize. It wasn't greed. It was the single most honest form of longing for civilization there is.

"Go in, or the door's going to think it's grown flowers," Maki said behind me, bag in hand, flat as ever. I snapped out of it and stepped aside.

"I was checking it wasn't a trap."

"If Takenaka has the skill to build a trap that looks like a private bathroom, he has my respect."

"... That's completely logical. Also very sad."

"Security Division courses were never built for optimism." Maki walked in and pulled the door shut behind her, easy as anything — like she wasn't someone who'd just survived a beat-your-instructor-to-earn-a-real-bed live assessment, but someone simply coming home. I set my bag by the bed and swept the room again with my eyes. Two beds — one against the inner wall, one near the door. One desk.

The TV was set flush into the wall, not large, but the moment I remembered it ran satellite and I wouldn't have to fight a crowd in the common lounge for the remote, the whole wall looked warmer. Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.... What was I doing. I was actually happy about this. Not a little. A lot. And happy in a way that had absolutely no spine to it. Maki set her own bag down by the bed near the door and turned.

"You take the inner one." I blinked.

"You already decided?"

"Door-side gets hit with corridor noise, people knocking, light spilling in when someone gets called out at night. Inner's quieter."

"How do you already have a noise-distribution model for a room you've been in for thirty seconds?"

"Because someone's coming tonight." I'd been working the clasps on my jacket. My fingers stopped.

"... How do you know that?" Maki set her data pad on the desk, squared perfectly to the edge.

"Because this is a second-class cabin."

"That's a little too general."

"Then I'll be precise." Her tone didn't change.

"Because you moved in." I turned to look at her. Maki met my eyes without a flicker of expression, which was exactly what made it land — she said it the way you'd note cabin pressure or lumen count.

"That makes it sound like I come with my own disaster radius."

"Not a disaster." Maki considered it.

"More like a high-probability event."

"That is not an improvement."

"It sounds more professional, though." I nearly laughed. Right. This one doesn't talk much, but when she does, she has a real gift for leaving you nowhere to go. I hung my jacket in the locker and pulled open a drawer. Empty. Clean. Mine. For a second I didn't feel like I'd moved into second class. I felt like I'd been let into some theoretical model of how a society was supposed to work.

"If you're planning to get sentimental about it, do it fast," Maki said.

"Once company shows up, you won't have time."

"Stop talking about this room like it's a tourist attraction." She glanced toward the door.

"I'm not talking about it like one. I'm issuing an early warning." The doorbell went off right then. Short. Fast. Two rings. Zero patience in it. Maki and I looked at each other.... Warning confirmed. I went and opened it. The door slid back, and of course it was Jess, holding a bag of snacks scavenged from god-knows-where, wearing a smile bright enough to double as a warning light — clearly not the smile of someone just here to say congratulations.

"Evening, civilized residents." My eye twitched.

"That opener deserves a punch." Jess didn't care in the slightest. Her gaze slid past my shoulder, did a full sweep of the room, and she let out a low, satisfied whistle.

"Wow. Double bed, desk, private bath, TV." She hoisted the snack bag.

"Knew I came to the right place."

"Are you here to visit, or to squat?"

"Not mutually exclusive." She slipped past me without waiting, moving with the ease of someone whose name was already half on the lease. I shut the door and turned around, already regretting not pretending we weren't home. Jess dumped the snacks on the desk, did a slow, unhurried lap of the room, and finally stopped in front of the bathroom door, sounding genuinely academic about it.

"So this is the legendary private bathroom."

"Don't talk like an archaeologist who just found a ruin."

"You don't get it." Jess turned to me, dead serious.

"To someone raised in the shared decks, this thing is rarer than an ancient relic." Maki, sitting on the edge of the door-side bed, watched Jess's circuit of the room.

"If you're planning to stay and write a field report," she said, "note that this isn't an open exhibit." Jess ignored that entirely, walked straight over, and sat down on my bed instead, patting the mattress.

"Good bounce." My temple gave a small, painful throb.

"Stop inspecting it like you're buying it." Jess raised an eyebrow.

"Double room. Of course I'm inspecting."

"Inspecting what?"

"Your shared living conditions."... There it was. I knew she wasn't going to let double room sit quietly in a sentence. I crossed my arms and stared her down.

"The face you're making right now says you're already writing a script in your head."

"Not writing." Jess smiled, no good intentions in it whatsoever.

"Reasonable extrapolation." Maki, flat, from the side: "Your extrapolation accuracy usually isn't very high." Jess's head snapped toward her.

"Still more interesting than someone who narrates everything like an after-action report."

"Interesting isn't the same as useful."

"How do you know it's not?" Jess propped her chin on one hand, let her gaze drift, deliberately slow, from me to Maki and back.

"For instance — I'm very curious about one thing right now." I had a bad feeling.

"Don't ask it."

"Who showers first?"... Knew it. I genuinely knew it. I took a slow breath. Even Takenaka's shield hadn't spiked my blood pressure this fast.

"How is that any of your business?"

"It's important," Jess said, completely without shame.

"The order of a double room gets established through bathroom rights. You didn't know that?"

"I don't, and I don't want to know why you do."

"Observation skills."

"What you have is a compulsion to watch things catch fire." Jess laughed, delighted, not remotely ashamed, and doubled down.

"So — beds settled? Desk time slots? Who picks the channel? Have you two even discussed whether you're going to elbow each other rolling over at night?"

"Jess."

"Mm?"

"Say one more word and I lock you in the bathroom from outside."

"So fierce." She leaned back on her hands, eyes still curved.

"Your ears are red, though." My hand went up before I could stop it.... Damn it. Warm.

"That's because you're annoying."

"Oh — so it's not the double room, and it's not the roommate. It's just me?"

"Stop writing your own scenes!" Maki, from her bed, added, perfectly level: "Your ears are red." I spun around.

"Maki."

"I'm reporting an observation." Jess laughed hard enough her shoulders shook.

"Perfect. Even the roommate's testifying."

"Shut up, both of you—" Jess did not shut up. People like her only take shut up as confirmation they're doing exactly the right thing. She glanced at my bed, then Maki's.

"You two split the beds fast, though."

"What did you expect," I said, "a one-hour domestic policy summit?" Jess actually thought about that.

"For most people, no." She looked up at me, slower.

"But for you two, I honestly expected more of a show." I didn't know which part to address first.

"What exactly do you think we are?"

"Two people extremely well-suited to being observed in a sealed room."

"You sound exactly like Takenaka."

"Thank you."

"Not a compliment."

"I know. Everyone's been playing dumb all day, so I've learned to extract the positive signal manually."... She's been around D too long. Before I could answer, Maki stood, walked to the desk, opened the snack bag, pulled out a pack of crackers, read the label, and set it back down.

"Are you here to visit, or to generate noise?" Jess blinked.

"Could be either. Which do you prefer?"

"The quiet one."

"Then you'll probably be disappointed." Maki looked at her and said nothing. That silence was its own kind of infuriating — not a dead pause, more like I already know your next line's going to be worse, so I'll just watch how far you take it. Jess, predictably, reacted to that silence like dry wood to a spark. She laughed.

"Why the look? I'm just checking how you two are settling in."

"We've been here ten minutes," I said.

"All the more reason to check." Jess tipped her chin toward Maki, deliberate.

"Especially whether a double room's first ten minutes are a little too quiet." And then I understood. Jess hadn't come to visit. She'd come to check the board — to see exactly what the two of us looked like, in the same room. To find out whether double room was just a prize, or the kind of thing that starts shifting other things around it. Worse — I didn't know the answer myself either. The room wasn't big. It really wasn't.

Under normal conditions it was fine, but the second a third person walked in, the air acquired weight. Bed, desk, bathroom door, TV, lockers — all ordinary objects, and every single one of them a little charged, right now, for no defensible reason. Because double room is exactly the kind of kindling someone like Jess knows how to strike. She leaned in slightly.

"So. How do you feel?"

"About what."

"Living with Maki." She said it like she was asking how dinner tasted.

"Nervous? Settled? Or maybe a little—""Stop." I cut her off.

"You don't need to finish that." Her smile sharpened.

"How do you know what I was going to say?"

"It's written on your face."

"Then you really do know me."

"That's not knowing you. That's accumulated damage." Maki finally cracked the crackers open, tone unchanged.

"Keep pushing and getting thrown out becomes a very reasonable outcome." Jess turned to her.

"Defending her?"

"Defending the room's peace."

"Oh—" That sound. The one that never leads anywhere good. I was running out of energy to even sigh.

"Jess."

"Mm?"

"Do you have to light a fire before you're satisfied?" She blinked, smile luminous and utterly unrepentant.

"If I don't light it, how do I find out what burns fastest?"... That was pure Jess. Mean, direct, and dead accurate. The room went quiet for one second. Then Maki spoke.

"Do you know now?" Jess paused. This time I was the one who turned to look at Maki. She was leaning against the desk, open crackers in hand, expression unchanged, tone flat as ever — and it was exactly that flatness that gave the line its full weight. Jess looked at her, the amusement in her eyes pulling back a fraction.

"Know what?"

"You said you were observing." Maki's tone didn't shift.

"So you should already know what burns fastest in here." Something in the air snapped. Not a figure of speech. Something genuinely caught. The back of my neck went warm. Because on the surface, that line was an answer to Jess. It wasn't only an answer to Jess. It was: you want to watch — fine. You want to light matches — also fine. But you'd better know you're not the only one in this room who knows how to start a fire. Jess stared at her for two seconds, then laughed — not the earlier, calculated, stirring laugh.

Something closer to real amusement.

"So you're not just good at playing the wall."

"I never was."

"You did a convincing impression today."

"Sometimes a wall's more useful than a blade."... I was now completely certain that if these two ever decided to go at each other for real, the ship wouldn't even need to sound the alarm. Before Jess could say anything more dangerous, I hauled her up off my bed.

"Tour's over." She let herself be pulled, still laughing.

"You're panicking."

"I'm preventing this room from becoming a crime scene before midnight."

"Wouldn't that be exciting?"

"Exciting my ass." I steered her toward the door. She kept talking the whole way.

"I brought snacks, though."

"Snacks stay. You go."

"So heartless."

"Thanks. Learned it from Security Division."

"That one actually sounds true." I got the door open. Jess stepped out, then turned back one more time — at me first, then at Maki. This time the smile had gone quieter. Less show, more truth.

"Shimo."

"What."

"A comfortable bed doesn't mean you get to go soft tomorrow."

"I know." She held my gaze a beat longer before adding, "Also — if Maki snores, come file a complaint with me." I blinked. From inside, Maki answered, perfectly calm: "I don't snore." Jess burst out laughing.

"See? Even that gets answered instantly. Isn't that fun?"

"Out."

"Fine, fine, I'm going." She backed into the corridor and got the last word in before the door shut.

"Goodnight, double-room residents." The door slid closed. The room dropped into silence. The kind of silence that took a second to adjust to — because when Jess left, it wasn't just one person walking out. It was an entire self-sustaining noise generator powering down. I pressed my forehead to the door and let out a long breath.

"... I'm starting to think the real reason Takenaka gave us a second-class cabin was so other people would have somewhere to come watch the show."

"Possible," Maki said behind me. I turned. She was back at the desk, sorting Jess's leftover snacks into neat little stacks, calm as if that entire round of miniature psychological warfare had nothing to do with her.

"Doesn't that ever wear you out?" I asked.

"Which part."

"Dealing with Jess." She looked up.

"Not really."

"Seriously?"

"Compared to dealing with Jess," Maki said, pausing briefly, "you look more tired."... Damn it. On target again. I dropped onto the bed and stared at the ceiling.

"Of course I'm tired. Takenaka hit me with a shield all afternoon. Jess hit me with her mouth all evening."

"Which one are you more afraid of?" I thought about it, honestly, for one second.

"The mouth." Maki actually laughed — small, brief, just a shift at the corner of her mouth. Which somehow made it harder to look away from.

"Honest answer," she said.

"I'm still alive. No interest in pretending to be tougher than I am."

"Fair." The room went quiet again. Different quiet this time — not tense, not two people testing each other. More like a loud wind had finally passed, the windows were shut, and you could hear what the room actually sounded like underneath it. The low hum of the ventilation system. The standby glow off the wall display. The soft click of a metal data pad set down on the desk.

And that particular kind of distance that exists whenever two people share a room — not awkward, but not something you can pretend isn't there either. I rolled onto my side and looked at her.

"Hey."

"Mm?"

"You really don't snore?" Maki paused, turned to look at me, and produced a rare, faint expression of pure are-we-doing-this-now.

"You're asking that now?"

"Jess already dragged it this far. I might as well confirm my own sleep safety."

"I don't snore."

"Grind your teeth?"

"No."

"Talk in your sleep?"

"... No."

"Good." I nodded.

"Then at least half the civilization in this cabin survives intact." Maki looked at me for two seconds, then laughed, quietly.

"You're very good at being serious about strange things."

"Can't help it." I put my hands behind my head.

"First night sharing a room with you. Standard risk assessment."

"And the result?" I looked at the ceiling and let the pause run a beat longer than it needed to.

"So far: roommate rated safer than external factors." She didn't answer right away. Two seconds later, quietly:"I'll take that as a compliment." I blinked and turned my head.

"You're claiming compliments on your own now?"

"Learned it from someone."

"... Now I genuinely can't tell if that's growth or contamination."

"As long as the result's fine." I couldn't help laughing.

"Fair enough." That night, the second-class bed really was leagues past the student berths. The private bathroom was real. The desk was real. The TV was real. But more real than any of that was something else — that afternoon, Takenaka had gone easy and let us clear the boarding assessment. That evening, Jess had come to "visit" and dragged a few things we could have gone on pretending not to see out into full light.

So by the time I pulled the covers up and closed my eyes, the last clear thought in my head wasn't the bathroom, and it wasn't the TV. It was: The second-class cabin is a double. My roommate is Maki. Jess already knows. And she has opinions.... Great. Looks like what Takenaka handed us today wasn't only a prize. It came with a set of ongoing housing complications attached.