Chương 76: 31.Friendly Discussion 31-1

When we went to find Linde, I was actually very polite. On the surface, at least. Genuinely polite people probably don't spend the walk mentally rehearsing: if he says "comprehensive systemic assessment" one more time, I'm folding this appeal receipt into a paper airplane and shoving it down his collar. But I couldn't help it. I was fourteen, still developing, and my mental hygiene had never been particularly stable.

If the Federation Academy wanted to cultivate perfect moral character, they really should have started with the mess hall soup.

"That face you're making," Jess murmured beside me, keeping her voice low.

"You look like you're going to confess your feelings." I glanced at her.

"Is there something fundamentally wrong with your understanding of confessions?"

"Let me revise." She corrected herself with perfect consideration.

"You look like you're going to drag him before a court-martial." That made much more sense. Linde wasn't usually hard to find. General Affairs types have a habitat range about as predictable as pests — service windows, storage rooms, records offices, supply lines, always somewhere specifically designed to make people feel worse. The only challenge was finding a moment with no one around that didn't look like an ambush. Jess handled it in the end.

She took a turn down the side corridor between the mixed dorms and the academic blocks, apparently guided by some reliable but slightly suspicious campus survival instinct, and intercepted him perfectly outside the records room. Linde was coming out with a stack of files. White shirt, dark jacket, thin steel-frame glasses, hair and collar both immaculate in a way that suggested he never sweated.

If someone ever put a bullet through him, what came out probably wouldn't be blood — it would be administrative procedure forms. When he saw me, his pace faltered by half a step. Not the obvious kind. Just very slight, very brief — brief enough that a normal person wouldn't catch it. Unfortunately, I was currently paying very close attention to his particular micro-expressions.

The person who'd been holding the Chair of the Disciplinary Committee in a greenhouse last night and the General Affairs Officer standing in this corridor now were different enough to qualify as separate biological specimens. I happened to know they were the same person. That thought improved my mood slightly.

"Senior Hoffmann," I opened, voice so cooperative it made even me want to gag.

"Could we have a few minutes?" He glanced down at the files, then at me, then at Jess standing beside me with an expression that clearly communicated she wasn't here to wish anyone a pleasant day.

"If this is about groupings, you should go to the academic affairs window."

"Already been." Jess smiled pleasantly.

"Came with a full set of comprehensive systemic assessment, functional complementarity, and no reassignments. Very polished. I almost wanted to applaud." Linde's expression didn't shift.

"Then you've already received an official response."

"We received official language," I said.

"Not a response." This stretch of corridor happened to be empty. Sunlight came in at an angle, whitening the metal railing along the wall. I kept my voice in the range between polite and not here to beg.

"To be clear, I'm not asking for special treatment." I held up the appeal receipt.

"I just want to know whether Group 144 is a survival unit or a waste-sorting exercise." Jess supplied the quiet footnote: "Current evidence suggests the latter." Linde finally let his gaze settle on the receipt. The eyes behind the lenses were standard-issue cold.

"Tarag and Cyrus are not waste."

"I didn't say they were," I said.

"I'm saying that from where Jess and I are standing, they look like two people who were pulled from the bottom of the system with the function labels still missing. Assembly is this afternoon and academic affairs won't provide a single coherent explanation for the grouping. That's not fairness. That's blindfolding someone, sealing them in an escape pod, and asking why they're not grateful." He didn't respond. Good. Silence usually meant he was running calculations.

If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. I kept going.

"Forest School isn't laps around the track," I said.

"Firestorms every seventy-two hours, three hundred kilometers per hour winds, outer temperature spikes to nineteen hundred degrees. Jäger (hunters) will herd you, cut your water lines, force you to burn cover early. In conditions like that, every person in your unit needs a function you can actually name." Linde's brow moved the smallest amount.

"You've done your research."

"When the school won't explain things, you find other ways to learn," I said, staying level.

"Dying out there uninformed would be embarrassing." Jess stepped half a pace forward, leaning against the wall, still smiling.

"And Senior Hoffmann, the paperwork on this grouping isn't pretty." She tilted her terminal.

"If you're going to perform fairness, at least make it look like fairness. This configuration is visibly off even to someone who knows nothing about administration."

"Watch your phrasing," Linde said.

"Of course." Jess nodded cooperatively.

"Let me rephrase — it's conspicuously ugly." I almost didn't hold it together. Linde looked at us both, visibly weighing which was more inconvenient: dismissing us now, or letting us finish. He chose the latter.

"What do you want?" That question meant there was room. Someone who genuinely wasn't going to negotiate wouldn't ask what you wanted. They'd call Disciplinary or bounce you back to the forms. I didn't rush forward. I stepped back half a pace instead, easing the posture.

"Simple," I said.

"I want a team that can survive at least the first firestorm."

"Be specific."

"Jess and I stay." I looked at him.

"What Group 144 is missing is a clear structural core. Either bring in someone I know who can actually function in that environment, or give me Tarag and Cyrus's complete functional annotations, prior observation records, and the grouping rationale — so I know at minimum that the school isn't treating us as a joke." He studied me for two seconds.

"You don't have clearance to view other cadets' full records."

"Then I'll take the first option," I said. The corridor went quiet for a moment. A distant bell from another class drifted through, far off, like sound filtered through water. Linde's stack of files stayed perfectly compressed in his grip, not a corner lifting. He had that particular talent — even standing in a corridor being negotiated with by two Lower House girls, he still looked like an administrative fixture that had no intention of relocating. Then he spoke.

"Are you threatening me?" There it was. I looked at him and let a slow smile come.

"No, Senior Hoffmann," I said.

"This is interpersonal mediation." Jess snapped her head sideways. Her shoulders shook in a way that was extremely suspicious. She was clearly working very hard not to die laughing on the spot, which would have added accomplice incapacitated by suppressed laughter to our negotiation record. The look behind Linde's lenses finally cooled by half a degree. I knew he understood. Not just understood. Understood completely. I hadn't mentioned the greenhouse. Hadn't mentioned the photographs.

Hadn't mentioned last night's moonlit meeting that had been deeply unkind to the school's code of conduct. And precisely because I'd mentioned none of it, the implication sat there much more clearly than words would have. Jess supplied the blade at exactly the right angle.

"Don't misread us, Senior Hoffmann. We just think that since we all live in the same Academy, a little mutual goodwill makes more sense than letting things that probably shouldn't have an audience start developing one." I gave her a silent standing ovation. She had a sharp mouth most of the time, but when it actually came to cutting, her angles were always clean. Linde was silent for a long time. Long enough that I could almost hear him running the risk calculation: Whether to adjust. How to adjust. How much.

How to do it without leaving obvious fingerprints. And — whether leaving us unaddressed would create a different, worse kind of problem later. Finally, he pushed his glasses up slightly.

"I can't let you specify the complete grouping."

"I know," I said.

"And I'm not rebuilding the entire roster."

"That would look terrible." I nodded.

"I'm not here asking you to blow yourself up." Jess added: "We're just here to discuss a more aesthetically considered approach." Linde seemed to decide he wasn't going to engage with our particular attitude of describing leverage as an art form, and moved to the point.

"Before Group 144's preliminary assembly this afternoon, there will be a functional annotation correction." I didn't speak. I waited.

"Tarag transfers out," he said.

"Knox comes in." My eyelid did something involuntary. Harvey. Good. Very good. More useful than I'd expected. Linde watched me, tone still as flat as a supply manifest.

"Cyrus stays. His atmospheric reading and surface thermal flow identification are useful in firestorm zones. McCallow stays. You—" He paused.

"Your placement has been under observation from the start." That didn't sound like a compliment. I decided to accept it anyway.

"One more thing," he added.

"This isn't because you won. It's because the original configuration had a genuine annotation error." I nodded and smiled very cooperatively.

"Understood. The system had a moment of conscience sometime before noon today." Jess nodded alongside me.

"The system really is a thoughtful, self-correcting institution." The look Linde gave us briefly expressed his disappointment in human civilization. Then he gathered his files and moved to leave. Just as he passed me, his pace stopped for half a second. His voice dropped low enough for only me.

"Hoshino." I looked up.

"Holding something doesn't mean you can actually control it," he said. I looked at him and thought: Senior Hoffmann, your posture in the greenhouse last night didn't particularly suggest someone in control of their life either. But I just smiled.

"That's fine," I said.

"My hands are small. Things I can't hold, I'm more used to keeping hidden anyway." His eyes finally went genuinely cold. Good. That was more like it. Once he was far enough away, Jess finally let go, turning to look at me with a face that was entirely that was the funniest thing I've ever witnessed.

"Interpersonal mediation?" She was barely keeping her voice down, laughing hard enough to cramp.

"Where did you even get that?" I folded the appeal receipt and put it in my pocket.

"Improvised."

"That smile you had — I almost thought you were actually pivoting to a career in diplomacy."

"Shut up."

"But—" She pulled the laughter back a fraction, eyes bright.

"It worked." I made a sound of agreement and looked down the corridor. Harvey in. Cyrus stays. Tarag out. Not perfect. But workable. And more importantly, I'd confirmed one thing: Linde was averse to complications. And I was, at this particular moment, very good at becoming one.

"Let's go," I said. Jess raised an eyebrow.

"Where?"

"To find Harvey." I put my hands in my pockets, one corner of my mouth lifting.

"Since the system has so fairly assigned him to us, he deserves to know just how moving that arrangement is."