Chương 80: 32.Late-Notice Attachment 32-3

Great, our dorm looked like a disaster site today. Specifically. A four-person room in the Lower House mixed dorms had never had much of a relationship with the word presentable. Two bunk beds, one desk, two chairs—one of which was listing at an angle that suggested it had recently lost a fight with fate. Socks that weren't quite dry yet hanging by the window. A pile of spare protective gear and a half-unpacked equipment bag in the corner.

The desk covered in notes, tools, medical tape, and the cherry cola I'd smuggled down last night before Harvey could confiscate all of it. Wonderful. Welcome to Lower House civilization. Maki Kushima stood in the doorway and did a quiet, methodical sweep of the room.

Not disgusted, not performing indifference—more like a high-precision scanner running its startup sequence, moving from the floor to the bunks to the desk corner to the ventilation grate, then across the course schedule on the wall and the book sitting on my pillow: On the Matter of Whether the Editorial Department Has Lost Their Minds, Given That This Light Novel's Title Is This Unreasonably Long. I reflexively shifted half a step to the left to block it. Whether she'd already seen it, I couldn't tell.

But her gaze paused in that direction for just a beat before moving on, perfectly unbothered. … This woman had eyes like a targeting system.

"Come in, come in," Jess said from the edge of her bed, waving at the room like a real estate agent who'd stopped trying.

"We don't have one of those Upper House air purifiers that cost more than tuition, but what we lack in quality we make up for in authenticity. Every breath comes with genuine character."

"And the character of socks that aren't dry yet," I added.

"And the distinctive aroma of youth being overworked," Jess confirmed. Maki Kushima stood her suitcase against the wall beside the door and set her pack down next to the desk. Clean movements, no hesitation about whether things would get dirty. I noticed she didn't put anything in the middle of the floor—she'd left the path clear between the beds and the door without being asked. First instinct: preserve the lanes. Okay. At least her brain wasn't decorative.

"Where do you want to sit?" I asked. She looked around the room. Two bunk beds, one desk, one tilted chair, and one normal chair currently buried under Jess's laundry. Jess looked down at her mountain of clothes with complete irresponsibility and said:"If you're feeling brave, you can try the tilted one."

"If it breaks under you," I added, in the spirit of fairness, "the school will probably bill us." Maki Kushima nodded once. Then she picked up the jacket sitting on top of the laundry pile, folded it, set it at the foot of the bed, and pulled out the chair and sat down. The whole thing was so natural it looked like she'd spent her whole life rearranging other people's territory without making it feel like an intrusion. Jess blinked. I narrowed my eyes.

In the first minute inside the room, she'd done three things: scanned the environment, preserved the walkway, and cleared herself a seat. … Annoying. Efficiency type. Those are the hardest to deal with. I leaned against the desk and crossed my arms.

"Alright. Since you're actually here, let's do this properly. Group 144, current members. Hoshino Shimo—bad temper, average heat tolerance, allergic to administrative systems, currently in a severe flare-up." Jess picked it up immediately.

"Jess McCallow. Specialty is keeping things and people that should be dead limping along until tomorrow. Hobby is watching Hoshino fight with people." I looked at her.

"You can cut the last part."

"Can't. It's load-bearing to my personality." Maki Kushima listened to all of it without expression, then gave a small nod.

"Maki Kushima. Upper House, Fleet Management. Specialty: supply load balancing, resource integration, environmental data analysis, and route planning. Interests—" She paused. Jess immediately leaned forward half an inch, eyes lighting up.

"Interests? Watching Lower House humans tear each other apart?"

"No," Maki Kushima said, perfectly calm.

"Reducing error rates." The room went quiet for a second. Then Jess burst out laughing.

"Hoshino, I think I kind of like her. She says nothing that technically sounds like an insult, but every sentence implies we've been living dangerously sloppy."

"That's not an implication," I said.

"That's exactly what she means." Maki Kushima didn't deny it. She couldn't even be bothered with the performance of politeness. I looked at that expressionless face and kept thinking she was some kind of calculator that had been fitted into a white uniform—I just couldn't figure out why it had walked into our room today of its own free will.

"First question." I held up one finger.

"Why us, actually? And I don't want the official version."

"I already explained part of it."

"That was the press release. I want the human version." She looked at me like she was calculating exactly how precise human version was permitted to be.

"Group 144's current configuration isn't bad," she said.

"Field adaptation, equipment maintenance, and someone who defaults to direct action under pressure."

"That last one sounds like it's about me." Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

"It is about you."

"…Christ." Jess, beside me, laughed without a shred of loyalty.

"Keep going. I love this." Maki Kushima's gaze moved away from my face and back across the room, like she was flipping through a file with her eyes.

"The gaps are also obvious. Supply integration will get disorganized. Decision-making tends to skew short-term. Under sustained weather changes, there's a real chance of fatigue-driven judgment errors before the third firestorm cycle." My eyebrow went up.

"You're writing us off before we've even shipped out?"

"Not writing off. Predicting."

"Doesn't sound much different."

"For the outcome, it's very different." …She said that like it was self-evident, and I couldn't find the seam to cut in. Jess found one fast enough.

"Okay, I've got one too." She tilted her chin up, swinging one foot lazily.

"Kushima—I'll take your theory as given. What about the practical side? Have you ever spent more than a day somewhere above thirty-five degrees, humidity so high your clothes feel like a second skin, and the mosquitoes are more aggressive than your classmates?"

"Yes." Both of us looked at her.

"How long?" I asked.

"Six days."

"Where?"

"Ninth external training satellite. Coastal humid tropics." Fast answer.

"Not an official course. I went with an Upper House climate data sampling team to do surface documentation." Jess blinked twice.

"You're genuinely not here for a field trip."

"I never said I was."

"You look like you are," Jess said, with complete honesty. I nearly laughed. Maki Kushima didn't get offended. She just let her gaze drop slightly.

"That I can't immediately fix."

"Don't worry about it," I said, generously.

"The Lower House environment does the fixing for you. Give it three days and you'll automatically downgrade from Upper House premium edition to field-tested wear-resistant."

"That sounds like a damage process," she said.

"It is," I said.

"Welcome to the damage process." She seemed to accept this without appeal, and let it go. A brief quiet settled over the room. From outside in the hallway, the sound of someone running past—shoe soles dragging against the floor for a moment, then gone. I didn't rush to fill the silence. Neither did she. And that strange feeling surfaced again— Not just a conversation. We were weighing each other. She was reading whether we'd treat her as a liability to discard or a tool to keep.

I was reading whether this voluntarily applied Upper House girl was here to play charity in a white uniform, or whether she could actually fit herself into this broken machine of ours. I walked to the desk deliberately, picked up a can of cherry cola, and cracked it open in front of her. The carbonation hissed loud. Artificial cherry hit the air immediately.

"Want some?" Jess turned to look at me instantly. I knew what she was thinking. Is using this as a test a little cruel? Answer: no. Completely reasonable. Someone who can't handle cheap artificial cherry flavoring will probably have equal difficulty handling our living standards in the field. Maki Kushima looked at the can, then at me. Then she reached out and took it.

"Thank you." She drank. No wince. No pushing through it. No performance of look how hard I'm trying to fit in. She just drank, set it down, and said, very evenly:"Sweeter than I expected."

"That's a diplomatic review," Jess said.

"Most people's first reaction is is this an industrial accident?"

"I'm not that rude."

"You're just a higher-end version of rude," I said.

"That's one way to put it." I watched her for two seconds. The hand holding the can—steady. No excess movement. Her posture wasn't the performed straightness of someone trying to look composed; her back was simply straight, the way it gets after years of habit. Since she'd walked in, her eyes had swept the room at least three times: once for the overall layout, once for our gear and the desk, and a third time tracking the spatial relationships between the door, the window, the beds, and our personal effects.

She was cataloguing too. That made me simultaneously irritated and slightly relieved. Irritated because I hate being assessed. Relieved because someone here just to coast wouldn't bother looking that carefully. Jess had clearly caught it too. She leaned back abruptly, propping herself on both hands, voice going light:"Kushima, have you already mentally mapped this room into a floor plan?" Maki Kushima was honest.

"Yes."

"Wow." Jess let out a low whistle.

"You're not even going to pretend."

"Because you're observing me too."

"Obviously," Jess said, grinning.

"I need to figure out if you're the type who goes through our bags at 3 a. m., or the type who sits down and negotiates openly."

"The latter."

"Good." I picked up the thread.

"Because the former gets kicked out." Maki Kushima looked at me, gaze still steady.

"Can I ask a question?"

"Go ahead."

"Why are you so resistant to letting someone new into the group?" She asked it too directly. Directly enough that even Jess made a small sound and sat up straight.

"That's a bold question," Jess said.

"Respect." I didn't answer right away. I set the half-empty can on the desk and tapped the aluminum twice with my fingertip. Why? If I wanted to dress it up, I could wrap it in something like heightened vigilance as a response to survival conditions. Very clean. Very presentable. But I didn't feel like being presentable right now.

"Because every new person is one more person who might not know which side she's on when it counts," I said.

"Anywhere else, that's a social risk. Out there, that's how people die." Jess didn't jump in. She just turned and looked at me with an expression that said: huh, you actually said something real. I pretended not to notice. Maki Kushima was quiet for a moment, then nodded.

"That's reasonable."

"You'd better actually understand what's reasonable about it."

"I do," she said.

"That's why I came in person." I looked up. Her voice was still flat, but there was something in it now—very faint, barely qualifying as an emotion—that hadn't been there before.

"If I'd just put my name on a form, you wouldn't accept it," she said.

"If I'd only sent materials without showing up myself, you wouldn't trust it. If I want to join, I have to come here first and let you decide whether I'm worth keeping." Jess blinked.

"That was kind of cool," she said.

"Shut up."

"I'm just objectively noting it." I looked at Maki Kushima, and felt an unexpected, faint urge to laugh. This kind of person was genuinely difficult. Not because she was trying to be liked, and not because she was asking to be taken in. She knew exactly what she wanted, walked over, sat down, put her cards on the table, and waited for your assessment. That's so much harder to throw out than someone playing nice.

"Fine." I pulled the half-empty can back toward me.

"Cards on the table, then. You're not one of us yet."

"Understood."

"You've got three days to give me reasons to regret not shipping you back to the Upper House with your luggage."

"I understand."

"And—" I held her gaze— "Harvey hasn't seen you yet. His mouth is worse than mine, his standards are more annoying than mine, and if you can clear him, then we'll talk about official placement." This time, Maki Kushima finally showed a reaction. Small, but real. Not nerves. More like—a new target entry opening in whatever she used for a mental filing system.

"Harvey Knox," she repeated quietly.

"Equipment maintenance and logistics correction. I know."

"You looked him up too?" Jess stared.

"He was on the list I brought."

"…Right." Jess nodded sincerely.

"Sorry. I was busy being shocked. I forgot you literally came in here with a briefing deck."

"I don't object to that description." I finally couldn't hold it anymore and let out a short laugh.

"Alright, candidate." I tilted my chin toward the mess of notes and supply sheets on the desk.

"Since you walked through the door yourself, don't just sit there. Group 144's current supply list is right there—some weight distribution that gives me a headache, and some personal items that'll give me a worse one. You said you could reduce our error rate?" Maki Kushima followed my gesture. On top of the pile, in my own handwriting: ESSENTIAL SUPPLIES. Underneath, the corner of the NICE TO HAVE column was visible, which included twelve cans of cherry cola and three light novels. Very personal.

Very easy for a professional to find contemptible. She looked at the list. Then at me.

"Can I ask first—are those twelve cans part of the essential supplies?" I didn't blink.

"Psychological sustenance." Jess lost it.

"Hoshino, she identified your worst pathology in under five minutes." I clicked my tongue.

"Less commentary. Either prove you're useful, or start learning to accept me and my industrial sugar water going into the firestorm zone together." Maki Kushima set the clear document sleeve on the desk, picked up the supply list, and lowered her eyes to read.

"I'll try to keep some of it." I paused.

"Some of it?"

"Bringing all of it in is inefficient. Cutting all of it damages morale." She looked up at me, perfectly calm.

"Keeping part of it has the highest net benefit." The room went quiet for a second. Jess slowly turned to look at me with an expression that said: she's not going to sentence your most cherished garbage to death. I looked at Maki Kushima. And honestly— In that moment, I wanted to kill her just a little bit less. Just a little.

"…Fine." I pulled a chair over, flipped it around, and straddled it with my arms over the back.

"Start revising. Too sloppy, I'll tell you. Too aggressive, I'll also tell you."

"Reasonable," she said.

"What's reasonable about it."

"Because you're still testing me."

"Good that you know." Jess propped her face in her hand, smiling like someone watching a very instructive accident unfold.

"Here we go," she said.

"Round one of Lower House feral survival unit versus Upper House precision-model princess. Stress test, begin." She paused, and added the last line:"I just hope the room doesn't explode today. At least not before breakfast."