Chương 122: 47. Duty 47-4

The bunker interior looked exactly like the oversized tin can I'd expected. Cold walls, hard floor, lighting so white it felt personally offended by the concept of human warmth. The air carried layered smells: disinfectant, metal, old dust, trapped humidity. There were storage lockers, a basic med kit, water access, and a cramped shower unit. The academy could be surprisingly humane in certain areas—provided they didn't throw Jäger units into the same exam zone. Maki walked in and switched modes.

She became something close to a medical automation unit.

"Injuries first. Anyone mobile, go left. Anyone not, lie flat. Don't track blood and ash everywhere unless you want this place smelling like a failure stew."

"…Your bedside manner is really something," I said.

"It is. Outside it's several hundred degrees. In here, you're fine." She didn't look up. Her hands were already finding Jess's pulse. I crouched down to help—though "help" was generous. Mostly I handed her things and got in the way. Jess lay on the floor, color poor but breathing steady. The paralytic round was still running its course. She looked like she'd just fallen asleep—quiet, still. For Jess, that level of silence was rare enough to be almost archival. Part of me wanted to document it somewhere.

Title: Rabid Alley Cat, Muted Edition: Limited One-Hour Run. On the other side, D had laid the short-haired girl flat. She'd been hit below the right collarbone, angling toward the shoulder—no external bleeding, just a small impact mark. Same as Jess: unconscious, no visible trauma. The tall guy crouched next to her. His fingers were shaking, but he still reached out first to move her hair away from her face so she could breathe easier.

"Her name is Lan," he said, voice rough.

"Not 'the short-haired girl.'" I blinked. Right. Of course she had a name. Obviously she had a name. We'd just been living for two days like a pack of feral dogs thrown into a blender, and properly exchanging names had become a luxury we hadn't gotten around to.

"… Got it," I said quietly. D settled down nearby. The backs of his hands were scraped raw, and the outer left thigh had taken a glancing hit from the pneumatic—no paralytic, just impact. His shield had fared worse: two ugly dents in the surface that looked like something extremely rude had been done to it with heavy machinery. Akari leaned against the wall, checking her weapon with unsettling precision.

Left forearm burn, a streak of char across one cheek, but her expression stayed locked in that these are just background variables setting. People like her were dangerous. Because they saw right through when you were barely holding it together. And right now, being seen was the last thing I wanted. Maki finished her sweep of all eight of us and stood.

"Summary." She said it like someone reading a mission report.

"Jess and Lan, paralytic rounds, temporarily unconscious, vitals normal, estimated recovery within the hour. D, left leg contusion, shield damage. Roy—""That's me," the tall one said, raising a weak hand.

"Roy." Maki continued without changing expression.

"Dehydration and heat exhaustion. The fact that you're not dead reflects well on your effort. Akari, left forearm burn, mobility unaffected. Harvey, palm laceration. Hoshino—" She paused. Turned to look at me.

"Captain. Your primary problem isn't physical injury. It's waterlogged brain from judgment failure. Prognosis poor."

"Hey."

"Additionally: abraded knee, strained right shoulder, and extensive ego burn across a wide surface area." Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work! D actually laughed—a short, involuntary sound. Harvey nearly sat down to applaud. I wanted to snap back. But the thing that had been holding me upright—the tension, the forward momentum, the sheer refusal to stop moving—started to loosen the moment I confirmed all eight of us were actually still breathing.

Not a collapse. Not yet. More like pulling a support beam out from under a wall. The wall doesn't fall immediately. But you can hear it starting to crack. What made it worse was that nobody was blaming anyone. Which was genuinely unnatural. Too unnatural. By rights, the eight of us should have been running through the classic post-disaster checklist right about now: Who was out of position. Who pushed too far forward. Who didn't cover. Who gave bad orders. Whose gear was useless.

Who nearly got everyone turned into kebab. But none of that happened. Nobody opened fire. D just sat there breathing. Roy kept his head down, watching over Lan. Harvey quietly coiled his alarm wire back up. Akari kept checking her weapon. Maki sorted through the medical supplies. Even I couldn't find a single piece of appropriate leadership bullshit to throw into the air. The quiet was suffocating. Not the quiet of resolution.

The quiet of people too exhausted to fight, where even the argument had to take a number and wait. I had the sudden, very clear sense that if I stayed in this room for one more second, something very not-squad-leader was going to break loose in front of them. So I stood up and said the least leader-like thing I'd said all night.

"… I'm going to shower." Nobody stopped me. If anything, I had the distinct impression everyone was relieved I was temporarily removing myself from the room. So I turned and walked away. Practically fled. The bunker shower room was pathetically small. Calling it a bathroom was generous—it was more accurately described as a decontamination stall carved out of sheet metal.

Gray-white walls, a drain in the floor, and a ceiling-mounted hot water nozzle that radiated the attitude of you're lucky I produce water at all, don't ask me for dignity on top of that. I pulled the door shut. The latch clicked. Then I leaned back against the door and stood there, head down, not moving, for several long seconds. Quiet. Just me. I peeled off my jacket slowly. When the fabric dragged across my skin, I noticed my hands were still shaking.

Shoulders, knees, wrists—all of it aching, every joint feeling like it had been removed, roasted, and crammed back in slightly wrong. My hair was full of ash. So were my fingernails. Even behind my ears had a layer of dried sweat and char dust. An impressively even level of misery, really. No favoritism shown to any particular part of my body. I turned on the water. Warm, not hot—but in this context, it qualified as luxury. The first stream hit me and I flinched. Not from heat. From the release of tension.

The moment something let go, everything I'd been bracing against started to come undone. I stood with my head down and let the water run through my hair. Ash, sweat, splinters of charred wood, dried mud—all of it sliding off and going down the drain. My hand was flat against the wall, knuckles white, and I was just standing there, but I was as tired as if I'd run the length of a mountain range. I'd meant to hold it together. I genuinely had. I was fourteen. I was the squad leader.

No matter how humiliating it got, crying because I'd nearly been made an example of by a Jäger was pathetic. How would I ever give Jess a hard time again? How would I ever yell at Harvey? How would I keep up the pretense, in front of someone like Akari with her dead-calm eyes, that I was at least seventy percent reliable? Thirty seconds later, I learned that rational thought has zero authority in the shower. Because the tears came down before the hot water did.

Not the clean, cinematic kind—the quiet single-tear-down-the-cheek kind. The ugly kind. The graceless kind. The kind where your shoulders shake. I cried and simultaneously felt like I owed someone a written apology for the display. Why was I crying. The reasons were numerous enough to itemize. Because when Jess went down, I genuinely thought I was about to watch her get a follow-up shot. Because when the second Jäger stepped out of the steam, my first response wasn't tactical assessment—it was it's over.

Because we'd set a trap, laid it carefully, and still got picked up by the scruff of the neck like misbehaving kids. Because Maki was right. Charging out was losing control, and I knew it. Because the thing I hate most about myself is saying I won't make a mistake and then being the first one to make it. Because we survived, and it wasn't skill. It was a firestorm arriving on schedule. God, that last one.

Like getting halfway through an exam and realizing you don't actually know the answers—the proctor just happened to get called out of the room. I pressed my palm harder against the wall and tried to wipe my face, which made everything worse, so I gave up. Forehead against the cold metal, water and tears running down together.

"…Pathetic," I said quietly.

"Genuinely pathetic, Hoshino Shimo." The water swallowed my voice. It came back sounding like someone speaking from very far away. By the time the crying ran its course, there was a strange kind of calm underneath it. Like the wreckage in my chest had been partially washed loose—still there, but no longer actively choking me. I stayed in the shower a long time—or maybe not that long at all. People whose minds are about to crack don't have a reliable relationship with time.

By the time I finally turned off the water, my eyes were convincingly red and the tip of my nose was stinging. I stared at the mirror: soaking wet, hair plastered to my face, expression like someone who'd just gone twelve rounds with the entire world and lost decisively. Two seconds of silence. Then a conclusion. Fine. At least I was clean. A loser could be a clean loser. I pulled on dry clothes, drew a long breath, and pushed the door open.