Chương 148: 55. Invitation 3

By the time we left the library, the sky had tilted toward evening. I'd gotten through about seventy percent of what I'd meant to cover. The remaining thirty wasn't beyond me—my brain had genuinely started to overheat. Maki had copied out a condensed summary of key points, telling me one more pass tonight back in the dorm would be enough. She said it with the tone of someone performing routine maintenance on equipment that had a habit of wandering off.

Coming out of the library, I sent messages to D, Akari, and Harvey. Short version: three upperclassmen cornered me, want an answer on intentions within a week, want your read first. D replied fastest. D: Any actual benefit involved? Very D. No preamble, straight to material interest. Akari took two minutes. Akari: First confirm whether they want a teammate or a tool. Big difference. Exactly the kind of thing she'd say. That woman could make even text messages feel like cold-eyed assessments.

Harvey was slowest, but came back with a paragraph. Harvey: Sado's the real thing, no argument. Rosen, if she's actually intel/tactics, not useless. Vander's the type who either genuinely leads or leads people straight into the ground. Find out what role they want you in before agreeing to anything. Don't let upperclassmen conscript you for free. Also—did you skip class this afternoon? I stared at that last line. A vein twitched near my temple. Where the hell does he get his intelligence network.

I was about to type none of your business when Maki, walking beside me, shifted the two books in her arms and freed one hand to catch my textbook before it slid off the stack.

"Watch where you're going," she said.

"I am watching."

"You almost walked into a pillar."

"That was the pillar's fault."

"Mm." Perfectly even.

"The pillar won't apologize." …This woman had started delivering sarcasm with a curve on it. When we got back to the dorm that night, Jess was face-down at her desk, writing something. She looked up at the sound of the door, let her eyes travel between me and Maki, and produced a smile that was equal parts insufferable and knowing.

"Back already? How was the library date?"

"It wasn't a date," I said immediately.

"Right, high-intensity academic proximity behavior." She adjusted without missing a beat.

"So—how much did the three beautiful upperclassmen pour into you today?" I set my bag down and gave her the short version: the corridor ambush, the professional introductions, the one-week deadline. Jess listened, then let out a low whistle.

"Not bad. Electronic warfare royalty, tactical theory specialist, and future fleet admiral in training—pick one. Shimo, your market value right now is higher than the cafeteria's fresh fried chicken."

"Hot commodity nothing. I'm a mid-level employee being headhunted by three firms simultaneously."

"What did you tell them?"

"That I needed to consult my people. One week." Jess nodded, and for half a second her expression was genuinely serious.

"That was the right call." Maki gave a quiet sound of agreement. Clearly concurred. I was just about to sit down when Jess suddenly raised a finger, like something had just occurred to her.

"Oh, right. Since we're already talking about pre-finals team assignments—I have a bomb to drop." The moment she used that opener, my stomach tightened.

"Please tell me this isn't another 'someone's underwear ended up in the wash with someone else's socks' situation."

"No, that's just a public order incident at best." Jess smiled sweetly.

"This one's higher-grade." She waved the paper in her hand.

"Did you know that once teams are officially registered and we come back from the two-week break, the Academy requires everyone to move into centralized housing?" The room went quiet for a beat. I frowned.

"Centralized housing?"

"Right. Simple version: they're taking everyone headed into the finals practicum and stuffing you back into the tightest management radius possible—easiest to monitor, easiest to drag out for formation at any time." Jess delivered this with the breezy tone of someone describing someone else's catastrophe.

"Unified schedule, unified movement. Someone coughs twice at three in the morning and there'll be a record."

"…That's disgusting," I muttered.

"Let me know when this place stops being disgusting so I can set off fireworks." She waved the paper again, but her smile was getting brighter.

"There's a second half, though." I looked at her. Maki glanced up too. Jess drew it out deliberately:"Top-performing teams can apply for off-campus housing." I stared.

"…What?"

"Exactly what it sounds like." She slapped the paper onto the desk.

"Privilege. Limited slots, but they exist. As long as your team's credentials are solid enough and the justification is comprehensive, you can skip centralized housing after break and live off-campus as a unit instead." The room dropped into silence. Quiet enough that I could almost hear my own brain spinning up. Off-campus housing. Skip centralized housing. Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. Those words hit harder than all three upperclassmen from this morning combined.

Because this wasn't just about where we'd sleep. It meant we wouldn't get fed back into the tightest link of the management chain. It meant different living space, different freedom of movement, a completely different rhythm for preparation. It also meant—if we actually got approved—who lived with whom, how we lived, and what that looked like would all become immediate, practical problems. I slowly shifted my gaze from the paper in Jess's hand to Maki's face. She was looking at the sheet too.

Not surprised, not excited—just wearing that expression I'd gotten increasingly familiar with lately. The one that meant a specific gear in her head, the one designated for organizing chaos, had begun turning without a sound. … Perfect. One look at that expression and I knew: this wasn't going to be a "discussion." This was going to be "planning." Jess clearly read it the same way, because her smile turned wicked.

"Oh, Kushima's already calculating. What is it—figuring out furniture placement, or working out how to legally confiscate Shimo's cherry cola from under the bed?"

"First, the housing won't come furnished," Maki said, perfectly calm.

"Second, I wouldn't confiscate her cola. I'd just regulate the quantity." I looked up immediately.

"Excuse me."

"If you keep drinking three cans a day, once you're actually posted to a ship, the first thing to break down might not be the vessel—it might be your stomach."

"I don't drink three cans a day." Maki looked at me, eyes very still. Still enough that I felt a flicker of guilt for a second. Jess slapped the table, laughing.

"That expression means she definitely has records. Shimo, this isn't tutoring anymore. You're being managed."

"Shut up."

"Nope." Jess pushed the paper between us and reined in the laughter slightly.

"Back to business. Off-campus housing isn't a gift. The Academy approves it because top teams have tactical value, and because they want you maintaining unit cohesion and independent readiness before finals. Translation: they're giving you more rope to see if you hang yourselves with it."

"Very on-brand for this institution," I said coldly.

"Right? So considerate. Brings a tear to my eye." Maki picked up the paper and scanned it from top to bottom. Her reading speed was always unsettling—not just fast, but the kind where you could feel the information wasn't sitting on the surface. It was being broken down, sorted, weighted, and filed into some invisible cabinet in her head the moment it went in. A few seconds later, she set it down.

"If this is accurate, the question isn't 'do we want to live off-campus.' It's 'under whose name do we apply,' 'how do we structure the unit composition,' 'who gets included in the housing arrangement,' and—" She paused and looked at me.

"Whether you're willing." I blinked. … Damn it. I'd been bracing for her to slide straight into planning mode, and she'd asked me first. That wasn't like her. Or rather—it was like her, but only the current version. The earlier version would have laid out the options and slotted me into them. Now she still laid out the options, but she'd learned to check my face before the final step. That kind of progress was dangerous. It made it very hard to maintain a principled objection to her.

I propped my elbows on my knees and looked at the floor.

"Centralized housing is a nightmare," I said.

"Off-campus won't necessarily be easier," Jess reminded me.

"That means carrying a lot more yourselves. Schedule, readiness, supplies, who's late, who's slacking, whose insomnia is tanking the whole team's mental state—none of that gets blamed on the Academy anymore."

"I know."

"And if we actually apply, we can't just think about this room." She wagged a finger.

"You'd better factor in D, Harvey, Akari, everyone. If half the team is off-campus and the other half gets locked in centralized housing, the unit fractures before we even start." That landed, and the room went quiet again. Because she was right. Squad 144 wasn't a question of who's closer to whom anymore. If we were genuinely going into the final practicum as a unit, then housing and operational rhythm would become part of combat effectiveness in their own right.

Which meant off-campus housing, for all that it sounded like a perk, was really something closer to an early simulation. A simulation of: when the Academy finally stops inserting itself into every detail of your daily existence, can this group of people form a functional system that doesn't immediately collapse? … That thought came with a very specific bad feeling. There was a real possibility we weren't applying to live more comfortably. We were applying to start being real.

And once things became real, a lot of other things became real alongside them. Things like responsibility. Like position. Like certain relationships that had been quietly insulated by dormitory rules and background noise. For no particular reason I looked up, and my eyes met Maki's. She was watching me, silent. But her gaze was still and direct—direct enough to read like a question: If this is the road, do you have the nerve for it? … Could you not hold entire conversations with your eyes.

I yanked my attention over to Jess and glared at her instead.

"So what you're saying is, this isn't just moving dorms. It's restructuring how we live for the entire pre-finals stretch."

"Exactly." Jess snapped her fingers.

"Congratulations, you've won a complimentary serving of reality."

"Can I return the prize?"

"The Federation Military Academy does not accept personal feelings as grounds for returns." I clicked my tongue and leaned back in my chair. Maki added quietly:"But if the application goes through, we'd have a more complete space for independent study."

"…"

"More stable rest schedules."

"…"

"And unit discussions that don't keep getting interrupted."

"That last one's the real point, isn't it."

"They're all real points." Jess was shaking beside us, trying not to laugh.

"Kushima, you have an extraordinary talent for packaging 'I want more time with her' as 'improving unit efficiency.'""I didn't say that."

"You didn't say it. Your entire existence is broadcasting it."

"Jess."

"Okay, okay, I'm done." She raised both hands in surrender, then couldn't resist one more strike.

"But honestly, I'm all for applying. At minimum, I won't have to listen to that fitness-track idiot snoring like a blown engine all night." I almost laughed.

"That's actually a compelling argument."

"Right? And think about it—centralized housing means the Academy can knock on your door any time. Roll call, room inspections, drag you out for anything. Off-campus at least means there's a door you can close. Close that door, and half the system's reach dies outside it." Something shifted in my chest at that. Close the door, and half the system dies outside it. Just that image was tempting. Not because I had some deep longing for freedom.

But in a place like this, even having a door you could decide to open or close yourself was starting to feel like a luxury good. Maki folded the paper neatly and set it back on the table.

"No decision tonight," she said.

"But tomorrow we start asking the others. D, Harvey, Akari—and anyone else who'd need to be included in the housing arrangement." She said it steadily, like reading tomorrow's task list aloud. But I knew: once it reached we start asking tomorrow, it wasn't hypothetical anymore. The bomb Jess had dropped was now officially counting down.

"You arranged the workload pretty fast," I said, looking at her. Maki looked back at me, unhurried.

"Because if I give you more time to think, you'll talk yourself out of it first."

"…Have you been getting better at reading me lately?"

"Not lately," Jess cut in from the side, grinning like a fox who'd been waiting for exactly this moment.

"She's always been reading you. She's just stopped pretending she isn't." I grabbed the cushion off the table and threw it at her. Jess caught it laughing and collapsed back into her chair, looking like her daily entertainment quota had been thoroughly satisfied.

"Anyway, remember one thing." She hugged the cushion, and for once her tone settled into something genuine.

"If we actually get approved, it's not just 'nicer living arrangements.' It's telling the Academy—Squad 144 can run itself." I was quiet for a few seconds. Then I nodded slowly.

"I know." And because I knew, that was exactly what made it complicated. Because once we got approved, we'd have to actually start living like a unit. Not on a timetable, not on a training ground, not on an attendance sheet or a grouping roster—but in the details of every morning we woke up, every meal, every hour of studying, every piece of equipment we maintained, every way we affected each other's mental state. That kind of thing was worse than a firestorm. A firestorm just wanted to kill you.

Unit life would grind you down while you were still alive, slowly shaping you into something that fit against other people whether you wanted it to or not. I hated that kind of irreversible change. … The problem was, I was probably already past the point where it mattered. I looked down at the paper on the table, and it stopped looking like an application. It looked more like a notice.

A notice that the two-week break ahead of us, the month after that, and even the ship I still hadn't actually seen—Yukikaze—were none of them going to move forward the way they had before. Not the old hold out alone, survive alone way. Jess yawned and reached over to switch off the brighter lamp by her desk, leaving only the small lights by the beds and study table. The room dropped half a register into darkness, and the atmosphere settled with it.

Maki gathered her open notebooks with the same neat, quiet efficiency as always. When she was done, she glanced at me—the kind of glance that could have been accidental, or could have been entirely deliberate.

"Shimo."

"What."

"Tomorrow—don't skip class and fall asleep again."

"That was a strategic reallocation of my learning environment."

"Mm." She nodded.

"Then tomorrow I'll go check whether your learning environment has been strategically reallocated again." I was about to fire back, but Jess had already buried her face in the cushion, laughing.

"I'm sorry, that sounded exactly like a rehearsal for cohabitation."

"Are you sleeping or not?" I glared at her.

"Sleeping, sleeping." Jess rolled back onto her bed and gave us a thoroughly obnoxious wave.

"Goodnight, future co-administrators of potential off-campus housing." I took a deep breath. Decided not to commit any crimes tonight. Dealing with a body in a military academy was logistically complicated, and I had teammates to consult tomorrow. No bandwidth for cleanup. I picked up the paper from the table, looked at it one more time, and tucked it into my notebook.