Chương 180: 68. Starport 2

The first time I officially took Maki Kushima anywhere on a bike was from the front door of No. 22 Platinum Bridge Street. Just running that sentence through my head was enough to mess with my heart rate. The problem was, I had to act normal. Because the moment I showed even a hint of I'm currently as tense as if this were my first live-fire exercise, Maki would probably just look at me calmly and say:"If you're not ready, we can go another day." Absolutely not.

"Another day" sounded too dangerous. The bike was here, she was here, the weather wasn't shit enough to count as a cosmic warning—backing out now meant delaying the entire see the Yukikaze and naturally extend into whatever comes next timeline. I refused. So I stood by the door, helmet in hand, trying to project the aura of a fully licensed, emotionally regulated operator executing a standard two-person transport protocol. Even though internally I was running hot enough to fry an egg.

When Maki stepped out of the entryway, I still stalled for half a second like an idiot. She wasn't wearing yesterday's more obviously curated intellectual look. Today was cleaner, more practical—built for being out. Black hair tied high, simple jacket, sharp-cut pants. The whole picture said today is business without trying. The problem was, it was her wearing it. Even dialed back to understated, she made it difficult to look anywhere else. Deeply unfair.

My mission today was to focus on operating a motor vehicle, not to catalog why Maki Kushima managed to make "ordinary" look like a deliberate tactical choice. She stopped in front of me. Eyes went to the bike first, then to the helmet in my hands, then up to my face.

"Spacing out?"

"No." I immediately handed her the spare helmet.

"Just confirming my passenger doesn't plan to bail mid-route." She took it, expression level.

"If your riding's bad enough, I'll consider it."

"That's a lot of pressure on the driver."

"Then ride smoothly." Perfect. Completely on brand. I could keep the banter going, but when she put the helmet on, something tightened in my chest—not because the movement was graceful, though it was, but because the whole thing suddenly became very concrete. Not someday I'll take her somewhere—a soft, shapeless idea. Right now. This. She was actually going to sit behind me, and I was going to take her from No. 22 to the port, to the Yukikaze, straight into the mission that had been abstract for too long.

I took a breath and swung onto the bike.

"Get on." Maki didn't say anything else. She just slid onto the back seat. My entire spine went rigid. Not the kind of close where you're pressed together—the kind where you can feel the weight settle, feel the center of gravity shift, feel the bike acknowledge there are two people now. I'd carried passengers before, in training, in the licensing test. But that was carrying a passenger. This was carrying Maki Kushima. Very different. Extremely different.

She adjusted her position, hands going to the rear grip first. Paused there for two seconds, like she was calculating which would cause more structural damage—her holding on properly, or whatever this did to my operational capacity. In the end, she made the rational call. Her hands moved to rest lightly against the sides of my jacket. Just resting. Not holding, not gripping tight. But that was more than enough to nearly short-circuit me on the spot.

"Hoshino."

"Yeah."

"You can go."

"… Right." Okay. Good. I started the engine. The bike came alive with a low rumble, power coiled quiet in the frame. I pulled out steadily from No. 22, with only one thought: Don't fuck this up. Under no circumstances. I took the first intersection smoother than I'd ever taken it. Smooth enough that Harvey, if he'd been watching, would've said something about finally respecting the laws of physics. Maki was quiet behind me.

She wasn't the type to fill space with chatter, and she knew I needed my attention on the road. So the first stretch was just wind, engine noise, and the sound of my own heartbeat doing something undignified inside my helmet. But once the riding settled, so did I. Not calm exactly—the awareness didn't fade. More that the initial spike of she's right there gradually shifted into something quieter. Like something in my chest had stopped flaring and started glowing instead.

I suddenly understood why people get attached to their first bikes. It's not just a vehicle. It remembers specific moments. The first time you went somewhere alone. The first time you felt like you could choose where to go. And this—the first time someone sat behind you whose presence alone made you determined to ride perfectly. We headed toward the port district. The city's architecture shifted as we went—wider, harder.

The loose commercial energy of student-friendly streets gave way to metal, glass, warehouses, logistics signage, and massive functional structures. The further we went, the more the air changed: salt, cold, machine oil, the particular smell of fuel and industrial work. Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. Maki finally spoke.

"Left at that street. Cut in."

"Copy."

"Skip the overpass ahead."

"How do you know this better than the nav system?"

"I did my homework."

"That's not homework coming from you," I said.

"You downloaded the entire port district into your brain." She didn't deny it. Just said, very quietly:"So you won't get lost with me on the back." My hands nearly twitched on the grips. Goddamn it. She'd been doing this more lately—dropping these perfectly flat lines that only hit you later when you're alone somewhere replaying them. I locked my eyes on the road ahead. The Yukikaze came into view as we cleared the final restricted perimeter road. My breath caught.

I'd heard the name before, seen specs and remote imagery. But actually standing at the edge of the port, looking across the wind and iron and grey-blue sprawl of dock infrastructure at a real warship—completely different. It was bigger than I'd expected. And quieter. Not mythically enormous, but more grounded and oppressive than that. Steel hull, tiered decks, comm towers, hull numbers, the cold precision of dockside supply equipment. Everything about it said: This isn't a backdrop for student photos.

This ship carries people, orders, risk, and consequences forward. I parked in the designated outer area. When I pulled off my helmet, the wind hit immediately—salt-sharp, clearing my head. Maki climbed off and stood beside me, both of us looking at the ship.

"Well?" she asked. I stared at the Yukikaze for two seconds.

"More trouble than I pictured." She laughed—small, brief.

"I thought you'd say it was impressive."

"It is impressive," I said honestly.

"But the kind of impressive where you know it's going to make everything more complicated, and you still want to get closer."

"Mm." She kept her eyes forward.

"I thought the same." We stood in the wind for a while. Strange feeling. Half my brain had been running hot the entire ride over, but standing here felt like cold water from above. Not that the heat was gone—just that something else had moved in alongside it. The awareness that this trip had never been just a joyride. The bike was real. The ship was real. What came after was very real. With what felt like the universe's signature timing, someone started walking toward us. A man.

Not old, uniform sharp, stride steady—not the type who leads with intimidation. But as he got closer, it became clear: this wasn't someone from the Academy, and not someone you could talk your way past. This was one of the people this ship belonged to. More precisely: the person who, in terms of port protocol and pre-departure procedure, currently controlled this vessel. He looked at us, then at the bike parked nearby. A slight smile.

"Hoshino Shimo? And Kushima?" Maki and I both straightened.

"Yes, sir," Maki answered first. He stopped in front of us, manner polite—more so than I'd expected.

"First formal introduction," he said.

"I'm Captain Shun Tobita, commanding officer of the Yukikaze." Captain Tobita. I filed the name against the face. He wasn't what I'd pictured when I thought captain. I'd expected colder, harder—someone who walks into a room and makes everyone stop laughing. He wasn't that. He spoke steadily, with measured consideration that didn't feel performed. He had room to spare. Which made him more dangerous. People with that kind of bandwidth usually are. He looked at the Yukikaze, then back at us.

"Good to see the ship first. Once you're actually aboard, at least some of the pressure is already accounted for." I answered without thinking:"Just looking shouldn't be too much pressure." Captain Tobita actually laughed at that. Short, polite. Then, in a tone that was entirely too casual, he said something that sent my soul three steps backward.

"Oh, right," he said.

"On the day of the operation, in addition to regular crew, we'll be hosting an external visit group." I blinked.

"…External visit?"

"Yes." He nodded, smile unchanged.

"Students from the Federal Military Officers' Affiliated Secondary School." Wind off the port. For two full seconds, my brain emptied completely. Federal Military Officers' Affiliated Secondary School. Students. On the ship. That day. I'd been thinking this was preliminary reconnaissance—see the ship, learn the layout, get a feel for the actual weight of the escort mission.

And now the captain, with perfect courtesy and the energy of someone mentioning an extra side dish, had just informed me: There would also be a group of secondary school students on board. The disaster simulation unfolded automatically in my head. Original mission parameters: Escort. Follow orders. Don't screw up. Come back alive. Updated mission parameters: Escort. Follow orders. Keep the secondary school students from wandering. Keep them from asking the wrong questions.

Keep them from touching things they shouldn't. Prevent any one of them—the clumsy one, the overexcited one, the one who wants to prove something—from turning the entire vessel into shared psychological trauma for crew and students alike. Then come back alive. This wasn't a normal mission anymore. This was a dungeon run.

The kind where you queue up for a standard escort quest and the system quietly drops a full party of fragile, curious, idealistic, chronically accident-prone minor NPCs into your lap, then smiles and tells you: Good luck. The world literally tilted. Not a figure of speech. Actual vertigo—like my brain had been lifted very high and dropped cleanly. How does a simple escort mission spontaneously mutate into an epic-tier nightmare at a port visit?

I could already see it: Jess hearing this and laughing for three seconds before cursing the universe. Harvey doing his cold smirk and saying I knew it wouldn't be straightforward. D nodding and calmly accepting oh, there are also children with his usual unshakeable calm. And me, standing in front of the Yukikaze, with only one question: Why. Why is it that every time something looks like it might run at reasonable difficulty, the universe immediately gets to work patching it into maximum hell mode?

Captain Tobita watched me, probably reading the full disaster of my expression, but he didn't twist the knife. Just added, very gently:"Don't stress too much. It's just a standard visit program. That said, going into the actual mission with this kind of mental preparation isn't a bad thing." … Captain, you are genuinely polite. Really. But there's something uniquely terrifying about the way you smile while pushing someone off a cliff and thoughtfully mention the view on the way down.

In some ways, that's worse than just being harsh. I scraped my soul off the ground and cleared my throat.

"Understood." I didn't, actually. Not fully. I'd just patched the surface layer of human social function back online. Maki, standing beside me, was holding together considerably better than I was. She gave a small nod.

"Thank you for the heads-up, Captain." Captain Tobita ran through a few more things—port perimeter protocols, check-in procedures, boarding sequence—same unhurried tone throughout. That calm was its own kind of signal. Whatever he'd seen in his career, a secondary school visit group barely registered as a complication. To him, it probably was just "a few extra variables." The problem is, their "few extra variables" usually want our entire lives. Once he headed off, I finally let out the breath I'd been holding.

"…Maki."

"Mm."

"I'm making an official announcement."

"About what?" I turned to look at her, completely sincere.

"This mission has just upgraded from standard escort quest to epic-tier dungeon run." She studied me for two seconds. Then she actually laughed—quiet, brief.

"I thought you'd say legendary tier."

"That depends on headcount." I pressed two fingers against my temple.

"If they're coming as a full group, we might as well start preparing for a total party wipe." Maki didn't argue. She just shifted her gaze back to the Yukikaze. Wind cut between us, carrying that cold, hard port smell. After a moment, she said quietly:"At least we know now." That pulled me back from the edge of a minor breakdown. Right. At least we know now.

Not finding out mid-mission—not standing on deck, already deep in procedure, suddenly surrounded by secondary school students with questions, discovering the dungeon mechanics had been patched without warning. We found out here. Now. Right at the moment I'd just officially brought her to see the ship for the first time, right as the Yukikaze had finished dragging everything back out of romantic projection and into reality. Not that knowing made me feel any better. I looked at the Yukikaze one last time.

It sat exactly as it had before—large, cold, quiet, substantial. A steel creature breathing at the dock, indifferent to whether secondary school students were touring its decks today, indifferent to the fact that I'd just gotten my first bike, was still oscillating between first time officially taking Maki somewhere and mission difficulty just spiked through the roof, and had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Ships don't cause trouble. People do. Especially young people. Especially lots of young people.

I lit a small, imaginary candle for my future self, then turned and walked back from the port perimeter with Maki. Coming here, half my brain had been running hot. Going back, that same brain now had a full-scale Yukikaze and a crowd of secondary school students smiling and waving at me from somewhere inside my skull. Perfect. Of course this first two-person ride was never going to deliver something as simple as just an elevated heart rate. Still— I glanced sideways at Maki walking beside me.

At least the first person to officially sit behind me, the first person to come here with me and look this ship and all its complications square in the face— was her.