Chương 190: 72. Boarding Notice 1

Bad news doesn't wait for your worst days. It prefers the other kind — the days when you've just convinced yourself the hardest part is over, and then fate leans out from the side and pokes its head in, saying, cheerfully: Good morning. There's a second round. After the breakfast briefing, I'd assumed Ash had already set the tone for the day. Hard. Cold. Carrying all the educational warmth of everyone please stop being a person and start being a cadet.

After that level of psychological damage, common decency suggested we should get at least half a day to recover. We didn't. We hadn't even finished clearing the table when the doorbell rang. One short ring. I don't know why, but the moment I heard it, something in me went: this isn't going to be good. Jess was already treating the Federal Destroyer Basic Handbook like a personal enemy — because yes, not long after the briefing ended, the Student Council arrived. Efficiently.

Efficiently enough to make you wonder if they'd been crouched outside Number 22 since the night before, waiting for the precise moment our mental defenses were thinnest. It wasn't Aki herself. Probably because the Student Council President personally delivering paperwork would upgrade a notification into a sentencing, and that would be a waste of resources.

Two Student Council officers came instead — uniforms pressed, expressions standard-issue, handling their folders with the practiced ease of hospital intake staff. One of them set a folder on the table and began reading in the tone of someone whose content you were going to hear whether you wanted to or not.

"Effective tomorrow, personnel are authorized to begin transferring personal effects to the Yukikaze in scheduled batches. Size and specification requirements are outlined in Form B-147. Non-compliant items will not be logged. The Yukikaze's scheduled departure has been moved forward; revised timing will be communicated separately. Home leave is permitted during the week prior to departure. Personnel requiring long-distance travel documents should consult Circular C-152."

He finished, pulled a stack of thin booklets from the folder, and distributed one to each of us. The cover read, in very official lettering: Federal Destroyer Basic Handbook. I flipped through a couple of pages. Wonderful.

Interior and exterior marking identification, alarm classifications, emergency bulkhead sealing procedures, personnel are prohibited from approaching the reactor maintenance zone without authorization — all laid out in thorough, loving detail, as if there were a genuine statistical probability that someone in this group would wander off on their first day, drift all the way to the reactor bay, and stand there contemplating their life choices in front of a radiation warning sign.... Actually.

Given the current population of Number 22, that precaution wasn't entirely paranoid. I flipped to the middle section and landed on Standard Prone Position During Onboard Emergency Decompression. I thought: of course. Only the Federation would pre-format the page for you might get blown into a wall.

The Student Council officer was still running through administrative details — move-in registration windows, item labeling requirements, personal effects must not obstruct ship passageways, anyone bringing non-compliant personal electronics aboard does so at their own risk. Harvey made a short sound when he heard personal electronics. The meaning was unmistakable: bring anything that malfunctions near my engine room and I will fix the equipment first and then fix you.

Aida was already flipping through the handbook, and laughed within two pages.

"Oh, there's actually a clause here about not opening unlabeled containers without authorization." She looked up, smiling with genuine delight.

"Is the school's trust in us offensively low, or just ordinarily low?"

"Appropriately low," Evelyn said, adjusting her glasses, tone as serene as it was merciless.

"That clause is necessary. For people whose hands move before their brains do." Aida immediately closed the handbook and pressed it to her chest.

"Why do you always make me sound dangerous?"

"Because you've earned it," Evelyn said. That was so clean I nearly laughed out loud. Across the table, Jess had already entered full combat mode with Form B-147.

"Wait —" She was flipping through it, expression collapsing steadily toward the Federation actively wants us to suffer.

"These size limits are serious? I'd have to refold my winter blanket into a geometric cube just to bring an extra one?" The Student Council officer looked at her with complete professional neutrality.

"If volume exceeds the limit, we recommend re-prioritizing based on functional necessity."

"Re-prioritizing?" Jess's voice went up half a register.

"That's just a polite way of saying say goodbye to everything that makes your life livable!" D, sitting nearby, was already marking up her own form with a pen, not looking up.

"You could start by cutting three bottles of skincare." Jess turned immediately.

"That is a basic human right."

"On a warship it's probably classified as personal supplies," Akari said, without inflection.

"Do you two have any concept of civilized empathy?"

"Yes," Akari said.

"That's why I'm telling you to face reality now rather than later." I quietly turned back to the front cover of the handbook. Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. In that moment I realized the Federal Destroyer Basic Handbook wasn't just teaching you how to survive aboard a ship. It was telling you, in administrative language, that everything about you was about to be compressed. Space. Time. Sleep. Carrying capacity. Private habits.

Even the luxury of I'll get used to it gradually. Especially those six words: departure has been moved forward. Six words. More damage than the entire handbook combined. Because moved forward meant every buffer moved with it. Things you'd been soothing yourself with yesterday — there's still time, I'll sort it out later — suddenly had a lot less traction. I looked back at the notices. Home leave. Long-distance travel documents. Circular C-152. The words sat on the paper, very quiet, very neatly printed.

Neat enough to feel almost cruel. For some people, those words were a grace — one last trip home before departure, one last familiar meal, one last person telling them don't push yourself too hard. For me, it read more like the administrative system politely noting: this particular door isn't for you. Feel free to look at it on your way past. I stared at that line for two seconds, then looked away. No point dwelling on it. I'd been old enough not to stop dead at the words home leave for a long time now....

In theory.

"Hoshino." I looked up. Maki was watching me. She didn't ask anything. She just slid another form slightly toward me.

"You missed this section." I followed her finger and found the B-147 footnote: Personally owned training equipment must be re-inspected by the ship's equipment officer before integration with standard gear.

"Ah." I pulled the paper closer.

"Got it."

"The Yukikaze won't let unverified personal equipment mix directly into the official gear pool," she said.

"I know."

"I'm reminding you," she said, tone unchanged.

"Not suggesting you didn't."... Right. I could hear, clearly enough, what she'd actually done — taken the two seconds I'd spent staring at home leave and given me something else to look at instead. Not obvious. Almost incidental, like a hand reaching over to turn a page. But that was exactly what made it harder to deal with. I looked down at the form and made a show of reading carefully.

"Got it. Thanks." Maki said nothing more. She opened her own handbook and went directly to the onboard gap-fill and contingency routing sections, as if home leave had never had anything to do with her — or as if she'd simply decided it wasn't going to take up any of her attention right now.... Terrifying. This woman ran cold enough sometimes that you'd wonder if she had a pulse. But that was exactly how I knew the thing she'd just done wasn't accidental. She'd seen it.

And she'd papered over those two seconds without making anything of it. That realization was annoying. Very annoying. Because once I started noticing things like that, I'd end up memorizing the exact angle at which she'd pushed that paper toward me. Which was not a healthy way for a person about to board a warship to be using their brain.

"They moved it forward..." Roy finally said, still holding his handbook, expression difficult to read.

"So the time we were counting on to adjust our schedules — that's just gone?"

"More or less." Ash was leaning against the table edge, flipping through his own copy, voice steady to the point of clinical.

"Which is why I said this morning — nobody treats this as something that's still far away." Aida raised her hand with cheerful deliberateness.

"I have a very practical question."

"Go."

"If someone gets lost inside the destroyer" — she held up the handbook — "do they follow this to find their way out, or do they go straight to lost-property protocol?" Half a second of silence. The Student Council officer's expression barely moved. He had apparently accepted that this household occasionally produced surplus personality during administrative briefings. Ash looked at Aida.

"First, confirm whether that someone is you." Aida smiled.

"What if it is?"

"Handle both simultaneously," Ash said.

"Search and rescue running parallel to the incident report."... Thorough. That answer was so complete I couldn't find a single thing wrong with it. Jess was still locked in combat with Form B-147.

"Who designed two sets of duty uniform, one set of off-duty clothing?" She looked genuinely aggrieved.

"Did they ever once consider that human beings occasionally want to look like they weren't just pulled out of a training crate?"

"The ship isn't your runway," Evelyn said, evenly.

"I'm not asking for a runway! I'm asking for the bare minimum of sartorial dignity!"

"If dignity is the priority," D said, finally looking up, "start by cutting the silver scarf." Jess went rigid, as if struck somewhere vital.

"It's not silver!"

"It catches the light," Akari said.

"That's called texture!"

"That's called a guaranteed way to get flagged by any NCO who finds it inconvenient," Ash said. I turned my head and coughed. Not because anything was wrong with my throat. Because if I didn't do something, I was going to laugh. Of everyone in this room, Jess's real talent might not be logistics at all — it might be the precise, almost artistic ability to express maximum personality at the exact moment personality was least welcome.

The Student Council officers, seeing that everyone had their materials, began wrapping up.

"Move-in registration opens tomorrow at 0800 at the East Harbor Staging Area. Please arrive within your assigned window. Late arrivals will be deferred; no supplementary slots will be provided." He tucked the remaining notices into the folder.

"Additionally, anyone applying for home leave travel documents must submit within three days. The Student Council does not accept late applications." Three days. I said it once, internally. How considerate. Even the time they gave you to decide whether to go face something — or not — was sized like a homework deadline. The officers nodded, collected themselves, and left. The door closed. The room went quiet for a moment. Not empty quiet.

The kind where everyone was processing things just accelerated in their own way. Aida moved first. She stood the handbook upright and flipped through it with quick, casual snaps, the way you'd sample a novel you weren't sure about yet.

"Hmm —" She nodded with exaggerated gravity.

"I like this one. They actually included a line about bathing schedules may be adjusted based on combat requirements. The Federation really does know exactly which part of a person to break first."

"Hygiene habits," Evelyn said.

"No. The soul," Aida said, with complete conviction. Harvey was already on his feet. He clearly had no intention of spending any more of his life discussing shower schedules.

"I'm going to check the engineering section's move-in specs," he said, already moving.

"Anyone who brings non-compliant electronics aboard, I'll throw them off the ship along with their equipment."

"That's probably illegal," Roy said.

"Only if someone catches me," Harvey said, and was gone. After he left, Roy looked down at his handbook and smiled faintly, without much humor.

"Honestly — the early departure caught me off guard. I'm not used to it yet." Lan was beside him, reviewing the logistics and supplies section, voice steady.

"That's normal. Just don't let not used to it turn into a mistake." Roy glanced at him. Brief. Quiet. And because I now possessed certain intelligence I hadn't asked for, that glance carried considerably more content than it would have twenty-four hours ago.... Fine. I decided to be a decent person. At least this morning, I wasn't going to keep staring at the kind of charged air that Jess could detonate again with a single sentence. I looked back down at my Federal Destroyer Basic Handbook.

I landed on a page titled: Procedure for Personnel Who Become Disoriented Onboard. I stopped. The gist: stay calm, identify your section number, do not wander, locate the nearest ship map, contact the duty officer if necessary. I read it and thought: the Federation's distrust of human beings is really quite comprehensive. Or maybe they'd just met enough people who genuinely managed to get lost.

"Hoshino." That voice again. I looked up. Maki was looking at the page in my hands. Her expression was calm in a way that was almost excessive.

"You're reading the disorientation procedure?"

"... Opened to it by accident." She gave a small nod.

"That page will be more useful for Jess."

"Excuse me!" Jess's head snapped up.

"Are you implying I'm going to get lost on a destroyer?" Maki looked at her.

"I'm assessing probable risk." I dropped my head immediately. No. That line was too much, and too perfectly her — I couldn't hold the corner of my mouth anymore. Jess looked personally affronted by the universe.

"Have you all been using me as morning warm-up material lately?"

"Not lately," Akari said, with quiet precision.

"Consistently."

"You shut up!" The tension in the room eased, slightly. Only slightly. Because no matter how much noise we made, the table still had all of it sitting right there — the notices, Form B-147, Circular C-152, the moved-up departure, the move-in registration, the handbook. Black ink on white paper, very quietly telling you: this is no longer something you have time to think about slowly. Starting tomorrow, you'd be moving your things onto the ship piece by piece. Cutting your life down to portable dimensions.

Pressing whatever you hadn't finished sorting through into regulation size. And then, at some point that had just been moved earlier without asking you, leaving with the Yukikaze. I closed the handbook. The cover made a soft, flat sound against my palm.