Chương 257: 104. Restless in Dark

Stepping out of the department store felt like surfacing from a dream that had been too bright, too soft, and far too good at stripping away your defenses. The commercial strip outside the port was still blazing away, refusing to admit how close it sat to the front line. Wind cut between the buildings and caught the paper and plastic bags in my hands, setting off a dry, rustling crackle. Not loud. But more than enough to drive one point home — Once you start shopping, stopping is genuinely difficult.

It's not so different from gambling addiction, honestly. You go in planning to buy one towel and one bottle of shampoo. Mentally it's no different from I'll just place one bet. Then somehow, before you've registered what happened, you're holding five kinds of face masks, three lip balms, and a small army of bottles with names that sound like chemical weapons and functions that sound like they evolve on their own at midnight. I looked down at the haul in my hands. Deep hydration. Night repair. Exfoliating care.

Sensitive-skin soothing. Radiance boost. Radiance boost. I'm a military cadet. What exactly was I boosting the radiance for? Was I supposed to look a little more luminous before the main battery fired?

"What are you thinking about now?" Maki walked beside me, tone flat as someone asking about the weather.

"I'm thinking," I said, hefting the bags, "that department stores might be an illegal but quietly tolerated large-scale financial weapon." Maki glanced at the pile.

"At least they don't explode."

"That's optimistic," I said.

"I have zero confidence in the ingredients of at least three of these bottles."

"That's because you can't read them."

"Isn't that scarier?" She didn't answer that one. She just reached over, naturally, and took the heavier bag out of my left hand — no pause, no asking, no room for discussion, like she was simply redistributing supply weight on a march. I looked at my suddenly lighter hand, feeling complicated about it. Some people are good at saying let me carry that for you. Maki Kushima isn't that kind of person. She's already taken it before you've had time to refuse.

If she ever decided to run a coup, her success rate would be genuinely alarming. We followed the main street a while before she steered us down a quieter side road. The crowd thinned out fast. The storefronts shifted register — from the department store's drag everyone inside and make them spend extravagance to something more practical: business hotels, convenience stores, drugstores, a few diners built to feed ship crews. Then I saw where we were staying tonight. A completely unremarkable hotel. Standard. Chain.

Commercial. Aggressively incapable of suggesting any dangerous development whatsoever. Clean exterior, low-key signage, two potted plants by the door that I suspected were half plastic. No crystal chandeliers, no holographic fountain, no décor that screamed one night here costs more than the Yukikaze's secondary battery maintenance budget. I let out a quiet breath.

Honestly, walking out of the department store, I'd had one genuine, split-second fear — that Maki was about to lose her mind completely, produce a black card without changing expression, and book a five-star presidential suite with a private butler, a panoramic bath, and a bed big enough to hold a tactical briefing. And then I'd have had to stand there trying to work out whether to take my shoes off first, or just apologize to the universe directly. Fortunately, no.

Maki was more practical than I'd given her credit for. In theory, that was safe. The problem is, safety has its own way of being dangerous. Because if she didn't need luxury, didn't need atmosphere, didn't need any external assist at all to knock my pulse sideways — then the problem wasn't the environment. It was me.... A genuinely terrible conclusion. We stepped into the lobby. No human at the desk.

Just a check-in unit, built to vaguely resemble a person, its joints moving at a stiffness that sat just wrong enough to register. The screen on its chest blinked IN SERVICE. When its head rotated toward us, it produced a faint grinding sound that crawled straight up my scalp.

"Wel... come... to... our... ho... tel..." The synthesized voice dragged itself out, one syllable at a time. Hard to describe, exactly. If I had to try — a concierge who'd died of overwork years ago, had his soul stuffed into a bargain-bin voice module from twenty years back, and was still clocking in shifts posthumously. Maki, entirely unfazed, scanned in the reservation.

I watched her run the terminal — data, ID, room type, deposit — smooth enough that it looked like she brought people to hotels on a regular basis. That thought immediately sent my brain somewhere deeply unhelpful. Thankfully, the robot cut back in and dragged me out of it.

"Your... room... is... on... the... se... venth... floor..." It raised a stiff arm and handed over the keycards.

"Break... fast... is... served... from... se... ven... to... ten... a. m... Have... a... plea... sant... eve... ning..." Drawn out that long, pleasant evening didn't sound welcoming at all. It sounded like it knew something I didn't want it to know. I stared at it for two seconds and murmured to Maki:"Is that thing about to die?" She took the cards.

"It's still issuing keys."

"That's a low bar."

"Realistic, for a frontline hotel."

"The front line really is a place that keeps finding new ways to lower the baseline for human happiness."

"You're only noticing that today?"

"No. Just confirming it again." The elevator came fast. Once the doors shut, the street noise and the lobby's cheap air freshener cut off together, leaving only the faint hum of the car rising and the occasional rustle of our bags. Seven floors isn't high. I have no idea why those few seconds felt worse than an FTL insertion. The mirrored doors threw back what I looked like right now — jacket still on, hair mussed by the night wind and the mall's air conditioning, arms full of branded bags.

Overall impression: someone dragged straight through mandatory re-education by civilized society. Maki stood beside me, carrying just as much, breathing steady in a way that felt almost unreasonable.

"Don't you ever get tired?" I couldn't help asking.

"I'm fine."

"What exactly is your baseline for fine?"

"My usual."

"Called it." I sighed.

"Comparing myself to you is an unhealthy activity." Maki turned her head.

"You're only just learning that. Still not too late."

"That doesn't sound like reassurance."

"It wasn't meant to be." The elevator chimed open. The seventh-floor corridor had dark carpet, lighting neither bright nor dim, doors lined up on both sides with a precision that looked measured by ruler. No character to speak of. Boring, even. But exactly because of that, it felt trustworthy. No surprises. No traps. No decor choices that might push things in a strange direction. At least, not on the surface. Maki stopped at Room 714, swiped the card. Green light. The lock clicked open.

I followed her in, and the first thing I saw was — The most standard business twin room in existence. Two single beds, one by the window, one against the inner wall, a small nightstand wedged between them. A desk against the far wall, a modest flat screen, a kettle, a mini-fridge, two mugs stamped with the hotel logo. The bathroom was a prefab unit, the door aggressively white — the kind of white that seemed to be trying very hard to suggest nothing dangerous could ever happen behind it. I let out half a breath.

Not a single bed. Good. The Federation wasn't quite trying to break me today. The other half of that breath got stuck somewhere in my chest and didn't move. Because even though it wasn't a single bed — it was still the same room. Same door. Same quiet. Same tonight. I stood in the doorway, bags still in hand, and something strange settled over me. I knew perfectly well this was just an ordinary hotel room. A boring one, even.

But maybe that was exactly the problem — when a room is this ordinary, there's nothing left for anything to hide behind. No moody lighting to take the blame. No expensive décor to misread the atmosphere against. No it was just the vibe to deflect responsibility onto. If your pulse still misbehaves in a room like this — that's entirely on you.

"Clear." Maki slotted the keycard to bring the lights up, set her bags by the desk, and — before she even sat down — went to check the window latch, the deadbolt, the bathroom, and the emergency exit diagram on the back of the door. I watched her work through the whole sweep and couldn't help it.

"Are we checking in, or setting up a forward operating base?"

"Confirming the environment first," she said.

"What exactly is going to happen in a seventh-floor business hotel room?"

"You never make that call first, in an unfamiliar place."

"... Yes, ma'am." Maki glanced back.

"I'm not your CO."

"You're doing a very convincing impression of one right now."

"Habit."

"I genuinely believe you check emergency exits in your sleep."

"If it helps me rest easier, there's nothing wrong with that." I was gearing up for another line, but then I watched her crouch down to check under the beds, and quietly swallowed the rest of it. She wasn't exaggerating. She just lived like a pre-op checklist that never missed a single line item. Whereas I lived like the kind of person who looks fine right up until the critical moment, at which point it turns out I forgot the charger. Maki finished the sweep and finally straightened.

"Window bed, or the inside one?" I blinked.

"Either's fine."

"Then take the window."

"Why?"

"You like looking outside." I opened my mouth and found nothing ready to say. Because I'd never consciously thought about that myself. But she said it so naturally, like it was just a small conclusion she'd filed away a while ago, nothing worth remarking on. All I managed was a dry:"... You really do watch closely."

"Mm." She admitted it with zero guilt. It hit me, belatedly, that the most dangerous thing about sharing a room with someone like this was never the physical distance. It was that you couldn't even fake obliviousness for very long. We unpacked the bags onto the desk, the beds, the luggage rack, one by one. What had looked borderline reasonable inside the department store took on the visual weight of a crime scene the second it hit the hotel room. A stack of face masks. A row of bottles. Three lip balms.

And a few things I still wasn't entirely sure why I'd bought, beyond Maki's you'll need it eventually. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. I looked at the pile and stayed quiet for a few seconds.

"Did we just move half the toiletries floor back here?" Maki was already sorting face wash and skincare onto the bathroom counter. She didn't even turn around.

"Just covering what you were missing."

"Do I really look that short on things, normally?"

"Yes."

"... You answered that fast."

"Because the facts are clear." Thanks so much. I pulled the new loungewear and change of clothes out of the bag and laid them on the window-side bed. Clean, soft, carrying a faint mix of new fabric and department-store packaging. The smell was unfamiliar. Unfamiliar enough to throw me off for a second. On the ship, everything smelled like collective survival — used, washed, dried, sterilized, by too many people over too many rotations. These things smelled like they'd been prepared specifically for tonight.

That thought was not helpful. I kicked it out immediately, before I could slide any further down that particular slope.

"I'll shower first." I grabbed the clothes, talking slightly faster than usual — like whoever claimed the bathroom first got to hold onto some scrap of psychological initiative. Maki looked up.

"Go ahead." Completely ordinary. Which was exactly why it didn't help me calm down at all. It was like we're spending tonight alone in the same room hadn't registered as something worth reacting to. Or she'd registered it just fine, and simply had far better control over the fact than I did. Either way, irritating. I took the clothes and the new face wash, shampoo, and body wash into the bathroom, shut the door, locked it, and stared at myself in the mirror for two seconds. My ears were a little red.

I looked at that face and thought that if any instructor were standing here right now, they'd be deeply disappointed in my psychological stress tolerance. I held it together through live-round loading. I didn't throw up through an FTL insertion. And now, taking a shower in an ordinary business hotel with Maki Kushima sitting outside, I was acting like a kid on their first night away from home. Pathetic. I turned on the tap. Hot water came fast.

The new shampoo smelled faintly of flowers and fruit — a completely different universe from the ship-issue soap, which operated on the philosophy of if it gets you clean, you've done your duty to the taxpayers. Washing with it, I couldn't help wondering if three days of this might genuinely corrupt me. By the time I'd finished, dried off halfway, and changed into the new loungewear, the air in the room had already shifted from when we'd first walked in. Maki had finished organizing.

The desk had more order to it now — charging cables connected, comm units placed within easy reach, jackets hung up, even the shopping bags folded and stacked neatly in the corner. She sat on the edge of her bed, rolling one cuff up, probably about to take her turn next. She looked up when I came out. Her gaze lasted a moment. Brief enough that nobody else in the room would have thought twice. But I felt it clearly. Not a glance. Not a check. She actually looked at me. Then she said:"Fits well." Done for.

That sentence was completely unremarkable, on paper. It landed harder than any deliberate compliment could have. I stood in the bathroom doorway, hand still on the handle, and felt every bit of heat the shower had just washed off come straight back into my ears.

"Do you have to say things like that in the exact tone of a quality inspection report?" Maki's expression didn't move.

"How else should I say it?"

"Something like—" I stalled out, realized coaching her through this was a genuinely terrible idea, and cut myself off.

"Never mind. Forget it." She looked like she almost wanted to smile, decided it wasn't worth the effort, gave a quiet "Mm," and stood. As she passed me, she stopped for a second, reached over, and tucked the tag that had folded out of my collar back into place. Just once. Her fingertips brushed the fabric. Light. Quick. No lingering. But it felt exactly like someone had run a very low current along the back of my neck — a numbness climbing straight up my spine, with absolutely zero regard for military discipline.

"There," she said. I opened my mouth and, after a genuine internal struggle, managed:"... Thanks." Maki nodded, gathered her own clothes, and went into the bathroom. The door shut. I finally let out a slow breath. Then I sat down on the edge of the bed like a coward and stared at nothing for two seconds. The room had gone terrifyingly quiet. A minute ago there'd been talking, things to sort, motion to hide inside.

Now that Maki was behind the bathroom door and the water had started running, the room seemed determined to amplify its own silence. I looked down at the loungewear. Soft fabric. The fit really was right.... How had she even known? No — wrong question. The question was why I still cared. I grabbed the box of face masks and started tearing it open, purely to give my hands something to do so my brain would stop drifting toward the bathroom door.

The second I opened the packet, the instructions and ingredient list read out like scripture from an alien civilization. Deep-sea mineral repair. Ceramide hydration. Hyaluronic acid moisture lock. I'd never studied a live-round loading chart this hard in my life. Now, apparently, I was researching face masks. The world is genuinely absurd. I was still staring at the instructions when the water in the bathroom shut off. My heart did something equally pathetic in sympathy.

I gave up, slapped the mask flat onto my face, and treated it like a layer of emergency armor. Good. Whatever happened next, at least I could pretend I wasn't me. When Maki came out, her hair was slightly damp. She'd changed into a simple, dark loungewear set — no jacket, no rank tabs, none of the hard lines that kept her separate from everyone else on the bridge. Just clean, soft, quiet. Honestly, the sight was worse than I'd expected.

Because she didn't look like the perpetually composed XO candidate who made your teeth ache. She looked like someone very close to me, who was staying here tonight. I sat rigid on the edge of my bed, doing my best impression of a face-masked zombie who'd given up on life entirely. Maki looked at me. Looked again.

"What are you doing?"

"Hydrating. Locking in moisture. Boosting radiance," I said, flat.

"You said I lived too carelessly. I'm undergoing civilizational correction." She was quiet for a second.

"Looks like an accident scene."

"Thank you. Very helpful feedback."

"At least it proves it's on properly."

"Your idea of comfort is genuinely broken." She didn't argue. She just walked to the desk, plugged her comm unit in, and opened a mask packet for herself. I stared at her.

"... You're doing one too?"

"Mm."

"Aren't you already living a fairly refined life?"

"It's not about that." She tore the packet open.

"The wind ran long today. The room's dry." She said it so matter-of-factly that I had, for a second, the absurd sense that live-round loading on the bridge, an FTL jump, nearly betting four hundred and fifty lives on a docking error, and the two of us sitting in a business hotel room with face masks on were somehow points on the exact same line. If the Academy ever turned this kind of tonal whiplash into a training module, the pass rate would be spectacularly, historically bad.

Maki sat down on the other bed, less than a meter away. Two girls, two dead-white masks, a silence quiet enough to run cheap horror-movie credits over. I suddenly wanted to laugh.

"What?" Maki asked.

"Nothing," I said.

"I was just thinking — if Jess barged in right now, she'd probably think we were summoning frontline ghosts." Maki was quiet a beat.

"She'd make sure you looked terrible in the shot first."

"I have no argument."

"Then she'd send it to everyone."

"Also agreed." Maki gave a small "Mm," like she'd just closed out a risk assessment.

"Shimo."

"Mm?"

"Sleep properly tonight." I looked over at her. She sat on the edge of the other bed, tone even, mask still on. It should have been a funny image. Somehow it wasn't. Because that wasn't an order, and it wasn't routine concern. It landed like something lighter than both — but real all the same.

"We're going out again tomorrow," she said.

"I know."

"You're already tired today." I'd been about to push back — say I wasn't, say this was nothing, say I could go another eight hours easy. The words reached my mouth and I couldn't be bothered with them. Because she was right. And hearing it said that calmly made any show of toughness feel specifically childish. So all I gave her, in the end, was a low:"Mm." Maki nodded. Didn't push. Which was, of course, the real problem — because once the quiet came back, I could hear my own heartbeat again.... Pathetic.

If someone asked what it felt like, being alone in a room with Maki Kushima — I'd probably say: It's like a grenade with the pin already pulled, sitting quietly on the table, within arm's reach. You know it hasn't gone off. You know it might not go off at all. And that's exactly why you stay aware of it, every single second, the whole night through. The worst part is — I genuinely couldn't tell anymore which one of us was the grenade. Face masks, in theory, exist for skincare.

At this point, though, I was becoming fairly convinced their actual function was to strip a person of facial expression control, and shove an already strange mood forcibly further into strange. Take right now, for instance. Maki and I sat on the edges of our respective beds, dead-white masks on our faces, the room quiet enough that all I could hear was the low hum of the AC and the faint wash of port traffic somewhere far outside the window.

If someone kicked the door in right now — Jess, say — she probably wouldn't even ask what we were doing. She'd scream first. Film it second. Then broadcast the footage shipwide, captioned: Two female cadets suspected of conducting illegal midnight séance in hotel room. The image made me laugh a little. Maki turned her head. Her mask sat far more evenly than mine — smooth enough that she'd apparently turned even skincare into standard procedure.

"What's funny?"

"I was thinking," I said, leaning back against the headboard, trying to sound like a functional human being, "if Jess rushed in right now, she'd assume we were trying to raise the ghosts of the front line." Maki was quiet a beat.

"She'd get an unflattering angle of you first."

"Completely agreed."

"Then forward it to everyone."

"Even more agreed." Maki made a small "Mm" — the tone of someone finishing a risk assessment. Watching her sit there, too composed as always, I found the whole thing funny.

"You've really got her behavioral patterns mapped out."

"It's not difficult."

"If she heard you say that, she'd wail about being misunderstood."

"She'd deny it first."

"Then admit it."

"Then blame someone else."

"... That's accurate enough that I almost feel sorry for her." I pressed the edge of the mask down against my cheek as I talked. Cool, faintly damp against the skin — a texture that had no business belonging to the same day as everything else that had happened in it. Bridge. Live rounds. FTL. Docking. Shore leave. Steak. Department store. Hotel. Face masks. Cut this entire day into a highlight reel and the tonal whiplash alone would make the editor want to resign.

"Maki."

"Mm?"

"What do you think of this port?" The question surprised even me, the second it was out. It wasn't the kind of thing I'd normally ask. Too ordinary. The kind of question that belongs between normal friends, on a normal walk, during a normal holiday. Maybe that's exactly why it was worth asking. Maki didn't answer right away. She looked toward the window, her gaze settling on the fragment of city cut into pieces by night and neon.

"It knows how to live."

"... That's a very abstract review."

"But accurate." Maki drew her legs in slightly and settled back against the headboard. Her voice wasn't loud, but every word came through clean.

"This place sits too close to the front line — close enough that even the payment systems have to leave room for the enemy's currency. The shops, the hotels, the restaurants, the people on the street — everyone knows the line could roll through again at any moment. So instead of trusting in order, they trust in getting through today." I listened without interrupting. Maki didn't waste words as a rule. When she chose to say more than usual, it was rarely for nothing.

"That sounds bleak."

"Not bleak," she said.

"Practiced." I didn't answer. Because that single word landed like a small, unremarkable knife. Looked ordinary. Went in deep anyway. Practiced. Practiced at staying alive. Practiced at running a business on the edge of a war. Practiced at accepting the Federal flag today and maybe the Imperial flag tomorrow. Practiced at a steakhouse taking two currencies at once. Practiced at finding the gaps between shelling and ceasefire and using them to keep going.

None of that had anything to do with what they taught us on the bridge. I let my head rest back against the wall.

"I had a strange feeling today."

"What kind?"

"Like—" I paused, trying to find a way to say it that didn't sound overwrought.

"Like I'd always assumed living just meant doing what you're supposed to do. On time. Correctly. No mistakes. Don't get anyone else killed, and don't die first yourself." I turned the unopened second mask packet over in my hands a couple of times.

"But we came out today, and I kept noticing people out here don't live like that at all." Maki watched me. Didn't cut in.

"They complain about room rates. Argue over how well-done a steak should be. Lose all reason during a department store sale. Research which shampoo suits their hair type. Leave a hotel one star because the check-in robot's voice was too creepy." I laughed a little before I'd even finished saying it.

"Stupid, right?"

"Not stupid." She answered fast. Fast enough that I looked up. She still had the mask on, but underneath it her expression was serious in a way that felt slightly out of place.

"That's life too," she said. The room went quiet for a second. The AC kept running. The light outside kept flickering. Somewhere down the corridor, footsteps passed — light, quick, gone again. But something about the air felt different after that sentence landed. That's life too. Not rest. Not a reward. Not some perk scraped off the edge of a readiness schedule. Life itself. I stared at the thin blanket over my knees, and for once I didn't have anything to say. That was rare.

If there's one thing I've never been short on, it's mouth.

"Shimo."

"Mm?"

"You ate a proper meal today. You bought what you needed. You didn't push yourself to the breaking point during docking." She said it in the same flat tone she'd use to list objective facts. Which made it exactly worse.

"That's good."... That line was cheating. Compared to the kind of thing that makes your ears catch fire on the spot, this low-temperature approval is worse in its own way. It doesn't flare. It doesn't burn you all at once. It's more like charcoal — quiet on the outside, slowly heating your bones from the inside until you notice it's already too late. I gave a dry cough, mostly to prove I still had basic motor function.

"Since when are you this close to a normal human being?" Maki looked at me.

"I'm not, usually?"

"Usually you're more like some self-ambulating appendix to the disciplinary code." Something almost like a smile crossed her eyes. Very faint.

"And yet you still followed me out here to stay in a hotel."

"..." The line wasn't loud. It barely even qualified as teasing. But coming from her, it had the specific effect of leaving me unsure which part to argue with first. I stayed quiet for two seconds, then dragged the topic sideways by force.

"Jess has probably turned the entire port inside out by now."

"She hasn't."

"You're that sure?"

"Her stamina and her drive are only sufficient for complaining. Not for an actual search."

"That's viciously accurate."

"I thought that was your specialty."

"No — mine has more literary quality."

"Jess doesn't merit literary quality." I nearly laughed out loud.

"If she heard you say that, she'd drop to the floor and announce her soul had been trampled."

"Her soul is highly resilient."

"Like a cactus?"

"Slightly more inconvenient than that." I pressed the edge of the mask down against my cheek, and something surfaced.

"By the way — Roy and Lan. Do you actually think something's going on?" Maki was quiet a beat.

"It's not impossible."

"That's a conservative answer."

"Insufficient data."

"I thought you'd just hand down a verdict."

"That's Jess's job." Fair enough. Jess filled in the story when the evidence ran short. Maki was the one who took a knife to the excess the second the story started getting away from itself.

"That said," Maki added after a pause, "Roy isn't the type to disappear without a reason."

"Lan isn't the type to wander off with just anyone, either."

"Which is why it's worth noting."

"... You sound like you're interrogating a suspect."

"Occupational habit."

"You have occupational habits at fifteen. The Federation should really reconsider its curriculum." Maki let that one pass. She checked the time instead.

"About time."

"Time for what?"

"The masks." I blinked, and before I'd finished processing it, she was already up and crossing the room toward me. Two steps. Maybe three. On the bridge, that distance would mean nothing — wouldn't even register as closing a safety gap. But the room was too quiet, the light too soft, the beds too close, and there were only the two of us in it. With every step she took, whatever paper-thin perimeter I'd set up in my head folded backward, one panel at a time.

"I can do it my—" I hadn't even finished the sentence before Maki was standing at the edge of my bed.

"Don't move." She said it quietly. And I didn't.... Pathetic. She leaned down and reached out, slowly peeling the mask away from my face, starting at one corner. Careful. Like she was worried about pulling too hard. As the cool, damp sheet lifted off my skin, I could feel her fingertips brush the side of my face here and there — brief, precise, entirely too clean about it. No deliberate lingering. No unnecessary ambiguity. Perfectly proper, if anything.

And it was exactly because it was so proper that it was the worst possible thing. Because I had no excuse left to blame this heartbeat on anything else.

"There." She folded the used mask, dropped it in the trash can beside the bed, and looked at me.

"Your hair's not fully dry." I reached up and touched the ends on instinct.

"Is it?"

"It is." She picked up the towel she'd left on the desk and, completely naturally, moved around behind me. I went rigid.

"Maki."

"Mm?"

"I really can do this my—""I know." She said it. Her hands didn't stop. The moment the towel settled over my hair, I went completely still. Not because I'd suddenly become cooperative. Because I genuinely had no idea what to do with myself. She wasn't rough about it. If anything, she was almost too patient — working from the ends up to the nape of my neck, drawing the last of the water out bit by bit. The towel was soft. Even through my hair, I could feel the steady warmth of her palms.

None of this was dramatic, on its face. It was still more dangerous than plenty of things that were. I sat on the edge of the bed with my spine locked straight, like someone enduring a completely unnecessary piece of battlefield first aid they were too afraid to interrupt. My ears were probably some color that had no business existing on a human face, and since my back was to her, there wasn't even a point pretending I had my expression under control.

"... I'm not injured," I muttered.

"I know."

"Then why is this post-op care."

"Because if you leave it, you'll have a headache tomorrow."

"How do you know everything?"

"Common sense." There it was again. This woman's greatest skill was taking every single thing that scrambled my pulse and filing it neatly under common sense. It was basically cheating. When she finally lifted the towel away, I let out a slow breath, like surfacing from water with no visible bottom.

"There," she said. I turned to look at her. She was standing close. Close enough that if I leaned forward even slightly, I'd catch her arm. Her hair was half-dry, the collar of her loungewear perfectly straight, her eyes as level as always in a way that made me want to argue with the universe about it. And that was exactly what I hated most right now. Because my side of things was a complete mess, and she looked like nothing had happened at all.

"Doing this," I said, holding her gaze, trying to keep my voice somewhere in the neighborhood of composed, "makes it very easy for someone to get the wrong idea." Maki didn't step back. She just looked down at me and let two seconds pass.

"Do you?"... That was vicious. Quietly vicious. Without a smile. The kind of vicious where she already knew exactly what the problem was, and wanted me to say it out loud myself anyway. My throat tightened. I nearly choked on nothing.

"That's not what I meant."

"I know." She finally stepped back half a pace and draped the towel over the chair.

"Just reminding you — dry your hair properly."

"... Right." It was a stupid answer. But it was about the full extent of my language skills at that moment. Maki gave me a look that seemed to reserve final judgment on my current intelligence, and finally just said, evenly:"Sleep, Shimo." Her voice wasn't low. Wasn't especially soft. But the way she said my name was enough to make my heart stop cooperating. I stayed quiet for a few seconds, then lay back without further argument. Maki got up and killed the main light, leaving only the dim glow of the bedside lamp.

The room dropped low, the quiet expanding around it, port neon bleeding in past the edge of the curtain to cut a faint line of light across the wall. She sat back down on her own bed, apparently checking the comm unit's alarm and tomorrow's schedule. I lay on my side, watching that line of light, and it hit me how long today had actually been. Long enough to feel like two days. Fast enough that some of it hadn't even finished processing yet. The steakhouse. The owner. Imperial marks. The department store.

The check-in robot. The face masks. That towel, just now. The most absurd part was that out of everything — the front line, the war, all of it — the thing keeping me awake right now was the completely, aggressively normal way Maki Kushima had dried my hair. If the Federation knew I was burning willpower on this, they'd probably start looking into recouping my tuition. Fabric shifted on the other bed. Then the click of her bedside lamp going off. The room went fully dark.

Just the faintest wash of night left, and the breathing neither of us could quite hide, given we were both still awake. I closed my eyes, assuming that would move things along. A second later, Maki's voice dropped into the dark, very quietly.

"Today wasn't bad — coming out with you." I opened my eyes. Went completely still for two seconds. Then slowly buried my face a little deeper into the pillow, just in case the dark itself could see what a mess my expression was right now.

"... That line," I said, quietly, "makes it very hard to sleep." In the dark, Maki didn't answer right away. After a moment, I heard her say, just as lightly:"Then take your time."... Finished. Falling asleep early tonight was clearly not happening.