Chương 356: 154.Solitude 1

When I walked out with the others — people who'd just nearly been itemized and inspected as public property by every Federal ministry in sight — the air outside was, absurdly, warm. The building behind us had been packed with mourning, official language, sobbing, bootsteps, camera flashes, and high-grade bastards trying to fold people back into forms. And the second the door opened, there was sunlight. Not the solemn, the-universe-mourns-with-you kind. Just plain, ordinary, completely inconsiderate daylight.

Then the daylight got swallowed by families. Literally swallowed. The half-orderly crowd surged forward like they'd received some divine signal — or, more accurately, like owners who'd finally been allowed to open the kennel doors. People crying. People shouting names. Someone nearly tripping mid-run. Someone in a uniform stiffer than ship armor charging in with an expression like they were one second from dropping to their knees and thanking every god they'd ever heard of.

Standing there, I felt less like I'd walked out of a memorial and more like lost property being wheeled up to a counter, while a clerk with a megaphone announced: — All guardians, please present identification to collect your respective children. — Items returned damaged, crying, or foul-mouthed are non-refundable. I almost laughed. Then I didn't. Because the first one collected was Maki Kushima. Or more precisely — Maki wasn't collected. The entire world she belonged to simply reached over and took her back.

Aki had already appeared at her side. The two of them together made a strange picture, like a deliberately composed contrast: one colder, tighter, pulled taut like a wire; the other freshly cried-out, restraint fully reassembled, steadiness locked back into place. The crowd parted naturally for the Kushima car. I followed that lane with my eyes and found a stretch limousine that didn't qualify as a car anymore.

That was civic infrastructure — a black monument built to grind civilian dignity under its wheels on the capital's main boulevard. Before getting in, Maki glanced back at me. Not the lingering kind. Not a shojo-manga over-the-shoulder look. More like a confirmation: you're alive. Good. That's enough for now. I'd started to lift a hand when Aki already had the door open for her.

The motion was so natural it stung — natural enough that I understood something: sometimes having a home doesn't mean someone hugs you and cries your name. Sometimes it means the door's already open before you get there. I pulled my gaze away and caught Ash leaving from the other side. Completely different picture. If the Kushimas were civilization wrapped in etiquette, the Vanders were do not approach — even a father-son reunion here runs like an operational briefing.

Admiral Bayer Vander stood there, shoulders squared enough to level a bridge deck. Ash walked over. No embrace. No my son, you suffered — none of the lines humans allow themselves when they're willing to admit they're human. Bayer looked at him once. Ash nodded back. Then the two of them walked off in the same direction, one slightly ahead. Cold as hell. And yet, somehow, I didn't feel like there was nothing there. Some families don't hold you close.

Some families clear the road behind you so you never have to look back. Infuriating. I must have gotten waterlogged from all that crying at the memorial, sitting here writing emotional analysis reports on power-clan dynamics. Jess's side was more normal — or, by Jess standards, downright touching. Her parents hit her from both sides at once. She'd clearly loaded up I'm fine and this is embarrassing — and then half her face collapsed the moment she got wrapped up.

That's the trouble with Jess: most days she's a folding knife with a spring blade for a tongue, but the second she's somewhere that's actually hers, the softer metal underneath shows through. Her mother kept smoothing her hair, saying something. Her father tried to keep his dignity, gave up, and just hauled her against his chest. Jess caught my eye mid-hug and still found room to roll her eyes at me: what are you looking at, never seen a functional family before? I wanted to say: no, actually. I just waved instead.

Then D. D's side wasn't a family collecting a survivor. It was a tribe reclaiming a war chief. I swear there were at least a dozen of them — brothers, uncles, cousins, I couldn't sort them — every one looking teleported straight out of some outer-rim colony with a terrible crime rate and excellent rhythm. D stood in the middle trying to hold his usual I'm solid face, right up until two of them hooked his neck simultaneously and someone started pounding his back hard enough to echo.

He looked less like a survivor going home and more like a newly crowned exile-king. Roy and Lan's side, meanwhile, dissolved into a full-scale social accident when both families converged on the same patch of pavement. The two of them stood there with their heads lower by the second, until I genuinely wondered if those were necks or some kind of collapsible survival mechanism. My first thought, watching it: — At this rate, maybe there really will be a wedding to attend someday.

I nearly choked on my own imagination. Barely out of hell, and my brain's first move is planning someone else's reception. My conscience deserves a court-martial. But Roy's I want to evaporate face next to Lan's bury me in this sidewalk crack face was too funny not to enjoy. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. I looked around again. No Akari. No Evelyn. Some people leave like fireworks. Some leave like a notification blinking off a screen.

Those two were probably the second kind.

"Well now." A voice behind me, pitched with deliberate lightness — like someone crossing a minefield in heels and refusing to scuff the polish. I turned and found Aida, with Calando Rosen beside her.

The Defense Committee Chair looked more like exactly what he was than I'd expected — not the legendary, awe-inspiring type, but the kind of man you can tell at a glance has learned precisely how to live inside a system, fatten in the right places, and wear a uniform until proper, within bounds, never overreaching becomes a physical trait. He stepped toward me.

"You're Hoshino," he said.

"I must thank you properly. My daughter's alive because of you." I froze. Someone at his level talking to me like that hits like watching a battleship eat pudding with a teaspoon — not impossible, just something your brain needs half a second to recalibrate for.

"No," I said, straightening on instinct.

"Senpai Aida saved us more times than I can count. I should be thanking her." The words were barely out before I wanted to bite my own tongue off. Way too formal — like some stranger's soul had briefly hijacked my vocal cords, one installed specifically for social survival. Aida's expression shifted immediately.

"Hoshino. Don't talk like that. It makes my skin crawl."

"Senpai, this is called basic manners," I said, straight-faced.

"I thought your basic manners all started with the letter F."

"..." Calando nearly laughed, then years of public office training forced the curve back down. In that instant I understood exactly how Aida had become Aida. Genetics are terrifying. Some families pass down eye color. Some pass down the ability to leave someone speechless while never once breaking composure.

"In any case," Calando said, nodding, his tone a shade more formal.

"The Rosen family has taken note." Short line. Somehow heavier than the thanks before it. I'd meant to say no need, noting it won't get you a discount — but looking at Aida, I just nodded. She didn't add anything, just looked at me once before turning to go. That look didn't carry her usual senior-standard distance. Something in it loosened, briefly, then locked back down. Then she left with Calando. Just like that. Eleven people, actually scattered.

No formation, no final remarks, no cheap thank you all for your hard work. People who'd survived god-knows-how-many ways of dying together were reclaimed, one by one, by their surnames, their bloodlines, their license plates, their addresses. I stood there and stretched. My shoulders opened and every ache came flooding back with them.

For one second I genuinely felt something like well, chapter closed, how nice — like the last five minutes of a cheap anime, protagonist tilting her head back, theme song cueing up, screen about to read End of Part One. Unfortunately, reality isn't an anime. Reality is: the theme hasn't even started, and the crew's already torn down your dressing room. Once the last car pulled away, the street went abruptly, unnaturally quiet.

The space that had been packed with families, guards, drivers, secretaries, escorts, and every variety of adult trying to put people back where they belonged emptied out all at once. Wind rolled past a building's edge, lifting a scrap of paper, tugging at my jacket hem. Standing there, I finally, belatedly understood something stupid and completely accurate. — Everyone else went home. — I just don't know who that sentence applies to, for me. Strange feeling. It wasn't like I'd only just learned I was an orphan.

I've known that longer than the Federal records system has. My parents exited the parenting process with impressive efficiency — left me the debt, the name, the mess, then died on their own terms without asking permission. Most days I can joke about it, treat it like introducing some discontinued, poor-quality family meal deal. But today was different. Today I watched it grow, one instance at a time. Grow in the limousine that looked like it could carry half a constitution alongside Maki.

Grow in the silence between Ash and his father, where one nod cleared a road. Grow in the arms of Jess's parents, pressed in from both sides like they were afraid she'd vanish if they let go. Grow in the loud, chain-heavy crowd around D, treating him like something sacred. Grow in the chaos around Roy and Lan, where two sets of parents were already calculating future holiday seating. Even in Calando's the Rosen family has taken note — a few words, and Aida slotted right back into a family's coordinates.

Every version different. Every version exhausting. Every version reminding me that home isn't one object. It's a pile of different kinds of trouble, different temperatures, things you complain about — that someone still shows up to claim. And I had none of it. What did I have? A bag that had somehow gotten heavier without my noticing. A skeleton I'd hauled off the Yukikaze and out of that memorial alive.

The aftereffects two high-grade bastards left behind after treating me like a test subject and making themselves scarce. A string of experiences that would make most people set their drink down very carefully if I said them out loud. A face. A surname. That's it. I suddenly wanted to laugh. Not because it was funny — because if I didn't, the thing in my chest was going to start growing somewhere else. Not tears, not anger. More like someone threading a very fine needle through my ribcage, slowly, sewing a hole.

I took a breath. The wind was a little cold. The intersection stood empty except for traffic lights cycling on schedule, as if the universe and the administrative system had agreed: whether or not you just crawled off a death list, red means stop, green means go, please proceed according to signal. So civilized.

I thought of Calando's line, of Jess's mother's hand in her hair, of Aki opening a car door, of D nearly getting physically loaded into a van, of Roy and Lan looking one conversation away from an arranged engagement. And realized I wasn't jealous. Jealousy is too elevated a word for it. I was more like someone standing outside a shop window, watching other people's homes light up one by one, suddenly remembering I didn't even have a door to knock on.

That's when I understood: the Federation releasing you doesn't mean everyone gets caught. Some people go home. Some people just go back. And some of us are simply handed from someone else's hands back into our own. I slid my fingers into my pockets. They brushed something small and hard — a candy wrapper, probably, or a promo sticker off a cherry cola can. I didn't take it out. Just held it, like holding onto some cheap, worthless, but still technically existing proof. At least I was still standing.

At least no one could drag me back to that memorial today. At least— I learned later that sometimes the sentence that lands hardest doesn't come from anyone else. It comes from your own mouth. — So this is what it's like, having no home. Even the grief gets collected alone. Looking at the empty street, I suddenly felt very light. Not the relaxed kind. The kind where, once you have nothing left, the weight just gets smaller with it.

I let the breath out slowly, lifted my head, looked up at the capital's sky, too clean as always.

"... Alright," I said, quietly.

"Then I'll go back myself." The second it left my mouth I thought it sounded pathetic. Unfortunately, no one on this street was going to feel sorry enough to open a door for me. So I just walked, toward a direction that only vaguely qualified as a destination.