Chương 357: 154.Solitude 2

God is unreasonable. Not a religious observation. A survival fact. He doesn't pick a bright day, mental state stable, hot cocoa in hand, to gently deliver bad news. He waits until you think things have finally settled, until you're about to breathe, maybe even wondering if you can manage a hot shower tonight — and then casually slides a fresh slap across your face. Like now. I stood at the front of an unmanned bus, student ID in hand, ready to tap in. Beep. Red light. [Verification Failed.] I blinked, tried again.

Beep. [Verification Failed.] Once more. Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep— This time it lit up like it had caught a wanted fugitive, flashing an aggressive line of red across the display. I stared at the screen. My mind went blank for two seconds. Then a thought surfaced, more ominous than any contact alarm we'd ever had on the Yukikaze.... Fuck. The Academy had probably cancelled my ID. Since when did those bastards get this efficient? Equipment repair requests usually move like they need three rounds of committee review.

Revoke a student's access, and suddenly they're wolves who've smelled blood. There was still money in that e-wallet — living expenses I'd saved through legal, semi-legal, and deal with it if I get caught channels, one of the few digital assets in civilized society that had never betrayed me. And now a piece of plastic and a backend system had simply decided they didn't recognize it. I stood there feeling something close to a mouthful of blood rising in my throat.

Fortunately, this route doesn't see much traffic — just a few retirees who'd retired their tempers along with everything else, hugging groceries, newspapers, thermoses, looking like they'd long since decided Federal civilization wasn't worth getting worked up over. And since it's an unmanned bus, no driver was going to materialize with an are you trying to ride for free, miss look. Otherwise I'd probably already be off this bus, receiving a civics lecture from Transit Authority for being dramatically broke.

I stood there half a second, then — with the specific resentment of someone filing a complaint they already know will go nowhere — raised my other hand and pressed my Federal military ID band to the sensor. I almost never use it for the bus. Simple reason: the second it registers as a fare card, the whole system flips into a patriotic mode so absurd it makes you want to self-destruct. Sure enough, right on cue, the bus's sickly-sweet synthetic voice chimed:"Welcome aboard, Lieutenant Hoshino.

The nation thanks you for your service."

"..." I wanted to rip the band and the card reader off the wall and swallow them both. Knew it. The two aunties up front with shopping bags looked up. An old man in back peered over his reading glasses. Even a dozing elderly woman blinked awake, scanning me from hairline to boots like a barcode reader — like I wasn't a cadet fresh off a ship, but a discount item that had fallen out of a recruitment poster.

I walked to the back, expressionless, mentally cursing the ancestors of whoever designed the Federal military's public transit audio package. Lieutenant. The nation thanks you for your service. Sounds lovely. As if the system saying it sweetly enough could repackage nearly dying on the Yukikaze, being used as living testimony at a memorial, and standing at a street corner watching everyone else get collected by their families — into some kind of loyalty points worth redeeming.

I took a window seat and leaned my head against the cold glass. The city slid past. The capital at dusk is always cleanly fake — streetlights at exactly the right brightness, trees trimmed exactly right, facades white enough to look like every brick passed civil-service training. This city is good at holding everything at presentable, like someone who straightens their tie no matter what disaster's underway. My reflection stared back.

Hair a mess, color not great, the fatigue under my eyes not yet fully evacuated from the ship. I'd just extricated myself from that whole each family reclaims their own spectacle, and now I was on a near-empty bus, using a military band to pay my own fare home.... If this counts as a triumphant return, the Federation's standards for triumph are impressively cheap. The bus was quiet — quiet enough that everything I'd been suppressing under the crowd noise, the limos, the crying, started surfacing again.

Maki and Aki in that limo built to carry half a constitution. When the door opened, for a second I genuinely thought it wasn't a pickup car but the Kushima family's dedicated device for retrieving heirs — high-end, soundproofed, beautifully wrapped. Ash and his father leaving the other way, not one raised word between them, cold enough to illustrate a military manual. But I knew something lived in that cold. Some families don't hold you. Some clear the road so you don't have to look back.

Jess's parents pressing in from both sides like she'd disappear if they loosened their grip. She'd glared back at me — a warning not to laugh. Impossible not to. Not a touching reunion; a minor kidnapping where the kidnappers happened to be her biological parents. D's family needed no explanation — a crew teleported straight from some starport's underground music scene, every brother built to headline a show while running security simultaneously.

Watching him get swallowed into the van looked less like a survivor coming home than a street king being escorted back to his stronghold. Roy and Lan — still funny. Both families colliding, both of them with their heads lower by the second, looking one conversation away from a forced engagement. Thinking about their wedding at a moment like this said something unflattering about my mental state. Then the reflection was just me again. No one rushing up. No one opening a door.

No one covering my fare when the card failed. Just the bus's damned the nation thanks you for your service. I almost laughed. Right — the nation thanks me. The bus welcomes me. The system recognizes me. There's just no one to say welcome back when the door opens. The universe really does have a high-end sense of humor.

"Arriving at Platinum Bridge Street—" The announcement pulled me out of thoughts with no business being had on public transit. I got off. The evening wind hit my fingers, stiff from gripping something too hard; I couldn't even remember putting my student ID away. Platinum Bridge Street hadn't changed. It has a peculiar retired quality — not run-down, not poor, just the quiet of people who've already watched life's early seasons and lost interest in new twists.

Yellow streetlights, slanted tree shadows, TV glow behind curtains down the block. The whole street felt steeped in a cup of tea gone lukewarm. I walked toward No. 22. My footsteps were light — light enough to sound like I was passing through, not actually coming back. No. 22 hadn't changed either. Same door. Same wall. Even the old scratch by the frame I used to think was ugly, and now found oddly endearing. I pressed a finger to the lock. Green light, fast. Click.

I took the key from the box inside, my hands knowing the motion before my brain caught up. Before picking it up, I glanced next door on instinct. Sure enough — the retired old man sat in his rocking chair, book open on his lap, tea steaming beside him. That angle, that posture, that the sky could fall and I'd finish this page first stillness — practically a permanent fixture of the street. He looked up. No surprise, no nosy questions. Just an ordinary nod: ah, you're back. I smiled back.

Not from a sudden love of humanity — because at least one thing on this street hadn't changed. When the whole universe is busy reclassifying you, one old man still in his rocking chair, still reading, still drinking tea, is close to a miracle. I turned the key. The door opened. Inside was dark. Not the owner's out, just flip the switch dark. The kind where the air tells you first: furniture, walls, a fridge, a faint trace of someone who used to live here — but no one waiting.

I stood in the doorway and didn't go in right away. I don't know why, but I said it anyway.

"I'm back." Quiet. A little stupid. The second it left my mouth I wanted to laugh at myself, because I knew perfectly well no one would answer. Knew it as clearly as I'd known the military band would humiliate me on the bus. But people do this anyway — announce themselves to a void they know is empty. Silence answered. In that instant the whole house's cold seemed to wrap around me at once. Not temperature-cold. The so it really is just you kind.

Like someone had peeled off every car door, every hug, every name called, every waiting person I'd seen at that curb, and left only Hoshino Shimo — bus fare paid with a dead student ID — standing in a doorway telling the dark she was back. I stepped in and pulled the door shut. Click. Wind, distant traffic, the neighbor's page-turning — all sealed outside. The house went quieter. Quiet enough that my own breathing sounded like an intruder. I slid down the wall and sat on the entryway floor. Shoes still on.

Lights still off. Bag dropped to the side. My whole body like a cheap machine that had run out of power halfway through assembly. I stared at the small patch of dark between my knees. A few seconds passed. Then my nose started to sting. Pathetic. I hadn't cried on the Yukikaze. Hadn't cried at the memorial. Hadn't cried while the military, the MP, the Council, and a room full of high-grade bastards took turns questioning me. And now, back at No.

22 Platinum Bridge Street, sitting in the entryway of a door nobody answered, I was crying like an idiot. This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. Not pretty. None of that silent, literary sliding-tear nonsense. More like a gate I'd held shut all day finally gave, and the water forced its way out through the ugliest crack first. One drop, two, then more.

I wiped it with the back of my hand, which only made it worse — like trying to press spilled water back into a cup.

"... What is this," I muttered. My voice came out rough and ugly. That's the worst part about crying like this. You know perfectly well you're not crying from weakness, or because you need someone to pat your head. You're crying because something ordinary, low-grade, and completely unreasonable just landed: Everyone else had somewhere to be picked up from. I didn't. I've always known I was an orphan — knew it longer than my own height and weight. My parents left me debt, a name, and a mess, then exited efficiently.

Not news. Most days I could joke about it, like introducing a discontinued, low-quality family meal deal. Today was different. Because today I'd watched homes exist, one after another. Every version different, every version exhausting, every version worth complaining about — and every one sharing exactly one thing: someone came. I wasn't collected by anyone. I came home by bus. Card failed. Had to broadcast my own rank to a bus full of grandparents via a military bracelet.

If this life were a motivational film, the box office would tank. Nobody would know whether to laugh or cry. I curled in the entryway, and my shoulders finally started shaking. Not the loud kind — more like a body that had held on too long deciding, without asking, to let some of it out. And through the tears, my brain kept producing thoughts I hadn't asked for. Like — if Jess saw this, she'd probably lead with wow, you finally evolved human functions.

If Aida were here, she'd hand me a tissue while critiquing my crying face. Maki probably wouldn't say anything useless; she'd just stand there until I decided this was undignified on my own. As for D — he'd probably throw an entire bag of snacks and tell me to eat once I was done. Thinking about that, I actually laughed. Then cried harder. Absolutely terrible. The house was still dark. I was still on the floor. No one was going to complain I was blocking the hallway. No one was going to ask why I was late.

No one was going to yell at me for sitting on the floor in a dirty uniform. The quiet rose like water and soaked me through. I lowered my forehead to my knees and cried like a complete fool. Maybe I wasn't crying because I had no home. Maybe I was crying because, even now, some tiny, unwilling-to-admit part of me had still been hoping someone was waiting. And this is where God is most unreasonable. He won't twist the knife when you've fully given up on the universe — too easy.

He prefers to wait until you think you've adjusted, until you think you don't care anymore, until you can deliver orphan as a punchline without flinching — and then, quietly, reminds you: — No. It still hurts. And it hurts in the most ordinary way. All it takes is a dark house and one unanswered "I'm back." I sat there a long time.

Long enough for the tears to slow, for my breathing to even out, long enough for someone's dinner smell to drift in through the door crack — a quiet reminder that everyone else's life on this street was still moving forward. I sniffed and wiped my face. The back of my hand came away a mess. Good thing no one was here to see it. I sat a little longer, then reached for the entryway light. Click.

Warm yellow light fell across the shoe cabinet, the mat, the corner, the keys I'd tossed aside — all rendered completely ordinary. Ordinary enough to be infuriating, as if the girl who'd been curled up crying in the dark and this lit room didn't belong to the same world. I looked at that light and let out one small breath.

"... Alright." My voice still a little rough.

"At least the light still responds to me." The second I said it, I thought how stupid that sounded. Stupid or not, it worked like a nail fished off the floor — just enough to keep the last of my strength from scattering entirely. I braced on the shoe cabinet and stood. Knees a little numb. The floor still cold. The house still empty. I was still just me. But at least I was inside.

And sometimes, in a life where no one opens the door for you, you just have to flip the light on yourself — even from somewhere this undignified. By midnight, no one had come back to No. 22 Platinum Bridge Street. If that sentence were a rental listing tagline, it would fit a cheap ad perfectly — good light, convenient transit, ideal for singles — with a tiny line at the bottom: complimentary unlimited emptiness and echo. Unfortunately this isn't an ad. This is my house.

Or — strictly speaking — I was starting to doubt whether it still counted as one. I left the entryway light on. Left the living room light on too. Not because I'm afraid of the dark — please, I've spent the past year around things that breathe fire at people; being scared of a dark apartment now would be a low-budget comedy setup. The problem is that the moment the lights go off, this place instantly turns into a shell that makes you feel like you've wandered into a disputed estate.

Every corner seems to say: oh, you're back? Sorry, nobody was expecting you. I kicked my shoes aside, stood in the middle of the living room, and spent about three seconds deciding something very practical. Find food first. Humans are remarkable. You can be crying at the door like a defeated nation one minute, and the next you're already thinking about dinner. Civilization probably survives precisely because no matter how much you want to give up, hunger still sends you to the cupboard first.

The kitchen was cleaner than I remembered — not the kind of clean that comes from someone tending it carefully, but the kind that comes from not being used long enough for new mess to form. Worse than grease. Grease at least proves someone lived here. This kind of neatness only proves time's been quietly settling dust where nobody touches anything. I opened the cabinet.

Found half a bag of salt from god-knows-what year, two empty jars, a seasoning packet I had no desire to touch, and finally, tucked in the very back, one cup of instant noodles. Lan's. I stared at that cup of instant noodles for two seconds, probably wearing the expression of an archaeologist who'd just unearthed a lost civilization in the sand. The packaging was a little wrinkled, but not expired. By the printed date, this thing had a more stable existence than my current enrollment status.

"... Thanks, Lan." I thanked a cup of instant noodles. It sounded pathetic, but there was no one else in the apartment to laugh at me anyway. The sound of water boiling was unusually loud in the night, loud enough that the house seemed to finally admit it still had a little life in it. I let the noodles steep, carried them to the living room, and turned on the TV without thinking. The screen flaring on startled me slightly — I'd almost forgotten the world still contained things that made noise on their own.

A news channel was running, a male host and a female commentator taking turns interrupting each other. He wore the expression of someone who believes he represents reason, assuring viewers that the Federation remained stable and the situation fully under control. She wore the expression of someone who'd like to see him try, reminding viewers that "stable order" usually just means it hasn't been your turn to have an accident yet.

I ate my noodles and watched them perform mutual respect at each other, and thought: this is actually highly educational. At the very least, it proved one thing. Some interactions between men and women in this world aren't romance. They're public executions. I slurped up a mouthful. The broth was honest-to-a-fault salty — honest enough to make you wonder if the manufacturer had simply removed consumer care from their production checklist. I ate every last bit anyway.

After being systematically humiliated by the Federation, the Academy, the transit system, and whatever passes for divine providence today, one more hit from instant noodles just rounded the day up to a whole number. The TV cut to a commercial — a family of three around a table, eating some premium frozen meal. The father smiled reliably. The mother smiled gently. The child smiled with the complete unawareness of someone who has no idea what fresh hell life is preparing to hand them.

I stared at that image and briefly considered writing to the advertiser: when you cast this, did you specifically check whether the people you hired actually have a real family? Then I let it go. They're just selling food. Not performing miracles. After eating, I washed the bowl. Standing at the sink, watching water run over the ceramic, over the back of my hand, I thought: today had been one elaborate, badly-directed setup from start to finish. It started with the unmanned bus. Student ID failing.

The bracelet loudly announcing my rank to a busload of grandparents. Everyone turning to stare. And then me, walking all the way back to No. 22 Platinum Bridge Street, like a defective product the world had rejected and shipped back in its original packaging. With a very formal return reason attached: Exterior undamaged, but incompatible with current operating systems. After washing up, I stood in the bathroom for a moment before undressing to shower.

The hot water hit my shoulders and they ached immediately — like my body had only just remembered it had been tired all day. The mirror fogged over. I couldn't see my face clearly, which was fine. I didn't particularly want to meet my own eyes tonight. Sixteen years old. Federal military lieutenant. Yukikaze survivor. Invalid student ID holder. Instant-noodle annihilator. Too many titles — enough to make me wonder if one had been left off the list. Temporary Human.

Out of the shower, only a little heat still clinging to me, the hallway was still cold. Not a temperature problem. A no-one-else-in-this-house problem. Drying my hair, I walked to my bedroom door and stopped with my hand on the handle. Strange — it was my room, but opening it felt like opening a stranger's storage unit. As if what was behind the door wasn't my bed and my desk, but some stretch of time I hadn't kept up with. The moment the door opened, a smell rushed out. I froze. My first reaction wasn't sadness.

It was: ah, so rooms really do develop a smell when they've been left too long. Hard to describe. Not foul. Not musty. More like a book closed too long — all the words sitting quietly inside, no one turning the pages, no one touching them, until time itself slowly settled into the paper. The air was full of that particular smell of something set aside. Like someone had pressed pause a long time ago and forgotten to come back and press play.

I stood in the doorway, unsure whether to step in first, or apologize to the smell first. Then I saw the photograph on the desk. It was placed perfectly straight, like someone had made a point of adjusting it right before leaving. The background was the courtyard behind the house. The light was good. The wind hadn't been strong that day, the day before the Yukikaze deployed. I wasn't standing especially straight in the photo, and my expression wasn't particularly cute.

It maxed out at dragged into the frame and hasn't managed to escape yet. Maki stood beside me — not far, not posed, just close in a way that felt entirely natural. That naturalness was worse than any staged photo, because it made one thing obvious at a glance: back then, we both assumed there were still plenty of ordinary days left to live. I really had thought I was done. Back in the entryway, I'd already used up what should have been the day's entire allotment of tears.

Logically, a person has to have some efficiency — you can't loop the same misery infinitely in a single day. Evidently I'd overestimated myself, and underestimated the lethality of photographs. I walked over. The moment my finger touched the edge of the frame, everything blurred. No warning. No buildup. No dignity worth mentioning. The tears just broke.

"... That's not fair." I didn't even know who I was saying it to. The photograph? Maki? This house? Or the world that sends someone away for over a year, then makes her open the door to empty air when she comes back? I sat on the edge of the bed, towel still in my hand, crying very quietly — quiet enough that it sounded like I was afraid of waking someone. But there was no one in this house to wake. Lan wasn't here. Maki wasn't here either. No one was going to knock and ask what was wrong.

No one was going to complain I was getting the floor wet. No one was going to use that infuriating but somehow effective tone to tell me to stop crying. I buried my face in my hands, and suddenly felt ridiculous. Out there in the daylight, I could take the broken bracelet reading my rank aloud to an entire bus. I could take the system treating me like an anomaly. I could think God is unreasonable while still wearing a face that said whatever, I'm alive, that'll do.

But the thing that actually broke me open wasn't the military. Wasn't the Academy. Wasn't the bus. Wasn't welcome aboard, Lieutenant Hoshino. It was opening my bedroom door and finding a photograph — one we'd taken the day before we left — still sitting on the desk. What a pathetic way to lose. I sniffled and held the photo for a long time. Maki wasn't smiling broadly in it, just the faintest relaxation at the corners of her mouth.

Show that expression to a stranger, and they'd probably think Maki Kushima was simply having an average day. I knew better. That was already a rare version of her — the one closest to something like gentleness. And knowing that was exactly what made it worse.

"... I shouldn't have taken this picture that day." I said it out loud. My thumb still, honestly, brushed slowly along the edge of the frame anyway. Liar. Even if I could really go back to that day, I'd take it again. That's just how people are — knowing full well the memory will come back and stab you later, still smiling as you sharpen the blade yourself in the moment. Eventually the crying slowed, then stopped. Not because I'd suddenly grown stronger.

Just that human tear ducts have physical limits; they can't supply an infinite amount all night. I was grateful for that. Otherwise I'd be facing tomorrow — a world that clearly wasn't planning on going easy on me — in a state of severe dehydration. I set the photograph back on the desk, this time a little straighter than before. Then I turned off the main light, leaving only a small lamp by the bed. The room went quiet at once — quiet enough that even my own breathing sounded borrowed.

I crawled under the covers, turned on my side, and stared at that small lamp for a while. Whatever. Even a garbage day is still just a day. Today's garbage was finished. If tomorrow wanted to keep being garbage, it could at least wait until I woke up. I pulled my hands under the blanket, closed my eyes, and slowly buried myself in the night — in the smell of a room left too long, the lingering salt of cheap noodles, and the aggressively clean scent of shampoo. Tonight, I fell asleep alone. [End of Season Two]