Chương 379: 168.School Trip Draft

By the time I was finally forced to finish writing the supplementary statement for that cursed Preliminary Record of Localized Lower-Year Student Clustering and Gaze Deviation Following Opening Ceremony Dismissal, I had the distinct sense that the Federation's administrative apparatus had taken a bite out of my life. Not a metaphor. More like the specific sensation of having your soul three-hole-punched, labeled, and filed under Section Seven of a binder nobody would ever open again.

I dropped the pen, shook out my aching hand, and looked up. Maki's side of the desk still had an entire mountain range of documents that hadn't moved. Not a little work left. More like a geological event in progress. Leave it long enough and future archaeologists would come excavating here, naming the layer they found the Late-Period Seitokai Overwork Stratum. She sat behind the desk, white President's uniform so clean you'd think this person didn't sweat and had never once wanted to kill someone.

Black hair tied back, cuffs pushed up a little, pen still moving. That concentrated, working face was deeply misleading. Easy to forget this was the same person who'd dragged me into the dark here not that long ago and kissed me until it nearly went somewhere we couldn't file. I glanced at her, then at the paperwork. Sighed. Then reached over and pulled toward myself the shorter stack at the side of her desk — the one that looked less like state secrets and more like a community grievance landfill.

"Shimo?" Maki looked up.

"Don't get sentimental." I thumped the pile down in front of me.

"I'm just worried if you actually die in here, the Council will have to file a death report on top of everything else." She gave me a look, the slightest flicker at the corner of her eyes.

"Thank you."

"Don't mention it." I started flipping through.

"My lunch is already dead. A few more casualties won't make a difference." One look at the first sheet told me I'd overestimated the Federation's next generation. It wasn't anything important. Not a policy draft, not a strategy memo. Just a digest of the suggestion box, complaints, and assorted pieces of writing that make you want to reboot human civilization from zero. The first one even had a proper, serious title. On Expanding the Diversity of Campus Food Services. I read the body in silence for three seconds.

Then looked up.

"What the hell does 'we request more sweets on campus for mental health purposes' mean."

"Suggestion box summary," Maki said without lifting her head.

"This isn't a suggestion." I shook the page.

"This is a manifesto from a dessert terrorist cell." I crumpled the "summary copy" and tossed it into the bin marked SCRAP / TO BE DESTROYED. The sound was small, but it improved my mood. Good. We were still technically following procedure. The Federal administrative machine had narrowly retained its minimum standards of due process. I pulled the next one. Report on Insufficient Variety of Main and Side Dishes in Dining Hall Rotation. Two lines in, a vein went in my forehead.

"We would like more options in the dining hall." I slapped the page on the desk.

"Are they stupid? Do they think this is a five-star resort? Should we add a line: we would also appreciate a delicate distinction between sunny side up and soft-scrambled eggs at breakfast?" Maki finally looked up.

"At least read the whole thing before you condemn it."

"I did. Verdict stands." I dropped it into the scrap bin.

"These people are living too well if they have time to go to war with diced carrots." The next dozen were worse. Someone wanted morning drills pushed back, citing the inseparable relationship between adolescent sleep quality and human development. Someone requested an observatory on the dorm roof, claiming it would enhance students' emotional connection with the cosmos. Someone else proposed a monthly Free Dress Day to promote personal expression and campus cultural diversity.

I stared at that last one for a full five seconds.

"Free Dress Day." The way I said it, you could've used it to certify a species extinct.

"What now?" Maki asked.

"Nothing," I said.

"Just suddenly understanding why the Federation has to fight a war every few years."

"Because someone proposed free dress day?"

"Because once humans get too idle, they start using their brains to manufacture trash." She watched me, like she wanted to laugh and was forcing it down.

"Those are student opinions, not combat reports."

"From the standpoint of the Federation's future, they're about the same." I crushed the last summary into a ball and dropped it into the bin.

"These idiots' suggestions are exactly like the Federation's future — stupid and out of reach." As I said it, a darker cover peeked out from the bottom of the pile. Not a feedback summary. Not a complaint. The paper stock was heavier, the color darker, title aligned too straight, a few schedule sheets clipped inside. I fished it out.

"And what the hell is this one?" I checked the cover. Draft Implementation Plan for Second-Year Study Trip and Exchange Activities. I lifted a brow and flipped to the first page.

"Destination is... Lunar City Copernicus." The room went quiet. Maki had been in the middle of another file. At Copernicus, her pen paused. Just once. Short enough to pass for nothing. But I saw it. I shook the document.

"Ever heard of a lunar city, Maki?" She looked up at me with the particular expression she reserved for when I said something that proved beyond doubt my brain had been absent for class. Very calm. Very restrained. And very clearly evaluating whether to apply for educational reparations on my behalf.

"Of course I have," she said.

"Copernicus is where humanity officially abandoned the old calendar and adopted the Universal Calendar. Shimo — do you sleep through history class?" On reflex, I raised the page slightly, as if I could hide my guilt behind it.

"N-no." She set her pen down, fingers steepling. The air around her took on a distinctly teacher about to cold-call feel. My internal alarms started shrieking. Great. Little-teacher mode. Worse than Nikaido brandishing regulations. When Nikaido goes in, it's just cold. Maki will actually drag you through the missing knowledge, and she'll do it while looking at you like a particularly cherished idiot.

"Then tell me," she said.

"The Universal Chronicle. Go." I nearly slapped the draft over my own face.

"Maki, can we skip—""What year, and who," she went on, unfazed, "developed the first FTL engine?"

"You really are asking."

"Answer." I spread my hands.

"I don't know." She inhaled. Not angry — more the exhausted kind of sigh that says something has clearly gone wrong in the Federation's educational apparatus, and the problem is currently sitting across from me.

"2744 CE." She started reciting like the textbook had possessed her.

"A Japanese scientist — Dr. Soichiro Amano — at the Tokyo Underground Particle Accelerator Laboratory, developed the world's first faster-than-light engine: the Spacetime Distortion Phase Thruster."

"Oh.""'Oh' what." Her look had shifted from concern to outright fear for the species. She wasn't making fun of me. She was genuinely worried I'd turn up at some formal event and invent a new branch of anthropology by accident. I sighed and tried to meet her halfway.

"Wow. First generation," I managed, dutiful.

"We're on the twenty-seventh-gen Kamikaze FTL engine now. Technology is amazing." Her eyes narrowed.

"Shimo."

"What, I was listening."

"If you slack off on history, it'll bite you later."

"The only thing humanity has ever learned from history—" I spread my hands again — "is that we don't learn a damn thing from it."

"That's sophistry," she said, almost immediately. She leaned forward, elbow on the desk, and slipped into the register that could pin any lazy student to their chair.

"Our ancestors fled the Empire's rule from those lunar cities," she said.

"They slipped out from Copernicus and headed for the outer Ursa Major sector, tens of light-years away. That's where they eventually discovered Dunan." I cut in halfway.

"That's recent history. My recent history is three days old."

"Shimo!!" The volume wasn't high. The lethality was. I almost laughed and pretended to focus on the document. Clearly, my total disrespect for civilizational memory had kicked her into another gear. She got up, walked around the desk, and came to stand by my chair.

"Move over."

"It's not crowded."

"You're covering the margins." I slid half a centimetre. She stepped in at my shoulder, leaning to look at the Copernicus draft. A strand of her hair fell across my sleeve. For anyone else, this would just be two people looking at a document. For me, it was something else entirely — because I knew perfectly well that the President currently lecturing me on civilization history was the same person who, not long before, had had me pinned against that same door.

Maki, of course, knew exactly how to exploit that kind of contrast. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

"Copernicus isn't just a tourist city," she said, tapping the title.

"It's one of the first lunar cities to complete neutralization and commercial self-governance. The symbolism's more complicated than the physical distance."

"Complicated how."

"The more symbolic a place is, the better a stage it makes for performative friendly exchanges." I turned a page. The schedule spread opened up. UIMA-Imperial Academy youth exchange. City tour. Neutral history museum. Joint etiquette demonstration. Student representative remarks. I paused on that last one.

"Student representative?"

"That's Hedwig," Maki said. The draft's taste changed immediately. It went from boring trip template to something that reeked a little too much of politics to be confused with sightseeing. I flipped further. The pages were packed: escort lists, liaison organizations, security notes, uniform requirements, even a page of suggested external messaging. My scalp tingled.

"This isn't a trip," I said.

"It's bundling a batch of students up and sending them out as props."

"That was the idea from the start," she said. I looked up at her.

"You sound awfully confident about that."

"Because trips like this are never for fun." Her eyes stayed on the draft, voice cooling a degree.

"Especially not with Hedwig involved." I watched her for two seconds. That pen pause earlier had definitely not been my imagination. This draft, for Maki, clearly wasn't just another item in the in-tray. She was reading it with more focus than she'd given the dessert lobby and Free Dress Day proposals put together. This wasn't just the President at work. It felt like someone who already knew there was something underneath this paper and hadn't decided how much she wanted to say yet. I didn't push.

Partly because I was too hungry to pick a full-scale fight with an institution. Partly because I knew Maki too well. If she wasn't telling me now, it wasn't because she never would. It was because she couldn't yet. Or because she was still confirming it herself. So I just flipped the draft back to the cover and rapped the glossy title.

"UIMA–Imperial Military Academy Friendly Exchange," I read. Half sneer, half nausea.

"Even dogs know both sides would love to stuff each other back into a launch tube." She actually laughed at that. Not the little public smile. A short, almost genuine sound, with a thread of of course you'd say that running through it.

"Put that line in the minutes," she said.

"It'd be memorable."

"I can add it to the recommendation column," I said.

"Along with a note suggesting the dining hall start selling dog food to support cross-school unity."

"That would get read as a diplomatic incident before it got read as a joke."

"More efficient that way." She lifted a hand and flicked my forehead — not hard, but very Maki.

"Don't turn everything into provocation."

"You didn't deny that both sides hate each other," I pointed out.

"Because that isn't the point," she said.

"Then what is." She didn't answer right away. Instead she slid the draft out of my hands, flipped to the appendices, and let her eyes rest on a few particular lines. Her fingers tightened a fraction. Then she closed it again.

"The point," she said, "is that there's still time before anything happens. It's a draft. Let's clear what's in front of us first." Reasonable. Reasonable enough to be suspicious. I leaned back, narrowing my eyes at her.

"Maki."

"Hm?"

"That face looks a lot like there's something in there you don't want me seeing yet." Her face didn't change. She even tucked the draft neatly aside.

"If your ability to read facial expressions matched even half your history retention, we'd be in good shape."

"Don't change the subject."

"I'm not." She lifted her pen again.

"I'm stating a regrettable fact."

"You really should be teaching," I muttered.

"You'd flunk."

"On what grounds."

"You didn't even recognize a major lunar city."

"That's because my brain's full of more practical things."

"Like."

"Like how to tell which memos are trash, and which trash has been dressed up as memos." She went still. Just half a second. But her eyes shifted. Not much. Enough. I didn't grin. Didn't poke. The room settled into a different kind of quiet. Not awkward, exactly. More like something was lying under the surface, taking shape, not yet big enough to name. Maki broke it first.

She nudged the suggestions pile back toward me, tone snapping cleanly back into President mode, as if that half-second had just been my imagination.

"Finish these."

"No."

"Shimo."

"I'd rather go back and memorize Soichiro Amano."

"That can be arranged." Her voice went light.

"Pop quiz on the Universal Calendar reform, afterwards."

"... Does this school genuinely not have a more humane model of romance." Her mouth flicked up at the corner.

"If you'd learned your history properly in the first place, you wouldn't be suffering now."

"Anyone who pins their girlfriend in the Seitokai office to drill civilization history has no right to use the word humane."

"Anyone who calls every suggestion a sign of civilizational decay doesn't either."

"That's honesty."

"This is education." We looked at each other. I broke first, grabbing the nearest remaining stack like I was accepting a sentence.

"Fine, President-slash-history-teacher," I said.

"At least answer me one thing."

"What."

"Copernicus—" I tapped the draft resting on the edge of the desk.

"—this really just a trip?" She didn't answer right away. She just looked at me — gaze steady, deeper than usual, quiet in the way of still water with something moving under it. Then she said, slowly:"If it was only what the paper says, it wouldn't be a problem." I didn't reply. She didn't elaborate. It was enough. Enough for a draft that had just looked like a not-quite-lucky school trip plan to start growing teeth.

And the ugly part was, knowing this school, the ones that get bitten are almost never the people who wrote the draft. The knock that came next was the not-quite-polite kind. I knew that rhythm. Not the standard President, do you have a moment? Seitokai tap. Not the Disciplinary we're here with the rules hammer. The kind that said: somebody open this door before I let myself in and make comments. The handle turned a second later.

Jess nudged the door open with her shoulder, half-stepping in with two paper bags and a drink cup on the verge of collapse.

"Wow, still writing?" she said, voice full of the kind of glee someone ought to classify as a public nuisance.

"Thought the President would've stapled you into a file drawer by now."

"Close enough." I dropped the last summary on the desk.

"Ten more minutes and the Council could've submitted me as an annual appendix."

"Can't have that." Jess lifted the bags.

"Starving a hot—" She caught herself, survival instinct kicking in, and edited.

"—starving you would be a real loss."

"You learned something today?" I asked.

"No, I just want to live long enough to finish lunch." She set one bag by my elbow and slid the other toward Maki.

"Harvey said if the President is keeping people imprisoned, the Council should at least meet minimum humanitarian food standards. D didn't say anything, but his face agreed." Maki glanced at the bags, expression steady.

"Thank you."

"It's not thanks. This is disaster relief," Jess said, and dragged a chair over, flopping into it like she'd paid for front-row seats. I unpacked the bag. The contents matched the Federation's proud cafeteria tradition: a lukewarm bento box, a side dish that looked like it had given up on life, and a cup of soup in a color that suggested chemical incident.

"What is this."

"Lunch."

"I know it's lunch." I poked the unidentifiable stew.

"I mean what crime did this thing commit before it got sentenced to look like this."

"Cafeteria auntie said it was a busy day," Jess said, all innocence.

"Also said managing to save this much was already doing you a favor, seeing as how your face apparently triggers cluster incidents now."

"Then her intel runs faster than Disciplinary."

"Obviously." Jess puffed up a little, tone very solemn.

"The Federation's real backbone isn't the government, the military, or the Seitokai. It's dining-hall aunties and dorm wardens."

"If Maki puts that in a report," I said, "you'll be in the curriculum under Ideological Education Case Studies."

"Sounds fine to me." Jess batted her eyelashes.

"Title: How an Ordinary Student Accurately Identified the Real Structure of the State Machine." Maki, still paging through the Copernicus draft, didn't look up when she said, "I'd lean more toward How Misconceptions Form."

"President's cruel."

"Not cruel," I said, peeling the soup lid.

"Accurate." Jess pouted, mouth opening to keep the act going — then stopped. Short. Almost nothing. If it had been anyone else, you'd think they'd finally found their conscience and chosen silence for five seconds. Unfortunately, Jess isn't anyone else. She's the sort of person whose radar lights up exactly where you least want it to. She looked at me. Then at Maki. Then let her eyes wander around the office — desk, sofa, lights, the faint residue of heat in the air that no amount of straightening could erase.

My internal alarms started screaming again. Great. I'd thought she was here to deliver food. She'd taken one look and upgraded the scene from delivery to forensic inspection. Jess tilted a brow, leaned back, and her mouth started to curl into something that deserved jail time.

"... Did I come at a bad moment?" she said. I picked up a piece of vegetable, face blank.

"If you don't want to eat, you can leave the planet."

"No, no, that's not what I meant." She put both hands up, doing innocent with her mouth and I smell blood with her eyes.

"Just that the air in here feels... loaded." Maki finally set her papers down and looked at Jess. Her expression was flat. Flat enough that a normal person would've started drafting their own apology. Jess wasn't normal.

"Don't look at me like that, President," she said, beaming.

"I'm the good guy today. I'm bringing food."

"Delivery doesn't require commentary on air quality," Maki said.

"So there was something to comment on."

"Jess." I put my chopsticks down, voice going cold.

"One more sentence and you're wearing that bento." Jess slapped a hand over her mouth in a theatrical I'll be good gesture. Three seconds later, she pointed at the open draft on the desk.

"But seriously, what's that?" I followed her finger. The Draft Implementation Plan for Second-Year Study Trip and Exchange Activities was still spread near the corner, title on full display, like it was proud of the collective misfortune it was about to engineer. Jess's eyes lit up. In an instant, whatever suspicion she'd had about the air re-routed into something more suited to her talents.

"No way." She leaned in so far she nearly knocked the soup.

"Second-year trip? And exchange? Where? Are they really gonna pack us up and let us outside the walls to live the Federation's dream of healthy adolescent group interaction?"

"Lunar City Copernicus," I said. She froze for half a beat. Then lit up like a festival.

"Copernicus? The neutral city? Seriously?"

"That's what it says." I tapped the page.

"Friendly exchange with the Imperial Academy." She snorted.

"Friendly exchange."

"Innovative phrasing, right." I said.

"Even dogs can hear the bullshit."

"No — the dogs are probably more honest than whoever wrote that title." She snatched up the draft, grinning.

"The Federation and the Empire doing friendly exchange reads like putting Nikaido in charge of Free Dress Day." Maki added, dry: "That would probably become Public Execution Day."

"Even better." Jess flipped through the draft fast, muttering as she went.

"So this is what — three days on the moon? Neutral city tour? Imperial Academy student exchange? And a princess speech?" She paused.

"Wait — Hedwig is really going up there?"

"According to this draft," Maki said, "yes."

"Wow." Jess sat back, entering that familiar state of delighted catastrophe.

"This isn't a trip. This is a high-density incident rehearsal. The Federation's contingent fake-smiles, the Empire's contingent fake-smiles, and Hedwig stands in the middle as 'Hope and the Future.' I'm getting a headache just picturing all the blood pressures."

"I didn't know you believed in blood pressure," I said.

"I have a deep interest in other people's blood pressure." I shoveled some rice down. It didn't taste great, but once you're hungry enough, dignity isn't part of the equation. It was warm. That alone bought the Federation zero point zero one seconds of goodwill. Jess was still reading.

"People are already talking about it," she said.

"Heard second-years betting in the lunch line this morning."

"Betting what."

"On whether Copernicus is actually a study trip or a public humiliation stage." She cleared her throat, slipping into rumor-relay voice.

"Faction one says: lunar neutral city — scenic domes, high-end souvenir shops, legendary lunar desserts. Faction two says: UIMA never does anything that nice; the prettier the itinerary, the more it feels like a minefield underfoot."

"Faction two, unexpectedly correct."

"Faction three's the best," she said, wiggling her fingers.

"There's a third."

"Sure." Her eyes gleamed.

"They're guessing the Imperial side will send a bunch of tall, cold, insufferable elites, and we'll match them with our own set of insufferable officers, line everyone up for a group photo, and distill all the hypocrisy in known space into one promotional poster." At that I couldn't help glancing at Maki. She showed no visible reaction, just squared off another pile. Too smooth. So smooth it made the bumps stand out.

"And?" I asked.

"Some are betting the whole thing's going to be filmed too," Jess went on, delighted.

"Wrong person in the wrong place, bad face at the wrong time, someone rolling their eyes at an Imperial student — it'll all get cut into one of those glossy propaganda reels that look like they're made of plastic flowers."

"In that case, you'd better not go."

"Why not."

"Because your footage would be unusable from the second you step off the shuttle."

"That's biased. I can behave like a proper lady in formal settings."

"Last time you said something about proper, your boots were on a chair and your mouth was full of fried bread."

"That's just my personal brand of proper."

"That's called wildlife feeding." She was about to fire back when something on the page caught her. She went quiet longer this time.

"Hm?" She frowned at the page.

"What's wrong," I asked.

"There's a field here that looks weird." She turned the paper.

"Look — besides the normal group breakdown, there's this Advance Coordination / Security Cooperation Preparatory Unit. Name screams something's going to blow up." I looked. Sure enough. There it was — small font, tucked into the corner of an appendix, buried in enough bureaucratic language you'd miss it if you weren't looking for it. As if printing the words long and dull enough would neutralize their implications. I hadn't had time to read it properly before Maki's hand slid in and drew the page away. Not fast.

Precise.

"That's for potential add-on events," she said.

"Draft stage only. It doesn't mean it'll be activated." Jess blinked.

"That sounds extremely suspicious."

"Seitokai documents are inherently suspicious," I said.

"No, this is a different flavor." Jess rested her chin on the table, eyes flicking between us.

"And the speed President just yoinked that page away with is also suspicious." Maki's face stayed cool.

"If you applied that level of attention to your coursework," she said, "your grades might actually impress someone."

"Wow. Deflection."

"Reminder."

"Reasonable suspicion." I held my chopsticks between my teeth and watched the draft now half-hidden under another pile. That page had been visible long enough for a few words to land. Advance. Security. Cooperation. Preparatory. All ordinary words. Ordinary enough that, lumped together, they gave off the particular stench of this means something much worse than it says. Jess clearly smelled it too. Her method, though, is to throw rocks and see if anything explodes.

It's never going to look like Maki's quiet thinking or Harvey's cold analysis.

"Whatever," she said, shrugging, popping a straw into the drink.

"No matter what, a three-day lunar trip was never going to be just sightseeing."

"You have rare moments of clarity," I said.

"I am always clear," she retorted.

"I just refuse to look like that kid who aces every test and has no friends." She took a long pull from the drink and made a face like she'd licked the inside of a reactor.

"What the hell is this. It's awful." I checked the label on the cup.

"Fortified soy milk."

"Who takes soy milk and turns it into punishment?" Jess looked personally wronged.

"The Federation," Maki said, without looking up.

"And you picked it," I added.

"That was because I assumed 'fortified' implied some baseline goodwill toward life."

"Federation memos sound full of goodwill too," I said.

"Open them and it's always something else." The words landed, and the table went still for a beat. Short. Long enough for the Copernicus draft to stop being just another file and settle into the room as something else. Jess set the drink down, tilting her head.

"So. We're really going." Maki didn't answer directly. She slipped the draft back into its folder, tucking it under a few other documents, out of easy reach.

"It's still a draft," she said. On the surface, ordinary. Her tone was too ordinary. Ordinary enough to confirm for me that this was absolutely not going to stay just a draft. Jess seemed to sense that too. For once, she didn't push. She just looked at Maki. Then at me.

"Fine." She stretched.

"If we really do go, I'm stating this now — I refuse to clap for any Imperial noble on that trip."

"Relax," I said.

"You won't get the chance. You're the type they'd assign to move chairs backstage."

"Rude. I'm an important asset in the distribution of correct rumors."

"That's called a secondary disaster source."

"Still a source." Maki sighed, softly.

"Jess."

"Mm?"

"Take your drink."

"Why?"

"The Seitokai office doesn't store toxic liquids." Jess stared for half a second, then doubled over laughing.

"President, that's cruel. I approve." I almost laughed too. The mood in the room — stretched, heavy, full of things unsaid — finally rippled, like someone had thrown a pebble into still water. But I knew better than to mistake ripples for depth changing. The Copernicus draft was still there. That strange appendix was still there. And the way Maki's hand had moved just a little too fast, pulling one particular page out of sight, was still there.

Jess's rumors, no matter how stupid or brochure-like, only added another layer to the cover — made it look more like a normal school trip. The more normal something looks in this place, the more teeth it usually has. I shoveled another bite of rice into my mouth and had the unreasonable realization that the bento, which had tasted like punishment earlier, didn't seem quite so bad now. Because the really hard-to-swallow part of today was still ahead.