Chương 382: 171.Princess's Breakfast

Late December on Dunan was cold enough to make you think someone had soaked the entire city in ice water, then hauled it out and left it hanging in the wind to dry. The first thought I had when I woke up that morning wasn't time to give it my all. It was: why does humanity insist on maintaining civilization at this temperature. Outside, the sky was still the gray of someone who hadn't slept. A thin frost had formed on the glass.

The moment I peeled back one corner of the blanket, I understood what mental preparation in a combat situation actually means — not the charge forward, but knowing you're going to regret leaving the covers the second you do, and doing it anyway. Not that I had any right to go back to sleep that day. Not because I'd suddenly reformed and decided to arrive two hours early for morning study.

That kind of thing, even at the end of the world, would probably see me standing at the edge of the apocalypse applauding the people still reading before turning to find cover. The real reasons were two. First, Seitokai business had spent the night chopping my sleep into pieces, like someone had brought a hole-punch into my brain and spent the hours working through it.

Second, once you open your door in the morning and find Maki Kushima standing there, any thought of going back to sleep falls into the category of a person who lacks a basic grasp of reality. She was holding the fake book she'd given me the night before. The shell of it, specifically. The genuinely dangerous part wasn't the book — it was the data chip inside, and the thing loaded onto the chip: history.

I still remembered lying in bed the night before, listening to a mechanical voice deliver dates in a tone so flat it made you wonder whether it had any feelings at all or just a timeline, working through Dr. Amano's FTL engine all the way to Copernicus, the first self-gravitating lunar city. Soichiro Amano. The end of the inner-solar isolation era. The first lunar city with its own gravity. How it got turned into a polite buffer zone through war and order.

I'd meant to fast-forward through most of it, but the more I listened, the less the place sounded like a field trip destination and the more it sounded like a very prettily wrapped medical file. And this morning, the person who'd handed me that file was standing in my doorway, wearing an expression I still couldn't decide was concern or supervision, saying, calmly:"Let's go." I didn't even bother resisting. In that situation, resistance usually just means wasting two minutes and then going anyway.

So we arrived at school considerably earlier than usual. When the bike turned onto the campus road in the early morning, wind pushed through my collar and I was cold enough that my teeth nearly started keeping rhythm. The snow on both sides of the road had been pressed into two pale-gray tire tracks. The area around the school gate was quiet enough that it almost felt like the school had, just this once, decided to treat students like human beings. That was what I thought.

Until I saw the unmistakably familiar figure near the gate.

"... Oh dear." I tapped Maki on the knee and tilted my chin toward the entrance. She followed the gesture. Her brow shifted slightly. Freya Nikaido was standing straight as a post outside the gate. Not standing waiting for someone. Not arrived early. The kind of standing where if someone set up a small placard beside her reading The Fate of Rule Violators, it would fit without any adjustment. She hadn't moved. A thin layer of snow had settled on her shoulders, the top of her head faintly white.

She looked like she'd been removed from the Disciplinary Committee specimen cabinet and placed outside for display.

"She's here this early?" Maki's voice carried a rare note of genuine surprise.

"We knew she arrived early," I said, staring at the figure that was almost the same color as the surrounding snowbank.

"But this is a different category. She doesn't actually live on campus, does she?"

"Upper House, second year. Unlikely." I ruled it out myself.

"Hard to say." Maki's voice came from behind me, mild.

"Do you know what Nikaido's posted to after graduation?"

"No."

"Military Police." I paused, then couldn't hold it. I laughed.

"Ha. Perfect casting. Besides the Military Police and Internal Affairs, I honestly can't think of anywhere else that would appreciate someone whose walk already looks like an active conduct inspection." Maki seemed to want to laugh too, but stopped herself, letting out a very faint hum through her nose. I knew that sound. It meant: that was uncharitable, but not incorrect. While we were talking, the bike had rolled up close to the gate. Nikaido was still standing there, motionless.

I squinted at her for two seconds.

"... She hasn't died, has she?"

"Don't start," Maki said, low.

"I'm asking out of humanitarian concern." As the bike slowed, I raised my voice toward the snow-dusted disciplinarian at the gate.

"Oh! Isn't that Senpai Linde!" The figure that had been standing frozen in the cold wind spun around instantly. Alive. Still moving. And very angry.

"Hoshino Shimo!!!" Nikaido's voice, carrying the specific fury of someone one step away from filing a campus conduct report, cut straight through the snow. I raised a hand immediately, producing the least convincing innocent expression in my repertoire.

"I thought you'd frozen to death. That cold, snow on your head, standing completely still. I was being considerate."

"Sure you were." She stepped aside, face still wearing that particular frost capable of making first-years immediately begin reconsidering their life choices. Unfortunately, I'd been exposed to that expression long enough to have developed a tolerance.

"What are you two doing here this early?"

"Missed you," I said. The words were barely out before a near-regulation-grade pain shot through my thigh. I nearly left the seat.

"—Hss—" Maki's one hand stayed steady on the handlebars. The other had found the outside of my thigh with accurate, merciless efficiency. The face that turned toward me even carried a faint smile.

"You're particularly talkative this morning, aren't you, Hoshino." Her tone was perfectly polite. Polite enough that I could see my own life flashing past.

"I was wrong, Madam President — let go. Civilized society prohibits applying extrajudicial force to colleagues." I surrendered immediately, and, with very little dignity, stuck out my tongue in an attempt to defuse the situation with something approaching cute. Nikaido watched us. Her expression said: I will eventually send both of them to the Disciplinary Committee's freezer.

"Shameless."

"That tone sounds like you're mourning the decline of public morals," I said, rubbing my thigh.

"Have you considered upgrading your gate position from Disciplinary Monitor to Morning Ethics Observer? I think it suits you."

"Hoshino." This time even Maki said my name. I shut up. Knowing when to stop is a survival skill. Especially when the two people flanking you are one who pinches and one who files reports. Maki got off the bike at the entrance to the classroom block. She pulled her scarf up a little, breathed out a cloud of white, and glanced at me sideways. The look was simple: don't cause trouble. At least not where I can see it. I gave her my most innocent face.

Internally, I acknowledged honestly: that's too abstract a requirement, I'll do what I can. She turned and walked toward the building — not fast, but steady. The early-morning campus, the thin snow, the uniform, the white breath in the cold air, and that figure moving into the school before the crowd had gathered. For just a moment, she looked like the only correctly functioning component in the entire institution. Then I immediately corrected myself. Right. She was the most normal one, yes.

But someone who shows up at your bedroom door before full daylight and drags you to school isn't exactly a textbook example of a healthy social personality either. The thought improved my mood considerably. At least neither of us was the only one with problems. I rode to the parking lot. Snow had settled in a thin white layer over the asphalt, the tire tracks pressing through to the wet black underneath.

The lot was empty and quiet, like the world had turned off half its sound, leaving only the faint wind from the distant school buildings. I parked, killed the engine, and the second my hand left the grip, the cold air bit my fingertips.

"... I want to put winter itself on trial." I muttered it under my breath, pulled my coat tighter, and started toward the Seitokai office. Then my first official trouble of the day found me at the corridor outside the classroom block, waiting like a legally delivered arrest warrant.

"Oh, aren't you Hoshino?" My steps stalled. My first internal reaction was: at this hour, someone's already intercepting me? I turned. A faculty member. Not old, neatly dressed, holding a manila envelope, smiling with the specific warmth of someone who's about to hand you work under the guise of just passing by. I had never seen this person before.

"... I'm sorry?"

"Perfect timing, I was just looking for someone from the Council." She sounded genuinely relieved, and held the envelope out to me.

"Could you pass this to the Seitokai President?"

"Wait, what is—" Her efficiency was extraordinary — as if offloading the package was her sole purpose for existing today. Before I could ask her name, she was already stepping away through the snow, her retreating figure smooth as a long-premeditated administrative escape. I stood there holding the envelope, silent for two seconds.

"... Not even a name. Is anonymous handoff the new standard for document transfers these days." If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. No way to throw it back at her now, so I started walking and opened it as I went. Several documents inside. Official correspondence, copies, attachments, what looked like an activity summary — and one sheet that stood out immediately, too colorful to belong in a normal Seitokai morning.

The paper was conspicuously designed, the Academy's favorite combination of dignified blue and white, the kind of color scheme that says we take ourselves very seriously. In the center, several lines of text, printed large enough to make sure the universe knew it was coming. United Interstellar Military Academy — Capital District Representative Team Selection I stopped walking. The cold morning wind pushed through the corridor gap, making the corner of the paper flutter. The sound was faint.

In my ears, it landed like the click of something being cocked halfway. I stared at those words. A nerve that had still been half-asleep finally, very reluctantly, woke up. Upper House–Lower House Rivalry. Representative team. Capital District. And beyond that, without spelling it out, clearly not a matter of one internal match and done. I flipped through the other documents in the envelope.

Of course — activity overview, preliminary coordination notes, student governance cooperation items, venue use applications, and tucked in at the back, a roster template that needed the Seitokai President's prior confirmation. I recognized the format immediately: it wasn't asking whether you wanted to participate. It was politely notifying you that the trouble was about to grow legs, and please prepare to receive it. I laughed, low and dry.

"Wonderful." I pulled the flyer out and read it again in the corridor's half-lit morning.

"Did I just open some kind of Pandora's box..." The most dangerous things at school were never explosions. Never gunfire. They were color-coded flyers. Because the things that actually drag people into the deep end always come printed beautifully, with very dignified titles. Friendly exchange. Preliminary coordination. Representative team selection. Every word looked civilized. Together, they only ever meant one thing. Your foreseeable future just stopped being quiet.

I stood there holding the documents, a bad feeling settling in. Today's time in the Council might not be half the day. It might be from right now until sunset. And worse, I could already picture it — handing this to Maki, watching her read the first page in silence, turn to the next, her brow tightening slightly, then looking up at me with that level expression: Hoshino. Don't even think about running today.

And I'd probably say, with whatever dignity I had left: Isn't the correct response here to comfort the victim first? And she'd probably hand me the thickest document in the stack. I pushed open the Seitokai office door and walked into something that had no business being there at this hour. Not paperwork. Not hell. Coffee.

The smell hit me before anything else — hot, well-mannered, bitter in a way that had taste, belonging to a completely different civilization tier than the documents stacked around the room waiting to bury someone. I stood in the doorway for half a second and arrived at one conclusion: So it's true that humans make coffee first, even in a crisis.

"Oh, Shimo, you're here." A familiar face surfaced from behind the document mountain. Maki had one hand pressed to a file and a pen in the other, the faint shadow under her eyes confirming that she hadn't slept well either. She looked at me.

"What took you?"

"Got intercepted on the way." I held up the manila envelope.

"A teacher who refused to leave her name shoved this at me and said to pass it to the President. I considered whether it might be a bomb, then remembered this place is already more dangerous than a bomb, so I brought it along." Maki took the envelope and opened it with the efficiency of someone defusing a paperwork explosive. She pulled out the top few sheets, scanned them — and her expression, which had been reasonably level, paused. Very briefly. Brief enough that anyone else would've thought she'd blinked.

I'd spent too much time with her. That kind of pause registered about the same as a campus alarm.

"... They're reviving this?" I hung my coat on the chair and asked, "Which?"

"The Selection." She drew out the color flyer and set it on the desk. The large text I'd already read once on the road was just as ominous the second time. United Interstellar Military Academy — Capital District Representative Team Selection I looked at the flyer. Then at her. She didn't seem inclined to explain immediately. I didn't push.

I knew her well enough — if she wasn't talking now, it wasn't because she didn't want to, it was because her brain was already running three processes at once: who was going to get pulled into this, how far the Council would need to go, and what shape today's original schedule was about to die in. So I didn't make it worse. I just picked up a nearby stack of documents, dragged a chair over, and sat down.

"Fine. I'll help you shave this mountain down a little. If something big is about to start, at least give it somewhere to land." Maki gave a low sound in response — either a small laugh or just a nasal acknowledgment. Hard to tell. Didn't matter. The next hour, the two of us settled into something deeply unromantic. Not cohabiting — colleagues. She handled verification, annotation, page-pulling, marking; I handled sorting, organizing, sequencing, occasionally translating something from bureaucratic into human.

Outside the window, the sky lightened in increments. The only sounds in the room were paper turning, pen against desk, the occasional soft clink of a coffee cup on its saucer. Somewhere else, that quiet might have been called peaceful. In the Seitokai office, it was just hell running normally. Around seven, a steady knock came at the door. Three knocks. Even. I didn't look up.

I'd already ruled one person out — if it were Jess, that door would currently sound like a festival drum, with a bonus is anyone alive in there? Maki set her pen down.

"Come in." The door opened a crack.

"Pardon the intrusion." I looked up. Hedwig von Wittelsbach was standing in the doorway, uniform impeccable, her hair catching the faint glow from the early snow and cold air outside. She glanced in, tone as measured as a formal opening statement.

"You're both here." Nothing wrong with that sentence. The problem was what she was carrying. Not a document bag. Not a file. A thermal tote — the kind with actual domestic energy, completely at odds with her usual presentation. Three internal alarm bells went off. Hedwig stepped inside and stopped in front of me with clear intent.

"H-Hoshino." I nearly dropped the file in my hands.... Who? Not the name — the name was right. The tone. That pause, that softness, that near-careful quality — on her, the effect was roughly equivalent to seeing the Chair of the Disciplinary Committee holding a bunny-shaped mug and advocating for world peace. I stared at her. She looked back, expression entirely serious, apparently unaware she'd nearly given me internal injuries.

"If you don't mind — please try this." She opened the tote and took out a bento box, holding it toward me. Before I could decide whether to thank her or be suspicious, she'd already pressed it into my hands and turned to set another on Maki's desk.

"There is soup as well."

"... Hedwig."

"Yes?"

"Do you have a fever?"

"No."

"Then why are you here at this hour delivering breakfast?" She paused. The pause wasn't long, but it had the texture of someone who hadn't planned on explaining, and was now improvising a sufficiently dignified account on the spot. Finally, she said, simply: "Don't ask so many questions. Try it first and see if it suits you." Something was off. Very off. I looked down at the box in my hands, harboring the most basic possible suspicion. There isn't something in here, is there.

Like something that makes you agree to work for the Empire after eating, or generates unrealistic expectations about a lunar neutral city.

"It's fine, Shimo." I turned. Maki had already opened hers and was eating. She picked up a piece of tamagoyaki, tone carrying the composure of someone conducting a hazardous materials safety assessment.

"It's quite good." I looked at her. Then at Hedwig.

"You just... ate it?"

"What else?"

"What if this is a new Imperial diplomatic weapon?"

"If it is," Maki said, taking a sip of soup, "then I'd say her strategic instincts are sound." That line left me with no option but to open my own. Then, one second later, I found a new complaint entirely.

"... Wait." I stared at the contents arranged with precise symmetry inside the box, and experienced a brief cultural shock. Who brings a nine-compartment bento as breakfast? White rice, grilled mackerel, tamagoyaki, tsukemono, chikuzen-ni, ohitashi spinach — clean colors, clearly divided sections, arranged with the kind of precision you'd expect from a military inspection. This wasn't breakfast.

This was a precision strike by Imperial aristocratic domestic education against the Federation's civilian class, delivered at dawn. I looked up. Hedwig was holding a bowl of miso soup. What was she trying to accomplish? Operating on the principle of if there's something in here, I at least need to know if it's worth the risk, I picked up a piece of chikuzen-ni and put it in my mouth. The next second, every sarcastic remark I'd been holding in reserve evaporated.

"... Oh, damn." I stopped my chopsticks midair.

"This is good." Not courtesy. Not a moment of weakness. Actually good. Not at least edible, like the dining hall. Not impressive given the constraints, like the Yukikaze. The kind where you take one bite and know the person who made it didn't cook to fill a stomach — they were trained by a standard rigorous enough to be cruel. I ate another bite, feeling conflicted.

"This is a bit much..." Hedwig seemed to exhale. Something shifted faintly in her eyes.

"I'm glad it suits you."

"Hold on, don't celebrate yet." I looked up, narrowing my eyes.

"Someone like you showing up with breakfast out of nowhere — by normal logic, you're either trying to win us over, or you're about to ask for something." Maki added, mild: "Could be both."

"Since when is Madam President helping with the interrogation?"

"Because I want to know too." Hedwig stood at the desk, looking at the two of us. For a moment she seemed to want to maintain her usual composed, impenetrable surface — but with the bento and miso soup already on the table, that surface had developed a few distinctly domestic cracks. She looked away. Her voice stayed level, but had lost a little of its usual steel.

"I just... thought you'd both be busy today." My chopsticks paused. Maki glanced up at her. Hedwig added quickly: "After yesterday, the Council was unlikely to be quiet. I happened to be up early, so I prepared something." That was a very composed explanation. Very her. But the problem was — too composed. Composed enough that I actually wanted to laugh.

"Your definition of 'happened to' is a bit extravagant," I said, looking at the nine compartments.

"Some families in the Federation don't put this much effort into New Year's."

"If you don't want it, you can return it."

"No." I pulled the box closer.

"The food is innocent." Maki finally laughed — not the polite corner-of-mouth kind, but something with a faint thread of actually being amused. When she laughed, the outer corner of her eye softened slightly. The change wasn't much. I could still see it. Hedwig saw it too. In that moment, something very light entered the air — not hostility, not any clearly nameable feeling, just the kind of presence two blades sheathed across a desk from each other would produce, each knowing the other was there.

I looked back down at my rice. Done for, I thought, privately. The food is excellent. The interpersonal dynamics are about to get complicated. I was still considering whether to wash down that particular unease with the miso soup when the door knocked again. More ordinary this time. Roy came in first. He had the look of someone who'd already accepted that today was for reconciling accounts, not for being born. Then his nose caught something, and he stopped completely.

"... What's that smell?" His gaze traveled from the bento on Maki's desk to the one in my hands, to Hedwig standing nearby, and finally to the steaming cup on the table. Roy's expression shifted into a very specific, accountant-flavored shock.

"Did I walk into the wrong room? Is this not the Seitokai office — is this the back kitchen of some high-end family restaurant?" Before I could answer, Lan came in behind him. Her response was more practical — she looked at the food first, then the people, then the documents on the desk, and arrived at a very precise summary.

"The workload today must be large enough to warrant a preemptive breakfast."

"This isn't Council welfare," I said.

"It's Imperial-style strategic appeasement." Hedwig didn't blink.

"If that's how you'd like to understand it, I don't object."

"You agreed to that too quickly." The office warmed up quickly after that — the cold that had sat in the air all morning started to dissolve under coffee, miso soup, and voices. Roy had already drifted over to look at the flyer. Lan scanned the Capital District Representative Team Selection materials on the desk, her brow ticking up once.

"They're actually doing this again this year?"

"Looks like it." Maki set her chopsticks down, fingers tapping the stack.

"And it's not just a notification — the Council probably needs to get ahead of it."

"Wonderful." I shoveled the last of my rice down, expression flat.

"I was just thinking this morning that maybe life could be calm for half a day. The school answered with concrete action: no." Roy flipped through a few pages, his face getting progressively worse, like discovering the end-of-month ledger had started reproducing on its own.

"Upper House–Lower House Rivalry, representative team selection, student governance cooperation, venue coordination..." He looked up.

"This isn't an event. This is a forecast that the Council's working hours are about to explode." I was about to agree when the door got knocked with an unmistakably unsubtle, unmistakably recognizable rhythm. Bang bang bang bang bang— Like someone was using the door for drum practice. I didn't need to look up.

"Come in, Jess," I said. The door swung open immediately. Jess stuck her head in, scarf still half-hanging off her neck, radiating the specific energy of someone who'd just arrived and was already prepared to say three useless things.

"Ha, knew you'd all be—" The second half of the sentence got stuck in her throat. She'd smelled it. Then she saw it. The bento in my hands, the soup on Maki's desk, Hedwig standing nearby, and the entire Seitokai office currently saturated with a domestic warmth that had no business being here at this hour. Jess went quiet for two seconds. Her eyes widened. Her expression shifted rapidly from I came here to cause trouble to did I just walk into something that belongs in the school history records.

"... Hold on." She slowly closed the door. Then opened it again, like she was checking whether the world had broken in the last three seconds.

"Did I come at a bad time?" Before I could answer, she supplied her own follow-up.

"Or did I come at exactly the right time?" I pressed two fingers to my temple. There it was. This one never missed the chance to push a situation one step further toward chaos.

"Shut up and come in," I said.

"That's not fair, you can't blame me for this." Jess pointed at the desk, looking genuinely wounded.

"First thing in the morning, Seitokai office, the President, you, an Imperial princess, hot bento, miso soup — how am I supposed to process this with a normal person's framework?"

"With the normal-person framework you don't have," Maki said, even. Roy was already laughing hard enough to shake, shoulders going. Lan kept her head down, pretending to organize files, but her ears were clearly working overtime. Hedwig, to her credit, was calmer than I'd expected. She looked at Jess once, voice polite and steady.

"It's just breakfast."

"Just?" Jess looked like she'd been told a fairy tale.

"Your Highness, your definition of 'just' is going to be the end of a lot of ordinary people." I was about to head off the next escalation when Jess had already darted to the desk and looked down at the bento contents. She inhaled sharply.

"Wait — nine compartments?" She looked up at me, voice full of a complex mixture of disbelief and barely-contained envy.

"Hoshino Shimo, what exactly did you do to deserve this."

"Because I'm naturally likeable?" I said on reflex. Then, one second later, I felt a gaze slide over from the side.... Retracting that.

"Because I've been accumulating good karma," I said immediately. Jess made a skeptical sound.

"That sentence is a bigger stretch than the Representative Team Selection." That line brought the room back to where it was always going to end up. Representative Team Selection. The stack of documents on the desk, timing impeccable, lay quietly in the middle of all the breakfast warmth, and was already doing more to wake people up than the miso soup. Maki turned the flyer back face-up. Her fingertips tapped it once.

"Alright. Now that most people are here — breakfast aside." She paused and looked around the room.

"Let's talk about what actually matters." I bit into the last piece of tamagoyaki and looked at the large, aggressively cheerful text on the table. The morning's shape suddenly felt very characteristic of this school. On the surface: coffee, hot soup, bento, people arriving early, someone bringing breakfast, someone else providing commentary. It almost looked like youth.

But look one layer down, and there were the documents, the roster templates, the selection, the rivalry, and the institutional gears that, once they started turning, would pull everyone in together. I set the bento box aside.

"I knew it," I said. Jess raised a brow.

"Knew what?"

"Today was never going to be just a good breakfast." I looked at the stack of documents, my mood sinking half an inch in a way that was honest, while something else in me, inexplicably, almost wanted to laugh.

"Usually, the better the morning meal, the bigger the trouble that comes after it."