Chương 414: 191.Our New Year's Night 2

The moment the duty-room door closed, that wind that had been scraping along like a blade against the ears was finally sealed outside. The heat of the heater, the old wooden desk, the photocopied paper, the leftover scent of tea in the thermoses, and that peculiar duty-room air — "there's hardly anything in here, yet it traps you like serving a sentence in a small cell" — all pressed in at once. I'd been in this room who knows how many times; by rights I should have been used to it.

But tonight — maybe because that moment at the gate had been too much of a foul — even this room, which normally only made me want to yawn, suddenly felt a little hard to breathe. Not because of the heat. Because Kushima Maki was in here too. And she was standing within three steps of me, ears still carrying a hint of red that wouldn't fade, while her face had already skillfully put back on that look of "the current speaker is the Student Council President; any private incidents, please queue up on your own."

Impressive. Really impressive. Impressive enough to make a person want to wreck it on purpose. I set the flashlight on the desk, making a deliberately audible little noise. Maki acted as if she hadn't heard, simply lining up her duty log, key ring, and radio on the tabletop, item by item. Everything landed in a position as precise as if there were gridlines in her head.

Log upper right, flashlight left, keys in the middle, radio close to her dominant hand; even the thermos was set somewhere it wouldn't knock over documents yet was within easy reach. Maki sometimes was like a kind of premium stationery. Cold, straight, clean, sharp edges — and if you set her at even slightly the wrong angle, she'd be the one to suffer before you did.

"Close the curtains first." Maki said. I shrugged off my coat, answered in a lazy drawl, and headed for the window. The duty-room window faced the gate and front courtyard; fine snow was already gathering on the glass, and the streetlights painted the falling flakes pale, like someone slowly scattering powdered glass into the night. A view like that might even have counted as romantic in another time and place.

Unfortunately this was the school duty room, and behind me stood the president whose cheek I'd just kissed — the word "romance" fit in here about as well as pouring milk into medical alcohol. I pulled the curtains shut. When I turned around, Maki was head-down flipping through the duty records. She flipped quickly, as if trying to press that entire scene at the gate down beneath the pages. When she reached today's handover page, her pen paused, then she began to write.

Handwriting as neat as ever, strokes crisp, not a trace of panic. Only her ears were still faintly red. That little bit was lethal.

"If you keep staring, today's duty record is going to gain an entry." Maki said without lifting her head. I raised an eyebrow.

"What?"

"Vice president persistently harasses the president with unclear intentions before the start of duty, seriously obstructing the year-end handover order."

"Wow," I pulled out a chair and sat, unable to help laughing, "so you WERE flustered." Only then did Maki lift her eyes to me. That glance was brief, but it carried the standard Kushima-model lethality — like the back of a blade: it doesn't necessarily cut, but a slap from it still hurts.

"I wasn't flustered."

"Oh." I nodded, dragging out the syllable.

"So your ears are this red because the heater is working too hard?"

"Hoshino Shimo."

"Present."

"Three minutes of silence."

"That's an unreasonable request. I'm a living person."

"Right now you look more like a disaster source." I nearly laughed out loud. Good. This was the Kushima Maki I knew. The surface had returned to normal, the tongue had regained its precision — only the ears hadn't recovered yet. Which made the entire picture extremely worth preserving. Maki clearly had no intention of letting me keep running with her ears as material, so she flatly pushed a patrol route sheet in front of me.

"Read it. Tonight, first confirm the gate, the east connecting corridor, the first-floor external door of the classroom block, and the central staircase; then come back for the pre-midnight record." I gave it a cursory glance, deliberately making my voice very proper.

"Yes, ma'am." Maki's brow twitched.

"Cut it out."

"I'm being serious."

"When you're serious, things usually start going bad."

"Your prejudice against me runs deep."

"It's not prejudice," Maki said flatly.

"It's accumulated observation." I was about to fire back one more round when Maki reached for the radio, tested the signal with practiced ease, checked the flashlight's battery, and re-sorted the tags on the key ring. Her expression was faint as she did all of it, her breathing steady — she'd almost fully switched back to work mode. Almost. Because when I reached for a pen and my fingertips brushed the back of her hand resting by the table edge, she stopped for a clear half-beat. Just that half-beat.

Smaller than small, shorter than short; anyone else might not have noticed at all. Unfortunately, she'd touched me. I turned the pen half a rotation, my tone calmer than calm.

"President, that's quite a reaction." Maki didn't pull her hand back right away, only withdrew it slowly, as if that half-beat had never existed.

"Your hand is too cold."

"You know that's a flimsy excuse, right?"

"Good enough is good enough."

"Tough mouth."

"You've already used that line once today."

"Because it works."

"Then you can consider shutting up once today as well." I looked at her and smiled.

"Can't. Today is New Year's Eve. Wishes have to be made sincerely — you can't wish for impossible things." Maki, as if reminded of what she'd said outside a few minutes ago, let her composure crack for a brief second; then she snapped the duty sheet shut with a sound neither loud nor soft.

"Shimo."

"Mm?"

"If you misbehave again tonight, I'm putting your name in the first self-criticism of next year."

"Reason: excessive honesty toward the president?"

"Reason: deploying honesty without any regard for time or place." I genuinely laughed. The air in the duty room, which had been stewed stuffy by the heater, seemed to finally crack open a seam. Not entirely light — merely backing down from that at-the-gate state where one touch would ignite it, to a danger zone where we could talk while on duty, with everyone knowing the afterburn hadn't fully cleared. I opened the thermos Hedwig had pressed on me and poured half a cup of hot tea.

Steam rose in a white layer, blurring the desk and Maki's face into a slight haze. She opened her own thermos too — pausing for a beat, as if just realizing these two cups of hot tea weren't courtesy of the duty room, but had come from No. 22 Platinum Bridge Street. Watching that scene, I suddenly found it a little funny.

"What?" Maki asked.

"Nothing," I cradled the cup and leaned back in my chair, "just suddenly thought it was strange."

"Strange where?"

"The two of us are supposed to be here on night duty, yet here we sit with tea brought from home, pretending nothing ever happened." Maki didn't answer right away. The duty room was small, the heater hummed low, the radio blinked once in a while. She kept her eyes lowered, watching the white vapor rise from the rim of her cup, and only after a few seconds spoke, faintly.

"It's not as if nothing happened." I blinked. Oh. That line would do. I set my cup down, holding back a smile, deliberately not chasing it — just an "Mm?" Maki, as if regretting having said too much the instant the words left her, glanced up at me and hardened her tone again.

"I mean — today has simply had a lot of things going on. This morning's matter. Hedwig's matter. The room matter. The duty schedule reassignment. Don't read into it deliberately."

"I haven't said anything."

"Your face has already said it."

"Then that just proves you know me very well."

"That's not something to be glad about."

"It is to me." The fingers Maki had around her cup tightened very slightly. A detail that small, too small for any official duty report, and yet more interesting than all the proper documents. Her silence lasted only two seconds; then, like a decision made, she set the cup down, stood, and walked to the wall, taking down the campus layout chart hanging there.

"Come here." She said. I blinked. That tone was pure business — clean, crisp, not a hint of ambiguity. And that was exactly the problem: the two of us were no longer in any position, tonight, to trust anything presenting itself as "not a hint of ambiguity." Still, I stood and walked over beside her. There wasn't much space by the wall. The chart was pinned to a corkboard, flanked by last week's lost-and-found notice and a patrol reminder written in some junior's wobbly hand.

Maki tapped the east corridor, then swept down to the first-floor external door of the classroom block.

"First round follows this line." she said.

"The front courtyard is starting to gather snow — slippery. Don't take too wide a loop outside."

"Got it."

"And the central staircase — the lighting tube had bad contact last time. If the light's off, use the flashlight first; don't walk hugging the wall." Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. I listened, but my gaze kept slipping, uncontrollably, to her profile. When Kushima Maki talked business, her voice was always pleasant. Never forcing, never pretending maturity — just steady.

That steadiness was dangerous, because it made a person want to deliberately knock it off balance. Especially when you knew this person had been bright red minutes ago; that restored presidential face before you became even more... how to put it, incitement to crime. I'd been staring a little too long. Maki's voice stopped.

"Shimo."

"I'm listening."

"Then repeat the patrol order I just gave."

"Don't take a wide loop in the courtyard, the central stair light is glitchy, don't be dumb and walk into the wall." I paused, adding the last line.

"And the president is working very hard to pretend nothing happened." Maki finally turned her head.

"That last sentence isn't part of the duty instructions."

"But it's true."

"You're really asking for—" She didn't finish that line. Because I was already a little closer than before. Not deliberately pressing in, not some dramatic wall pin — it was just that the duty room was small to begin with, and by the wall it was smaller still, and when two people need to look at one chart together, the distance naturally shrinks. The problem was that once a certain distance shrinks past a point, the physical excuses stop mattering. Her breathing stopped for a beat. I saw it. Light. Brief.

Then I also smelled her coat — that mix of cold air and laundry detergent — different from when we'd come in, its edges now softened by the heater. Maki stood very straight, one hand still on the corner of the chart, as if as long as she didn't retreat, this scene could still be filed under legitimate duty. I found it very interesting.

"What are you backing away from?" I asked in a low voice.

"I'm not backing away."

"Then why did your breathing stop?"

"Because you're too close."

"But you didn't dodge." Maki's lashes moved. Ah. Trouble. One more half-step at a moment like this and tonight's duty record would really have to be rewritten. But right then, the radio let out a "zzz" — a sharp green light — as if unable to watch any longer, yanking the two of us back from a very dangerous edge. I froze for an instant, then laughed out loud. Maki simply closed her eyes, as if holding back the urge to hurl the radio out the window.... This was too much like being named by fate herself.

She quickly withdrew her hand, turned, walked back to the desk, and picked up the radio to check the signal. Same steady movements — only her back was visibly stiffer than usual. Not anger. More like the self-restorative process of "I nearly lost my professional ethics a moment ago, and now I need to go find them." I followed her back, pulled out a chair, sat, and propped my chin on my hand to watch her.

"President."

"Quiet."

"You almost—""Hoshino Shimo." This time Maki said my full name, voice quiet, but precise as a fine needle. She set the radio back in place, and only then looked up at me. Those eyes had cooled down again. But only reorganized — not restored to factory settings.

"Duty first tonight." Maki said, one word at a time.

"Everything else, after the handover." I looked at her, and something knocked lightly against my chest. Not because she'd refused me. Because she hadn't denied that "everything else" existed. That was the deadly thing about this person. She never shaped a sentence into something a person could deal with easily; she always left half of it hanging there — like a fishhook, like a window not quite latched on a snowy night: the wind isn't strong, but it keeps seeping through.

I smiled, and finally, with effort, let her off.

"Fine." Maki looked relieved, or maybe not relieved at all — just checked the time briefly.

"Eleven more minutes." she said.

"Until the first round?"

"Until we leave the duty room." Following her gaze, I looked at the clock on the wall. The second hand marched obediently forward, as if it alone in all the world had no private attachments. The heater blew on as before; outside, the snow seemed denser, a thin film of fog on the glass. I finished the last of the hot tea, stood, and clipped the flashlight to my belt. Maki also fastened the top button of her coat and tidied her scarf once more.

She was fully in duty mode by then — but maybe I was imagining it, or maybe not, her fingers seemed a shade slower when they touched her collar. Maybe because a few minutes ago I'd kissed her cheek, not her collar. Or maybe just because I was asking for it.

"Looking at what?" Maki asked.

"Nothing." I lied honestly.

"Just suddenly felt tonight's going to be rough on you."

"Keep yourself in line and it won't be rough on me."

"But if I kept myself in line, I wouldn't be me."

"That absolutely cannot be used as a disclaimer."

"Think of it as a year-end-limited exception."

"No."

"So heartless."

"Too much indulgence is what made you like this."

"What's wrong with how I am?" I picked up the spare gloves by the door and waved them.

"Getting a ripe apple at the school gate before the night shift starts — isn't that a pretty good year-end benefit?" Maki shot me a glare. That glare actually carried real authority. If it had been anyone else, they would have instinctively straightened up and apologized. Unfortunately I was Hoshino Shimo, and I'd just kissed her, so that authority registered at maybe sixty percent — the other forty percent auto-translated into "she really wants to hit me with the duty log right now."

"Shimo."

"Yes."

"Say the word apple once more tonight and I'll assign you a week of wiping the duty-room windows."

"See, you just admitted it's ripe."

"Go patrol."

"Yes, ma'am, Madame President." Laughing, I held the door open for her. The moment it opened, the cold air outside poured in, colliding with the indoor warmth — two completely different worlds butting heads in the doorway. Pale snowlight spread across the corridor and courtyard, and the duty room's warmth, its tea scent, the air that had nearly burned a hole in all the official work, was pushed behind us in a single sweep. Maki walked out past me, boot heels striking the ground with clear sounds.

As she passed my side she paused half a step — not looking at me — and dropped one line, very low:"We'll settle this when we're back." I blinked. Then I couldn't help laughing. Because that sentence, translated into human language, meant exactly one thing. — Tonight is still far from over. I closed the door behind us and stepped into the snowlit night, in a better mood than when I'd arrived at school. Can't be helped. People are just sometimes this hopeless.

Knowing full well that what lay ahead might not be a peaceful handover but a whole night of low-temperature re-education at the hands of Kushima Maki, I still found myself, for no good reason, thinking this year-end night shift wasn't so bad after all. The moment the duty-room door opened, the cold air outside, as if it had been queuing right by the door all along, surged in by the batch the instant it got the chance. The skin that had just been softened by the warmth and tea steam woke nearly instantly.

My nose first drew in a chill carrying the taste of snow, then caught the peculiar scent of the school buildings at night — concrete, iron railings, half-dried fallen leaves, and the smell of ground that had been walked on by day and was slowly cooling back into itself after dark. I closed the door behind us, settled the flashlight into my palm, and followed Maki out onto the small platform before the duty room. She didn't speak right away. The moment Kushima Maki entered formal duty, she sank.

Not colder — thinner, sharper. Like a blade that had been sitting in its sheath, finally drawn out an inch: the light isn't blinding yet, but everyone knows it isn't decoration. The front courtyard had gathered a thin layer of snow — not enough to hinder walking, but enough to swallow half the campus's sound. Soles pressed down into small, muffled crunching sounds.

Rows of classroom blocks stood in the dark, windows black, only scattered security lights burning, cutting the empty corridors into blocks of pale white silence. Maki paused at the top of the steps, her gaze sweeping the inner side of the gate first, then the courtyard and the duty-room windows, before speaking at last.

"Confirm the front courtyard and the inner side of the gate first; then follow the same route to the east connecting corridor."

"Understood." I answered crisply this time. Not because I'd suddenly turned well-behaved — but because the school at night simply had that power. The moment you left the duty room, voices naturally lowered, steps naturally slowed, and even the stray thoughts that refused to sit still during the day got pressed down a layer by the darkness. Maki walked ahead; I followed half a step behind her.

That distance wasn't ambiguity, nor deference — it was the most efficient formation for patrol: the front person watches the field of view and overall route, the rear person covers blind spots and watches the flanks. Plain stuff, when you said it out loud — but once we actually walked like that, it made you very clearly feel: we're not out for a stroll. We're on duty. The front courtyard looked a little bigger than it did by day. Or rather — it was emptier in the way emptiness can be.

All the students, clubs, and deafening chatter of the daytime had been drained away, leaving only streetlights and snow washing the ground a little too clean. Maki's light didn't wander; it swept steadily across the gateposts, under the notice board, along the shadows by the duty-room's outer wall, and stopped at the inner side of the door lock.

"Inner side normal." she said. I swung my own light to the other side, sweeping the flowerbed edges, under the benches, and over the flagstone path leading to the classroom blocks.

"Courtyard, no anomalies." I answered. Maki nodded and turned east. As we crossed the edge of the courtyard, the wind was noticeably sharper than before. The snow was light, drifting fine, landing on scarves and shoulders and quickly melting into a little dampness. I tugged at my gloves instinctively, my gaze sliding across the administrative block's glass windows to the right.

Pitch black inside; the reflections threw the streetlights and both our shadows back at us, like a quiet, precisely paced ghost patrol hidden somewhere inside the campus. Today, though, there was no Nikaido. Thinking that, I briefly loosened half a breath. Maki seemed to notice my step rhythm shift. Without turning back, she asked, flatly:"What is it?"

"Nothing." I angled my light lower, onto a patch of snow on the flagstones.

"Just thought — it's very quiet today."

"Quiet is good."

"For the disciplinary committee, yes. For living people, not necessarily."

"You call yourself a living person when you're being noisy, too."

"Because that's a fact."

"Tonight I hope you keep being a fact and don't evolve into an incident." I couldn't help smiling a little — but the sound was light, nearly eaten by the wind. That degree was just right. Not teasing, not casual chatter — just conversation on duty. Like both of us knowing what the other was like on an ordinary day, so there was no need to pretend to be strangers, but no intention of deliberately dirtying the atmosphere in the empty nighttime campus, either.

Past this was the corner before the east connecting corridor. It looked like nothing by day, but at night it always seemed particularly long. The reason was simple: one side was the classroom block's outer wall, the other a stretch of wide windows and a semi-open area looking out at the side courtyard; when the wind blew through, both sound and light got stretched thin. On a deep night, even your own footsteps sounded like they were catching up from somewhere behind you.

Maki slowed half a step before the corner, her flashlight probing ahead first. The beam slid along the ground, picking out the base of the wall, the drain cover, and the first stretch of the corridor entrance. The east connecting corridor had a lower ceiling and dimmer lights than the main block; at night it looked like a passage deliberately narrowed by someone. Beyond the windows it was black, only a faint brightness reflected off the snow, making every pane look coated in a pale film.

"Once we're inside, don't put the beam directly on the glass." Maki said.

"Check the floor and the door edges first."

"It'll reflect."

"And it makes the blind spots harder to read."

"Got it." She was always like this. Most of it didn't need saying; I already understood. But Maki still said it. Not out of distrust — she simply spelled out what needed spelling out, shaving a layer of risk off for herself and for whoever walked with her. Sometimes that thoroughness felt heavy. But once you got out into the night, you had to admit: having this kind of person take point saved you a real amount of trouble. We entered the east connecting corridor one after the other.

The sound of footsteps changed instantly. From the muffled crunch of snow to clear but empty echoes on hard floor. Tap, tap, tap — not fast, not rushed, but stretched slightly longer by the corridor itself, like the whole space was reciting our steps back to us. My flashlight held the right-front, Maki's light pressed steadily left-of-center; the two beams didn't overlap, splitting the front-half floor and the wall-side zone cleanly. Nothing anomalous in the first stretch of the corridor.

Window latches normal, drains unblocked, no broom or equipment someone had forgotten propped against the wall. Even the cardboard boxes that usually loved accumulating their presence in the corner had, tonight, honestly vanished. Docile to the point of boring. But night duty was sometimes exactly this. Real professionalism wasn't encountering an incident every ten minutes; it was walking every step by the book even when nothing happened at all. To put it plainly: you had to take boredom seriously.

That sounded nothing like a hero story, and very much like real duty. I shifted my beam forward a little, sweeping the wall beneath the third window.

"Right side normal."

"Left side normal." Maki answered flatly. Neither of us was loud, like we were afraid of disturbing something. Not superstition, not deliberate atmosphere — just that, in a place like this, talking too loudly made you startle yourself with your own echo. It wasn't so much fear of the dark as it was not wanting to be laughed at by an empty school building. Near the fourth pillar, a gust of wind passed outside; the window glass gave a tiny tremor. Click. I looked up instinctively.

Maki stopped too, but only for a half-beat. She swept her light along the window frame edge, confirming the latch and bolt hadn't come loose, before saying flatly:"Temperature difference and wind pressure."

"Mm." I acknowledged, not asking more. Because this stretch was for honest patrol — not for probing someone's reactions, not for deliberately studying someone's weaknesses. Besides, tonight's partner was Kushima Maki, not Nikaido. Maki and Nikaido were different. The former was the type who put duty first even with things weighing on her mind; the latter was the type who packaged whatever weighed on her mind directly into the duty itself. Both were troublesome, but in different directions.

Thinking that, I took another step forward. My foot slipped — just slightly. Nothing serious: the edge of my sole had caught a small patch of thin snow carried into the corridor, and my center of gravity wobbled. But in that instant, Maki was faster — she reached out and caught my arm. Steady. No fumbling, no wasted motion. She simply held on, waited until I'd steadied, confirmed I wasn't going to fall, and let go. All of it took maybe two seconds.

I looked down at the patch of snow already melting, then at my arm where she'd touched it.

"... Thanks." Maki pressed her light toward the ground, as if what had just happened were only part of the duty procedure.

"Watch where you walk."

"I was watching."

"Then your watching isn't useful enough."

"You really don't know how to say pleasant things."

"Preventing the vice president from falling into the new year during the first patrol makes this unpleasantness necessary." I nearly laughed. That line was harsh, but harsh in a normal way. Not a deliberate jab, not settling a personal score — just standard Maki-style correction. Like the hand she'd just offered: not a gentle scene, not material to make a big deal out of. She simply stood in that position, saw it, and acted. And precisely because of that, it was harder to write off as nothing.

I re-gripped the flashlight, my tone pulling back a bit.

"Understood, President." Maki didn't answer, just kept walking. As the first half of the east connecting corridor neared its end, there was a small door on the left leading to the equipment room. Maki stopped, lighting the gap under the door and below the handle. I swept the floor and the wall corner beside it, confirming there were no drag marks, no fresh wet mud, and no one so bored at year-end that they'd come all the way here to vandalize.

"Equipment room, exterior normal." Maki said.

"Floor normal." I followed. The exchange came so smoothly that even I paused for a second. Maki probably noticed too — she turned her head and glanced at me. That glance was faint, but not like the ones in the duty room, which always carried a private undertone that wouldn't quite press clean. She was genuinely on duty now, so when her gaze landed, it was unusually straight.

"Situation better than I expected." she said. I blinked.

"How bad did you expect it to be?"

"At least two more lines of nonsense."

"So I've been performing excellently tonight."

"Barely passing."

"Kushima Maki, do you know that kind of comment is hurtful?"

"The wind's too loud. Can't hear you."

"That's a dirty trick."

"Patrolling. Efficiency first." This time I actually laughed — light, even a little helpless about it myself. Fine. At least she wasn't freezing the atmosphere solid the whole way through. Once the first half of the corridor was confirmed, Maki glanced at her watch.

"Time's fine. Continue to the rear section." I nodded, rolled my wrist, and re-gripped the flashlight with my slightly stiff fingers. The corridor ahead was still long, the lights still dim, the snow outside still falling. The first patrol had barely begun — stairs, the classroom block's external door, and the whole confirmation sequence before returning to the duty room were still waiting. Not exactly thrilling, but not boring enough to let your mind genuinely drift.

Duty, sometimes, was like this — not something constantly happening, but two people walking side by side through an empty place, confirming "nothing's wrong" over and over until it could be handed off to the next shift. That sounded ordinary. But that ordinariness — in the snow-lit night, after the school buildings had emptied out, in a corridor left with only flashlight beams and footsteps — carried a strange sort of weight. Like what tonight was really protecting wasn't just the gate and the corridor.

But also certain things that, without being said, had to be held steady first. I didn't say that out loud — just sent my beam forward and followed Maki deeper into the east connecting corridor.