Chương 470: 222.Early Access 1

The anteroom to the hot springs was quieter than I'd expected. Not the dead silence of an empty room, and not the cold, metallic quiet of a warship on night watch. This quiet had warmth to it—as if someone had deliberately shut every alarm, every comm chatter, every footstep and voice on the Asgard outside a set of heavy doors, leaving only a trace of steam, a hint of wood, and the faint sound of hot water moving somewhere deeper inside. I stood at the threshold. The changing room was the first thing I saw.

The floor wasn't the standard anti-slip metal plating you found everywhere else on the ship. It was dark wood, its sheen worn soft by warm yellow light. A neat row of low lockers and benches lined both walls—no unnecessary decoration, but clean almost to a fault. The edges of the wooden cabinets had all been rounded off, as if whoever designed this place had decided from the start that no one should have to walk in here with their guard up.

Folded towels and robes sat stacked along the wall, arranged with a precision that suggested they were waiting for something more extravagant than a military order could authorize. Rest, maybe. The air carried a faint trace of cypress, and beneath it, the damp, sweet warmth that comes with real heat. It was when that smell hit me that I finally registered, for the first time, what I'd been carrying since we ran for our lives. Not blood. Not injuries.

Just tension—locked into my shoulders, into the back of my neck, into the way I'd been breathing the whole way back here, teeth gritted, and still hadn't fully let go. Maki had already stepped in ahead of me. She set her folder down on the small table by the entrance with the ease of someone who wasn't standing in a hidden facility inside a warship, but in a second Seitokai room she stopped by after class.

The warm light caught the side of her face and softened, just a little, that overly alert edge she wore during meetings. Only a little, though. This woman's bones were probably built out of regulations. Even here, her posture still carried the faint suggestion that she could call a meeting at any second. I leaned against the lockers and watched her. I couldn't help myself.

"Exactly how many more of these things are the Imperial nobles hiding?" Maki didn't turn around. She slipped off her uniform jacket and hung it up, and said, flat, "A little late to start caring about that now, isn't it?"

"I was busy staying alive."

"This falls under Seitokai benefits, too." I almost laughed.

"Drag someone out from under an Imperial fortress's main gun, then buy them off with a hot spring?"

"Correction." She finally turned her head to look at me.

"The first is duty. The second is reassurance."

"That sounds exactly like something a Senpai executive at a black company would say."

"Didn't you just call me a seasoned CEO?" She fired that back so cleanly I didn't know whether to admit she was right or regret my own mouth. I coughed and started on my uniform buttons. The changing room went quiet again. But it was a different kind of quiet this time. Before, the room had gone still. Now it was the two of us. That was a problem. Neither of us was the type who needed to fill silence with talk.

Normally there were too many people around, too many tasks, too many orders—everyone busy, and if you ended up close, you ended up close. A shoulder bump, an arm slung across a back, most of it never needed explaining. But once things were like this—nothing around but wood, steam, and warm light, where you could hear the friction of fabric—a lot of things that usually passed as ordinary had a way of turning dangerous. I pulled off my jacket and set it aside. Maki wasn't moving much faster than I was.

She looked as composed as ever, but I knew her too well—well enough to notice that when she reached up to take out her hair clip, her fingers lingered half a second longer than usual.

"What are you looking at?" She didn't look up. The question still landed dead center.

"Checking whether Maki's finally going to turn back into a living person."

"Disappointed?"

"Not yet." I thought about it.

"But I reserve the right to keep observing." She let out a soft hum. Barely enough to count as a laugh, but looser than anything she'd allowed herself in the briefing room, where every sentence came out measured. I stepped up beside her and reached for the back of her neck. Maki didn't pull away—just tightened her shoulders, slightly.

"What are you doing?"

"Taking this off you." I hooked the ID clip still pinned neatly to the inside of her collar and undid it. The metal made a small, clean sound as it left the fabric—pathetic, as far as noises go, but it landed like some kind of off-duty signal. I set the clip aside and pressed my thumb into the back of her neck.

"Stiff as armor."

"Are you conducting a structural assessment on a key command asset of this ship?"

"Yes." I kept my face completely straight.

"Conclusion: non-compliant. Immediate immersion in hot water recommended." Maki actually laughed at that. Short. But I saw it—a small release at the corner of her eyes, like someone finally letting a wound-up spring loosen by one notch. She didn't knock my hand away. She just reached up and pressed her fingers against my wrist.

"Take care of yourself first."

"I'm fine."

"Every time you say that, it means you're not." This woman was genuinely insufferable sometimes. Because she was right. I was about to fire something back when my eyes caught the half-open lattice door deeper in the room. Through it, I could see a corner of the garden outside the spring itself. Not large. But considered. Beyond the door was a rest area done in a Japanese-garden style—wood decking stretching outward, low lanterns tucked into the corners, their light so soft it looked steamed into submission.

Further out: pines pruned into careful shapes, stone lanterns, low plantings, and the edge of the spring pool itself, half-hidden in mist. Most absurd of all was the transparent dome overhead—as if someone had physically pried the night sky loose and bolted it to the ceiling. A river of stars spread slowly across the curved glass, distant enough to feel like a dream, close enough that if you soaked long enough, you might dissolve straight into it.

There were even low tables and a tea set arranged in the middle of the rest area. I narrowed my eyes.

"Is this a hot spring, or a secret high-end club?"

"The two aren't mutually exclusive." Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. Maki answered without missing a beat. Shameless. But very Seitokai. On the other side of the changing room, a corridor led toward the shower stalls. The atmosphere there was completely different—no garden, no low tables, nothing deliberately designed to soften you up.

Just a neat row of washing stations: copper showerheads and wooden buckets gleaming old-gold under warm light, steam curling up along the tiles, the whole place looking like it had been jointly governed by Imperial etiquette and bathhouse pragmatism. Each station was spaced exactly right—not crowded, not pointedly distant either. As if to say: we respect personal space, but we do not tolerate sloppiness. The massive water heater beside it had presence of its own.

It stood there, breathing steam out in slow coils, like the entire ship's gentleness had to be pressure-boiled before it was cleared for entry into the bath. I looked at it, then let my eyes drift toward a narrower passage further in. That way led to the private baths. Unlike the open garden or the communal showers, that direction felt deliberately hidden—a wooden door, low lamps, a separate little anteroom. Even the entrance radiated a distinct "crowds not welcome" energy.

Through the half-drawn curtain I could just make out the round rim of a single tub, and thicker steam—a small pocket of quiet reserved for people who genuinely didn't want to be found. I looked a second too long. Maki caught it immediately.

"Not that way." I turned to her.

"I didn't say I was going anywhere."

"Your eyes did."

"Maki, that's occupational discrimination."

"No." She tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear, unhurried.

"That's prevention of facility misuse." I nearly choked on a laugh. Perfect. She sounded righteous enough saying it, but she knew exactly what she was doing: if she let me drift that way right now, tonight wasn't staying at the "just a soak" level. The public baths were an entirely different scale. A little further in, the space opened up all at once. Three large pools laid out generously, rims framed in dark stone.

The central pool was the widest, its surface catching the warm light and the star-dome above in interlocking threads of gold and pale blue. The two side pools ran smaller—one cooler, one warmer, as if even the bathwater came with a choice of moods. Tall columns held the ceiling up, decorative reliefs and potted greenery lined the walls, and the whole space felt like a bathhouse crossed with an indoor garden pavilion that had gotten badly, wonderfully out of hand.

The maddest part was that this was inside a warship, and none of it felt like one. It felt more like some obscenely wealthy person with too much aesthetic conviction had insisted on hiding a whole palace of hot mist deep inside a hull built for steel and gunfire—specifically so people could forget there was a war going on. I stayed quiet for a couple of seconds, then reached a conclusion.

"Now I understand why you'd never bring up the hot spring in a briefing." Maki handed me a folded towel.

"How so?"

"I thought this was standard welfare." I took the towel.

"Turns out it's a coup-grade asset." She raised an eyebrow.

"Coup-grade?"

"Yes." I nodded with total sincerity.

"The moment this facility goes public, your legitimacy as a leader is going to rest entirely on who controls access to the hot spring." Maki didn't shoot back right away this time. She just looked at me. Her eyes clearly said you're talking nonsense again, but the corner of her mouth moved.

"Since you have such strong opinions on the matter," she said.

"Go wash first."

"Maki, you have a real gift for turning romantic atmosphere into hygiene management."

"That's because you look exactly like the type who'd jump straight in."

"Do I really look that uncivilized?"

"Yes." No hesitation whatsoever. Great. Even her insults sounded like she was reading from meeting minutes. I hugged the towel to my chest and followed her toward the showers. It was brighter there than in the garden outside, but not the cold white of the bridge—warm light threaded with steam and the smell of wood. A neat line of washing stations ran along the wall: copper showerheads, wooden buckets, low stools, finely patterned partitions, all glowing old-gold in the mist. Overhead, the dome's curve continued.

Look up, and the whole galaxy sat pressed gently against the ceiling—a band of silver-violet drifting slowly across the glass, layering with the steam rising off the floor, until the place stopped looking like a bathhouse and started looking like something a very wealthy, very unhinged Imperial garden designer had built specifically to erode people's guard. The tall water heater stood off to one side, exhaling steam through copper pipes in a steady rhythm, like it was setting the pulse for the whole room.

The floor was dark stone. Heat rose up through the soles of my feet, and before I'd even touched the water, I already had the distinct sense my bones were about to give up.

"I think I understand something now." I sat down at one of the stations and looked up at her.

"Understand what?" Maki draped her towel over her shoulder and sat down beside me. Her hair hung damp at the ends against her neck, and for a moment she looked—just barely—softer than usual.

"Why our Seitokai hasn't completely lost it." She glanced at me.

"You're sure we haven't?"

"On the surface, at least."

"That's only because what you see is the working version." I almost asked what the non-working version looked like—but then I thought about where we were, and the heat, and the way she could still pin someone back into line with a single sentence even looking like this, and decided that question was safer saved for later. She picked up a wooden bucket and glanced my way.

"Turn around."

"Yes, Lady Maki."

"Don't." I turned obediently, giving her my back. A second later, warm water poured down. It felt almost criminally good—sliding from the back of my neck, over my shoulders, down my spine, like someone was finally, patiently dissolving the knot of tension I'd hauled out from under the Hohenzollern's main gun and hadn't managed to shake since. Heat rose off my skin. Even my breathing slowed down without asking permission. Maki set the wash things within reach. Her voice came from behind me.

"Head down." I complied, and threw in a comment with the least sincerity I could manage.

"You sound like you're commanding a fleet."

"Because sometimes the Executive Officer is harder to manage than a fleet."

"That's a personal attack."

"No. That's the conclusion of long-term observation." Of course. Managing to scrub someone's back and deliver a structured character assessment at the same time—very on-brand for her. When her hand landed on my shoulder through the soapy cloth, I let out a breath before I could stop myself. Not because it tickled. Not because I was suddenly shy. Because we were too familiar for that.

On the battlefield she'd hauled me by the arm, I'd hauled her back, hands on shoulders, half-dragging each other forward in emergencies—all of it closer than this. But in a place this warm, this quiet, things that had always counted as ordinary had a way of turning into something that needed handling with care. She worked down my shoulders and back at a steady, unhurried pace.

Not the careful touch you'd use on someone injured, not the carelessness of a quick rinse, but something calibrated in between—the specific competence of someone who already knew exactly where I carried tension, where more pressure would get a complaint, and where going easy wouldn't do anything at all.

"Harder on the left."

"Here?"

"Lower." She adjusted. I nearly dissolved straight into the steam.

"Shimo." Her voice came from behind me, carrying a faint edge of warning.

"Don't talk in that tone. The one that sounds like you're ascending to heaven."

"Not my fault." I rested my chin on my arm and answered with complete honesty.

"I almost died next to the Hohenzollern today. Now someone's washing my back. Of course I want to become a better person." She didn't answer. But I was certain she smiled—because the next pass of the cloth came down noticeably harder.

"Ow."

"Deserved."

"Maki is abusing her authority."

"You talk too much." I turned my head, smiling, ready to fire something back—but she'd already shifted the cloth's angle, drawing it from my shoulder around toward my side. It shouldn't have meant anything. On any other day it wouldn't have registered at all. But the heat and the steam must have slowed both of us down by half a beat, because when she pulled her hand back, it brushed somewhere it wasn't supposed to. Briefly. Really, just a fraction of a second. But we both went still at exactly the same moment.

The steam kept rising. The water kept running. The boiler in the corner kept exhaling its steady rhythm. Nothing in the room had changed. The air had, somehow, completely. I didn't turn around right away. She didn't say anything right away. That kind of quiet was dangerous—not the "too-familiar, therefore risky" quiet from the changing room. This was something half a step further along, right at the edge of a line neither of us had actually crossed yet. I could feel her still behind me. Not moving.

That wasn't like her. If she'd touched something by accident, the Maki I knew would apologize, throw out a quick line, or just act like it hadn't happened. The fact that she'd gone still, too, was somehow worse than anything she could have said. The tips of my ears went hot. That didn't happen often. Especially not because of her. In the end, I was the one who spoke first. My throat felt a little dry.

"... Maki."

"Mm." She finally answered. Lower than usual. A little slower. I almost laughed—not because it was funny, but because it was rare, genuinely rare, to catch this woman off guard like this.

"Was that within the scope of washing someone's back?" A beat of silence behind me. Then a very quiet breath.

"An accident."

"That answer has zero sincerity."

"Then what do you want me to say?" I finally turned around. Maki sat just behind me, cloth still in hand, expression as composed as ever. But if you looked closely—and I always looked closely—the composure had come loose at the edges. Her ears were unmistakably red, and her eyes had lost that precise, clean edge they carried in meetings, replaced with something steam-softened, almost helpless. Oh, that's a problem. That's a real problem.

I looked at her and, for once, didn't feel like turning this into a joke and moving on. She must have noticed. Her fingers shifted, like she was about to set the cloth down—or like she hadn't yet decided what to do about an atmosphere that had just, undeniably, gone pink. I moved a little closer. Not much. Just enough that the distance between us, technically safe a moment ago, stopped being safe.

"I want the truth," I said, quietly. Maki looked at me. Whatever composure she'd been holding onto, she held it right up until she didn't. She raised her hand, brushed a damp strand of hair off my forehead, her fingertips grazing my cheek.

"The truth," she said finally, "is that if you come any closer, I won't be able to call it an accident anymore." Right. That wasn't pink atmosphere anymore. That was someone who'd already lit the match, calmly asking if you felt warm. I looked at her with exactly one thought in my head: this woman could flatten an entire room during a meeting, and then, at a moment like this, turn around and be better than me at saying the one thing you couldn't pretend you hadn't heard. I was just about to answer.

Then footsteps came barreling in from outside, with absolutely no respect for timing. Fast. Familiar. And loud before they'd even reached the door.

"—I knew it! They came here first!" Jess. I closed my eyes and swore, silently, with real feeling. Of course.