Chương 479: 226.Rising Problems

I didn't go to the artificial beach. The reason was simple, and completely unromantic. The last time I saw that artificial beach, I already thought its scale was ridiculous. White sand, lounge chairs, sunshades, a beverage bar, and the kind of over-engineered design that clearly wanted to disguise a warship as a resort. The whole spec was so extravagant it felt like some deranged billionaire had decided to use the budget to personally insult reality. But the size of the beach wasn't the problem.

The problem was, the moment I thought about nearly three hundred second-years surging into it—fresh off a near-death experience, fresh off a briefing on joint holding systems, and freshly brainwashed by it's not that we aren't giving it to you, it's that we aren't letting the money take you apart—I felt exhausted just standing there. That wasn't a recreation facility. It was a large-scale mass behavioral observation site. And I had no intention of checking myself in as a researcher today.

Jess, of course, was different. Her lifeform essentially thrived wherever the crowd was thickest. Like some kind of highly mobile, incredibly loud marine organism capable of spontaneously generating its own gossip. The second she stepped into the beach zone, she blended seamlessly into the crowd, so fast you'd think she'd been born in that sand. I didn't stop her. That place was the Disciplinary Committee's home turf now. Since Freya and her people had taken over beach security, I wasn't going to steal their quota.

One of the most basic survival skills on a shared ship is not stepping into someone else's jurisdiction to volunteer for a second job. So I turned around and headed for the bridge. Not because I was particularly hardworking. And not because I'd suddenly ignited with military zeal for navigation management. Purely because, halfway there, I suddenly remembered something fatal. Something that was going to turn into a nightmare in a few days. Right now was the absolute best time to copy the Asgard's combat data.

The most terrifying thing about someone like Colonel Wiesland wasn't that he yelled. It was that he would use an incredibly calm, incredibly patient, incredibly military-academy tone to repeatedly remind you: "Hoshino, where is your tactical analysis report?"

"Hoshino, how is the data compilation coming along?"

"Hoshino, I trust you haven't forgotten, merely haven't submitted it yet." I was more afraid of that tone than an enemy target lock. An enemy ship just opens fire. He makes you feel ashamed first. So if I didn't take this chance—when the ship was at its most relaxed, the mainframe at its emptiest, and the data easiest to rip—to steal my homework materials, I probably didn't deserve to live in civilized society. But the second I stepped onto the bridge, I knew something was wrong. Not a little wrong.

The kind of wrong where, if an inspector walked in right now, they'd stay silent for three seconds before deciding whether to just decommission the entire crew on the spot. First, there was no watch personnel. Second, the navigator's station was empty. The communications station was also empty. The bridge felt terrifyingly large. The soft duty-mode lights were on, the screens were running normally—nav charts, power parameters, border monitoring feeds all dutifully alive.

But the humans responsible for them had collectively evaporated. There were exactly two and a half living things left on the entire bridge. One was Akari. She was curled up asleep at the radar station. Not a nap. Not resting her eyes. Not the high-tier slacking where you pretend to listen while your eyelids take a break. She was genuinely curled up in the chair, hugging her jacket, sleeping like someone who had temporarily deposited her soul into the radar waves.

The screen in front of her was still lit, casting a glow over her face that highlighted a profoundly justified exhaustion. The other was Hedwig. She was sitting in the captain's chair, currently playing 3D chess against Yggdrasil. I stood in the doorway for two seconds, only one very simple thought in my head. Wasn't using a military AI for chess a bit too extravagant? Yggdrasil wasn't a standard shipboard system.

Its processing power was theoretically meant for course correction, risk calculation, threat prediction—or at least pretending to do work worthy of military spec. And yet here it was, earnestly analyzing whether a bishop should flank the kingside across three vertical planes against an Imperial princess. Looked at from certain angles, this ship was truly doomed.

"Oh. Hoshino." Hedwig looked up and saw me first. Her expression was actually composed, as if she hadn't just been caught occupying the command seat to play games with a tactical AI, but had merely been spotted taking an extra pastry at an afternoon tea party.

"You don't have a shift today, do you?" I couldn't be bothered to answer that yet. I walked over to the main console, slotted my data card into the terminal, waited for the interface to pop up, and then said flatly:"I'm here to do homework." She blinked.

"You mean that gig you did for the Intel Department?"

"What else would it be?" As I pulled up the copy menu for the engagement logs, I finally threw the question out.

"Where did the bridge watch run off to?" Hedwig gestured casually to the side.

"Akari is here." I looked at the person who had nearly fused with her chair in sleep, and stayed quiet for half a beat.

"Your Highness." I turned back and looked at her.

"You know exactly what I'm asking." In that moment, her expression finally cracked. Just a little. Not a lot. But enough. She pressed her lips together very lightly, her eyes shifting away unnaturally. Then, as if realizing that was too obvious, she tried to force the calm back into her face, but couldn't completely suppress the panic.

Finally, she even stole a few glances toward the maintenance room, her movements so quick it was like she was afraid the answer would crawl out from under the door if she stared too long. I understood instantly. Thoroughly. Understood so well I lost all desire to ask follow-up questions.

After all, when you walk onto an empty bridge occupied only by a princess, a sleeping beauty, and a military AI, and you see the princess showing a level of concern for the maintenance room door that clearly has nothing to do with her chess game—the deduction difficulty drops to charity levels. I decided to be a person of culture. So I didn't expose her. I simply walked over to the navigator's station, pulled out the chair, sat down, folded my hands, and closed my eyes to rest. The data was copying.

The progress bar crawled forward at its own pace. I wasn't in a hurry either. Given the situation, I wasn't the one who needed to sweat. Hedwig probably knew I'd figured it out. So she didn't say anything else. She just coughed once and returned her eyes to the board. But her focus was a little strained now.

Like she wasn't playing chess anymore, but running a social-survival simulation: When you know the person next to you has discovered the secret in the maintenance room, how do you maintain your Imperial dignity? The answer clearly wasn't in any opening theory. About thirty minutes passed. Maybe forty. Long enough that I almost actually fell asleep. Long enough that Akari didn't even shift her posture. Long enough that Yggdrasil even politely announced, "Data duplication at eighty-three percent."

Finally, the maintenance room door opened. The sound of the door opening wasn't loud. But in bridge-level silence, it sounded roughly like turning yourself in. I didn't open my eyes immediately. I heard the footsteps first. One in front, one behind. Both very light. Thief-light. Then I looked up. Roy and Lan were slipping out of the maintenance room. Not walking out normally.

The kind of sneaking where, even though you technically haven't broken any written military law, you take every step like you're afraid the floorboards will suddenly open their mouths and testify against you. Roy came out first, the tips of his ears honestly red. Lan followed, her composure lasting exactly until the moment she saw me sitting at the navigator's station. Then her entire face detonated into red.

I leaned back in the chair, looked at them, and asked in a voice that was almost gentle:"Did you two have a pleasant time?" Roy froze instantly. Lan looked like someone had pulled her spine out on the spot, her shoulders visibly shrinking.

"Ah—ah, Hoshino—Executive—Executive Officer." When she spoke, even the title tripped over itself twice. I nodded.

"Good. At least you remember that I do currently hold the title of Executive Officer." Her expression went from panicked to despairing. Roy stood beside her, uncharacteristically silent. The guy who could normally field any financial, institutional, or logical problem without missing a beat was now as quiet as a model student cornered by a teacher in the hallway—proving that some situations really are harder to handle than spreadsheets. Lan coughed, trying very hard to find her voice.

"When... when did you get here?" The flattery in her tone was so obvious I almost wanted to applaud.

"Right around the time you were telling Roy you weren't satisfied yet." I said it flatly. Lightly. Like I was just stating an inconsequential timestamp. Then Lan cooked. Not just blushed. Fully cooked. If this hadn't been the bridge, I genuinely suspected she would have evaporated on the spot, leaving only her uniform and her dignity folded on the floor. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"I-I wasn't—""Don't explain." I raised a hand to cut her off.

"I have no interest in the details. It's better for my mental hygiene." Hedwig turned her face slightly away in the captain's chair. I suspected she was holding back a laugh. Or perhaps holding a final memorial service for Imperial aristocratic education. I checked the progress bar on my data card again, then slowly shifted my gaze back to the two missing bridge personnel freshly excavated from the maintenance room.

"Even though we're irregular students," I said.

"Even though this ship currently looks nothing like a regular warship."

"And even though I have zero interest in how the two of you express your mutual affection." I paused.

"Could you please leave at least one person to watch the bridge?" Lan shrank her neck. Roy finally spoke, his voice low and carrying an obvious, unnatural dryness.

"Sorry."

"That's not what I'm looking for." I stared at him.

"If the Asgard actually flies itself into a star, are you two planning to push the ship back out using the power of love?"

"That will not happen," Yggdrasil suddenly interrupted.

"I maintain round-the-clock monitoring." I turned and looked at the extremely innocent system indicator light on the main console.

"Oh, please," I said.

"I'm lecturing people. Don't interrupt."

"Understood." It actually shut up, completely obediently. From top to bottom, not a single part of this ship was normal. I took a deep breath and decided to at least keep my own part within normal parameters.

"Anyway." I looked back at Roy and Lan.

"If you two want to date, I don't care. If you want to steal ten or twenty minutes, I'm too lazy to investigate. But you cannot joke around with everyone else's lives." Roy lowered his eyes and nodded, sharply this time. Lan finally settled down too, dropping the attempts to act cute or play dumb. She pressed her lips together and said quietly:"Understood." That sounded much more real than her panicked responses earlier. The data completion chime sounded right then. I reached over and pulled the card out.

A tiny little card, packed with enough combat data from last night to make our entire class write until we questioned the meaning of life. Thinking about Colonel Wiesland seeing me hand in my analysis report on time, and the "good, you haven't entirely lost your educational value" approval in his eyes, my mood suddenly improved just a fraction. I stood up and took two steps toward the exit. As I passed Akari, I looked down at her. She was still asleep.

Thoroughly asleep, completely unaware that she had nominally become the final cornerstone of the Asgard's watch rotation. In a way, that was terrifying too. If anyone ever built a monument for her, the epitaph could just read: She never woke up. But she was always there. I reached the hatch, then turned back and dropped one last line.

"Next time." I waved the data card.

"At least wake Akari up first." Then I left. As the door closed behind me, I heard a half-second of silence inside. An interesting kind of silence. Not mortifying silence, but the silence of two people who had just been caught and were trying very hard to figure out whether they were more humiliated or more lucky. Walking down the corridor, I suddenly wanted to laugh.

Everyone else was probably on the artificial beach right now, getting some sun, playing in the water, fighting for lounge chairs, or continuing to debate joint holding, monthly distributions, and whether the second-year class would eventually go public. Meanwhile, I'd spent my morning acting as Maki's proxy for shipboard economic law, and then walked onto the bridge to catch the watch system collapsing in real time. The job of Executive Officer was just too broad.

So broad that sometimes I suspected Vice President of the Seitokai wasn't a title at all, but a disaster-response classification. What was more troublesome was that everyone on this ship seemed to be slowly dropping their over-wound nerves back into human mode, each in their own way. Some went to the beach. Some slept at the radar station. Some played chess with the military AI. Some hid in the maintenance room for co-ed communication.

And someone was holding a combat data card, getting ready to go back and face homework more relentless than an enemy ship. As for Maki, she was probably still asleep in my bed. Thinking of that, my steps paused for a beat.... Whatever. At least it was better than the maintenance room. When I got back to my room, Maki was exactly where I'd left her. But not in the half-awake state from before—wrapped in blankets, hair a little messy, eyes still swimming in sleep. No.

The way she looked now was closer to a tactical nexus that had completed self-diagnostics, rebooted its core, stabilized its power, and returned all systems to standby. In short, she was one floating subtitle away from displaying: System has entered combat mode. She was sitting at the desk, a cup next to her hand, her clothes straightened, every trace of post-sleep slackness wiped clean.

The person who had lingered in my bed last night saying "I want to stay tonight" and the Seitokai President sitting here now with eyes sharp enough to casually restructure an entire chain of command felt like two different species inhabiting the same body on a time-share basis. She looked up at me.

"How did it go?" I closed the door, leaned back against it, and looked at her for a second.

"Does your 'how' include the beach, or exclude the beach?" She tilted her head slightly, as if evaluating exactly how many incident reports were hiding in that sentence. I walked over and dropped the piece of paper that had nearly given the entire mess hall an institutional concussion this morning onto the desk.

"If you're asking about the money, I handled it." Maki glanced at the paper, like she was reviewing a combat log for a large-scale mass incident she'd casually drafted last night and successfully triggered this morning.

"Mm." She picked up her teacup and took a slow, deliberate sip. The motion was perfectly calm. So calm you'd think what I'd just read to the entire class wasn't joint holding, trust structures, and three hundred trillion, but just whether the beverage bar needed juice or ice restocked first. I pulled out a chair and sat down.

"Even though the whole process felt like I was starting a revolution." Hearing that, Maki actually thought about it for a second before speaking.

"This year's class is full of smart people." She set the cup back on the desk, her tone flat, treating it as a given.

"With smart people, instead of hiding things, it's better to lock the direction in from the start." I stared at her, suddenly feeling that this was classic Maki-style violence. Not intimidation. Not loud orders. Just an incredibly polite, incredibly logical method of handling things that absolutely refused to leave anyone an emergency exit. She looked at me.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Judging by your expression, it wasn't just the beach. Is it Jess again?"

"No." I answered quickly on reflex.

"Jess is loud, but she's still within controllable parameters." The moment the words left my mouth, I froze. Because that sounded exactly like something she would say. Not just the vocabulary. The underlying logic—categorizing a person as a problem, assessing the threat level, and concluding with "currently acceptable." It was as if sitting next to her for too long had subconsciously infected me with Seitokai President syntax. Maki clearly heard it too.

Her eyebrow twitched very slightly, and the corner of her mouth curved into something almost invisible.

"Oh," she said.

"You've improved."

"That kind of improvement doesn't sound like a blessing."

"It was never meant to be." She answered instantly, saving herself the trouble of thinking. I couldn't be bothered to argue a point I clearly couldn't win, so I just threw out the main issue.

"It's Lan and Roy..." But when the words reached my mouth, I actually stumbled. I couldn't be blamed for that. Some things are one thing to witness in person, and entirely another to come back and recount to the Seitokai President currently drinking tea next to your bed. Maki watched me stall, a very clean confusion floating in her eyes.

"What about them?" I cleared my throat.

"The two of them were secretly... doing that in the maintenance room." She went silent for a second.

"That?" I looked at her. She looked at me. The room settled into a very honest silence. Then, after about three seconds, her entire face flushed red all at once. Not an exaggerated, explosive red, and definitely no cartoonish steam. It was the kind of blush that appeared so rarely its sheer existence was lethal. It spread from the tips of her ears all the way up, instantly dragging that freshly-booted combat-system aura violently back down into human territory. Looked like she understood. Understood completely.

I suddenly wanted to laugh, but held it in. After all, I was here to report a bridge incident, not to admire the Seitokai President's rare expression pack.

"The point is," I continued, "while Lan and Roy were doing that in the maintenance room, Hedwig was right outside the door." Maki's color hadn't fully receded yet.

"Outside the door?"

"Right." I added the last two words with absolute calm.

"Playing chess." She blinked. I could see her brain working very hard to piece those elements back together into a single reality. Roy. Lan. Maintenance room. Hedwig. Outside the door. Chess. And all of this against a backdrop where the bridge watch had practically evaporated, and Akari was asleep at the radar station, serving as the ship's sole anchor of stability.

This picture—whether viewed from the angle of military discipline, management, or simply the aesthetic standards of human civilization—possessed a highly complex absurdity.

"Wait." Maki finally spoke, her tone still carrying a subtle hesitation left over from her blush.

"You're saying that while Roy and Lan were in the maintenance room... doing that, Hedwig was outside, sitting in the captain's chair playing chess against the computer?"

"That's what I saw." I spread my hands.

"She was sitting in the captain's chair, completely composed, playing 3D chess against Yggdrasil. Akari was asleep next to her like someone who had lost all hope in the system." Maki closed her eyes, seemingly processing the urge to facepalm in the most restrained way possible.

"Those two really are..." She didn't finish the sentence. But the meaning was complete enough. I nodded.

"I already reprimanded them." I paused there, then decided to add my subjective assessment anyway.

"Though, this is just my personal feeling." Maki looked up at me.

"What feeling?" I thought about it seriously for a second before choosing a phrasing that was tactful enough but didn't distort the truth.

"I think Roy was leaning more toward the passive side." Maki froze for a second, then her eyes turned incredibly complicated. I knew she was holding back. Holding back laughter, or something else, I didn't want to parse.

"Lan's initiative was stronger." I continued in a flat narrative tone, like I was delivering an unusually detailed field observation that the Executive Officer had no business listening to personally.

"At least, having sat at the navigator's station and waited for thirty or forty minutes, judging by the outcome, that seems to be the case." Maki immediately shot me a look.

"You stayed for it too?" That look was beautiful. Not angry, not jealous. Just a pure accusation of did you sit there and listen for too long? I defended myself immediately.

"I had to wait for them to come out." My expression was innocent enough to run for the ship's Citizen of the Year.

"I couldn't just charge over and yank the door open without reading the room like Jess would, could I?" That argument was clearly persuasive. Maki didn't immediately retort. She just picked her cup back up, using the motion to slightly shield her expression. But I still saw it—the red on the tips of her ears hadn't completely faded. How rare.

An Imperial princess standing guard outside a scene of lust on the bridge couldn't shake her, but my one sentence—I waited thirty or forty minutes—made her lose half a notch of her composure. If this were Jess, she probably would have already written that discovery down as item number one in her shipboard observation report. Unfortunately, I was kinder than that. Maki set the cup down and finally pulled the topic back on track.

"So how do you see it?" she asked.

"The punishment part." I blinked.

"I'm not Freya," I said honestly.

"Why make things hard for people?" It wasn't shirking responsibility; it was the truth. If you wanted me to lecture someone on the spot, stab them with words, or drop a few sarcastic remarks, I was great at it. But if you wanted me to act like the Chair of the Disciplinary Committee—pulling out regulations, clauses, penalty tiers, and follow-up tracking mechanisms—I would just want to run away.

"I gave them a verbal warning," I added. But Maki shook her head.

"Not enough," she said.

"That's only temporary." The moment I heard that, I knew two people's lives were about to be rearranged. Sure enough. As she spoke, she was already pulling her terminal closer.

"Where are they quartered right now?" I opened my own terminal and pulled up the roster.

"Roy's in Boys B-85, a six-person room. Lan's in Girls C-33, a four-person room." Maki tapped her fingertip lightly against the desk. The rhythm was light, but I knew it well. It meant a plan was already forming in her head.

"There should still be second-class cabins on the ship, right?" She looked up at me.

"The two-person ones."

"There are." I scrolled down the data and tossed the cabin layout map straight over to her screen.

"But they're located in the noble sector." Maki glanced at it, her reaction as calm as if I'd said there was an empty room next to a storage closet, not the noble sector.

"Doesn't matter," she said.

"Transfer them there." I raised an eyebrow.

"Reason?"

"To save them from causing trouble all day," she answered, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I looked at her and couldn't help laughing, a deliberate touch of ambiguity in my smile.

"That's not a punishment," I said.

"That's officially sanctioned breeding optimization." Maki froze for half a beat, then smacked me without hesitation. Not too hard. But very accurate. Falling exactly into that range where it carried a warning but didn't actually hurt.

"Shut up." She glared at me.

"And tell them to go to the supply station and pick up that while they're at it."

"That?" I honestly didn't catch on at first. After all, the word "that" had far too many uses on our ship. It could be an NDA appendix, a supply crate, a meal ticket, a maintenance card, or any kind of thing that instantly ruined the mood the moment it was spoken. But a second later, I understood. And I wanted to laugh again.

"... Mm, got it." I tried to keep my tone within the bounds of seriousness. Maki deliberately avoided looking at me, shifting her gaze straight back to her terminal, as if using her managerial posture to cover up the fact that she'd actually thought of follow-up safety measures like that. That was what was terrifying about her. Anyone else hearing about catching people on the bridge would, at most, be shocked, crack a joke, or consider whether to punish them.

She skipped straight from dorm allocation and environmental risk to traffic management, all the way down to supply station inventory. This wasn't a Seitokai President anymore. This was more like some kind of administrative disaster capable of integrating adolescent accidents into fleet governance. And I was sitting across from her, earnestly listening to her plan it out. To a certain extent, my life trajectory was also completely absurd. Right then, my comm terminal vibrated.

I glanced down, and the name that popped up on the screen made me pause for half a second. Maki asked immediately:"Who?"

"Freya Nikaido." I scrolled down the message.

"She says she has something she wants to discuss with us." Maki's expression immediately retracted back into official business mode. The subtle flush and the urge to banter that had surfaced over the maintenance room incident were locked back into some invisible drawer almost instantly.

"I'm coming too," she said. The tone was flat, but it carried an unhesitating certainty. I looked at her, suddenly feeling that this person was truly frightening. One minute she was discussing Lan and Roy's cabin transfer and supply station requisitions with me, and the next she could completely switch herself back into an okay, what's the next problem state.

Like a machine so efficient it bordered on inhumane—yet she was the same person who would crawl under my covers in the middle of the night, shove a three-hundred-trillion proposal at me at dawn, and sit here doing risk management for someone else's romantic accident. Logically speaking, that kind of whiplash should be annoying. But the troublesome part was, I was already used to it. Maybe even, in a way I didn't really want to admit to myself, I liked it. I stood up, reaching for that slip of paper and my terminal.

"Alright," I said.

"Let's go see what new trouble the Chair of the Disciplinary Committee has picked up for us this time." Maki stood up too. As she walked past me, she casually finished the still-warm tea on the desk in one gulp. The movement was clean, sharp—like a brief rest period had officially ended. From here on out, whether it was the artificial beach, the suggestion box, the watch incident, or this message from Freya, everything had to be pulled back into her processing radius.

As she passed me, the back of her hand brushed lightly against mine. Like a reminder. Or a shared understanding. I didn't say anything, just followed her toward the door. When the door opened, a very strange thought suddenly flashed through my mind. Maybe the Asgard wasn't a warship at all.

Maybe it was just a supermassive experimental apparatus, built specifically to throw interpersonal relationships, capital structures, adolescent accidents, military academy discipline, and temporary political collectives all into the same pot to simmer. And we just happened to still be in the pot.