Chương 48: 21.Nowhere Left to Hide Your Tears 21-1

The next day when I went in, Master Tam really hadn't opened the cabin. He'd even put away that simulation chair—the one that looked like it could depreciate a person's soul on a fixed schedule. The room had nothing left in it but a table, two chairs, a pot of suspiciously hot tea, and a window. The window was suspicious in itself. At the Federal Military Training Center, anywhere that lets you see the sky is generally not doing it out of kindness.

Either it's reminding you that you'd die if you fell, or it's making sure you understand that however big the world is out there, none of it is there for you to run to. Master Tam was sitting by the window. No cigarette today. That was more unsettling than if he'd had one.

"Sit," he said. I sat, staring at the tea.

"Relax, it's not drugged," Master Tam said.

"You saying that has about the same effect as a pirate announcing he's not robbing any ships today."

"I don't need you out of it today." He pushed the cup toward me.

"Today I need you awake while you embarrass yourself." …Wonderful. The Federation's educational philosophy. Always so touchingly straightforward. I didn't touch the tea. Master Tam didn't push. He just pulled out a thin stack of papers and set them on the table. No projection, no data, no charts. Just paper. The old-fashioned kind—you could feel the edges, and it made a sound when you tore it.

"Last lesson today. No technical questions," he said.

"And I'm not checking whether you're a rat." I looked up at him.

"Then what are you checking?"

"How much human being you've got left." I made a short sound that wasn't quite a laugh.

"They still sell that here?"

"Not selling," Master Tam said.

"Just confirming you haven't lost the last of it." He slid the first sheet of paper across to me. One sentence. If you were dying tomorrow, what would you want to do today. I read it for three seconds, then looked up.

"What is this, a children's psych test?"

"Answer."

"Sleep."

"Too fast."

"Eat something good."

"Too cheap."

"Punch J. J. in the face." Master Tam finally smiled.

"Now that sounds like that mouth of yours." I leaned back in my chair.

"I thought you said no technical questions today."

"Right. Which is why I'm not letting you answer with technique." Master Tam leaned forward slightly.

"Sleep, eat, hit an instructor—those are poses, not answers. What you're telling me right now isn't what you want to do. It's what kind of person you want me to think you are." Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. I said nothing. This was the most aggravating thing about this old bastard. Every line you threw at him, he didn't just catch—he held it up to the light and checked for a false bottom. Master Tam picked up the second sheet and laid it over the first.

If no one needed you to get stronger, would you still want to. I read this one longer. Then I said: "Yeah."

"Why?"

"Live longer."

"There it is again." Master Tam's tone stayed flat.

"That's a veteran's mouth. Not a fourteen-year-old's." My eye twitched. He noticed, but didn't call it out. Just added, unhurried:"The advantage of talking like a veteran is that people assume you've made your peace with things. Problem is, you haven't lived long enough to make peace with anything. Stop cosplaying a retiree." I stared at him.

"So what do you want to hear?"

"The truth."

"Truth is expensive."

"That's fine. The Federation can afford it." … Fuck. I hate how he delivers complete bullshit with a completely straight face. I moved my eyes back to the paper. My throat had gone a little dry. If no one needed me to get stronger, would I still want to. The vicious thing about this question is that it's not asking whether you can survive. It's asking what you'd want to grow into if you weren't spending every waking moment braced for the ceiling to come down. I thought about it for a while.

And the first thing that surfaced in my head wasn't weapon, wasn't winning, wasn't revenge, wasn't dragging anyone down with me. It was something stupid. So stupid I didn't want to admit it was my answer. Master Tam watched me, and then his voice went very quiet.

"Did something embarrassing just come to mind?" I laughed, cold.

"Why don't you go set up a fortune-telling stall on the corner."

"Because kids like you are worth more." He said it so naturally I almost threw the cup at him. But I just lowered my head, looked at the paper, and slowly opened my mouth.

"…I might want to learn some useless things." Master Tam didn't fill the silence.

"Like?" he asked. I wanted to shut up. But sometimes the truly terrifying thing isn't someone forcing you to speak—it's knowing exactly how far they've already dug, and deciding you'd rather shovel the dirt aside yourself than let it stay ugly any longer.

"Like drawing," I said, very slowly.

"Like making something sweet. Like… waking up when my body decides to, without anyone kicking the door in. Like clothes that don't have a standard-issue number. Like walking into a room without immediately clocking the exits, the camera angles, and what's close enough to use as a weapon." The room went quiet. The light from the window lay across the table, very white, very clean. I had a sudden urge to laugh. Not because anything was funny—more the absurdity of oh, so I think about things like this too.

A fourteen-year-old girl's dream, and it turns out it's not piloting a single-seat zero-gravity combat fighter—Zero type—and luring enemies into a battleship's gun range. It's learning to bake. Truly pathetic. The Federation would probably want a refund. Master Tam looked at me and nodded.

"Now that sounds like a human being." I lifted my head, and my voice hardened immediately.

"I said it. Are we done?"

"No," he said. He pushed the third sheet across. What do you hate most about how people see you. I answered almost before I'd thought.

"Lab rat." Master Tam shook his head.

"Too shallow."

"Weapon."

"Closer. Not enough." I was starting to get annoyed.

"Then just tell me the answer. Why are we doing a quiz show."

"Because the answer only works if you say it yourself." Master Tam looked at me.

"You hate being seen as a lab rat—not because of the pain. You hate being seen as a weapon—not because of the danger. What you actually hate is—" He stopped. Just for a beat. But it landed exactly right.

"—being treated like something that works fine without anyone giving a damn about it." My whole body went rigid for a moment. Brief, barely there. But he saw it. Master Tam didn't let it go this time.

"You play very experienced," he said.

"Like you've seen everything. You play foul, like anyone who gets close deserves to get bitten first. You play hard, like tomorrow you could crawl into an enemy ship and wire it to blow all by yourself. But that's all shell." He reached out and tapped the table three times.

"First layer: the foul mouth. Scares people off. Doubles as a courage supplement."

"Second layer: playing old. Talk like you've lived a long time, so being scared feels less shameful."

"Third layer: the weapon act. Treat yourself like a tool. Tools don't need coaxing, don't need holding, don't need anyone to say you've worked hard." I opened my mouth to argue. Nothing came out. Because he was too fucking accurate. Accurate enough that I suddenly wanted to stand up and walk out. But walking out would become its own kind of testimony, so I just sat there like a joke nailed to a chair, listening to him write off my outer layers one by one.

"Hoshino Shimo." Master Tam used my full name for the first time, his voice not raised.

"You're not a killer. You're afraid of dying, so you learned earlier than most how to make sure other people go down first."

"You're not antisocial either. You just figured out too soon that if you let yourself like someone first, and then one day they're gone, it's going to hurt like hell."

"And you're definitely not a veteran." He looked at me, his expression as flat as a weather report.

"Veterans rot because they've lived too long. You learned how to look rotten before you even finished growing." Something in my chest clenched suddenly. Like a hand reaching in, closing around something that had been tucked away just fine, and pulling it slowly toward the surface. I laughed. It sounded ugly.

"Is this whole thing just so you can make me cry?"

"No," Master Tam said.

"I'm returning the faces you borrowed to stay alive." I stared at him. He stared back.