Chương 480: 227.Secret Meeting in Bar 1

The place Maki and I went to meet Freya wasn't the mess hall, and it wasn't the Seitokai's temporary office either. It was the management room next to the artificial beach—the one originally meant for towels, first-aid kits, and spare drinks. That fact alone said plenty. A warship that had been surviving on gravity rounds and jump maneuvers just yesterday was now holding its most urgent governance meeting of the morning in a storage closet next to a fake beach. Civilization isn't always sustained by epics.

Sometimes it's sustained by a group of people in swimwear handling order problems between dips in the water. The moment the door opened, the noise from outside hit first. Laughter, splashing, someone shouting "ball's over there," someone else announcing in a tone far too bright for a military academy that they'd finally understood what "paid survival leave" meant.

The artificial beach had already turned into some kind of fledgling autonomous nation—its citizens free, enthusiastic, and increasingly out of control of their tans. Inside the management room, the atmosphere was the exact opposite. Freya stood at a folding table spread with hand-drawn traffic maps, duty rosters, a recreation-area layout, and a crowd-density printout clearly exported from a terminal in a hurry.

Even her posture was immaculate, as if the whole ship's looseness had to pass through her and get ironed flat first. She nodded when we came in.

"Thank you for getting here quickly." Maki didn't bother with preamble.

"You have a problem."

"I do." Freya answered without hesitation.

"And it isn't a small one." She slid the top sheet forward, tapping at several marked points—the beach, the officers' club, the rec room, the hot-spring and sauna wing.

"After excluding those whose physical condition doesn't allow long standing, plus those who still have to handle reporting, documentation, and necessary persuasion, the Disciplinary Committee's actual deployable headcount comes to somewhere between a dozen and twenty. That's barely enough to cover one beach. Covering the beach, the officers' club, the rec room, and, from this afternoon on, the sauna and bath wing all at once? Not possible." She said not possible completely flatly.

Which carried more weight than a complaint would have. She wasn't here to vent. She was here to hand over facts. I leaned against the doorframe and looked over the papers. She'd even color-coded which time slots were most likely to trigger turf wars, which zones tended to attract crowds, and which groups were most inclined to misuse shared space as a dating venue. This woman really was built for disaster management. Maki looked down at the maps and, after almost no time at all, asked:"What do you need?"

"Staggered access," Freya said.

"I want the Seitokai to issue a class usage schedule directly—which class, which day, which time slot gets beach priority, all laid out. I don't want the entire second year pouring into the same place at once like a burst dam." I almost laughed. The image was too accurate. The beach we'd just walked past had looked exactly like a mass psychological pressure-release valve. Maki didn't laugh.

She opened her terminal, pulled up the second-year roster, the recreation hours, and the current duty list, and began sorting the information at the speed that always made me suspect she had a hidden tactical sandbox running behind her eyes.

"The beach stops being open to the entire year at all hours," she said quickly, as if the answer had been sitting in her head the whole time, only waiting for someone to read the question aloud.

"We switch to a class-priority rotation. 0930 to 1230, 1330 to 1730—one or two classes get priority per half-day. Other classes may enter, but loungers, shaded zones, and group-use rights aren't guaranteed." I raised an eyebrow. Very Maki. Not a hard lockdown—just letting the rules themselves grow a skeleton for order. She kept going.

"The rec room switches to a reservation-and-sign-in system, registered by class or group. The officers' club stays evening-only, but with tighter entry checks. Anyone on bridge night watch, engine duty, or comms standby remains barred from alcohol. That doesn't change." Freya nodded fast, clearly already calculating how much manpower this would free up. Maki flicked through her terminal twice and put in the sharpest cut.

"Once the beach is staggered, Disciplinary doesn't need to chase problems around like a fire brigade anymore. Reassign the freed manpower: some back to bridge watch coverage, some to roaming patrols across the recreation deck, some specifically to the officers' club and changing-room entrances." She paused, then added in an even flatter tone:"Also. New rule, effective today." Freya and I both looked up at her.

Maki said, without expression:"During recreation open hours, the bridge may never be left without a watch presence. At minimum, one of the three stations—main control, navigation, comms—must have an alert stander at all times. Any absence over five minutes must be logged with Yggdrasil as a temporary departure. No maintenance room, comms room, or observation room may remain closed under single-watch conditions for more than ten minutes." I nearly lost control of my expression. This wasn't a rules patch.

This was her taking this morning's maintenance-room incident and nailing it straight into shipboard regulation. Freya didn't laugh. She just recorded the clauses with total seriousness, then added one more question:"Should we include a footnote clarifying that Akari being asleep doesn't constitute a valid watch?" I turned and stared at her. So did Maki. Then the Seitokai President, with perfect composure, answered:"No names." She thought for a second, then added the sharper version.

"Write it as: 'A sole watchstander in an unresponsive state does not constitute effective presence.'" I held a brief moment of silence for Akari. That was a very institutionally dignified way to die. Once the arrangements were settled, the air in the room noticeably loosened. Not because every problem had been solved, but because the chaos that had been scattering in every direction had finally been boxed up and labeled.

And that was always Maki's specialty—name the disorder first, then push each piece back into its own compartment. A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. That was when her terminal buzzed. Not mine. Hers. Maki glanced down, her expression unchanged, and said only:"Good timing."

"What's good timing?" I asked.

"The second-class cabin's confirmed." She turned the screen toward me and Freya.

"Noble sector. Two-person room. Available immediately." I understood exactly what she was about to do, and started quietly mourning the future expressions of two specific people. Freya read the screen and clearly tracked just as fast. She didn't even ask why—she just said, in the purest possible Chair-of-the-Disciplinary-Committee tone:"For ease of management?"

"And for ease of damage control," Maki replied, calm to the point of being unsettling. Then she turned to me.

"Call them here." I nodded and sent the message. About ten minutes later, Lan and Roy arrived. The way the two of them walked in was interesting. Lan was still performing composure on the surface, her steps even steadier than usual, as if trying to bury the morning's maintenance-room incident under sheer bearing. Roy was the opposite. His expression had moved past nervous into something between I know I might be about to die and I don't yet know what form it'll take—the face of a man drafting his last words.

The moment they stepped inside, Lan saw me, then Maki, then the diagrams on the table. For one visible second, she clearly wanted to walk back out and reload her life from an earlier save point.

"Council President," she said first, working very hard to stay polite.

"Vice President," Roy followed, his voice half a register lower than usual. Maki didn't leave them standing long.

"Given the bridge watch vulnerability, accommodation traffic management, and follow-up risk control," she announced, "effective tonight, you and Roy are reassigned to a two-person second-class cabin in the noble sector." The room went silent for exactly one second. Then the reactions split cleanly in two directions. Lan froze—then her whole face lit up. Not the shy kind of bright. The kind that says the world's a mess, but the Seitokai finally did something recognizably human for me.

"Really?" Her eyes were practically emitting light. She turned to Roy with a smile several shades too radiant.

"Isn't that wonderful, Roy!" Roy, meanwhile, looked like fate had gently pushed him off a cliff. Not that he was unwilling. He was too willing, which made it worse. That caught-between-crying-and-having-nothing-to-cry-about expression was spectacular—spectacular enough that I wondered if this was the first time in his life he'd understood that disciplinary action and reward sometimes differ only by which form gets filed.

"Wait." He finally found his voice.

"Isn't this... a bit inappropriate?" Maki looked up at him.

"In what way?" His mouth opened and closed. He clearly had a whole list ready—housing regulations, dorm structure, external optics, resource-allocation logic. But under Lan's gaze, which looked ready to physically drag him into their shared future, those arguments drowned one by one. In the end, all he managed was:"... Isn't it a bit high-spec?" I nearly laughed. At a moment like this, his first instinct was still cost analysis. No wonder the students had surrounded him for an impromptu investor briefing.

Maki stayed perfectly calm.

"It isn't," she said.

"Compared to leaving the bridge empty again, this is cheap." Lan nodded beside her fast enough to leave an afterimage. Watching this, I felt the accuracy of what I'd said that morning settle into place. That's not a punishment. It really wasn't. This was the Seitokai using administrative means to install a legally sanctioned traffic lane for a relationship. Maki wasn't finished.

"Also." She slid the next form across the table.

"You two go to the supply station later and pick up the standard living-and-hygiene supply pack." Roy didn't react at first. Lan paused for exactly one second, and then the tips of her ears went a very honest shade of red. I, standing off to the side, turned my head and found something very interesting to study on the wall, purely to preserve the minimal dignity expected of a Vice President. Excellent. Administrative management. Accommodation optimization. Risk control.

And, incidentally, a remedial unit in basic adult-world common sense. This Seitokai was looking less and less like a school organization by the minute. Clutching the reassignment notice, Lan gave Maki a genuinely solemn bow.

"Thank you, Seitokai." My eyelid twitched. She was probably the only person alive who could make that sentence sound like accepting an officially bestowed marriage decree. Roy stood rooted to the spot, wearing an expression that looked like a document simultaneously stamped Sanction, Subsidy, Congratulations, and Take Care. Maki waved a hand. Dismissed. The moment they left, the room finally went quiet. I laughed first.

Not the restrained kind—the kind that comes out once you've held it too long and no longer have to pretend to be serious. Maki glanced at me.

"Funny?"

"Extremely," I said, honestly.

"From the outside, that whole process looked like discipline. From the inside, it looked like prenuptial asset allocation." She raised a hand to smack me. I stepped out of range just ahead of her. Freya, standing to the side, went uncharacteristically quiet for two seconds, then added with total seriousness:"From a disciplinary standpoint, relocating high-risk private interaction into a predictable, trackable, manageable space is more rational than leaving it scattered across public duty zones." I looked at her.

"Translated into human language, that's stop using the maintenance room, right?"

"Correct," she said, immediately. I laughed again. Then a knock at the door. Hedwig. She stood in the doorway with that same composed, high-bred calm that made any absurdity placed near her look like it had already gone through etiquette review.

"Forgive the intrusion." Her eyes swept over us, then dropped to the freshly minted usage schedules and cabin-transfer orders on the table.

"It seems I've missed an impressively efficient governance session." I leaned against the table and answered lazily.

"You're not late. Perfect timing, actually. You can weigh in on this morning's maintenance-room incident while you're here." Hedwig gave me a look, and actually considered it. Then she laughed, very softly.

"The Imperial court has at least one unwritten rule," she said.

"Even in the middle of an affair, one remembers to leave someone to watch the door." I nearly choked on my own breath. Freya's pen froze over her record board. Maki closed her eyes, as close as she ever came to visibly absorbing a hit—because that line was elegant, venomous, and perfectly placed. Hedwig wasn't finished. Her gaze flicked toward the suggestion box, moved into the management room at some point and already half-stuffed with its first batch of slips.

"And the most admirable thing about Federation students," she went on, "is their ability to treat joint trusts, an artificial beach, bridge watch coverage, and a maintenance-room tryst as equally urgent items requiring resolution—on the very same day." That line was brutal enough that I wanted to applaud on behalf of the entire second year. Because there was no arguing with it.

Our year genuinely had that strange gift: switching between crisis, property law, adolescent impulse, and administrative paperwork like running through a class schedule—the only difference being that this curriculum was slightly more hazardous than a normal one. Speaking of the suggestion box, Freya pulled out the first stack and split it into two piles.

"The ratio's within normal parameters so far," she said.

"Reasonable to absurd, roughly seven to three." I looked at her.

"You calculated that too?"

"It helps with risk assessment." She handed a few sheets over. I pulled a handful at random. The first was reasonable: If a family member has a medical emergency, can trust benefits be accessed early? The second was also reasonable: If someone drops out of the academy, how is their equity handled? The third still sounded like human language: Who oversees the public fund? Will finances be disclosed? I nodded. Good. A large portion of this ship's brainpower hadn't fully evaporated at the beach.

Then I flipped to the fourth. If I marry a classmate from another class in the future, would dividends count as shared marital property? I went quiet for a second. Next one: Can shareholders get priority reservations for front-row beach chairs? My head started to hurt. The sixth was the finest yet: If the Asgard keeps appreciating in value, can the second-years issue commemorative bonds? I set the paper down and took a long breath.

"Who wrote commemorative bonds?"

"Handwriting looks like Class C," Freya said, perfectly deadpan. Maki pulled one slip over, read it, and her brow shifted by the smallest possible increment.

"At least no one's mentioned the mercenary company again."

"I wouldn't be so sure." I dug out the slip at the very bottom and held it up. In very neat handwriting: If we take work under the name "off-campus high-risk security consulting services," does that still count as mercenary activity? The room went dead silent for two full seconds. Then even Maki laughed. Not much, but enough to mean she was conceding: this year's students were, on occasion, genuinely ready to be shipped straight out into society. Hedwig read the slip and offered a quiet verdict.

"The Federation's great strength is its boundless creativity." A pause.

"That's also its weakness." Maki separated the more absurd slips into their own pile.

"Reasonable questions get answered within three days. Absurd ones go into an appendix. The especially absurd ones we track down even if they're anonymous." I tilted my head.

"How do you plan to track them?"

"By word choice," she said, perfectly level.

"There aren't many people on this ship who'd write commemorative bonds into an anonymous slip." I began a quiet moment of mourning for Class C. Rules, traffic flow, cabins, supplies, watch schedules, crowd management, suggestion box. In under an hour, a morning that had looked like a holiday had been pressed back into something that could, with some generosity, be called order. Outside, the artificial beach was still loud. The light was still bright.

Water and laughter kept drifting in, wave after wave, as if reminding us: no matter how busy management gets, adolescence never waits for administrative approval to begin. Standing in that room stacked with towels and traffic diagrams, I had a strange feeling. Maybe Maki had been right this morning. The Asgard wasn't a bonus. And she wasn't simply a war prize, either.

She was more like a massive, willful, obscenely expensive, high-risk container—one that had scooped up every unfinished part of this entire second-year class and packed it inside, then forced us to learn, while mutually irritated with each other, how not to let the whole thing tip over.

As for whether it would tip— I glanced at the Seitokai President revising watch protocols, the Chair of the Disciplinary Committee auditing crowd allocation, the Imperial princess in the doorway judging Federation absurdity by court standards, and the stack of slips on the table hovering somewhere between shared future and collective nonsense.... For now, at least, it hadn't.