Chương 483: 228.Crossed Signals 2

I swear, in that moment I genuinely watched my life fall like a glass dropped from a great height—cracking mid-air, then shattering, the sound of it hitting the ground carrying a clarity entirely without dignity. Maki stood in the doorway, her empty hand still frozen at the angle of someone who'd just been carrying a bowl. The hangover soup had died a heroic death on the floor—shards, broth, and a last curl of steam spread across the threshold, like someone had just held a small, tidy funeral for my innocence.

Hedwig's arms were still around my waist. Tightly. Not the ambiguous kind of tight—the kind produced by a body running entirely on drunken instinct, having decided in its sleep that I was something worth holding onto and seeing no reason to reconsider. The problem was that the person in the doorway was Kushima Maki. Which meant any version of it's not what it looks like I could produce arrived with about seventy percent suspicion already built in.

"Wait." My voice came out dry as the last breath in an empty bottle.

"Maki, it's not what it looks like." She looked at me. No—she scanned me. The kind of look that goes from skin to bone and files your soul away as a meeting summary on the way out. Then she answered, very calmly.

"Oh." One word. Done. If she'd charged over and flipped the bed, I could have at least rolled clear on instinct. This stillness made it clear the real danger wasn't the explosion—it was the extremely stable pressure building right before it. She stepped into the room, skirting the shards, crouched down, and started picking up the pieces, one by one. My scalp went numb. This was the most frightening thing about an angry Maki. It was never about whether she'd raise her voice.

The quieter she got, the more mundane her hands became—like she wasn't cleaning up a shattered bowl of hangover soup, but tidying a crime scene she intended to personally process.

"I can explain," I said, trying to sound like an innocent citizen rather than someone caught mid-felony.

"I'm listening." She set a larger shard on the tray without looking up.

"Start with the simplest part." The simplest part. I wanted to tell her that no part of my life this morning qualified as simple.

"I drank too much last night," I pushed on anyway.

"My head was spinning by the time I got back to the room, and then someone came in, and I thought it was you, so—""So the Third Imperial Princess ended up in your bed." Maki finished the sentence smoothly, almost helpfully.

"Hoshino Shimo, your room management system is more advanced than I gave you credit for." I nearly choked on my own breath.

"No—I mean I genuinely thought it was you!"

"That sentence isn't any safer."

"I know, but it's the truth!" I said this while still trying to peel Hedwig off my waist. She didn't loosen. If anything, sensing her body pillow attempting to escape, she tightened her grip and burrowed closer. I wanted to die. Urgently. The kind of wanting to die that involves requesting an emergency ejection seat and launching yourself straight out onto the outer hull for some cold air.

"... Your Highness," I gritted out, quiet.

"Let go." Hedwig finally stirred. Her lashes shivered, as if consciousness was slowly surfacing through the alcohol. First a frown, then her eyes opened—still hazy blue, unfocused for a few seconds before the world resolved back into place. She saw me first. Then, following my gaze, she looked over at Maki, now wiping broth off the floor with folded paper towels. Two seconds of silence.

I'd been holding onto a small, almost heroic hope that in those two seconds she'd fully wake up, let go immediately, sit up straight, and salvage at least half of this scene. Instead, Hedwig blinked, and in that just-woken, faintly hoarse voice, said with total naturalness:"... Good morning." I closed my eyes. Perfect. Now my life wasn't just broken—someone had come in with tweezers to lay the pieces out neatly for exhibition. Maki finally looked up. Her gaze on Hedwig was perfectly level.

"Your Highness," she said.

"If you're currently lucid, I'd appreciate it if you could fill in the rest of the story for me." Hedwig went quiet for a moment. Not long—but long enough for me to see her genuinely waking up. Not just opening her eyes, but her reason, her bearing, and her awareness of exactly who she was, layering back, piece by piece, into that unreasonably beautiful shell. She slowly released my waist and pushed herself up to sit.

The white chemise had creased from sleep, but on her it still carried some inexplicable degree of refinement. The milk-gold hair slid off her shoulder, one strand brushing the back of my hand, cool to the touch. She reached up to tuck it behind her ear, and halfway through the motion, as if suddenly remembering something, her eyes dropped to the nightstand. Where a slender silver hairpiece lay. Not just a hairpiece.

Its lines were too fine, too precise, the tip bearing a microscopic Imperial crest—like some regulation shrunk down and mounted into jewelry. That was the cold, bright flash I'd half-seen right before blacking out last night. Hedwig followed my gaze, seeming to finally connect last night's fragments to this morning's. The corner of her mouth moved, very slightly.

"So that's what you saw."

"So it really wasn't a hallucination," I muttered.

"Regrettably, no." Maki set the last shard on the tray, stood, and left the wreckage on the desk.

"Good," she said.

"Since everyone's more or less awake now, we can speak like normal people." No raised pitch. No stressed syllables. But my spine straightened anyway. Hedwig was more composed than I was. She glanced down at the chemise, then at the outer coat and last night's formal gown draped over the chair, tilting her head slightly, as if sorting events into their proper order first.

"Last night," she began, her voice already back to its usual cool steadiness, "you drank yourself down to about half your normal cognitive function on the officers' club's whisky. Maki was called away partway through by the service system to confirm the bank authorizations and the shipboard fund interface. I happened to leave the booth just ahead of you." I looked at her. I had a vague impression of that part.

My memory from that point on had been pickled past use for historical research—blurred like ink soaked through wet paper.

"And then," Hedwig went on, "I saw you nearly walk face-first into a wall in the corridor." I protested, quietly.

"I think I was only a little off course."

"Your 'a little' was about enough to let a small supply craft kiss the dock at full speed," she said, calm as ever. I shut up. Maki stood off to the side, arms folded. That was her formal-inquiry posture. Hedwig seemed entirely unbothered by the you'd better not leave a single word out look on her face, her tone as steady as if she were reading poetry in a garden.

"So I walked you back. You were very quiet the whole way. Quiet enough that I briefly believed you might still be salvageable."

"That sentence sounds fairly rude."

"Because I later discovered my judgment was wrong." Flatly.

"The moment you opened your door, you turned and looked at me—and mistook me for Maki." My throat caught. Maki's brow shifted, barely. I raised a hand immediately.

"I can explain that part. I was genuinely that drunk, the lights were dim, and your walk is very steady—""I see." Maki looked at me.

"So in your current worldview, anyone who walks steadily and is willing to help you home can temporarily substitute for me." Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

"No, that's not what I meant!"

"I know," she said.

"You just keep choosing the most dangerous possible angle for every sentence." This woman could turn sarcasm into an executive summary. Someone should really revoke her speaking license. Hedwig glanced between us, clearly entertained, but still maintaining her sense of duty as a witness.

"In any case, you mistook me for her, and said—and I quote—just glad you're back." The tips of my ears went hot instantly. Damn it. She actually remembered. Even half-dead last night, I'd apparently managed to leave behind a perfectly precise record, tailor-made to hang myself with later. Maki said nothing. But the look she gave me was worse than the one right after the bowl hit the floor. Because there was something else in it now—something she probably didn't want to admit to herself. I looked away immediately.

"And then?" she asked Hedwig.

"And then," Hedwig said, "on a whim, I chose not to correct you right away." I snapped my head up.

"Your Highness!"

"What?" She looked back at me, perfectly composed.

"Isn't that accurate?"

"That makes me sound even more guilty!"

"But you already look exactly like the kind of person who'd open with it's not what it looks like the moment they're caught."

"..." There were moments when this princess genuinely deserved to have her speaking privileges revoked too. Maki's gaze slid slowly toward her.

"So this was a scheme." Hedwig actually gave it thought.

"If you insist on the more dramatic framing, I won't object." Her eyes settled on me, carrying the faintest trace of something soft—the look of someone who'd just concluded a small experiment and found the results satisfying.

"I simply wanted to see whether the Vice President, drunk enough to lose all sense of direction, would mistake absolutely anyone for you." The room went still. Then I caught up.

"Wait—you did this on purpose?"

"Not entirely." She said.

"The first half was circumstance. The second half... call it curiosity."

"Is Imperial curiosity always this terrifying?"

"Only toward subjects worth studying." Stated like established fact. I wanted to object, but couldn't locate a more urgent disaster requiring my attention first, so I turned to Maki with the most sincere expression I'd produced in recent memory.

"See? She admitted it herself. This was her plan. Not mine."

"That's not quite right either," Maki said, flat.

"It sounds like you're dumping all the blame on the Empire."

"Then what am I supposed to say that doesn't get me killed?"

"At the moment—that looks difficult." My hope turned to ash. Hedwig laughed softly, finally willing to pull things toward something survivable. She picked up the silver hairpiece from the nightstand, turning it between her fingers, letting the cold light catch once more in the morning glow.

"This," she said, "was the last thing you saw last night. My hairpiece. I took it off before lying down and set it here." I stared at it.

"So it wasn't an earring. Or some Imperial classified device."

"You'd prefer I slept in your bed wearing a classified device?" she countered.

"I'd prefer you hadn't slept in my bed at all."

"Then you should have let go last night." I froze. Maki's eyes sharpened at once.

"She grabbed you?" Hedwig looked at her, as if she'd been waiting exactly for this.

"Yes," she said.

"And quite firmly." I opened my mouth. Closed it again. Because that—damn it—I genuinely couldn't deny. Hedwig kept going, calm as a judge delivering a ruling.

"I'd intended to leave once I got you to the bed. But you caught my sleeve and pulled me down with you. Last night's formal outer layer was too stiff, and the hairpiece dug in—sleeping in either would have ruined the outfit by morning. So I removed the outer coat and the hairpiece, planning to leave the moment you let go."

"... And I didn't?" I asked, weakly.

"You did not," Hedwig pronounced, with perfect impartiality.

"You buried your face against me the moment I sat down." I wanted to eject through the nearest hatch. Maki was quiet for two seconds beside me, then let out a long, slow breath. It didn't put the fire out entirely. But it no longer felt capable of taking the deck plating with it, the way it had the moment she'd walked in.

"So," she summarized, "start to finish, she simply mistook you for me, and was drunk enough to grab hold and refuse to let go."

"Yes." Hedwig looked at her, her tone carrying something that, for once, resembled consideration.

"And if it matters to you, I'll add one thing more. She never assigned me any identity other than the wrong one. From beginning to end, the only person in her head was you." The room went quiet. This time the quiet felt a little unfair. Because the line hadn't landed on Hedwig, and it hadn't landed on me. It had landed squarely on Maki, standing at the foot of the bed, still holding her low-temperature tribunal mode. Her expression barely shifted. But I saw it—the line of her shoulders loosening, just slightly.

Not much. But there. I let out a breath I hadn't noticed I was holding. Then, the next second, a knock came at the door. Knock. Knock. Knock. A rhythm precise enough to bring the disciplinary manual to mind. My scalp prickled. At this hour, with that particular knock, the answer barely needed guessing. Sure enough, Freya's voice came through, calm as a morning broadcast.

"Vice President. There was a clear sound of breaking ceramics from this room. Per shipboard regulations, I need to confirm whether anyone is injured." A beat. Then a second voice—noticeably more excited, and with no business at all being here—added:"And I have a personal, extremely high level of concern—" Jess. My vision went dark. Wonderful. How do absolute order and absolute chaos always manage to form the most complete two-person patrol package at precisely the worst possible moment? Maki closed her eyes.

I knew that gesture. It usually meant she was counting to three, to keep from doing something that would end up in a disciplinary report.

"We're fine," she called toward the door.

"A bowl broke."

"President," Jess drawled from outside, "you realize that sentence just makes people want to know what's happening in there even more." Freya cut in immediately, her tone entirely without inflection.

"I concur with her technical assessment. I do not concur with her cheerful delivery." I nearly laughed, and swallowed it just in time. Laughing right now might actually kill me. Maki turned and looked at me. That look said, clearly: pray this doesn't get worse. As it turned out, the one who made it worse wasn't either of the two outside. It was Hedwig. She chose that exact moment to push back the blanket and climb, unhurried, out of bed.

"Your Highness!" I hissed.

"What are you doing?"

"Closing the scene," she said. Hedwig draped last night's dark outer coat back over her shoulders—not bothering to smooth it into perfect order, which somehow only made her radiate more of an I just woke up, and no one here gets to comment authority. She gathered her milk-gold hair, slid the silver hairpiece back into place, and just like that, her whole silhouette shifted—from a hungover beauty back into the dangerous territory of an Imperial princess. Then she walked to the door.

Maki looked as if she meant to stop her, but Hedwig just glanced back.

"Don't worry," she said.

"I'm not about to let a small joke of mine escalate into a shipboard morning scandal." She opened the door a measured width. Outside, as expected, stood Freya and Jess. Freya held her morning inspection board, wearing the expression of someone here purely for the sake of order. Jess leaned against the frame beside her, eyes bright with the unmistakable scent of at least three distinct grades of gossip. The door opened, and both of them paused. Because the person filling the gap wasn't me.

And it hadn't been Maki's voice they'd heard. It was Hedwig. Clearly just woken, hair slightly undone, coat merely draped rather than fastened. Jess's mouth formed a perfect, silent O. Freya's expression didn't change—but I would stake something on the fact that the line in her eyes marking a brief processing stall flickered, just once. Hedwig didn't blink.

"Good morning," she said.

"If you're here about the breaking sound, you may stand down. I startled the President into dropping a bowl of hangover soup. The Vice President bears no responsibility." Jess blinked.

"... Wait, which part am I supposed to be shocked by first?"

"I'd suggest none of it." Maki's voice came from inside, cold enough to have just come out of cryo. Freya recovered her normal operating mode instantly.

"To confirm," she said, "no injuries, no external intrusion, nothing requiring medical intervention. Correct?"

"Correct," Hedwig said.

"And—" Freya glanced at Jess, a look loaded entirely with do not say a word, "—this incident does not constitute spreadable information." Jess's hand shot up.

"I object, on entertainment grounds—""Objection not received." Freya shut it down in under a second. Watching from the bed, I found myself with a sudden, deeper appreciation for cosmic balance. Some people exist purely so that other people don't actually break the world. Hedwig seemed satisfied with that conclusion. She nodded once, and then, apparently deciding one more shield wouldn't hurt, added:"Additionally," she said, light as a footnote, "I borrowed a corner of the Vice President's room last night.

Aside from being hungover, mistaking my identity, and displaying a severe lack of personal boundaries, she engaged in no other misconduct. Should any other version of this story begin circulating on this ship—" She smiled. Beautifully. Like the last gold-foil seal on a death warrant.

"I'll be looking into it personally." Two full seconds of silence outside. Jess recovered first, both hands raised to shoulder height, the picture of someone who'd merely been out for a morning jog.

"I heard nothing." Freya added, evenly: "I only heard a recommendation to reinforce hangover-boundary training." Good. One preserving her own life. One drafting legislation. Exactly what you'd expect from them. Maki walked over and opened the door a little wider, her expression as settled as if none of this had happened.

"Now that we've confirmed the situation," she said, "you two may go." Jess, entirely unafraid of death, leaned in for one last look.

"President," she said, her tone sweetly rotten, "if there's a second pot of that hangover soup, I'd like to apply for a seat in the gallery—" Thud. The door closed. Clean. Very Maki. Once the room was quiet again, I fell back onto the bed and covered my face with one arm.

"I want to drop out."

"No," Maki answered immediately.

"Then I want to jump off the Asgard."

"Also no."

"Then what am I allowed to do?"

"Stay alive," she said.

"And then walk me through everything from last night to this morning, start to finish, in language a normal person can follow." I looked at her through my fingers. Maki had mostly finished clearing the shards and the soup. She stood in the morning light, hair tied back neat as always, a faint shadow of exhaustion beneath her eyes—but still wearing the expression of someone who could produce a three-point executive summary standing in the middle of a disaster site. She was still angry.

But the fire had dropped from burn the bed and everyone in it to something closer to a slow simmer. Hedwig stood by the window, smoothing the ends of her hair, as if the near-detonation of my life just now had been nothing more than a slightly impolite morning interlude. Noticing my eyes on her, she tilted her head.

"Don't worry," she said.

"I started this. I won't let you die too badly."

"Your Highness, that is not comfort."

"Then take it as a promise." I glared at her. She gave me back a faint, unhurried smile. Beautiful. Composed. Utterly without remorse. I became suddenly, completely certain of one thing. Imperial princesses aren't frightening because they can operate Yggdrasil.

They're frightening because, after a night of drinking, in a rumpled white chemise, freshly out of my bed, and having nearly wrecked my personal life in passing, she could still stand there wearing the expression of someone who had simply run a small, interesting experiment. Worse still—I couldn't even argue with the experiment's conclusion. Because last night, drunk out of my mind, the first person I'd recognized really had been Maki. I turned my face into the pillow. Might as well be dead.

Maki looked at me, and something in her expression finally shifted—just barely, just enough to register as a crack in the frost. She turned toward the door, her hand already on the handle, then paused.

"I'm going to remake the hangover soup," she said. A weak sound came from the pillow.

"... You'll still make it for me?"

"What else would I do?" She didn't turn around.

"Letting the Vice President drink herself to death would affect shipboard efficiency today." That was very Maki. True enough to make you laugh. True enough to make something in your chest go warm. She opened the door, and just before stepping out, added one more line.

"And, Hoshino Shimo." My head came up off the pillow at once. Maki turned her face slightly. The morning light fell across the corner of her eye—faint, cool, but no longer as sharp as before.

"When I get back, the account still needs settling." The door closed. I stared at it for two seconds, then honestly collapsed back onto the bed. Hedwig laughed softly beside me.

"Congratulations," she said.

"You survived."

"Your Highness," I said, with absolutely no energy left, "if you ever want to run a little scheme like this again, please pick someone else's life."

"I'm afraid I can't." She fastened the hairpiece back into place, her tone impeccably gracious.

"Yours is the only reaction worth my personal observation." I threw a pillow at her. She stepped aside, dodging it more easily than she had that entire diplomatic incident the night before. Somewhere between the headache, the hangover, the shock, and a quiet, inconvenient sense of being safe that I had no interest in naming, I finally, completely understood where I stood this morning. No external enemy had boarded the Asgard last night.

But my private life had already been boarded by the Princess and the Council President, working in tandem.