Chương 487: 230.Propaganda Sample 2

Once the families truly broke through, Terminal Seven finally started to feel like a place built for people. One second it was banners, microphones, security lines, official statements, council-member smiles. The next second, all of it got trampled by things that actually mattered. People crying. People holding on. People cursing through tears. Someone crying and still remembering to punch her own son once, just to check he wasn't a hallucination.

It was honestly chaotic—chaotic enough that the whole earlier political theater nearly lost its usefulness on the spot. We didn't get to stay in it long, unfortunately. Barely three minutes in, an academy staff member jogged up to Maki, wearing the strained expression of someone trying very hard to melt into the background while still needing to interrupt.

"Kushima, and the Seitokai members... there's a special reception area arranged upstairs. Please come this way." I understood immediately. Translated: too much humanity out here, not conducive to the next procedures—please recall core personnel at once. Maki didn't answer right away. She glanced at the students still searching the crowd, then over at Freya, standing nearby, straight as a lamppost.

"Freya."

"Understood." Freya didn't waste a second, turning to take over crowd management immediately. People like her are genuinely uncanny. Most people, faced with a survival scene full of crying, panic first. She doesn't. She just instinctively starts sorting, routing, controlling flow, stabilizing emotion, and pinning any opportunist trying to slip in under cover of chaos right back into place with a look.

Jess watched her work and murmured, half in awe:"Sometimes I genuinely wonder if the Chair of the Disciplinary Committee was raised on a diet of regulations."

"What else did you think she grew up on?" I said.

"Justice?"

"Then you're done for." Jess looked wounded.

"I was literally in the middle of playing the frail, post-crisis, possibly-about-to-vomit girl."

"You played it beautifully," Lan said, dry, from the side.

"Beautifully enough that I genuinely considered sending you to medical isolation." Roy, behind her, laughed once and immediately coughed it into something more respectable. Hedwig stood a step further back, still holding onto the ability to look like a formal diplomatic silhouette even fresh out of a terror attack and a long evacuation. Under the port's overly white lighting, her hair gleamed almost offensively, which only made the fatigue on her face look like a deliberate stylistic choice rather than exhaustion.

If I hadn't personally watched her get hustled out of the line of fire, and heard the blast roll toward the podium with my own ears, I might have suspected the Third Imperial Princess of the Galactic Empire wasn't human at all, but some high-spec showpiece jointly developed by the Federation and the Empire. She felt my stare and tilted her head.

"Something wrong, Shimo?"

"Nothing." A pause.

"Just thinking your ability to hold this composure the whole way is very unkind to the rest of us mortals." She blinked, then actually laughed.

"If you'd like, I can cooperate and show a more disheveled side."

"No need," Maki said flatly, from ahead.

"This is fine as it is." It sounded like business. But I knew her too well. That wasn't only for Hedwig. It was for all of us. Hold it together. Don't fall apart yet. So we let ourselves be led away from the section of the terminal that was finally turning back into something human, down a side security corridor into the port's interior. Standard Federation administrative palette—cool-toned, clean, aggressively unmemorable, floors polished enough to reflect the shadow of your heel.

The kind of place perfectly suited for meetings, and equally suited for bleaching any living feeling into a number on a form. Walking through it, the sound of the families crying already felt like it belonged to a different world. The special reception area sat at the end of the upper-level VIP corridor. The door opened, and for a moment I thought I'd wandered into something upscale on the surface and specifically designed to process testimony underneath.

Floor-to-ceiling windows faced the port's outer ring, showing the docking bays and distant traffic lanes. The carpet inside was thick enough to make even deliberate footsteps behave. Federation founding-anniversary prints hung on the walls, and the table held hot drinks, snacks, data pads, and a smile so proper, so harmless, that I went on instinctive alert the moment I saw it. The smile belonged to Vice Admiral Keisuke Hasumi. He was already inside.

Along with him: the Principal, several Senpai academy staff, a middle-aged woman I didn't recognize but who was clearly a Directorate affairs officer, and two officers in headquarters uniforms standing at the back, looking like footnotes given human shape. Jefferson was absent. Good—at least the Federation understood division of labor when it came to being nauseating; they wouldn't run the same man for two shifts in a row.

"Please, sit," Hasumi said, gesturing with impeccable economy.

"You've all been through enough. This isn't an interrogation. We'd simply like to establish the general sequence of events, to make follow-up protection and resettlement easier." The moment he said not an interrogation, I knew at least eighty percent of what followed would look exactly like one. Jess clearly caught it too. The moment she sat, she cupped her hot drink in both hands, wearing the devout expression of someone attempting to disguise herself as a harmless thermal container.

Maki took the seat front and center, posture so textbook it made the back of my neck itch. Hedwig sat to her right, composed. Lan and Roy took the other side. Akari kept her usual dead-fish expression, as if someone had installed too tired to even perform being tired as premium facial firmware. Harvey and D stood a little further back—the former looking like he might fall asleep standing up, the latter radiating steady warmth, the only buffer pad in the room still holding a normal human temperature.

My first thought sitting down was: This seating arrangement really does look like it's deciding who gets served up first. Hasumi clearly knew what he was doing. He didn't cut straight to the point. He let the Principal open with another round of we're just so relieved you're safe, the academy is heartbroken and proud, we'll offer every possible support—padding thick enough I half expected commemorative gifts by the end. Once that emotional cushion was in place, Hasumi took the rhythm back.

"I understand you're all exhausted, so I'll limit myself to a few points most critical to Federation security and student protection." There it was. His tone stayed even, his phrasing clean, even his gaze carefully measured. This type of person is the worst. Jefferson treats you like a poster. Hasumi treats you like a puzzle—quietly collecting pieces while you're distracted, and only later do you realize your outline has already been traced.

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"First," he turned to Hedwig, "regarding the attack on the podium on the second day in Lunar City—can we confirm the target was originally intended to be Your Highness?" A steady question. Steady like something testing how much deeper it could go. Hedwig folded her hands lightly on her lap, her voice just as composed.

"Judging by the pattern on-site, the attack was heavily concentrated around my position. If you're asking my personal view, I'd lean toward yes." She didn't elaborate. Good. Because going further would touch her two brothers, and that level of mess didn't belong on the tea table in round one. Hasumi nodded.

"And the Seitokai organized the evacuation on its own initiative once the attack began?"

"Yes," Maki said.

"Perimeter order collapsed very quickly. Waiting for external command to reassert itself would only have increased casualties, so the Seitokai used our existing structure to maintain evacuation routes, prioritizing gathering students and moving them to the spaceport."

"A remarkably calm assessment."

"Just doing what needed doing." Maki's answers were always like that—clean enough that nothing stuck. Hasumi smiled slightly, didn't accept the compliment right away, and eased the question sideways instead.

"During the evacuation, did the Seitokai receive any outside assistance?" The room went still for a second. That was the fox showing his tail. He didn't ask about weapons first. Or vehicles. He asked about assistance. Because if someone volunteered it themselves, that saved him the trouble of forcing the door open. Maki didn't rush to answer. She just shifted her gaze slightly toward me. A small movement. But I understood. My turn.

I set my untouched tea back on the table, looked up, and aimed for a tone somewhere between I'm exhausted, you really want to ask this now?, and I have an answer, but you might not enjoy the full version.

"We did." Hasumi looked at me.

"Could you be specific, Hoshino?"

"Sure." I leaned back in my chair.

"Day two in Lunar City, during Her Highness Hedwig's speech, the attack happened. The scene went chaotic. The Seitokai covered the evacuation, and along the way we did pick up some outside support—transport and on-site armed assistance included. We reached the port, and the Kushima Group handled the pickup from there. That's the gist." Beautiful. I wanted to applaud myself. Because every word of it was true. And together, it added up to very little. Hasumi, of course, wasn't satisfied.

He kept that polite smile—the kind you wanted to poke with a fork just to check for another face underneath—his tone even milder than before.

"I understand. It's just that a few details in the on-site record could use clarifying. Some students mentioned boarding a large bus that seems to have been dispatched on short notice. Others mentioned the Seitokai's side carrying weapons capable of suppressing the chaos. If we can't confirm the origin of resources like that, it may cause some difficulty for the administrative record going forward." There it was. Transportation. Where the weapons came from.

And that phrase, administrative difficulty, which anyone could recognize as the polite legal opener for we are about to take you apart on paper. I'd wondered if he'd circle wider first. Apparently his grasp of the fox as a species was thorough—when it's time to bite, you bite, you just make it look routine. Jess's grip on her cup tightened visibly. Roy and Lan both went still. Even Akari's permanently disillusioned eyes lifted by half a degree. Inside, I actually relaxed. Good.

Finally, a place I could dump the blame.

"That part," I said, letting a beat hang, as if searching my memory.

"You'll want to talk to Colonel Leo Wiesland." The air in the room caught, very lightly. Hasumi's expression didn't move—only his brow shifted, a fraction of a millimeter.

"Colonel Wiesland?"

"Right." I nodded, righteous as a citizen conscientiously pointing an inquiry toward the correct department.

"I picked up a part-time attachment with Intelligence. Some of the temporary contact points, liaison lines, evacuation routes, and on-site emergency resources fall under his purview to explain. If you're more interested in where the bus came from, how the weapons got there, or who authorized what on the ground, I'd suggest going straight to him. After all, I was just in charge of transporting lives. I don't have clearance for the detailed administrative routing." I nearly moved myself. What is duty to one's post.

What is faith in the system. What is direct your inquiry to the proper channel. This was it. Jess nearly sprayed her tea, holding it in through sheer survival instinct, her face going crimson like an internal explosion barely contained by skin. Maki didn't look at me. But the fingers resting on the table gave a single, very light tap. I knew that rhythm. She was suppressing a laugh.

Or, more precisely, suppressing the specific laugh that would have meant openly admitting, in this room, that the deflection had been very well thrown. Hasumi went still for half a second, and—to his credit—didn't press. A true fox. Because he knew that once Leo Wiesland's name had been placed openly on the table, digging further wasn't digging into students anymore. It was digging into the intelligence apparatus.

That kind of hole made noise loud enough that it might not be wise to dig it here, in front of the Principal, a princess, and half the academy's leadership. So he only smiled a little more graciously.

"I see. It seems you did receive quite timely assistance under extreme circumstances."

"The Federation occasionally manages to function like the Federation," I said. The Principal nearly choked on his tea. Lan lowered her head, hiding her expression behind her bangs. Roy pressed a fist to his lips, shoulders shaking. D worked hard to hold his warm, steady expression, but I could see he was losing ground. Maki finally said my name, lightly.

"Shimo."

"Sorry." I apologized with zero remorse. Hasumi still didn't get angry. Or rather, someone like him wouldn't waste anger in a room like this. He simply pivoted, retreating to safer ground.

"Then, at minimum, we can confirm: the Seitokai's actions during the evacuation focused on protecting students, maintaining order, and ensuring a successful handoff at the port, without engaging in offensive armed action beyond self-defense. Is that correct?" That question was craftier still. Because it wasn't asking for facts. It was asking for the official line. This time Maki didn't let me answer. She spoke directly.

"Correct." Her voice was steady as a sealed stamp.

"The Seitokai's sole priority was getting the students alive to a point of pickup. Beyond that, there's nothing worth dramatizing." Hasumi looked at her for a count of two, then nodded. In those two seconds, I had a clear feeling. He'd probably already understood he wasn't going to pry anything shiny out of us today. But that didn't mean he'd gained nothing. Someone like him doesn't always need answers.

Sometimes it's enough to watch—who answers for whom, who steps in front of what, whose eyes don't even flicker when a certain name comes up. That thought irritated me a little. Because it meant a certain kind of interrogation had already been half-completed from the moment we walked into the room. Fortunately, he didn't drag the session out forever. Maybe the Principal still had a scrap of humanity left. Maybe Hedwig's mere presence made certain questions too filthy for round one.

Whatever the reason, the remaining questions stayed on the surface—injury status, corrections to the missing-persons list, resettlement and testimony scheduling. Tedious, but tolerable. Finally, Hasumi closed his data pad, wearing that hundred-point official smile.

"That's all for today. When formal statements are needed, the relevant departments will be in touch. Rest assured, the Federation will handle this incident properly." I almost blurted: Which part? The incident, or us? Thankfully, I held it in this time. Maki stood.

"If there's nothing else, I'd like the Seitokai members to rejoin their families and classmates first."

"Of course." Hasumi raised a hand, his manner impeccably gracious.

"You've already done more than enough today." What a beautifully constructed sentence. Beautiful enough that I wanted to finish the second half for him. —So from here on, leave it to people better suited to hold the narrative. When we left the special reception area, the corridor lights were still bright enough to suggest no one here ever needed sleep. I trailed half a step behind Maki, and it wasn't until we'd turned a corner clear of staff and academy ears that she finally slowed down.

I thought she'd say I'd pushed the deflection too far. She didn't. She just tilted her head and glanced at me.

"You're getting bolder."

"I'm saving the Federation's paperwork process some time."

"Dumping every problem on someone else counts as saving time?"

"Of course it does. At minimum, our side went quiet immediately." She looked at me, and the cold edge she'd been holding down finally loosened by a hairline, like a crack opening across ice.

"Almost too far."

"But not quite."

"... Mm." I couldn't help the corner of my mouth curving up. That was enough. Beside us, Jess finally came back to life, folding herself onto Lan's shoulder.

"I'm dying.

'I was just in charge of transporting lives'—Hoshino, how do you say that with a straight face?"

"Because I'm a victim, a witness, a student, and a part-time Intelligence attachment," I listed, flat.

"Lots of social identities. There's always one that fits the day." Lan sighed.

"I'm starting to feel bad for Colonel Wiesland."

"No need," I said.

"Truly mature adults ought to learn how to clean up after students." Roy finally laughed out loud. Ahead of us, Hedwig glanced back, the faintest smile at her mouth.

"Should I feel bad for Colonel Wiesland as well, then?"

"You don't need to," I told her.

"You're the Imperial princess who got attacked. You've had plenty to deal with today. Save your sympathy quota for the Federation apparatus." Hedwig laughed, very softly. The sound wasn't loud, but it was just enough to wash away a bit of the disinfectant-scented bureaucracy still clinging to us from that room. We walked back down the corridor, toward the part of the terminal that still held family, classmates, tears, embraces. I knew this wasn't the end. Today's meeting had only been round one.

There would be a round two, a round three—more people in crisp uniforms or expensive suits, each with a different pretext, a different script, a different procedure, all asking the same questions. Everyone wanted to know how we survived. Everyone wanted to know what actually happened in Lunar City over those two days. Everyone wanted to know exactly how much the Seitokai was holding. But for now, they could only knock from outside. And we still got to choose who opened the door.

I shoved my hands into my uniform pockets and let out a long breath. The spaceport's bureaucratic air conditioning was as cold as ever. Compared to the sound of the explosion off that podium in Lunar City, at least this kind of cold wouldn't kill you outright. Of course. It would just slowly disgust you to death. Which might not be much better.