Chương 488: 231.Secret Consultation 1

A school trip originally scheduled for two days and one night had been dragged out into nearly a month. I couldn't laugh about it. Not as a figure of speech. I genuinely could not laugh.

After you claw your way back through a package deal of terrorist attacks, a lunar evacuation, the seizure of the Asgard, Europa, a pirate fleet, a fortress, an entire course of Federation bureaucratic theater, and enough incidents to give any normal student premature grey hair—after all that, seeing the familiar school buildings, the familiar administrative block, and a Seitokai doorplate so familiar it made you want to kick it off the wall didn't produce any warm feeling of ah, finally back to everyday life.

It only made you want to ask one question. —Who invented everyday life, and how do I sue them? Maki walked ahead and swiped the door open with her Council President ID. The electronic lock gave a clean click. The door opened, and I understood at once: some places fight dirtier than a battlefield.

"... This is murder, right?" I stood in the doorway, staring at the mountain of paperwork, and let out a very sincere wail. The desk had it. The sofa had it. The side cabinet had it. Even the two stacks by the window—apparently held upright only by mutual respect—were also paperwork. I suddenly realized Lunar City's evacuation had one advantage. Artillery fire doesn't demand a signature. Maki gave the room a single glance. Not an exaggeration. Literally one glance.

She hung her jacket over the chair back, walked straight in, and split the top layer of these-will-cost-you-seventeen-briefings documents into two piles.

"Unimportant ones go aside for now," she said.

"Handle the important ones first."

"I'm all ears," I answered, carefully stepping over a stack of club budget resubmission forms on the floor, privately certain that if my toe drifted two centimeters further, I'd trigger a Seitokai office avalanche, and tomorrow's campus bulletin would read: Vice President Hoshino Shimo. Killed in the line of paperwork duty. Maki ignored me. She pulled out several documents clipped with red tabs, her fingers crisp and fast, moving like she was processing frontline reports, not campus admin files.

"Read these first." She tossed one in front of me. I caught it, looked down, and felt my stomach tighten at the words on the cover. Capital Region Representative Team Selection — Results Summary. I froze.

"Wasn't this already over?"

"Yes." Maki sat, not looking up.

"Which is exactly why you should be reading it now." I frowned. That was very Kushima Maki. Sounded like an answer. Wasn't one. Just handed the next question back into your hands and told you to unwrap it yourself. I opened the file. Inside wasn't recruitment material, sign-up forms, or promotional copy—not the kind of hot-blooded drivel designed to trick underclassmen into believing that making the representative team was some kind of youthful glory. It was a roster. Scores. Aptitude evaluations. Regional notes.

And a separately clipped appendix: Capital Region Joint Representative Team — Tactical Formation Draft. I stared at those lines, and a bad feeling started creeping up.

"... Wait." I looked up.

"So the point was never the selection itself."

"You're finally awake." Maki's tone stayed calm as she pushed another file toward me.

"Individual selection wrapped up a while ago. The scores are just reference. The real problem is what comes after." I looked at her.

"The team stage?"

"Right." She finally lifted her eyes, gaze landing on me, even.

"Solo matches just pull people out. The team phase is where you cram those people into a structure that actually breaks, and see who can walk back out with everyone else still alive." I went quiet for two seconds.

"That doesn't sound like a campus competition."

"It isn't." She leaned back, fingers laced together.

"At least—not this year." The office went still for a moment. Outside, the campus was the same as always. Some club was test-running promotional music in the courtyard, a muffled beat leaking through the wall. Students' footsteps passed down the corridor, distant and light, as if the whole world was still barely maintaining the fiction that this was a school. If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. The file in my hands clearly had other plans.

"Start with the basics," Maki said. Her tone had slipped into lecture mode. Dangerous. Very dangerous. When Kushima Maki is patient enough to walk you through something, it usually means the problem isn't the kind you can bluff past with strategic ignorance. It's a boulder that's already landed on your foot, and if you don't look at it clearly now, your knee goes next.

"Does the Galactic Federation know why it's called a Federation?"

"That much I know." I flipped a page, not bothering to hide my annoyance.

"Because the Federation controls nine star systems."

"Correct." She nodded.

"Ursa Major, Andromeda, Orion, Auriga, Cygnus, Aquila, Boötes, Centaurus, Dorado." She recited them in one breath, without a single pause, like she was listing her breakfast order.

"In other words, the Federation has nine sectors, nine defense zones, and nine military academy systems that cooperate with each other, compete with each other, can't stand one another, and still can't afford to actually tear each other's throats out." My hand paused mid-page-turn.

"That's a refreshingly honest version of the explanation."

"Because you're not being tested on it," she said, as if it were obvious.

"What you need to understand right now is that the so-called Capital Region Representative Team has never been about gathering a bunch of students with good scores, fast reflexes, and sharp aim, sticking them together for a group photo, and having them shout long live the Federation."

"Shame. I was actually looking forward to that childish script."

"Then join the arts club."

"No thanks. I'm afraid they have paperwork too." Maki didn't dignify that. She flipped to the back of the file and pointed.

"Every selection round, the real value was never the rankings. It's the formation authority that comes after." I looked where she pointed. Dense columns: each qualifier's specialty, coordination assessment, recommended position, provisional grouping notes. Not simply the strongest goes first. Who pairs well with whom. Who can anchor a position. Who, placed wrong, could get the whole team killed. Definitely not the kind of content that belongs on a recruitment poster. My throat moved.

"So... the selection is just filtering."

"Right."

"And the real problem is building the filtered people into a team."

"Also right." Maki looked at me, expression perfectly calm. Infuriatingly calm. The calmer she was, the earlier she'd usually seen the whole thing coming. I flipped a few more pages and hit another heading. Team Exercise — Revised Program Notice. The bad feeling in my chest climbed another notch.

"... Please tell me there isn't anything worse than team formation in here." Maki said nothing. She just tapped one line with her forefinger. I followed it down. And nearly swore out loud.

"What does 'existing simulated-engagement mechanisms cancelled, replaced with live border-environment practical assessment' mean?"

"Exactly what it says." Her answer was light. Too light. At a moment like this, light wasn't comfort. It was a verdict. I looked up.

"Plain language."

"Plain language: no simulations for the team phase this year." She looked at me.

"It's live." My brain went quiet for a second. Then I slowly swallowed the sentence.

"... Live, as in what kind of live?"

"The kind where people from the Empire show up." The office went so quiet the air conditioning was the loudest thing in it. I stared at her, briefly wanting to reach over and check her forehead—wondering if a month without proper sleep had finally made her conflate military academy competition with border skirmish, two things that had no business sharing the same spreadsheet. Unfortunately, I knew her too well. Kushima Maki doesn't joke about things like this.

If she ever did, the Federation would already be finished.

"Wait." I slapped the file flat on the desk.

"You're saying that once the individual phase picks the students, the team phase is going to throw them at the Empire?"

"On paper, it won't be phrased that bluntly, of course." She reached over and smoothed the page I'd nearly crumpled, her fingers lighter than I'd expected.

"In practice, that's about what it means."

"Fuck." I meant it sincerely.

"Whose idea was this? Tying academic credit to survival rates—doesn't that overestimate the renewability of teenagers just a little?" Maki actually smiled, faintly.

"That sentence made you sound almost like a normal person."

"Thanks. I'm normal all the time."

"That one wasn't." I glared at her. She ignored it and kept going.

"The Empire will have a corresponding mechanism. Different name, different packaging, same substance underneath. Every Federation sector wants to send something more than a showpiece. The Empire isn't about to hand us the whole border stage for free either." I slumped back in my chair and stared at the ceiling. The whole picture was absurd. We'd barely escaped a place where people actually died.

The moment we're back on campus, sitting in the Seitokai office, the first document we open tells us the system has already, very thoughtfully, arranged another, slightly more dignified way for us to get killed. Civilization really is impressive. At least this time, they send a notice first.

"This isn't everything, is it," I said, lowering my head to look at her again. Maki didn't answer right away. That kind of silence was the worst. It usually meant I'd already brushed the edge of something I wasn't supposed to touch quite this soon.

"That expression is making me very uncomfortable," I said.

"Because you're starting to guess right." I looked at the file on the desk, then at her, then at the whole room stacked high enough to bury the Seitokai alive. A very unpleasant chain of associations started wiring itself together in my head. Capital Region selection, complete. Individual scores, just reference. The real killer: the team stage. This year's team stage isn't simulated. It's live-environment. The Kushima family just took custody of the Asgard.

And Maki did not look like someone who'd only learned any of this today. I narrowed my eyes.

"... Hey. Wait." Maki didn't move. Worse. If she'd pushed back, I could have told myself I was overthinking. Her stillness meant my instincts had probably landed close to the truth.

"Your family acquiring the Asgard—" I said slowly.

"That was never just about hiding her, was it?" The office went suddenly, sharply quiet. Even the faint club broadcast outside seemed to pull back a layer. Maki looked at me. Then she smiled. It wasn't Jefferson Sterling's smile—the kind you could print thirty thousand copies of for a campaign poster. It wasn't her usual polite, distance-cutting smile for public occasions, either. The smile was gentle. Almost soft. Like she was genuinely pleased I'd finally caught up by a step. My spine went cold, inch by inch.

Because I knew her too well. The gentler Kushima Maki looked when she watched you like this, the more certain it was that the game in her head hadn't started today—that while you were still working out your opening move, she'd already laid out the midgame. I swallowed.

"Is it too late to say I didn't ask anything?"

"Too late." She said it, perfectly calm.

"And you're not the type who stops halfway through knowing half the story anyway."

"That assessment sounds unkind."

"It's accurate."

"... God." I looked back down at the team-formation file, and the words on the page suddenly looked a little too sharp. I see. Not the selection. Not the rankings. Not even just the Capital Region Representative Team. The real problem was this: Someone had already assumed that the next batch of filtered students would need something to hold them up in a live-fire environment.

And that something was currently sitting in a place that couldn't be publicized, couldn't be acknowledged, and couldn't be known to exist by anyone outside. I pressed my hand slowly against the edge of the document.

"... I'm starting to feel a little sick."

"There's a bin over there."

"I meant spiritually."

"Then I can't help you." She said it, and still reached over to restack the papers I'd scattered, her fingertip brushing the back of my hand and pausing there, very briefly. Light enough to pass for an accident. Or for a signal only I would recognize. —Don't panic yet. —It's already too late to panic anyway. I closed my eyes. Right. It was exactly because it was too late that it was so infuriating.

"So what now?" I asked.

"You start coming clean, or I torch every 'unimportant document' in this room as my final protest against the Federation education system?"

"Let's hold off on the arson," she said, as level as if managing a routine administrative risk.

"Finish reading the team-phase requirements first."

"And then?"

"Then you'll understand why I said the results aren't what really matters." She paused, then added the rest, slower.

"What matters is what the people who were selected are about to be sent to do." I stopped talking. Because I knew she was right. The Kushima Maki sitting across from me had clearly seen this long before I did—had started calculating, long before I did, how to turn a team battle designed to swallow people alive into a board where, at minimum, our side wouldn't be first to die. I looked at her, and a chill ran through me. She had probably never treated the Asgard as just a rescued hulk. She'd treated her as a card.

One that hadn't been turned face-up yet.