Chương 49: 21.Nowhere Left to Hide Your Tears 21-2

Then, slowly, careful not to disturb anything, he pushed the last sheet of paper in front of me. One sentence. Now that the table is empty, who are you. I looked at those words. Didn't move for a while. The first answer that came up: soldier. The second: raw material. The third: something that will survive. The fourth: a disaster the Federation is keeping on a leash. All very familiar. Worn-in, like old clothes. Falling apart, but they keep the wind out.

But Master Tam had just stripped those clothes off me, one by one. What was left underneath was cold. And ugly. I stared at the paper. My fingers started to shake. Not visibly. But enough that I felt it. That was the worst part. You can fake calm in front of other people. What you can't fake is the moment your own hand finds the tremor—like finally pressing against a wall and realizing it's been cracked for a long time, and you just never pushed on it before.

"Talk," Master Tam said. His voice was level. I drew a breath.

"…Hoshino Shimo."

"That's a name." I bit down.

"Fourteen years old."

"That's an age." I looked at him, and felt something close to hatred rise up. Hatred for this old bastard who wouldn't let me go. Hatred that he had to push it this far, make it this ugly. Hatred that he looked like a sun-dried strip of jerky someone left by the road, and yet his aim was sharper than anyone's. But what I hated most was that he wasn't wrong. I'm not a weapon. At least, I wasn't one to begin with. I'm not some creature born fitted for the battlefield. I made myself into that, gradually, over time.

Because it was less frightening that way. Less humiliating. Because it meant I didn't have to admit that I've been terrified, every single time. My throat locked up. I turned my head away and fixed my eyes on the window. My vision blurred, which was humiliating.

"I'm a…" I started, my voice wrecked.

"I'm a fourteen-year-old girl with really terrible luck…" The rest of the sentence jammed. Like a fish bone. Like broken glass. Like being forced to cough up something you'd been swallowing for a very long time. Master Tam didn't rush me. He just sat there across from me, watching, like he was waiting for a thief to finally put back what they'd been hiding up their sleeve. I held out for two seconds. Lost on the third. When the tears came, my first instinct wasn't grief—it was the urge to swear. Fuck.

This was so humiliating. I actually cried. Not the kind where your eyes go red and you pretend something got in them—genuinely, completely, without a shred of dignity, falling. The Federation spent all those resources cycling me through centrifuge pods, pressure chambers, and medication trials, and in the end I got taken apart by a table, four pieces of paper, and one old man's mouth. Military budget efficiency at its finest. I raised my hand to wipe my face and only made it worse.

My breathing went ragged, my chest hitching in short pulls, like I'd finally been dragged out of that pile of shells and what was inside wasn't a cold, hard weapon at all—just a kid, thoroughly and completely unlucky.

"I'm a fourteen-year-old girl with really terrible luck," I finally got out, my voice shaking badly.

"I didn't want to learn all this so fast…I don't want to keep looking for exits, I don't want to always be calculating who's going to die first, I don't want to treat every single person like they might betray me before they get the chance—" I stopped, pulling in a breath that came out all wrong.

"It's not that I don't want to get close to people." I had my head down; the tears hit the paper and spread into dark little blooms.

"I'm scared that if I do, and then one day they're gone, I'm going to fall apart like an idiot." The room was quiet except for the sound of my breathing. Ugly. Wrecked. Nothing like the Hoshino who'd squared off against J. J. for forty-two days straight, who'd learned demolition too fast in front of Leonard, who'd refused to fold under Mila's sharpest lines. But Master Tam just watched me. No expression like he'd finally gotten something on me. He didn't even say anything kind.

Just pulled a tissue from somewhere and pushed it across.

"Alright," he said.

"That was real." I glared at the tissue and felt like crying harder. This was against the rules. Knife after knife after knife, and then at the end, one tissue—like finishing a fight and only then asking if you wanted water. An old fox to the last, even the cleanup was low. I grabbed the tissue and scrubbed at my face.

"Satisfied?" Master Tam leaned back in his chair and nodded.

"More or less."

"More or less. What kind of assessment is that."

"Means you're not a rat," he said. I looked up at him. Master Tam was looking out the window, voice still carrying that lazy, unhurried quality.

"If you were something the Empire had planted, you wouldn't cry this ugly," he said.

"And you wouldn't still be confused, at this point, about whether you want to live or whether you just want someone to reach down and pull." My nose stung. I almost swore at him again. But he was already standing, gathering the papers from the table one by one.

"Last lesson of counter-interrogation training. Remember this," Master Tam said.

"It's not about sealing your mouth shut. It's not about performing like you're made of solid iron." He looked down at me.

"It's about knowing which human part of you is the easiest to pry open. Once you know that, you can actually guard it." I sat there, face still hot, eyes still aching, probably looking like a stray cat that had been left out in the rain. Master Tam tucked the stack of papers under his arm and turned for the door. Halfway there, he stopped, like something had just occurred to him, and said without turning around:"One more thing, girl."

"What."

"Next time you want to play veteran in front of me, wipe your nose first." I wanted to throw the cup at him right then. Unfortunately, my personal image management had already suffered a total collapse, and adding assault on an instructor to the list would only generate more Federation paperwork. So I sat there, swallowing a stomach full of murderous shame, and watched that small, hunched old fox walk out the door. He paused just before it closed.

"Tomorrow afternoon, back to your regular schedule," he said.

"I'll talk to Vera." I frowned.

"Talk to her about what?" Master Tam turned his head halfway, showing half a grin.

"Tell her you're still worth keeping," he said.

"Just don't raise her too much like a blade. Feed her something human every once in a while." Then he was really gone. Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work! The door closed, and the room went quiet. I sat alone by the window, eyes red like I'd just gone twelve rounds with the entire Federation, the tea still steaming faintly on the table. The sky outside was white—blank white, no expression at all. The training center ran on schedule.

No alarms, no announcements. The world did not extend a single courtesy to a fourteen-year-old girl for having cried herself apart in the final session of counter-interrogation training. Good. The universe: stable. The Federation: stable. Me: not stable. But the strange thing was—that place in my chest, the part that had been wrenched open—it hurt, but it wasn't as suffocating as before. Like someone had finally acknowledged that it was never meant to hold an engine. It was flesh.

And flesh hurts, and fears, and wants to cry. Undignified. But still alive. The next afternoon, I was called to the assessment room. Not Master Tam's room—the one so white it looked like someone had laundered their conscience in it. Not the Observation Room Leo usually used, the kind of cold that could reduce a person to a spreadsheet. This was higher up. No label on the door. The corridor was quiet enough that even shoe friction felt like it needed clearance.

Places like that generally serve one of two purposes: deciding your promotion, or deciding how your death gets filed. When I pushed the door open, Brigadier Vera Eisenhertz was already seated at the far end. She wasn't wearing the practical training-area uniform today. She had on formal dress grays—severe enough to qualify as cruel. Epaulettes, collar lines, the row of identification markers on her chest that were so minimal they bordered on contemptuous—all of it quietly expensive.

She sat behind the table with her back straight enough that it seemed like the entire Federation had to pass through her spine before it could stand upright. Leo stood behind her right shoulder, like a shadow. Master Tam was in the corner, cigarette in his mouth, wearing the expression of a market vendor watching someone else's pork get weighed. Wonderful. Yesterday I cried until my life felt like it had been pickled in brine. Today I get a senior review board.

The Federation's after-service support: reliably efficient.

"Trainee Hoshino Shimo, reporting," I said. Vera looked up at me. No pressure in the gaze, no deliberate intimidation, not even impatience. Which was exactly why it was worse. The way she looked at people was like reading a map—no rush to evaluate, just confirming first whether the terrain was worth deploying forces into.

"Sit," she said. I sat. There was a paper file on the table. Not thick. But I had a deeply unpleasant instinct: lately, my fate had been arriving in thin packages like this. Vera opened the top page, her voice as level as a weather broadcast.

"Phase Two counter-interrogation and stress-aptitude summary assessment," she said.

"Instructor: Tam Chengyue." Master Tam coughed.

"Hm. Strange to hear the full name. Takes some getting used to." Nobody acknowledged him. Vera continued reading.

"Subject exhibits highly defensive verbal architecture, demonstrates rapid capacity for constructing false narratives, retains selective-misdirection potential under stress stimulus. Core personality shows no externally implanted loyalty framework; no indicators consistent with standard Imperial deep-cover pre-conditioning." I didn't move. But I knew: my left fingertips had just curled, very slightly. Oh. So that layer was real.

The Federation was teaching me how not to get hollowed out by enemies, while simultaneously running a quiet check on whether I was someone else's surprise package. Touching. The institutional thoroughness of it was almost maternal—like a mother tucking you in at night. Except this mother cracks your ribs first to make sure you haven't been hiding a transmitter in there. Vera turned a page.

"Additionally: subject demonstrates marked premature weaponization tendency, with elevated self-instrumentalization. Strengths include high adaptability, rapid tactical response, and strong acceptance of gray-area methods. Risk factors include excessive lone-operator orientation, attachment-severance tendency, and potential for delayed group-trust development following extended deployment." She looked up from the page at that point.

"Simply put," she said, "you're very useful. But you can't lead a unit yet." I almost laughed. That one sentence was more honest than the entire preceding page.

"Thank you for the encouragement," I said.

"The Federation's approach to motivating minors is really quite heartwarming." Leo's eyebrows didn't move. Master Tam, on the other hand, grinned.

"Told you. Wipe the snot off and the mouth is still just as insufferable."

"Therefore," Vera said, cutting straight to the center of the room as if our exchange hadn't happened at all, "you will not be deployed to the front line directly." The back I'd been leaning against the chair with went very slightly still. Not from disappointment. Not from relief. Because—sentences like that always have something worse attached to the end. Sure enough.

"Phase One is hereby concluded," Vera said.

"Effective tomorrow, trainee Hoshino Shimo is transferred into Phase Two integrated development." She pushed the file forward an inch.

"Assignment: United Interstellar Military Academy main campus, Tactical Preparatory Division, Special Observation Class." I looked at her. She looked at me.

"…Military school?"

"You look disappointed," Master Tam said from the side, unhurried.

"I'm not," I said.

"I'm just a little overwhelmed by the honor. Didn't realize something like me was eligible for an education." The corner of Vera's mouth moved—somewhere between not-quite-a-smile and almost-one.

"You won't be going as a normal student," she said. I knew it. The Federation wasn't going to suddenly develop a conscience and decide the child had suffered enough, send her to campus to experience youth. This wasn't a coming-of-age romance. This was a place that would turn your course schedule into a dissection chart. Vera laced her fingers together, her voice still even.

"Phase One took you from specimen to material," she said.

"Phase Two, we determine whether material can become a node." I blinked. I hated that word. Because it didn't sound like anything good.

"Could you say that in language a fourteen-year-old can actually understand," I said.

"In plain language," Leo said—he was the one who spoke, "you can't only know how to survive alone." He was standing behind and to the side of Vera, his voice still the kind that could turn hot soup into ice just by describing it.

"Karl taught you close-quarters survival. Mila taught you how to maintain fire judgment under hostile conditions. Leonard taught you sabotage behind enemy lines. J. J. taught you how to turn the sky into a trap. Master Tam confirmed you weren't an outside plant, and while he was at it, he put you back together into something resembling a person." He looked at me.

"Now you need to learn the next thing." I stared at him. Leo said, flat:"How not to fight alone." The room was quiet for a second. I hated that sentence. Not because it was harsh. Because it was accurate. Vera picked up where he left off.

"The academy segment is not a reward, and it is not a rest period," she said.

"Your curriculum will include standard academics, tactical theory, fleet identification, logistics and structural fundamentals, unit composition practice, leadership and compliance assessment, and group-complementarity observation." With each item she added, my head hurt a little more.

"Hold on," I said, raising a hand.

"Did you just say standard academics?"

"Yes."

"You spent forty-three days cycling me through centrifuge pods, pressure chambers, medication trials, and full-sensory deconstruction facilities, and now you want me to go back to school?"

"Yes."

"…Is the Federation feeling alright?" Master Tam finally laughed out loud. Leo almost looked sympathetic. Vera didn't smile. She just delivered the last line with complete calm:"And your grades can't be an embarrassment." I wanted to file an immediate request to go back and let J. J. spin me until I vomited. At least that was straightforward.

"Furthermore," Vera said, "your assignment at the academy is not only to learn." I looked up. She pulled out another sheet and placed it on top.

"You're there to watch people." I went quiet. Vera's gaze settled on my face, calm to the point of cruelty.

"Watch who has a brain, who has nerve, who has discipline, who has resilience, who doesn't break under pressure, who should stay, who's only good for burning through, who's worth leading, who will get the people next to them killed the moment they hit a real battlefield." She paused.

"Identify the useful ones. Not make friends. Build a core." I was silent for a few seconds. Then I said:"You're sending me back to run a battle royale." Master Tam raised his hand lazily, cigarette still in his mouth.

"Oh, I like that one."

"It's not a battle royale," Vera said. I looked at her. She looked back at me, and then said it in a tone that was nothing like reassurance and harder than any reassurance could be:"It's teaching you how to figure out, while there's still time, who can survive alongside you." When that landed, the whole room went clean and quiet. Because we all understood that no one here was talking about campus life. No one was talking about youth. No one was talking about the bonds of classmates.

Everyone was talking about the next war. Except this time, instead of teaching me how to blow up someone else's things, they were teaching me first how to recognize which people shouldn't die too early. I leaned back in my chair and looked at the thin reassignment order.

"So," I said, "I'm going to military school to fill in my knowledge gaps, develop some concept of teamwork, and along the way pick out a few people the Federation can send to hell together with me later."

"Accurate summary," Leo said.

"You people have a real gift for destroying a girl's illusions about education."

"If you still have illusions about education at this point, Master Tam's work was wasted on you," Leo said. …Alright, that one was a bit much. …But he's not wrong either. Fuck. Vera closed the file.

"One more thing," she said. I looked at her.

"At the academy, your complete Phase One record will not be disclosed." My brow shifted slightly.

"Why?"

"Because there's no reason for everyone to know how far along you've been worked," Vera said.

"Too much disclosure and people will fear you, resent you, or become dependent on you too early. All three are bad for observation." Master Tam added from the side:"Also bad for catching who comes to mess with you first." I turned to look at him. This old bastard—even shipping me off to school, he still wanted ringside seats to the show. Vera didn't deny it.

"Your status will be listed as a special-transfer intake," she said.

"Your academic scores, physical benchmarks, and tactical course clearance will be slightly above your cohort level, but not so far above that you're unapproachable. You'll need to find your own way in. The system won't clear a path for you." I understood well enough. Not putting me in as a trophy. More like threading a needle into a tangled knot and seeing which threads it pulls loose. Bright future ahead.

"What if I take a dislike to someone—can I just put them on the list and send it to you?" I asked.

"You can note them down," Vera said.

"But you'll need to demonstrate it's not simply personal."

"That rule is very unfriendly."

"So is the battlefield."

"The Federation might want to consider improving its service quality."

"It won't." …Alright then. This woman and Leo came off the same assembly line. Except he's ice and Vera's a blade. Ice at least lets you feel cold first. A blade, once it knows exactly where to go, just goes. Master Tam stood up at that point, brushing off his trousers with the air of someone who'd watched the whole performance and was ready to pack up his stall.

"I'll add one line to my assessment," he said. Vera tilted her head toward him. Master Tam glanced at me.

"Don't put her on casualty-responsibility assignments too early," he said.

"She can calculate, endure, perform, survive, and she'll take the dirty road when she has to. But she just had her shell stripped off, and the girl underneath is still in there. Put human lives on her back too soon, and she won't say a word about it—she'll just start rotting from the inside." The room was quiet for a moment. Even I didn't say anything. Because that was too direct. Too direct to sound like Master Tam's usual market-corner-old-con-artist routine. Vera looked at him for a second, then nodded.

"Noted." Leo said nothing, but his gaze touched me for just a moment, then moved away. I had a sudden urge to say something unpleasant. Not because I'd been seen. Because why do these people always wear that expression—oh, still alive after all—at the exact moment I start resembling a human being for two seconds. Infuriating. Profoundly infuriating. Like a crew of engineers cracking open a machine and discovering there's a heart in the components, then pausing to evaluate whether it's worth keeping.

Vera slid the file across to me.

"Conclusion," she said.

"Trainee Hoshino Shimo: Phase One training completed, passed. Phase Two cultivation clearance elevated to provisional special-integrated sequence. Assignment: United Interstellar Military Academy main campus, Tactical Preparatory Division, Special Observation Class." She paused. Then added the last line:"Objectives: study, unit formation, observation, and selection. And—" I looked at her. Her gaze was steady.

"—prove that you're not only capable of surviving brilliantly alone." I stared at her for two seconds, then pulled one corner of my mouth up.

"That's a high bar."

"Which is why it's yours."

"Can I refuse?"

"No."

"Can I at least request that the dormitory not be completely terrible?" Master Tam snorted beside me. Leo closed his eyes briefly, like he was holding something back. Vera finally smiled—faintly, barely there.

"Depends on your performance," she said. That was the end of the meeting. I stood, picked up the reassignment order. The paper wasn't heavy, but it felt strange in my hand. For forty-three days, my future had been simple: get through it, don't die, learn faster, come back after you're done vomiting.

Now the Federation was suddenly sending me somewhere full of people my own age—schedules, unit formations, coursework, assessments, choices—like they'd finished one round of forging and decided this blade still needed to learn how to pick out other blades. I was almost at the door when Vera called after me.

"Hoshino." I turned around. She wasn't looking at the file. She was looking directly at me.

"The academy isn't there to make you normal," she said.

"It's too late for that." …Thank you so much.

"It's there to make you whole." I stood in the doorway and didn't answer right away. Because that line was infuriating. Infuriating in a way that made it hard to tell, in the moment, whether I wanted to roll my eyes or quietly commit it to memory. In the end I just said:"Understood, Brigadier." She nodded. I pushed through the door. The corridor was just as quiet as before—quiet like the whole building knew someone had just had their fate reassigned. I looked down at the document in my hand.

The line at the top was hard, formal, thoroughly Federation: Phase Two Integrated Development Transfer Order. Below it, my name. Hoshino Shimo. Fourteen years old. Not sent to the front. Not permitted to fall apart. Not permitted to only know how to survive alone. Also required to go back to school, observe people, assess people, build something out of people, and not turn herself into a pure weapon in the process. Brilliant prospects.

I was already walking out when Master Tam's last line came back to me—still worth keeping. Looking at it now, that wasn't an assessment. That was delivery instructions. And this particular piece of cargo was headed, next stop, to military school.