Chương 494: 234.Heartfelt Confession

"Doctor." I stared at the silver powered armor lying quietly in the stowage pod, keeping my voice low.

"You're not about to make me test another new toy for you, are you?" After all, this guy's track record over the years could hardly be squared with the words "good intentions." From new pressure-resistant gels and experimental muscle-assist fluids to some oral drug claiming to delay fatigue — if I sat down today and really thought about it, I could probably assemble a list worthy of competing for the Department of Education's annual student research prize. Dr. Heinrich von Steiner smiled.

That smile was bright in a way that wasn't quite human.

"No." He shook his head without hesitation.

"Already tested." I froze for half a second.

"... What?"

"Already tested." He repeated it, as if stressing a fact that was something to be proud of for him, and thoroughly threatening for me.

"That subject's build, skeletal feedback, and neural conduction delay were all extremely close to yours. The data I got essentially maps directly."

"Hold on." I narrowed my eyes.

"Did you take someone's data without asking again and run a human-experiment projection on me?"

"How could you think that, Miss Hoshino." He smiled with an utterly innocent face.

"It's called 'front-end optimization.'""It's called 'legally defensible evasive phrasing.'""My, you're harsh with your words today."

"Because you've parked a suit of powered armor in front of me today."

"How does that relate to being harsh?"

"Because I'm about to be stuffed into it."

"See, you already know."... And that's the trouble with arguing with this kind of person. He doesn't get angry, and he doesn't get defensive. He just catches every attack you throw at him with an absurdly optimistic attitude toward the world, then converts them into fuel to keep going.

"So," I took a deep breath.

"what exactly are you after?" Dr. Steiner leaned against the edge of the stowage pod and laced his fingers in front of his chin.

"The long-distance endurance obstacle race." He smiled.

"If there's any way you can run the anchor leg."

"Hm?"

"Then run the anchor leg." I stared at him.

"... Why?"

"Stress testing." I went silent for two seconds. Great. Just great. For a moment when the pod cover opened just now, I'd even thought the doctor had finally come to his senses and was starting to care about me in some clumsy but sincere way. Less than three minutes later, he smashed me awake from that tiny illusion with the words "stress testing." And to think I'd actually believed he'd found his humanity again. I'm such an idiot.

"I don't really mind either way." I deliberately raised my eyes to look at him.

"But if our team gets knocked out in the first few legs, doesn't that make this suit a wasted gift?" Dr. Steiner raised his eyes, looked at me for a second, and only then spoke slowly.

"Impossible." That one word came out very steady.

"As long as a member of the Kushima family is there, losing is impossible." I blinked. For an instant, I thought he was one of those researchers who harbored a strange faith in a particular bloodline. After all, for someone like him, living year after year between data and experiments, it wasn't entirely unprecedented for a near-religious fixation on some special individual, or some special family, to crop up now and then.

But just as I was about to toss off a jab — "Doctor, that makes you sound like the president of the Kushima family fan club" — I caught his eyes. It wasn't worship, wasn't praise, wasn't the excitement of a researcher seeing an excellent specimen. It was a sliver of fear. Very faint, very brief — perhaps a micro-expression that slipped out before he'd even fully registered it, then got swallowed back down by him. But I saw it. I slammed the brakes in my head at once. So that was it.

This doctor — who spoke Federation standard with an Imperial accent and was infuriatingly cheerful — had a day when the Kushima family had scared him, too. I shut my mouth, being sensible about it. Some pots, once you accidentally lift the lid, are best closed again immediately. Otherwise you'll soon discover the pot is deeper than you thought, and what's simmering at the bottom may not be something you wanted to know.

"I see." I didn't press further. Dr. Steiner didn't elaborate either. He just smiled and slowly closed the pod cover, his movements unusually careful.

"Take good care of yourself." That was the last thing he said. I glanced at him.

"When did you learn that line?"

"Memorized it last night."

"You even memorize basic social pleasantries?"

"I thought you'd be a little moved."

"I'm more worried you wrote it into your experiment log."

"Already did."

"... Doctor."

"Hm?"

"You really are sick." He looked enormously happy. I said no more, nodded to him, and turned to leave the lab. After leaving Combined Operations Command, I drove the short-range light vehicle the school had assigned me back toward campus. I'd only taken half a day off; in theory I still had afternoon classes. Though any teacher who paid even a little attention to the news could probably guess the reason for my leave today.

Of course, they would never know that the actual content was "gotten a false slip from the Deputy Chief of Combined Operations Headquarters, plus pitched a prototype powered armor by a doctor with an Imperial accent." Capital planet, Dunan.

Outside the window, the countdown billboards for the representative team still hung in place; the large holographic ads on the streets were still playing away with all their might; even the automatic coffee machine by the highway had a sheet stuck to it reading "Representative team athletes, welcome to cheer on the Federation with the official special blend." Looking at all that, my chest suddenly felt a little tight. Not because I was tired.

It was that I suddenly realized the entire star zone, the whole capital, millions of people, were all cheering passionately for this. And yet the people actually pushed into it numbered, in the end, only those three hundred and some. Including me. I tightened my grip on the bars a little and forced myself not to think further. It wouldn't do any good anyway. By the time I reached the school, it wasn't dark yet. Every so often a few students passed me in the corridor and reflexively glanced back at me.

Some wore the expression of "ah, that vice president seems to have been absent this morning," and some wore the expression of "I heard this one's been weird ever since coming back from the lunar surface." I ignored them all. The remaining capacity in my head wasn't enough to deal with other people's stares. When I pushed open the door to the Student Council office, I'd expected to see Lan sorting materials, Roy working the accounts, and Jess getting scolded. Instead, there was only Maki.

She sat behind the president's desk, just then signing her name on the last document. Stacks of papers still crowded the desk, but clearly less than half of yesterday's. The afternoon light slanting in from the window settled on her profile, quiet in a way that didn't seem like Maki Kushima. I blinked.

"Where are Roy and the others?"

"He went with Hedwig, and Lan, to do the site survey." Maki finished signing the last official document, put down her pen, and stood from her chair.

"The venue for Operation Nine Stars individual events has been decided."

"Where?"

"The Dunan General Stadium."

"... On this planet?"

"On this planet." She gathered the papers on the desk into a neat stack, movements clean and crisp.

"The Federation couldn't even be bothered to change the venue this time. The stated reason is cost savings and making it easier for the media to cover in one place. In reality," She glanced at me.

"it's probably to let their own people finish the fight under their own people's watchful eyes first."

"... Same as ever." I no longer had the energy to comment further. Maki came out from behind the desk, walked toward me, and asked casually.

"You went to Command again today?"

"Yeah." I dropped onto the sofa. The cushion was soft — soft enough that I relaxed all at once, until I could even hear the faint sound of the bones in my shoulders. I closed my eyes for a moment. The morning's images ran through my head again. Colonel Leo Wiesland's smile. Vice Admiral Hasumi Keisuke's line, "We're all part of this project." That sliver of fear on Dr. Steiner's face before the pod cover closed.

And that silver prototype lying quietly in the stowage pod, its lines so beautiful they were almost unsettling. I couldn't help speaking.

"This country really is a wreck." I didn't shout, didn't roar, and didn't half-jump, half-huff the way I had at Maki this morning. I just said it, very tiredly, with hardly any emotion left in my tone — as if the sentence had been pressed inside my lungs for half a day and now simply slid out with my breath. If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. The office went quiet for a second. Maki didn't answer right away.

She walked to the side of the sofa, stood diagonally in front of me, and looked at me for a while. Not the kind of look that checks on someone's condition — the kind that truly takes you in. Only then did I realize she seemed to have been watching me for a while. Since I came in the door — maybe even earlier. Perhaps from the moment she cut Jefferson off for my sake and let me yell in the office that "this isn't a relay race," she'd already begun paying attention to when my boundaries would give way.

She didn't speak. She just sat down beside me, naturally. So naturally that at first I wasn't on guard at all. I was still staring blankly at the ceiling, still thinking about the day's awful events, still about to open my mouth to complain to her about Vice Admiral Hasumi, about Federation bureaucrats, about that doctor with the Imperial accent. And then she kissed me. Just one, really. No warning, no preamble, none of the usual means she used to package things up respectably.

She just turned toward me a little and, in a motion almost offhand, pressed her lips lightly against mine. Only an instant — light, and very brief. My whole system crashed on the spot. Not an exaggeration. Literally. My head had still been circling around Hasumi, Leo, Steiner, the prototype, Operation Nine Stars, the Dunan General Stadium, the team countdown billboards — and every one of those things went silent together the second her lips left mine.... Had I... said something romantic just now? I stared at her.

Maki's expression was as calm as if the kiss just now had merely been her pouring me a cup of tea.

"Shimo." She spoke.

"W-what." I heard my own voice, clearly different from usual. Maki paid no attention to the state I was in.

"Soon." She looked at me.

"This country is going to change." For a moment I couldn't follow.

"... Huh?"

"Change." She said it again. It wasn't a slogan-shouting declaration, not passion, not smug satisfaction — it was telling you, very calmly, that it would rain tomorrow at noon. Calm enough to send a chill down your spine. She looked at me, her gaze more direct than the kiss had been.

"When that time comes," she said.

"will you still be on my side?" The office fell silent, with only the clock on the wall still moving. I looked at her. Watched her let someone more real lean briefly out from behind the identities — teenage cadet, Student Council President, next head of the Kushima family — to take one look at me. That wasn't what Maki Kushima "ought" to look like. That was what Maki Kushima originally looked like. And after that kiss, she had set that thing in front of me. I suddenly understood.

The thing I had never really said to her out loud — today there was no longer any room to put it off. I looked at her and spoke.

"I've always been on your side." I said. My voice steadier than I'd expected. As if saying it to her, and as if saying it to myself. That sentence had lain in my chest for who knew how many days, held down by excuses like "I'll say it later," "now isn't the time," "she probably knows anyway."

"I love you, Maki." Maki's eyelashes moved. Just once. A tiny movement, but I saw it. I went on.

"Even if the whole world turns against you," I looked at her.

"I'll stand by your side." The office went quiet again. This quiet was more complete than before — even the ticking of the clock seemed to come from very far away. Then she reached out and cupped my face in her hands. I didn't pull away. I didn't even know whether I was breathing. This time she kissed me longer, and slower, than before.

As if confirming something — confirming that what I'd said wasn't offhand, confirming that I understood what I'd said, and confirming that I knew just how heavy standing on her side could be. I didn't retreat. If anything, I returned it a little, out of sheer unwillingness to lose. Not out of bravado — it was that I suddenly found the heavy weight that had been pressing on my heart had been shifted slightly aside by those words. What showed underneath was a very strange, very hot, very careful version of me.

She needed to confirm immediately that what she'd just said out loud had truly arrived. So I closed my eyes and kissed her back, hard.

"Good afternoon, everyone. I brought you all lunch." The door was pushed open right then. I opened my eyes. I hadn't seen her come in during the instant my eyes were closed, but that voice was familiar enough that I almost wanted to cue an entrance sound effect for her. Jess. Maki didn't let go of me right away. She just lifted her eyelids and glanced toward the door with her peripheral vision.

That glance held no fluster, no shame — it even carried a calm provocation, as if saying "since we've been interrupted, we might as well act as if we weren't." And then — she actually kept kissing me. I nearly laughed. Because only by experiencing it firsthand did I learn that to Jess's eyes, this scene was probably equivalent to seeing Freya Nikaido personally clearing a path for someone in the Lower House corridor. Jess at the doorway looked like she'd been paused.

One hand held the lunch bag; the other froze by the door frame; her mouth hung open and her eyes grew wider and wider. In between she made a few very subtle movements — half a step back and half a step forward, lifting the lunch bag a little and setting it down again — wanting to speak but never managing a sound. Only after several seconds did Maki unhurriedly let go of me. That rhythm even carried the calm of "there, that matter is handled."

"You two..." Jess's voice was shaking, her finger pointed straight at me and Maki.

"You really are getting bolder and bolder." Her expression was exactly like someone who'd just witnessed the Federation collapsing in person.

"Broad daylight, in the Student Council office, and I'm carrying everyone's lunch, and the vice president is sitting in the guest sofa area..."

"Jess." Maki smiled faintly. I knew that smile too well. It was the look of her getting ready to deal with someone.

"Want a kiss too?" I froze on the spot.... Maki Kushima, is there something wrong with you? Jess's whole face went red instantly, burning from the base of her ears all the way down to her neck — so thoroughly red that I half wondered whether the lunch bag would get steamed by her. And then this hopeless creature actually glanced at me. I even suspected I'd seen it wrong.

"... Is that really okay?" Jess asked in a voice somewhere between testing the waters and pleading. And she was asking me. I could almost feel the heat rush to my whole face, faster than the kiss had been.

"No." I lowered my voice.

"Not now." And I'd actually added the word "now." The instant I finished, I really wanted to drag myself out and beat myself up. Jess froze in place, her face redder than the school badge on her uniform, her mouth shaping into a thoroughly useless "wow." Maki gave a soft laugh.

"See? Shimo still has a tiny bit of rationality."

"Only a tiny bit." I glared at her.

"And you're not embarrassed at all?"

"Why should I be embarrassed?"

"Because you just, in the Student Council office..."

"This is my office."

"..." Fine, I'll shut up. I really can't afford to cross this woman. The awkward air didn't last long, because the footsteps of Lan, Roy, and Hedwig returning came drifting from the other end of the corridor. Jess, as if suddenly hit with a "quick, pretend nothing just happened" button, moved stiffly aside and set the lunch on the table. Maki gave me one last look. The look was brief, but all the softness from when she'd kissed me had already been withdrawn.

She stood, straightened her uniform, adjusted her collar, and pulled herself back into the president's bearing. Back straight, shoulder line level, chin slightly tucked — every emotion seemingly locked away in some drawer at a casual stroke. The woman who had kissed me just now and the woman standing in front of me were clearly the same person. And yet the latter was the "Maki Kushima" everyone knew. She walked back to the president's desk and laid a hand on its edge. The others filed into the office about then.

Lan came in, looked over the mood of the room, then looked at the still-blushing Jess, and with great discernment asked absolutely nothing. Hedwig merely gave Maki a polite nod. Roy, maintaining a high degree of professional ethics, took out his site-survey notes and got ready to report. Maki looked at them, and when she spoke, her voice had returned entirely to the calm, clean, unquestionable mode of the president.

"Now," she said.

"let me brief you on the operational policy for this long-distance endurance obstacle race."

"The long-distance endurance obstacle race," Maki began. Her tone had cut completely back from that atmosphere I did not particularly want to replay a second time — clean as a freshly signed document.

"Never mind the five from the qualifiers for now." She tapped the desk lightly with her knuckle.

"Let's start with our Student Council part." The air in the office sank at once. Lan sat closest to the desk, a fresh stack of lists already spread out by her hand. Roy held the just-returned site-survey notes, looking ready to drop straight into work mode. Hedwig sat up elegantly, one hand on her knee, the other opening her private terminal.

Jess, still not fully recovered from the disaster scene at the door, was faintly red in the face, more restrained than usual in her movements — she hadn't even sneaked into the seat beside me the way she normally would. I leaned back against the sofa and tried hard to look as if nothing had happened. Though I knew perfectly well that this kind of effort usually only makes you look more suspicious. Maki didn't linger on me for a second.

She put her full attention on the long-distance endurance obstacle race materials on the desk.

"The rules are written vaguely, but the key points are clear." Her gaze moved over the clauses inch by inch.

"Ten legs in total. The first five are run by the people selected from the top three events' results. The last five," She raised her eyes.

"are covered by the Student Council."

"Knew it." The first voice to surface wasn't Jess's or Hedwig's, but Lan's. She didn't even look up — she just flipped through the list in her hand and said, in a tone close to talking to herself:"I knew it..." Those words were very quiet. And yet precisely that quietness made them the most lethal. Lan didn't usually make judgments lightly; when she spoke, it usually meant she'd already pushed that line back and forth in her head two or three times.

That "I knew it" wasn't a complaint — it meant she'd seen, one step before I did, exactly whose shoulders Maki intended to put the weight on today. I glanced at her. She happened to raise her eyes at the same moment, and we held each other's gaze for half a second. Lan said nothing, only gave a very faint shrug. I understood what it meant. The last five legs of an event like this were always the position most easily targeted.

Who the school would throw up there needed no guessing at all — obviously the five most capable of bearing responsibility. And the reason the Student Council was called the Student Council was that it was forever the place at the whole school best at being pushed out to bear responsibility. Lan, as a person, could sometimes be more frightening than Maki.

She wasn't a strategist, nor a decision-maker, but she could always see, at the very first moment and with speed and accuracy, who the whole play would ultimately land on.

"I'll take the anchor leg." I spoke. My voice even leveler than I'd expected. The office went silent instantly. Maki paused her hands. Lan put down her pen. Hedwig raised her head. Roy's eyebrows went up. As for Jess — Jess was of course the one with the least social experience, and she let out a:"Huh?"

"Shimo, are you serious?" Jess leaned her whole body forward.

"The anchor leg, come on — don't you want to reconsider?"

"No need."

"Do you even know what the anchor leg means?"

"I do."

"You know that if the nine people before you all get run half to death, you're the one who takes the baton last, right?"

"I do."

"You know the final sprint stretch is usually designed to be the most—""I do."

"..." Jess slowly closed her mouth. She probably hadn't expected me to answer that crisply. But of course I knew what the anchor leg meant. In any official event that called itself a team relay, the anchor leg was the spot in the whole field most easily targeted. Especially when this was a race written by the Federation's own hand — nominally rule-bound, but in practice a tacit permission for everyone to settle old scores with each other.

Whatever grudges the first nine legs tore open, whatever sparks they struck, whatever old debts they buried, all of it would pile up together on that final stretch. Rationally, of course I didn't want to take on that kind of blame. The problem was, I'd just seen that silver prototype at Dr. Steiner's. That thing had already had its basic testing done for me using someone else's data. The doctor had even said outright: if I could run the anchor leg, run the anchor leg. The reason: stress testing.

Put into plain language, it probably meant this machine needed a combat environment extremely hostile to it in order to farm data — otherwise he'd grab me and test it again next time. And knowing that doctor as I did, I believed one thing a hundred percent. If I didn't give him satisfactory stress-test data this time, he would absolutely, in that Imperial-accented Federation standard, cheerfully drag me back to the lab until he was completely satisfied. That would be the real dead end.

Compared with going into that lab again, I'd rather run the anchor leg. Of course, there was no way I could tell them that.

"I just want to run it." I looked at Maki.

"No other meaning." Not just Jess — even Lan gave me a sidelong look. Hedwig blinked slowly once, then let out a very soft:"... Wow." That sound was drawn out elegantly. Elegant as if she were not sitting in the Student Council office but at some Imperial banquet, having just watched someone make a bold, rude, and yet oddly tasteful decision.

"Miss Hoshino." She said, unhurried.

"You seem especially brave today?"

"Not brave." I didn't let her make it sound too pretty.

"Lazy."

"Lazy?"

"I don't want someone else to carry something that'll definitely come back to bite me later." Hedwig paused, then smiled. The smile was faint, but a touch more genuine than before.

"... I see." She said quietly.

"That does sound very much like you, come to think of it." Maki didn't respond at once. She straightened up from the desk, walked to the sofa, stood diagonally in front of me, and looked down at me. Her gaze was very serious, carrying something not quite belonging to the president's bearing.

"The anchor leg," she said.

"is expected to come under heavy attack." I knew. Of course I knew. With something likeOperation Nine Stars, the killing intent always concentrates on the stretch where feelings accumulate most easily. The essence of the long-distance endurance obstacle race was to let everyone settle accounts with each other within what the system allowed. And the anchor leg was always the spot most likely to start smoking. Maki looked down at me. That gaze came closer to her real self than the kiss had.

She wasn't even using the president's tone anymore.

"Are you sure?" She asked again. I looked at her and didn't answer right away. It took me about two seconds to sort out the truest answer in my heart first. If it wasn't me, it would be her. Maki Kushima was the Student Council President, the next head of the Kushima family, and the person who was clearly already calculating something larger in her head. She would never hand the anchor leg to someone of lower standing than herself. She would absolutely run it herself.

And if the one running the anchor leg was her, I would hate that sight. I hadn't even fully digested that kiss, hadn't fully digested her line "this country is going to change," and hadn't fully digested her question, "will you still be on my side?" I couldn't accept that the woman who had just said those things to me would, a few days later, be wearing combat armor and running the final stretch most likely to take a beating. I couldn't.

"In that case," I looked at Maki.

"there's even less chance I'll let you run it." The office went quiet at once. Not because the line was so startling, but because of the tone I said it in. Even I could hear that it was steadier than when I'd said I'd run the anchor leg. It wasn't to show off, wasn't for romance, wasn't said on purpose for Jess to hear. I hadn't even treated it as a confession. When I said it, what was in my head was actually very simple. Before Asgard, I had already decided once that I would stay with you to the end.

So the anchor leg won't be you. Maki looked at me. That gaze was hard to describe. She didn't laugh at once, didn't sigh at once — she just let her gaze drop slightly for half a second, as if something had settled gently in her chest. After quite a while, she finally spoke slowly.

"... You're talking too much today."

"You brought it on yourself."

"I didn't ask you to say all that."

"You asked twice, 'are you sure.'""..." She shut up. I admit, I felt a half-second of satisfaction. Maki Kushima, do you have any idea — the second time you asked me, it was already impossible for me to answer you in that surface-level president-and-vice-president relationship.

"All right, all right, all right." A very theatrical voice cut in.

"You two." Jess's voice was trembling slightly; she'd even covered half her face.

"Please — don't start flirting again out of nowhere in the middle of a discussion, okay?"

"Not in the Student Council office."

"Not in front of me."

"Don't make the anchor leg sound like a marriage proposal scene." Her voice got quieter and quieter. By the last sentence there was almost nothing left but breath.

"... Are you two planning to make me go back to the dorm after work today and down three glasses of ice water to calm down?" I scratched my head, uncharacteristically a little embarrassed. Not because she'd hit on something — but because having it pointed out so directly made me finally realize that my line about there being even less chance I'd let her run, even if not meant to be sweet, would be hard for others to hear without catching something odd.... Fine. She wasn't wrong either.

"You two, from a while ago," Jess continued her accusation.

"have been treating the office like a dating reality show you're filming."

"Jess." Lan spoke suddenly.

"Hm?"

"Shut up first."

"Why?"

"Because I'm reading Roy's site survey."

"I'm shut." Lan could be frightening too. She couldn't even be bothered to smooth things over — she just calmly asked the other party to stop making noise so she could keep working. Hedwig slowly put her hand back on the terminal, her smile faint.

"I see." She said quietly. I glanced at her.

"And what are you 'I see'-ing now?"

"Nothing." Hedwig smiled.

"I just think Miss Hoshino and the president have better chemistry than I'd imagined."

"... Is that praise, or a jab?"

"Which does it sound like to you?"

"If you keep talking like that, I won't want to go to the tea station with you anymore."

"That's a shame." I couldn't be bothered to pick that apart further. Once everyone had finally quieted down, Maki let out a soft sigh. That sigh wasn't impatience — it was more like she knew everyone had finished laughing and fooling around and could finally get back to proper work.

"The rest," She realigned the papers.

"we'll select once the first three events are over." She said it very evenly, even carrying the official air of "I'd planned to close on this from the start." As if my line about there being even less chance I'd let her run, and her "Shimo, are you sure," had never come up at all. I looked at her. She looked at me too. In the second our eyes met, there were no words, no smile, no expression that could be written into the Student Council minutes. Only a very brief, very faint, very level understanding. You know.

I know. You know I know. That was enough. I leaned back against the chair. The afternoon light slanted in through the window onto the desk, plating the long-distance endurance obstacle race materials as if with a fresh layer of cold metal.