Chương 496: 235.Misjudgment 2

The backyard wasn't large. Behind 22 Platinum Bridge Street was a clean, walled-in square that had probably been meant as a garden. After I moved in, I'd cleared it out into bare ground, because I'd always known someone in this house was eventually going to throw a punch. I just hadn't expected it this soon. Or this politely. I stopped in the center of the square. Irena stopped with me. About three steps between us. I started rolling up my sleeves. Not for effect.

I'd already seen that strike at the door—the force, the angle, the clean recovery. All of it too clean. Clean enough that an uncomfortable judgment surfaced in my head almost immediately. I'd felt movement like that before. On Kaoru. I knew I shouldn't map her directly onto Kaoru. But cyberware, cleanliness, precision, an expressionless face, zero wasted motion on the strike—stack those together, and the first file my brain pulled was Kaoru. And if she really was operating at that spec, I had no room to be gentle.

Against something like Kaoru, you don't hold back, because it never gives you the opening to. So I made my decision fast. Crush her from the opening move. No warm-up. No probing. No courtesy. Press her down from the very start. I dropped my center of gravity. Irena settled into her stance. Her form was beautiful enough to almost make you want to applaud—shoulder, elbow, wrist, hip, knee, every joint resting exactly where it should. The kind of posture only years under the best possible instruction could produce.

Looking at that stance, something in my chest sank. Her form is even cleaner than Kaoru's. Then it sank again. Things with clean form don't usually fight nicely. I stopped thinking and moved. First step: I cut inside. The worst thing about something Kaoru's grade was reach. Its length wasn't built from muscle—it was calculated straight into the structure. Against that, you only get one option: eat the distance and get into its chest. Circling the outside forever gets you nowhere. It doesn't hesitate.

The moment I stepped in, I dropped my shoulder, kept my right hand low, and drove along the line of her waist. I'd tried this entry against Kaoru many times before—one of the few angles where I actually had decent odds. Irena reacted fast. She pulled back. Fast, clean, tight. But the direction was backward. Something in my head went huh. Kaoru never retreats. Kaoru shifts sideways, pivots its axis, uses the shortest possible line to make you miss, then counters on the half-beat while you're recovering.

It doesn't need to retreat, because it refuses to acknowledge your attack as a threat in the first place. But Irena retreated. That half-step back was clean, even elegant—very Upper House. But that half-step shouldn't have existed at all. A light went on in my head. Not Kaoru. This woman isn't Kaoru. But by then I was already inside, couldn't brake, and didn't need to. I changed exactly one thing and left everything else as it was. I didn't pull the strike. I just raised the point of impact two centimeters.

What had been aimed at her floating ribs shifted to the sternoclavicular junction instead. A spot that hurts terribly on a human, does almost nothing to Kaoru, but bites very deep into cyberware built close to human specification. My hand landed. Her whole upper body jerked backward at an unnatural angle, like she'd been shoved hard from the front. I heard a very faint click. The sound of something inside a cyberframe suffering a minor internal misalignment. Not broken. Breached. Fuck.

That was the first sentence in my head. Not I hit her. Fuck. I broke through. Because Kaoru's spec would never make that sound. Kaoru's structure eats force, disperses it, redirects it. She hadn't. She'd swallowed it whole. Which meant she wasn't Kaoru's tier. Which meant that strike had been far too much for her. But the body moves faster than the brain. Once you've opened up, you can't stop halfway on a guilty conscience. Pulling back at the wrong moment only hands the other side a worse window to counter.

I shouted at myself, internally. Finish it first. Feel bad later. Second step: I followed straight in. From that point on, the whole exchange turned one-sided. Not because I meant it to. Because Irena's movements had started developing a lag. First beat—I chopped at her left shoulder. She blocked it. Beautifully. Second beat—I slid off the shoulder, cutting toward the inside of her collarbone. She blocked that too, but this time her elbow was a fraction slower than the beat before. Only a fraction.

But against Kaoru, a fraction is disaster, because Kaoru doesn't have fractions. Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. And for Irena, that fraction was also a disaster—because it meant she could no longer keep pace with me. Not because I'd gotten faster. Because she'd gotten slower. Not even genuinely slower. Her stance was simply too beautiful, too complete, too precise, too Upper House, too perfectly compliant with training protocol.

But a real fight isn't a protocol. A real fight is, very often, knowing exactly what the next beat should be—and still getting hit mid-motion anyway. I started riding her rhythm. She retreated, I advanced half a step. She blocked, I shifted the target to somewhere the block wouldn't reach. She tried to withdraw, I glued my hand to the exact line of her retreat so she couldn't even pull back clean. She kept retreating.

From the center of the yard, to one step from the wall, to two steps, until I'd pressed her all the way back to the boundary. A second thought surfaced in my head. This is wrong. This whole fight is wrong. Since when did this become a one-woman show? I drove a strike into her forearm plate. It answered with a much louder crack. Not internal misalignment this time. A component was actually coming loose. Her cyberware was undeniably top-grade. But even top-grade gear is still a structure.

After absorbing six or seven straight hits at this level, structure starts talking. A very small expression finally surfaced on Irena's face. Small enough that anyone who didn't know her well probably wouldn't have caught it. Her brow shifted, half a millimeter. Her breathing—more precisely, her cyberframe's simulated breathing rhythm—stumbled half a beat. She was starting to panic. A third thought hit me immediately. Fuck. Fuck, I've gone too far. Because I'd been treating her like Kaoru, using Kaoru-grade force.

But she wasn't Kaoru. She was just a girl who'd tried very hard, worked very seriously, and desperately wanted to prove she deserved the Anchor slot. And I'd processed her like a monster. My arm hesitated in the air, for one instant. But that hesitation didn't make me stop. Stopping halfway would have been more dangerous. Cyberware isn't paper—ease off at the wrong moment, and she could rebound on a bad beat, making everything worse. So I changed tactics.

Every strike after that turned into pushing, crowding, pinning, pressuring. No longer aiming for damage. Aiming for position. She stepped back once more, and had nowhere left to go. Her back hit the wall. She tried to slip sideways—I blocked that angle. She tried to switch guard hands—I pinned that hand back against her own side. She raised a knee to protect her center—I hooked my shin around the outside of her knee. Her balance broke, and her whole body pitched forward.

I rode that momentum and pressed her straight down. Crack. A plate on her back armor detached, fully. Not knocked off by force—her own forward momentum had simply exceeded what the structure could hold. The small plate slid onto the yard floor, making a very quiet, very definitive sound. That sound meant almost exactly one thing. This is over. Irena lay pinned beneath me.

My hand held her shoulder down, my knee wedged against the small of her back, my palm resting against the outer casing of the interface at the nape of her neck. Half a kilogram more pressure, and her main connector would lock, physically. She wouldn't be able to move at all. I didn't add that half kilogram. There was no need. I looked down at her. She looked up at me, her cheek pressed against the concrete of my own backyard.

Her eyes were still beautiful—cold, clear, bright, like a lens that had almost never truly been used. Except now, for the first time, there was something very quiet in them. Something that didn't quite know what to do with itself.

"FUCK!" D's voice detonated behind us. Nearly two meters tall, the man who'd been hiding behind the Seitokai President a minute ago, screaming with the most sincere, most excited, and most tone-deaf volume of his life:"WE SHOULD'VE HAD YOU AS ANCHOR FROM THE START!" The yard went dead silent for one second. Maki's you had better shut your mouth right now glare swept straight over him. Roy pressed a hand to his forehead. Lan let out a long breath and closed her eyes. Hedwig raised one eyebrow, very slightly.

Her Highness never lost composure, but I could see it—she was quietly reclassifying exactly which category D belonged in. And I was still pinning Irena. The next second, I felt something under my palm—very faint, very brief, and nothing at all like a machine. Not a joint click. Not a component loosening. Not friction from the interface. A sob. I froze, and looked down.

Her eyes were still open, cheek against the ground, her expression barely changed—the corner of her mouth still clinging to some trained version of composure. But tears were falling from those eyes. One by one. Not a breakdown. Not out-of-control sobbing. The kind of crying a girl least wants anyone to witness—the kind you try desperately to hold back, and fail to, letting it fall anyway, drop by drop. Cyberframes can cry. I'd never seen it on Kaoru, but I'd read the specifications.

True near-human-grade cyberware ships standard with lachrymal simulation units. Not for appearances—to keep the emotional feedback loop complete. Which meant what she was doing right now wasn't a glitch. She was genuinely devastated. Looking at those eyes, I suddenly understood something with total clarity. This girl had thrown her entire body into Full-Body Cyberization just to climb her way to the Anchor slot.

And today, in the backyard of 22 Platinum Bridge Street, she'd been pinned to the ground by a high-schooler who wasn't even on her tournament bracket, using a style of force she'd never encountered before. And she'd had to lie there, in exactly that position, and listen to the man who'd just been terrified enough to hide behind the Seitokai President scream, at maximum volume: We should've had you as Anchor from the start. To me, that line was a joke. To her, it was a verdict. Done for.

That was, genuinely, the only thing left in my head. I broke her. Not physically. Psychologically. And a psychological break is much harder to repair than a damaged component. I looked up on instinct, searching for Maki first. She stood at the edge of the yard, arms folded, her expression terrifyingly flat. Flat enough that I knew immediately: she was angry. Just not at Irena. She was glaring at me. I understood that look. Shimo. I told you to teach her a lesson. Not take her apart.

Pinned under that stare, the corner of my mouth pulled, brief and defiant. I shouted a line at her in my head that she couldn't hear. President, if you'd spoken up half a minute sooner, I would've eased off. Maki, of course, didn't hear it. And even if she had, she wouldn't have cared. She just kept glaring. I added one more line, silently. God. She's not going to become afraid of her own uniform over this, is she. I only meant to teach her a lesson.

I didn't mean to make her never want to wear Upper House colors again. Does House Kushima's education really have to be this strict? Can I get a discount on that glare? Moving as slowly and unthreateningly as I could manage, I lifted my hand off the interface casing at her neck, released my knee from her lower back, and stepped away. I didn't rush her to her feet. Because I knew the thing she least wanted anyone watching right now was the sight of herself getting up.

I stood, took two steps back, and turned half-sideways, giving her room. Not pity. Manners. However close to human a cyberframe gets, it still registers pain. And a person—especially a person who's just been made to cry—usually needs at least three seconds.

"Shimo." A familiar voice came from behind me, still chewing something, with absolutely no sense of the room. Jess. I didn't turn around. I already knew what she was about to say, and could pre-render the exact tone she'd use. But she was always going to say it anyway. Because she was Jess. With the last of a cookie caught in the corner of her mouth, she announced, at the volume of someone delivering breaking news, with total sincerity:"You made a girl cry." The yard went silent a second time.

D nodded vigorously beside her. Lan shut her eyes. Hedwig pressed two elegant fingers to her temple. Maki said nothing. Maki just gave me one more look, like another blade to the ribs. I finally snapped. I turned around and compressed every ounce of the day's frustration, absurdity, and what exactly did I do to deserve this into a single line.

"Jess." I did my best to keep my tone level.

"I'm also a girl."

"Mm."

"I got cut today."

"Mm."

"I was forced into a fight in my own home."

"Mm."

"I got glared at by the President."

"Mm."

"So—" I spread my hands, looking at the Upper House Anchor still silently crying on the ground, at the Kushima heir glaring at me with folded arms, at the instigator behind me still finishing a cookie, and finally at the not-quite-dry blood on my own fingertip.

"I'm the one who most deserves to cry here. Okay?" The yard went silent for a second time. Then Hedwig let out a sound—very light, very brief, and thoroughly ill-timed.

"Pfft." Her Highness laughed. It was the first time I'd genuinely heard her laugh out loud in front of me. The sound was tiny. But I could tell—it was the first completely involuntary reaction she'd had all evening. She pulled it back almost instantly into that royal composure, as if nothing had happened. But I'd already heard it. I stared at her.

"Your Highness."

"Mm?"

"What exactly are you laughing at."

"Nothing." Hedwig tilted her head slightly.

"Just thinking this yard hasn't been this lively in quite a while."

"..." I didn't even have the energy left to retort. I pulled my eyes back to Irena on the ground. Her tears hadn't fully stopped, but she was already pushing herself up—laboriously, stubbornly, and very Upper House. The motion wasn't graceful. But it was beautiful. Because she refused to let anyone help her. She was exactly the kind of person who'd rather crawl up on her own than reach out a hand. I quietly turned another page in her mental file. This woman has something worth using.

I'd just turned what should have been her grand debut into the one memory she'd probably never want to revisit. I sighed, walked over, and held out my hand. Irena looked at it. Her eyes were still red, the tears not fully dry, but her expression had already begun reassembling itself. I didn't pull the hand back.

"... Get up," I said.

"The ground's cold." Irena looked at me. The look was completely different from the one at the door. The one at the door had been a scan. This one was looking at a person. She didn't take my hand. But as she pushed herself up, her body leaned half a step toward me. Only half a step. But for someone like her, half a step was already a great deal.