Chương 499: 237.Operation Nine Stars Curtain-Raiser 1

The next morning, I didn't wake up on my own. Maki woke me. Strictly speaking, that's not quite right either. Maki isn't the type to stand at the bedside and shout. She's more like a high-precision alarm clock — she sits down on the edge of the bed first, lays a palm gently on your shoulder, and says something pitched at exactly the volume needed to reach you and no one else.

"Shimo. Time's up." It sounds gentle. The problem is, she uses the exact same tone to call a Seitokai meeting to order. The only difference is that one version executes people at a conference table, and the other executes me at my pillow. I opened my eyes. My first instinct was to swear. My second was to remember exactly how I'd wrecked myself the night before to end up in this state.

Right after seeing Irena out last night, I'd barely stepped back through the door when Harvey poked his head out of the basement stairwell, deadpan as an instructor catching a cadet who'd skipped a report.

"Where's the armor plate?" I sobered up on the spot. Not in the entryway. Not in the dining room. Not in my hands, either. Apparently, somewhere in the process of walking a guest out the door, I'd managed to leave a piece of her hardware sitting in my own house. Harvey pushed his glasses up and added, flat:"Given where House Kushima and House Dubois currently stand, that thing can't stay here tonight." I didn't answer, because the real weight in that sentence wasn't the armor plate. It was House Kushima.

That's the single most infuriating thing about Harvey. He spends all day down in that basement, apparently in a committed relationship with his equipment, showing zero interest in the outside world — and then he opens his mouth and drops you into a specific political camp with one sentence, leaving you to sit with the weight of it on your own. So I went back out. After returning the plate, I'd genuinely thought the day was finally over. I came home to find Maki already sitting in the living room, waiting.

"Shimo. Sit."

"... I'm going to bed."

"Sit."

"... Maki."

"There are three things about how you handled our guest tonight that need correcting." I nearly lay down flat on the floor right there. I'd assumed seeing a guest off meant the day was over. Turns out that was just the over-optimistic miscalculation of someone doomed to a life of hard labor. Maki poured me a cup of hot tea, pressed it into my hands, produced a manual from somewhere I couldn't identify, flipped to the first page, and started the lesson.

"First. Your farewell handshake tonight lasted 0. 8 seconds. For a family like the Dubois, that reads as rushed — like you're trying to hustle them out the door. The standard is 1. 2 seconds."

"..."

"Second. Your eye line was too low when you made contact with the guest. Don't look at the collarbone. Look just below the chin."

"..."

"Third. When you said take care on your way, you cut the trailing syllable off too fast."

"..."

"Again." For one brief, deeply disrespectful moment, I wanted to ask whether House Kushima's entire education system had been engineered specifically as an instrument of torture？ Unfortunately, I had no energy left to resist, so I let her drill me until even my soul felt calibrated to a 1. 2-second handshake. The last thing I remember before collapsing into bed was her demonstrating the correct angle with total seriousness, like she was adjusting a pendulum. And now, morning.

"Shimo." Maki called again. I realized I'd been lying there with my eyes open, playing dead.

"... I'm up."

"If you're up, get out of bed."

"... I'm out."

"If you're out, brush your teeth."

"..."

"When you're done, I'll do your buttons." I dragged myself into the bathroom wrapped in a full body's worth of unprocessed resentment, toothbrush in my mouth, muttering through the foam.

"Maki. You know you're going to turn me into a useless human being if you keep this up." She followed me in, turned on the tap, straightened my crooked collar, and answered in that same flat, this-has-nothing-to-do-with-me tone.

"If you genuinely had it in you to be useless, I'd accept that."

"..."

"The problem is, you don't." She said it while doing up my buttons, one at a time, her fingers brushing my collar with the ease of something done hundreds of times before.

"So you're stuck keeping me company." I nearly choked on toothpaste. This woman is terrifying. Not because she gives cold orders. Because she uses her President's voice while doing things engineered to send your pulse straight off the charts. Buttoning a shirt. Straightening a collar. Even stuck keeping me company. I looked at myself in the mirror.

Uniform straight, hair smoothed down where her fingers had passed through it — the whole picture of a piece of public property she'd personally inspected and signed off on. I muttered, low: "My day hasn't even officially started, and you've already scheduled all of it." Maki stood behind me, pressing down one last stubborn strand of hair.

"That just means I'm efficient."

"Do you even know what humility means?" This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

"I do," she said, setting the comb down like that settled the matter.

"I just have no use for it today." I gave up. Genuinely, completely gave up. To keep from ascending straight to heaven out of pure fury before breakfast, I changed the subject.

"So who's fighting who today?" Maki put the comb away and, finally, gave me a real answer.

"Today's opening day. You, me, and Nikaido represent the host, receiving the heirs of the other eight houses." I let that sit for two seconds. Perfect. She'd dodged exactly the thing I actually wanted to ask.

"All Council Presidents?"

"It's tradition."

"Eight Presidents, plus Nikaido, you, and me."

"Correct." Ten houses. The Federation's nine sectors, plus the host, House Kushima. Ten, exactly. I almost asked if any of them were on friendlier terms with House Kushima, just to have some kind of map in my head. The thought surfaced and I swallowed it right back down. No such thing existed. House Kushima had sat at the top for too long; the balance among the ten houses had been skewed for years. Asking who was close to whom at this point would just sound naive.

If you really wanted to sort them, there were only three real categories: Not quite hostile. Not quite close. And the ones keeping up polite smiles while waiting for House Kushima to slip. I straightened my uniform hem in the mirror and decided today I'd just be a Vice President who didn't drag her down. Maki caught my eyes in the glass. She didn't say anything. But I could read that look well enough. Probably translated to: good, you've finally learned to shut up. I looked away immediately.

Keep this up and she'd start grading my silences too. The venue was the Dunan Sports Complex. From outside, it was a massive, brand-new, unsettlingly clean circular arena — the kind of clean that looks less like a place for a competition and more like a Federation image project. The curved outer walls gave off a silver-white sheen; the entrance stairs were absurdly wide, flanked on both sides by formally dressed ushers whose smiles all looked printed from the same template.

A little further in, the scale of Operation Nine Stars started to show. Nine enormous flags stood along the perimeter of the stadium, one for each sector of the Federation: Ursa Major, Andromeda, Orion, Auriga, Cygnus, Aquila, Boötes, Centaurus, Dorado. They fanned out along the curve of the entrance, and when the wind caught them, the whole arrangement genuinely managed to hold the weight of a grand occasion. The problem was, the flag closest to the main entrance wasn't a sector flag at all.

It was the Kushima crest. Clear enough: whatever this tournament was officially called, the venue had already made its own statement first. This is Kushima ground. I glanced sideways at Maki. She didn't turn her head. As we passed that flag, her stride slowed by the smallest possible fraction, her eyes swept over it once, and then she kept walking as if nothing had happened. No pride showed on her face. But I knew she'd seen it. And she'd remember it. There's a lot this woman doesn't waste emotion on.

Anything touching House Kushima's standing has never once been one of them. Once inside, I finally understood what impressively exhausting actually meant. First, security. The host's guest list had presumably already been combed over eight hundred times before today, and yet we still had to scan our terminals again, re-verify our identities, confirm our Council badges, and endure a staff member delivering the same syrupy line:"Welcome, President Kushima. Welcome, Vice President Hoshino." I understood.

It's called procedure. There's nothing wrong with procedure. Procedure just makes you want to lie down on the floor and go to sleep. Then registration. The Kushima secretariat had somehow conjured an entire row of people from nowhere, each holding a datapad, standing at identical angles, speaking at identical speeds, tilting their heads to check information at what looked like the same exact degree. By the end of one short hallway, I'd been verified three separate times.

"Hoshino Shimo, Vice President of the Seitokai, correct?"

"Yes."

"Attending today as a host representative to receive the visiting family heirs, correct?"

"Yes."

"Accompanying President Kushima, assisting with reception procedure, correct?"

"Yes." My name, spoken three times, in one short corridor. The ceremony hadn't even started yet, and I already felt like I'd been formally catalogued into some paperwork system's archive. Maki, beside me, answered shorter and more effectively. One "yes" out of her, and no one ever asked a follow-up. Which felt deeply unfair. Technically the same syllable. Out of her mouth, it read as confirmation. Out of mine, it sounded more like cooperating with an investigation.

The host's lounge, at least, looked exactly like something House Kushima would build. Redwood conference table, black leather chairs, a projected sector map, nine miniature flags lined up with military precision down the center of the table. In the middle sat an opening-ceremony manual, absurdly thick, bound in leather. I got a headache just looking at it.

"You don't need to read it," Maki said, sliding it away from me.

"Why not?"

"Because I already have."

"That's not helping. That's overreach."

"That's efficiency," she said, without blinking. I decided not to argue. I already knew I'd lose. The eight heirs trickled in over the next while. I didn't bother memorizing them individually — just sorted them roughly into two types. The first: young, clearly inserted into formal functions early so they could practice. The second: obviously raised as heirs from birth — crisp handshakes, calibrated smiles, eye contact landing exactly below the chin. Watching them, I finally understood what Maki's 1.

2-second handshake had actually been benchmarked against. She hadn't lost her mind. I was genuinely being held to the standard of this room. Which made me want to complain all over again. Nikaido arrived a little after the rest. She walked in, gave us a single nod, and took the seat to Maki's left.

"Morning."

"Mm." Two syllables. But they carried the ease of something taken entirely for granted — not warmth, not formality, just two houses that had known each other too long to bother wasting breath. That, oddly, was a relief. At least in a room full of standardized smiles, two people were still willing to talk like actual human beings. After that: round after round of introductions, handshakes, small talk. I held onto last night's emergency-drilled 1.

2 seconds the whole time, silently tallying up Maki's debt against my future wrist cramps. When the ceremony officially opened, we were led up to the host's viewing box. The seats were absurdly good — dead center on the main floor, sightlines clean enough to track exactly which way the referee's shoes were pointed.

The stands below were nearly full, sector flags, academy banners, and house crests layered in alternating rows, the lighting stacked in tiers that, admittedly, did produce the look of a genuinely grand occasion. Then the emcee took the stage. The second she opened her mouth, I knew exactly what was coming. The Federation's standard broadcast register — perfect enunciation, emotional weight measured out with a ruler. Extremely professional. Also extremely well-suited to hypnotizing an entire stadium into a coma.

"Honored guests, esteemed house representatives, and everyone supporting this year's Operation Nine Stars — welcome to the opening ceremony hosted by the United Interstellar Military Academy." I timed it in my head. That single sentence was long enough to let me mourn last night's lost sleep all over again. She went on: the host, the nine sectors, the tournament's legacy, the Federation spirit, the responsibilities of youth, the vision for the future. Every word correct. Every sentence dignified.

You could tell it was the version that had survived a dozen rounds of editing specifically because it was the least likely to cause an incident. Genuinely grand. Genuinely unbearable. I glanced sideways at Maki. She sat perfectly straight, hands folded, gaze level — flawless enough to be the reference photo printed inside this ceremony's own handbook. Drag her up on stage right now and she could probably run the whole thing herself, emcee duties included. Worse — she was actually listening.

I started to suspect House Kushima members were born with some biological ability to absorb energy from occasions exactly like this one. When the emcee reached the introduction for House Kushima, she rolled out a string of very weighty titles: Founding Patron of the Federation's Naval Shipbuilding Industry. Custodian of Galactic History and Culture. Cultivator of Youth Talent. Three "-ors" lined up in a row, delivered in a single breath. I nearly laughed. I held it in. Barely. Maki's knee shifted. Once. Very small.

But I saw it. Good. So it wasn't just me who thought that string of titles was working a little too hard. Then the roll call — each sector named in turn, the corresponding box of heirs rising, nodding, and sitting back down, the whole sequence tight enough to look rehearsed. When Maki's turn came, she rose, acknowledged, and sat, all in one continuous motion, precise enough that I genuinely wondered if she'd been made to practice this instead of morning stretches as a child.

When mine came, I just gritted my teeth and copied her, doing my best not to look like I'd wandered in from somewhere else. Finally, the emcee moved on to what everyone had actually come to see.

"Our first event today is Unarmed Combat! Opening Match: Andromeda Sector's representative, Xinghuan Academy, versus Aquila Sector's representative, Aquila Aerospace Technical School!" She said all of that at roughly twice the speed of everything before it. All I wanted to ask was: if you're capable of talking like a normal person, who exactly were the last forty minutes for? Both competitors entered the floor. I checked the roster. Didn't know either name. Looked at the two on the field. Still didn't know them.

Perfect. No familiar faces, no emotional stakes, no pressure as a spectator. I leaned back and let myself get comfortable. We weren't up yet today; as far as I was concerned, the main function of this match was to formally close out the ceremony. The referee walked to the center of the floor, moving a hundred times more efficiently than the emcee had. No preamble, no speech, no Federation spirit. She just raised her hand and struck the bell hanging over the center of the field.

The chime rolled through the entire Dunan Sports Complex. A second later, the emcee finally delivered the single most human-sounding line she'd used all day:"Operation Nine Stars — begin."