Chương 502: 238.Precision Shooting 2

That morning, I woke in a state of mind that said: three more minutes and our entire team gets laughed off the stage because one person overslept. More precisely, I didn't wake up — I was hunted down by the clock and launched out of bed. The time on my phone struck like a judge's gavel: no feeling, no room to negotiate. I washed, changed, checked my name tag, checked my credentials, shoved the venue ID card into a pocket — the whole sequence fast as defusing a bomb.

By the time I burst out the door and ran into Suzuki Aoi in the corridor — already groomed as if on her way to receive a national medal — Suzuki asked me exactly one thing.

"Where's Akari?" I stopped for half a second. In that half second, I remembered the message I'd made a point of sending before bed last night. I remembered Akari's line: Relax, I absolutely won't be late tomorrow. And I remembered that the reason human civilization had come this far was probably that there was always someone willing to believe the wrong person one more time.

"I'm going to go get her." I turned and sprinted up toward the dormitory floors. The stairs in that moment looked more unreasonable than yesterday's hand-to-hand combat rules. I took them two at a time, one thought in my head. Akari Flak — if you're already awake today, I'll apologize to the world on the spot. If you're still asleep, I'm coming for you personally. I ran all the way to Akari's door and didn't even bother knocking politely.

"Akari. Open up." No response. I knocked again, with enough force for the door panel to register my displeasure.

"Akari, if you don't open up, I'm coming in." The room was as quiet as a funeral viewing. I took a deep breath and pressed the handle. Unlocked. Great. Trust expressed in exactly the wrong place — infuriating in a remarkably layered way. I pushed the door open. The curtains were half drawn; the morning light came in cut to pieces. Socks from last night lay scattered on the floor, along with a training jacket, a half-finished sports drink, and yesterday's match schedule, trampled like the organizers' dignity.

On the bed, the blanket was heaped into a lump. I crossed the room quickly and pulled it back. Nobody on the bed. I froze — then my gaze dropped, and there, poking out from under the bed frame, was a stretch of pale calf, with a tuft of sleep-mussed midnight-blue hair beside it. I went silent. Truly. In that moment I wasn't just silent — I came close to applauding Akari. Managing to sleep herself right off the bed and lodge half her body underneath it wasn't ordinary late-for-roll-call material.

This was a physical challenge to the limits of sleep science.

"... Akari." I crouched down. Akari was hugging a pillow, half her face buried in a thin blanket, sleeping with serene shamelessness. Her hair was a mess, her lashes trembling faintly, her lips unconsciously pursed — the whole of her radiating a softness, a warmth, an aura that practically begged to be dragged straight off and dunked in ice water. I was frantic; Akari was too sleepy to even acknowledge reality. The contrast left me briefly unsure whether to scold her first or save our academy's reputation first.

"Akari. Get up." I patted her shoulder. Akari wrinkled her nose, as if something unappetizing had drifted past in a dream, then mumbled a vague "mm" and hugged the pillow tighter. My temple started to twitch.

"Akari. Today's the precision shooting."

"... Five more minutes..."

"In five minutes, the only event you'll be competing in is watching your life flash before your eyes." I gave up on reasoning, grabbed her by the forearm, and dragged her straight out from under the bed. Akari, like a cat that hadn't finished booting up, even had the presence of mind to take the blanket with her. Her long legs scraped twice across the carpet before she finally managed, with difficulty, to open her eyes.

She lifted her head, eyes wet, still wearing the blankness of someone yanked back into the human world out of a dream. Her short, midnight-blue hair framed her face, a faint pillow crease pressed into one cheek, and somehow it looked inopportunely beautiful. Sometimes this world was genuinely unfair. Some people overslept and looked like an accident scene. Others overslept and looked like a commercial shoot. Akari looked at me for two seconds, then blinked slowly.

"... Shimo, why are you so scary today?"

"Because you're so drag-worthy today."

"Didn't I set an alarm?"

"Then your alarm probably gave its life for the academy already." Akari finally seemed to grasp why I was crouched by her bed at the crack of dawn looking like I meant to drag her off to execution. She tilted her head, her gaze sliding past me to the phone on the nightstand. The screen was lit; the alarm had indeed stopped — stopped very cleanly, cleanly enough that it looked like Akari had personally escorted it out.

"Ah." Akari produced a soft sound of reflection.

"I did get up to turn it off."

"I can tell. And on your way to turning it off, you turned your sense of responsibility off too." Akari sat on the floor hugging the pillow, hair a mess, shoulders slightly slumped, languid as cream melted halfway. That sleepy look made it hard to connect her with the person about to be the anchor at a 6, 000-meter indoor shooting range. But I knew Akari had exactly that infuriating knack. Normally she looked boneless; the moment a gun was actually in her hand, her nerves went straighter than anyone's.

Provided she woke up first.

"Up. Wash your face. Change clothes." I stood and pulled the pillow out of her arms.

"In five minutes I want to see someone in the corridor who's alive, awake, and wearing the right uniform." Akari looked up at me and slowly held out a hand, as if to catch my sleeve.

"Shimo, pull me up."

"You just managed to turn off your own alarm."

"That was sleeping instinct. Getting up is a different matter."

"That sentence has no scientific basis."

"But it holds true on me." Looking at that self-righteous uselessness, I genuinely wanted to record this and show it to everyone today who imagined the anchor as a cold-blooded ace. Let them know some academies win not through genius, but because a teammate digs the genius out from under the bed every morning. In the end I reached down and pulled Akari to her feet. She swayed as she stood, leaning a half step toward me for a moment, her chin nearly brushing my shoulder.

Her warm breath grazed the side of my neck, and I stiffened without thinking. Akari seemed not to notice at all. She just mumbled, half-awake:"Shimo, you're so cold."

"Because I've been carrying your blood pressure since dawn."

"Then I'll win it back for you in a bit." Akari said it lightly, with the loose softness particular to someone not fully awake — and yet it landed as precisely as a needle. The inexplicable irritation got pinned down a notch the moment it fell. I huffed and pushed her toward the washroom.

"Wash the sleep off your face first, then talk big." By the time we reached the venue, athlete check-in for the precision shooting event had already begun. The 6, 000-meter indoor range looked even less like a sports facility than I'd expected — more like an artificial canyon sealed inside a building. The field ran dead straight, almost coldly so, a marker line every thousand meters, stretching away into the distance as if someone had used a ruler to carve the distance into six segments for you to look at.

From the first glance, this place had no intention whatsoever of getting along with its competitors. Even better: the rule sheet the organizers handed out managed to mix two different notations — "external interference increases from 3, 000 feet onward" and "the 3, 000-to-4, 000-meter zone" — onto the same page.

Staring at that sheet, I honestly suspected for a moment that whoever laid it out had written it in metric first, then been taken over for revisions by someone who lived in imperial units, and in the end neither side won — only the competing students became casualties. But however much of a joke the paperwork was, the venue itself was dead serious. The first 3, 000 meters were clean enough to make you think you were in a normal match. From 3, 000 to 4, 000 meters, air resistance and thermal barriers were added.

From 4, 000 to 5, 000 meters, the effect of gravity was deliberately amplified — the rule sheet even had the nerve to stuff in the formula, d = ½gt², as if to remind you that if you'd slept through high school physics, someone else would pay the tuition for you today. From 5, 000 to 6, 000 meters, wind drift and the Coriolis variable joined in as well. In other words: once the shot left the barrel, the first 3, 000 meters were only the starting line. The real chaos began at meter 3, 001.

Air resistance, thermal barriers, gravity, wind drift, Coriolis — any of them could be randomly increased or decreased on you, like a pack of physics teachers nursing a grudge against puberty, lurking in the dark and taking their revenge together. I finished reading the rules and couldn't help muttering.

"This isn't precision shooting." Beside me, Charles Bingham turned his head.

"Then what is it?"

"It's sending people off to make peace with modern physics." Charles Bingham laughed. Albert Roland, hands in his pockets, tipped his head toward the distant target area.

"Every year the organizers have to prove they're not running a match, they're running a stress test," Albert Roland said. Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

"Wrong." Suzuki Aoi corrected him flatly.

"A stress test at least tells you where the problem is first. This is closer to malice." Louis Dupont flexed his fingers nearby, as if he couldn't be bothered to comment on the mental state of the rule-makers and was focused only on steadying his breathing. Akari stood beside me, most of the sleep washed from her face, replaced by a loose sort of focus. It was a strange expression — not sharp, not tense — but I knew that by now Akari had actually started working.

She studied the front of the range, then the overhead structure, the positions of the interference generators on either side, the refresh rate of the far monitoring screens. Her eyes gradually narrowed.

"Watch the previous match first," Akari said. The first match was the Itsuwa Heavy Armor Academy against the Rokkaku Engineering Academy. The moment both teams stepped up, the difference in temperament was stark enough to use as an academy recruiting brochure. The Itsuwa side looked like people who'd send themselves and their weapons platforms straight into the center of a battlefield — hard shoulder lines, heavy stances, even their silhouettes had weight.

The Rokkaku side looked more like people who'd memorize every parameter before field-stripping a bolt — precise, clean movements, carrying engineering's customary rational distrust of the world. Once the match began, I quickly understood why Akari wanted to watch first. The first 3, 000 meters, both sides were steady. The real gap opened in that stretch past 3, 000 where human malice reached its culmination.

The Itsuwa shooters were used to holding their weapons down, direct in style, and their first three segments were even a touch better. But the moment they crossed 3, 000, the thermal barrier began twisting the view on the screens like a transparent tongue of flame, and the drag parameters weren't fixed values — several shooters clearly over-corrected. Their rounds flew like a textbook in the early stretch, then in the late stretch looked as if someone had slapped them out of the air.

Rokkaku had the opposite problem. Their shooters calculated too finely — so finely that a few of them looked ready to negotiate with the range before firing. But the nastiest thing about this match was that from meter 3, 001, the variables didn't simply stack up; they went up and down. Calculate too slowly, and the range changed the answer on you first.

Two of Rokkaku's shots were beautifully corrected and still lost — because they were too beautifully complete, like turning in a perfect exam paper only for the proctor to switch the questions. Every time a deviation was announced, the stands rippled. Not the roaring cheer of a melee event, but a stifled gasp that couldn't be held back. Precision shooting looked quiet on the surface, but underneath it felt like everyone had hung their hearts on the trajectory and sent them flying along with it.

I'd assumed Akari would watch intently, gravely, or at least like a proper anchor, doing mental arithmetic as she watched. Instead her posture was loose to the point of idleness — arms crossed, lashes half lowered, as if she'd just happened to stand here and watch others embarrass themselves. But I stood close enough to see that her eyes were not relaxed at all. Akari was watching the rhythm.

Not who scored how many rings — she was watching how fast the thermal barrier refreshed, whether the gravity shift in the 4, 000-to-5, 000 stretch came in jumps or a slow drift, whether the wind drift and Coriolis corrections past 5, 000 changed together in the same round or with a time lag. This wasn't spectating. This was an autopsy on the range. In the end, Itsuwa lost by half a step. Not for lack of nerve, not on accuracy itself, but for treating this match as "a harder shooting event" to be handled.

And this place wasn't merely a shooting range. It was more like a very large, very cold, and thoroughly overdue-for-a-thrashing calculating machine. The moment the match ended, Akari let out a soft breath.

"Saw it." I turned my head.

"What."

"Today's range likes to scare people who take it too seriously," Akari said.

"That sounds like a tautology."

"Nope." Akari tapped a finger toward the far screen, finally showing the expression of someone fully awake.

"The thermal barrier and drag variables between 3, 000 and 4, 000 don't jump randomly — they like to add a second hit after the shooter makes his first correction. And the gravity parameters in the 4, 000-to-5, 000 stretch don't climb the whole way — they drop back half a beat, suddenly. Two of Rokkaku's people calculated for the maximum and got fooled by it." I frowned.

"So this isn't a matter of the more you calculate, the better."

"It's knowing it wants to watch you panic." Akari finished, then raised her eyes and smiled.

"Don't worry. I'm the best there is at dealing with things that misbehave on purpose." From anyone else, that line would have sounded like bravado. From Akari, it carried an unreasonably convincing weight. When our turn came, the venue announcement read out the academy names in order. The United Interstellar Military Academy. Versus. The Yagi Heavy Industries Defense Technology Academy. The Yagi shooters lined up in a row, their temperament perfectly uniform.

Not the blunt hardness of a pure military academy, but a calm carrying the self-respect of a manufacturing industry. As if each of them believed that as long as the specs were precise enough, the calibration fine enough, the tolerance small enough, victory was a matter of craft, not luck. Unfortunately, today this range most loved to slap that belief in the face. Our order was: lead-off, Charles; second, Suzuki; middle, Louis; vice-anchor, Albert; anchor, Akari. Akari didn't go to her prep position at once.

She just looked toward the lead-off area and said, very quietly:"Don't rush to be a hero. Today, the people who make it back alive to 6, 000 meters are worth more than the people who look pretty." Charles Bingham grinned.

"You make it sound like we're headed for the frontier."

"Pretty much." Akari gave a tiny yawn, then her tone shifted — and the whole of her seemed to have had another switch flipped.

"Except the frontier doesn't print a formula on the rule sheet and pretend to be fair." Charles Bingham went first. The Lower House first-year's strength was clear: steady, and not rattled by the stage. He didn't chase any fancy rhythm; his early stretch was clean, and past 3, 000 meters he didn't rush into heavy corrections. He looked like a man conceding one thing — that today this range was more mischievous than any person, so best not to get sentimental with it.

His first round flew a first half so pretty it seemed to slap the organizers, then began drifting noticeably once it entered the interference zone. But Charles had held back early, and the correction room he'd left himself saved the shot. The result wasn't the flashiest round of the field, but it was worth a great many points. We didn't cheer too loudly. This wasn't the finish line — just the table set steady. Yagi's lead-off took the line right after.

It was a beautiful shot, beautiful with an industrial feel to it. Stance, breathing, correction — all clean. But in the wind-drift and Coriolis stretch past 5, 000 meters, his final compensation came in a touch heavy, and the impact point drifted off by a sliver. Just that sliver gave Charles Bingham the lead-off for us. I turned to look at Akari. She didn't show much pleasure — only nodded slightly.

"He listened," Akari said. Next came Suzuki Aoi. If Charles Bingham was steady, Suzuki Aoi was cold. The moment Suzuki took the line, her whole presence seemed to sink an inch, and the surrounding noise faded with it. Suzuki wasn't the type to make people think impressive through big movements. What made her formidable was making you feel she wouldn't even grant the range the courtesy of a mistake. Suzuki's opponent was strong too — over the first 3, 000 meters, even more eye-catching than Suzuki.

But once into the thermal-barrier zone, Suzuki's near-harsh sense of rhythm began to work. While others waited for the range to give them a signal, Suzuki looked like she was forcing the range to turn its cards over first. When that round finally bit into the center, I even heard someone in the stands draw a sharp breath. Second leg — ours as well. The score pressure rolled onto Yagi.

But the other side, true to an academy from a heavy-industry defense-technology lineage, pulled one back immediately at the middle leg. Louis Dupont's performance wasn't bad — you could even call it steady — but Yagi's middle shooter read the gravity shift in the 4, 000-to-5, 000 stretch more accurately. Not a show of skill — a very patient kind of accuracy. Louis came off the line without visible frustration; he only pressed his lips together. I handed him water.

"Close," I said. Louis Dupont took the water and let out a breath.

"Close is the worst," Louis Dupont said.

"Like knowing you weren't that far off, and still having to swallow it."

"Swallow it," Albert Roland said from the side, rolling his shoulders, his tone lazy.

"I'll go take a bite back for you in a bit."

"You'd better." In the vice-anchor match, Albert Roland did exactly as he'd said. Albert Roland's shooting was entirely different from Suzuki's. Suzuki was a scalpel; Albert was more the type who looked casual on the surface but planted every step inside a range he could pull back from. Yagi's vice-anchor clearly meant to even the score more aggressively; his first three segments were beautiful, and before 4, 000 meters he even looked set to post the match's best.

Then the extra-weighted gravity term in the 4, 000-to-5, 000 stretch arrived, and the whole trajectory sank harder than expected — precise calculation turned into a fatal flaw. Albert Roland didn't chase the most spectacular hit. He took back the vice-anchor point with one clean, decisive, comfortably-margined shot. At that point we led three to one. But no one relaxed. Because the last match was the anchor.

And the opposing anchor was the kind of shooter from Yagi Heavy Industries Defense Technology Academy who, at a glance, clearly spent his usual hours either polishing a gun or polishing a person. When that man stepped up, the whole venue's mood drew in. The thing to fear in a match like this wasn't falling behind early — it was an anchor capable of turning the entire wind from 6, 000 meters out. Akari adjusted the collar of her jacket and walked toward the firing position.

Looking at her back, I found it hard to overlap her with the person who, ten minutes earlier, had half her body stuck under a bed, hugging a pillow and saying five more minutes. And yet both of them were Akari. The infuriating thing about this woman was that she normally looked like a puddle of sea-salt cream left in the sun too long, and when it came time to perform, she could be as precise as if she'd pressed all the sleep into the trigger. Once in position, Akari didn't immediately enter her state.

Instead she swept the whole range with her eyes, seemingly casually. That gaze was lazy, but not scattered. It was more like someone giving a final check to a machine they'd already taken apart once. The opposing anchor fired first. It was a shot beautiful enough to hush the stands for a moment. The early stretch like a ruler, the middle corrections decisive, and the wind-drift and Coriolis variables in the final stretch past 5, 000 meters bitten off with great precision.

When the impact result lit up on the screen, I heard someone nearby curse under their breath — clearly shaken by how complete that shot was. Akari stood without moving, staring at the trajectory record that had just run its course, the corner of her mouth twitching slightly.

"So that's it," Akari murmured. Standing behind her, I couldn't see her full expression — only her raising a hand, taking the rifle, her movements clean without a trace of drag. In that instant, the last of the post-waking softness fell away from her entirely. The whole of her seemed to finally settle into the position she truly belonged in. Akari didn't chase the opposing anchor's shot. That was the first thing I noticed.

An ordinary spectator would probably think only that her corrections looked a little conservative, even close to odd. But I remembered what Akari had said while watching the earlier match. Today's range likes to scare people who take it too seriously. It adds a second hit after you think you've caught the pattern. Which meant the opposing anchor's shot was beautiful not because he'd fully seen through the range, but because he'd happened to step in time with the breath the range was holding right then.

Akari didn't chase that breath. Akari chose to wait for it to change. The instant she fired, the whole venue went quiet as if every sound had been pressed into the soundproofing together. The first 3, 000 meters, clean trajectory. Past 3, 000, the thermal barrier and drag lunged at it, the prediction line on the screen twisting faintly. Past 4, 000, the gravity term jumped, then fell back half a beat. An ordinary shooter would have prayed right about then.

Akari's round looked as if it had been waiting for exactly that fallback — the trajectory didn't collide with it head-on, but slid through the gap. Past 5, 000 meters, the wind drift and Coriolis variables began to misbehave. Many in the crowd held their breath. So did I. Then Akari's round made a final correction in the last stretch that looked insufficiently greedy, and yet was precise enough to make your scalp prickle.

Not the kind that makes you want to applaud — the kind so calm it makes you realize this person had never been fighting the wind from the start. She'd been waiting for it to reveal where it would truly drift. The moment the impact result lit up, the stands went silent for a beat, then burst. She'd won. Not a narrow escape, not a lucky edge.

The kind of win that, once you'd seen it, made it perfectly clear: this round won by reading the range, by refusing to be led around by it, by Akari having been laying the groundwork for it since the previous match. The breath I'd been holding since I ran to drag someone out of bed this morning finally loosened by half. Akari set down the rifle and turned to glance our way. The distance was far, but I could still make out a familiar, lazily smug look in her eyes — as if to say: See?

Didn't I tell you I'd win it back for you. I really wanted to stuff her back under the bed once more. But right now I only wanted to admit one thing first. However undisciplined this woman was in daily life, however much of a public disgrace on the matter of waking up, the moment she stepped onto the firing position, Akari Flak was someone you could trust with the final match.

Charles Bingham whistled first; Albert Roland raised a hand, grinning; Louis Dupont let out a hard breath of relief; and Suzuki Aoi said only, very mildly:"Finally woke up like a proper person." Akari came back, her shoulders still carrying the looseness of someone just emerging from deep concentration, a lazy smile at her lips.

"I was already awake." I looked at her with a deadpan face.

"You were dragged out from under the bed by me."

"That's a way of waking up too."

"That sounds like crime-scene testimony." Akari blinked and leaned a little toward me, lowering her voice.

"But I won."

"..." That line was despicable. Despicable because it worked. Looking at Akari's face — finally fully awake, still carrying a touch of post-match ease — the string of scoldings I'd lined up warped on the spot like it had hit a high-temperature thermal barrier. Akari clearly knew it too, and smiled even more like a problem student who'd just dodged a parent-teacher meeting on the strength of her grades. In the end I let out only one line.

"If you're late again, I'm dragging the bed along with you." Akari laughed out loud.

"So scary, Shimo."

"You deserve it."

"But the way you looked at me from behind just now — it was a lot like you actually believed in me a little." I stared at her. Akari didn't look away, standing there with that light, lazy smile that only surfaced after a win. The look made it hard to tell whether she was an ace anchor or a nuisance who got pushy the moment she'd slept enough. I shifted my gaze away and didn't let her wait for too complete an answer.

"I'm more inclined to believe the organizers will unify their units one day." Akari laughed hard enough that her shoulders shook. And looking at that 6, 000-meter firing lane still stretching out cold and unfeeling in the distance, I suddenly understood something very clearly. Today was only precision shooting. But the truly troublesome thing about the Nine-Star Games was never how hard the shot in front of you was. It was that every match forced you to reconfirm just what the people around you were made of.

Some were steel. Some were blades. Some were monsters no formula could hold down. And Akari was probably the kind who looked like a duvet gremlin on ordinary days, and at the crucial moment could nail the chaos 6, 000 meters away with a single shot. At that thought, I suddenly felt the trip upstairs this morning hadn't been wasted. At least our anchor wasn't still lying under the bed.