Chương 74: 30.Rigged under Name of Fairness 30-1

The day Colonel Leo Wiesland and Dr. Heinrich von Steiner visited the Academy looked, on the surface, like highly successful crisis management.

"Successful" meaning the Student Council and Disciplinary Committee managed to bury the whole thing in under half a day. Nothing on the bulletin boards, nothing in the internal system, even the instructors' speech patterns acquired an extra layer of high-grade indifference that clearly communicated: this subject is not worth discussing. It felt like someone had draped a very respectable white sheet over a freshly dead body and told you with complete seriousness: nothing to see here, just some uneven flooring.

The problem was, the top could suppress things. The top also only ever believed what the top said. The bottom was different. The bottom was students. Students have two great talents: finding holes in any rule, and cultivating gossip into genuinely monstrous life forms. So things fermented faster than I'd expected.

Within twenty-four hours, the mixed dorms, laundry room, dispensary counter, mess hall corners, equipment sheds, even the third stall in the women's bathroom — yes, the third stall is always the highest-density strategic intelligence node — everywhere had started spawning versions. Not one version. A whole nest of them. The I heard version. The my friend personally witnessed version. The actually she's really— version. The true or false doesn't matter, spread it first version.

And the kind that started with me being called to the faculty office and somehow reasoned its way to secret illegitimate daughter of Federation high command. I tried ignoring it at first. By noon the second day, I sat down in a corner of the mixed dorm lounge, opened the underground student newsletter digest, and gave up. Too many. Genuinely too many. If it were just ordinary rumors, I could file them under non-recyclable campus noise.

But when you watch the same event grow twenty-something versions in under a day, complete with voting polls and probability analysis, you start wondering whether the academic pressure here is actually insufficient — leaving everyone with excess cognitive capacity to waste on a miserable bastard like me. I scrolled down one by one. — Hoshino Shimo is actually the illegitimate daughter of a sector commander, secretly given up for adoption as a child, only recently located.

— Wrong, she's a test subject in a classified military program. The doctor came for follow-up observation. — I heard she actually has royal blood, the Federation just doesn't publicize that anymore. — She got into an argument with high command in the faculty office and the colonel personally intervened to protect her. — False, my friend says she didn't argue at all. She opened her mouth and both of them smiled. The relationship is not normal. — Correction: not just abnormal. Special.

By that point my eyelid was twitching. One page further, I found the most deranged entry. — According to reliable sources, Hoshino Shimo is actually a fallen girl who was retrieved from an illegal establishment by a flag officer and has since maintained an indescribable special relationship. Her enrollment is merely a cover for close supervision. I stared at that line for three full seconds. Then I very seriously began questioning whether humanity should have been granted typing privileges.

Which mold-infested, actively fermenting brain had generated this? Fallen girl. Flag officer's kept woman. Indescribable special relationship. I hadn't even finished the second page and was already experiencing the urge to format my own memory. This wasn't just rumor. This was psychic vandalism. I genuinely suspected whoever wrote it wasn't attending classes but secretly conducting illegal experiments on their own neurons. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"You really drew the short straw on this one." Jess appeared behind me, glanced at my terminal screen, and produced genuine sympathy. Not her usual wow, tragic, but I'm still going to laugh at you variety. Something closer to even I think they went too far this time. I slapped the terminal face-down and let out a long breath.

"Thanks. At least one person pities me."

"Don't get comfortable." She dragged a chair over and sat beside me, flipping the screen back up.

"I mostly pity whoever wrote this. Managing to showcase ignorance, lust, and pathological imagination in that word count is actually rare talent."

"I'd rather they enrolled that talent in pathological research."

"Can't have that. Dr. Heinrich would be delighted." That shut me up instantly. Invoking the man who smiled like he was mentally portioning you into specimen jars had the same effect as dropping ice into hot soup. I picked the terminal back up. Great. Latest update. Version thirty had arrived. This one had gone further, complete with a carefully crafted headline: From Faculty Office to Military Transport: The Untold Story of Hoshino Shimo and the Centaurus Sector I closed the page without expression.

"If I collected royalties on every version," I said, "I'd probably be financially independent by now." Jess nodded.

"Built on fabricated sex scandals, too. Very Federation career trajectory." I looked at her.

"Your approach to comfort is genuinely unique."

"Can't help it. Your situation has exceptional creative potential." I couldn't argue with that. Which made me even more irritated. For those few days, the entire Lower House seemed to grow extra ears and mouths. Everywhere I went, someone would glance at me and quickly snap their gaze away. People would drift past in that deliberate just happened to be here manner, ears practically rotating. When anyone saw me standing with Jess, they'd get that particular expression — ah, so the dorm witness version might be true.

I did consider hurling my terminal at some of those faces. Then I remembered terminals were expensive and I'd have to cover replacement costs myself. Not cost-effective. What actually saved me wasn't restraint. It was bigger news. A few days later, an announcement appeared on the internal system first thing in the morning. First-year cadets: Forest School activity. The line beneath was written with full institutional dignity: Groupings determined by fair systemic lottery and comprehensive aptitude assessment.

All cadets must review group assignments in the morning. Activity groups will conduct preliminary assembly in the afternoon.

"Fair systemic lottery." I nearly choked on those words. The United Interstellar Military Academy claiming fairness was like the mess hall claiming today's soup contained real ingredients — prime material for any black humor anthology. But it worked. Within half a day, campus attention had migrated completely from who exactly is keeping Hoshino Shimo to who the hell am I going to die in a firestorm rainforest with. Humans, when faced with sufficiently large collective misfortune, display remarkable solidarity.

Such as temporarily forgetting my scandal. By the time Jess and I went to check the boards, the announcement area was packed. The long electronic displays scrolled down in neat rows, names lined up with the precision of casualty lists, group numbers and assembly times attached. People stood on tiptoe, cursed, searched for their names while preemptively developing grudges against future teammates. The scene had perfect Academy aesthetic consistency.

Jess stood beside me, one hand clearing two people from our path, the other tracing the scrolling display.

"One thirty-seven… one thirty-eight… why is your surname so far down."

"If you're complaining now, take it up with my parents."

"You'd need some first."

"…Shut up." She laughed and kept scrolling.

"One forty-two… one forty-three… there." Her finger stopped on a line. Group 144 Hoshino Shimo Jess McCallow Tarag Cyrus I stared at that block of names for two seconds. Then another two. The air went quiet. No — my head went quiet first, for exactly one second. Then one thought surfaced, very clearly.

"…" Jess had gone silent beside me too. I slowly turned to look at her.

"Who the fuck are those two?" She turned toward me, expression entirely earnest.

"Maintenance staff?" We both looked back at the board. Tarag. Cyrus. The names weren't completely unfamiliar, but they existed at the pretty sure I heard that somewhere level. Not Harvey. Not D. Not Akari. Not Aida. Not Evelyn. Not anyone I could immediately match to a face and function. Simply put: this wasn't the team structure I'd wanted. It didn't even look like a structure.

It looked like someone had thrown me and Jess in first, then grabbed two random humanoid variables from some back corner to fill the remaining slots. Jess put both hands in her pockets and stared up at the fair systemic lottery banner, smiling coldly.

"Fair my ass." I didn't say anything. Because this time even my sarcasm had to queue. Around us people were cheering, groaning, already calculating who would drag whom. But I just looked at that line of names, and something inside me went cold and still. Perfect. The rumors hadn't fully died when the next problem arrived, already served and waiting. And this time, it wasn't just talk. This was the kind of trouble where they actually threw you onto a firestorm planet.

I took a slow breath and felt like I should probably save my eye-rolling energy for the afternoon.

"Let's go," I said. Jess raised an eyebrow.

"Where?" I took one last look at the Group 144 roster.

"Through proper channels first," I said.

"Before I decide whether to tear this board down and paste it across certain people's faces, I'd at least like to see if the Academy can produce an explanation that doesn't sound like it's actively mocking me."