Chương 84: 33.All Accounted For 33-4

The moment the door closed, the room went quiet—briefly. Long enough for one blink. The next second, Jess threw herself backward onto her bed, clutching her stomach and laughing like she was suffocating.

"Christ," she gasped, "I can't—I genuinely cannot. What was that? Two tactical computers from competing manufacturers running live compatibility diagnostics?" I leaned against the desk, still holding Harvey's replacement liner, expression somewhere between want to curse and cursing won't help.

"Calling it diagnostics is rude."

"But accurate." Jess rolled over, buried her face in the pillow for two laughs, then looked up.

"One opens her mouth calculating failure rates, the other looks down hunting configuration gaps. You standing between them looked exactly like meat caught between two knives."

"Thanks. Very appetite-inducing imagery."

"You're welcome. I've always had literary gifts." Maki was still at the desk, re-sleeving the revised list, movements unhurried but each one annoyingly precise. She showed no interest in joining our nutritionally empty commentary, just set the clear folder at the desk corner and looked up calmly.

"Can I go to Academic Affairs first to confirm the temporary bed assignment and mixed-dorm application?" I looked at her.

"You're actually planning to live here?"

"If the transfer is confirmed, early environmental adaptation is more efficient." Jess raised her hand.

"I support this. The sooner the Upper House girl learns people here sleepwalk at 2 a. m. looking for socks, the better for team cohesion."

"No objections," I said, "but if you come back with aromatherapy dehumidifiers, antibacterial air circulators, or Upper House premium bedding sets, I'm dumping you with Linde." Maki considered for half a second.

"I don't own those things."

"Good." She stood, shouldered the pack, and gave us a precise nod.

"I'll be back within an hour."

"Take your time." I waved.

"Try not to get flattened by Lower House reality."

"If I do, I'll file a cause report," she said, and walked out with perfect composure. The door closed again. Really just the two of us now. Two seconds of silence. Then we both spoke simultaneously.

"What the hell—""What the hell—" We looked at each other.

"You first," Jess said.

"No, you."

"Fine." Jess sat up, legs folded, face serious as someone convening a Lower House underground tribunal.

"First: Maki Kushima has a problem."

"Agreed."

"Not regular problems. Premium problems."

"Strongly agreed."

"I thought she'd be the type to write three-thousand-word Lower House Observation Journals to submit back to the Upper House. Instead she came down with planning sheets to argue supply configurations with us." I tossed the replacement liner onto my bed, pulled a chair over, straddled it with arms across the back, staring at where she'd been sitting.

"She's not down here performing." The words came out, and I paused. Because I don't usually like making calls this fast. Especially not for someone from the Upper House. But there it was. You can fake it for five minutes easily enough; faking it through Harvey walking in, flipping the sheet on the spot, catching errors, challenging her revisions, running the clock—and not flinching once—that wasn't something you could bluff your way through on nerve alone. Jess had clearly landed in the same place.

She nodded slowly.

"Yeah. She wasn't performing like she'd thought it through. She actually had. Not how do I get into the group—she'd already moved on to which gaps do I fill once I'm in."

"And she'd gone deep on it." I frowned.

"Deep enough to be annoying."

"Are you annoyed that she went deep, or that she went deep and was right?"

"…Both." Jess laughed.

"Honestly? The part that got to me most was watching her and Harvey."

"Which part?"

"All of it." No hesitation.

"Doesn't that bother you? Normal people meeting for the first time—there's always some friction. Not those two. They skipped the whole getting acquainted phase and went straight to running each other's numbers." I went quiet for a moment. That was accurate. Accurate enough that I didn't really want to say so. Harvey—I'd been around him long enough to know the read. Vicious mouth, finds the flaw first, looks at anything new the same way he looks at equipment: where's this going to break?

He's not warm, he's not easy to manage, and he's definitely not the type to go soft because someone shows up in a clean white uniform. He treats everyone the same—suspect first, test second, then decide whether they belong in the marginally functional category. This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. And Maki Kushima had walked out of the first round with a works. Two words. But this was Harvey.

This was a man whose version of a compliment to me was still breathing, good enough—delivered like a condolence card. I clicked my tongue and leaned back in the chair.

"That's the most annoying part."

"You mean Harvey actually accepting her?"

"That's not what I said." Reflexive denial. Jess raised an eyebrow.

"Oh? Then what did you mean?"

"I meant—" I stalled, then found something that was almost not embarrassing.

"Harvey doesn't waste time on things that aren't worth anything." Jess looked at me with a deeply uncharitable smile.

"So you're complimenting her."

"I'm conducting a risk assessment."

"You've been spending too much time with Harvey."

"Shut up." I tipped my head back and stared at the ugly water stain on the ceiling. Honestly, the strongest feeling I'd had in that room wasn't an Upper House person showed up. It was— Something had appeared that was like Harvey, and completely unlike Harvey, at the same time. What is Harvey like? He's like that wrench in the toolbox—the one you complained about when you first got it, too heavy, ugly, always being used to knock you on the head. But when something actually comes loose, breaks, fails—you go find it.

Maki Kushima was more like a measuring rule. Hard. Cold. Straight in a way that was its own kind of insult, just sitting there like a quiet commentary on how carelessly you'd been living. But then you measured something with it, and—shit. She was right. That was the infuriating part.

"There's something else that's strange about her," I said. Jess sat up a little.

"What?"

"She's not here to make anyone like her." I'd felt that from the beginning. If Maki was the kind of smart girl who wanted to play this strategically, she could have performed it better. Softer tone, more sorry to intrude, please take care of me, let us Lower House people feel too guilty to be too hostile. She didn't. She came with data. Admitted she'd investigated us. Told us where our gaps were. Said she was here to fill them. That kind of directness invites hostility.

Unless she genuinely doesn't care about being liked first. She only cares about being assessed as useful. Jess took that in, made a slow sound of agreement.

"Right. I was thinking the same thing." She hugged her knees, chin resting on them, unusually serious.

"She didn't come in wanting to be friends."

"No."

"She came in wanting to be in the group."

"Yes."

"And she knew that pitching friendship to you wouldn't work, and pitching her family name to Harvey would work even less—so she went straight for the most useful angle." I turned to look at her.

"You're sharp today."

"Because watching those two almost shocked me sober." Jess rolled her eyes.

"Come on—a woman in a white uniform standing in our dorm arguing replacement fastener counts with Harvey over your supply sheet. That scene was so absurd I might never see its equal again in my lifetime." I laughed despite myself.

"Fair." The laugh faded, and I went quiet for a few seconds. Because the conversation was getting close to the part I didn't particularly want to acknowledge. Jess knew it too. She didn't push, just sat there and waited. I clicked my tongue. Then said it anyway.

"Harvey was…different today too."

"Oh?" Her eyes lit up.

"Tell me more."

"Not like that—drop the face." I warned her first, then continued.

"His usual reaction to anything new is to tear it apart and insult it. Today wasn't that." Jess nodded.

"Today he dismantled first, read it, then decided how to find fault."

"…That sounds worse, actually."

"But you know what I mean." I did. Which was exactly why it bothered me. When Harvey walked in and saw Maki, his first reaction was suspicion—that was normal. But what followed wasn't the pure rejection of Upper House? Get out. Not the gut-level dismissal of what would someone like you know. He went straight into work mode. Read the sheet. Caught the error. Tested her. Set a standard. What does that mean? It means he'd already processed Maki Kushima as someone who might actually stay. Not a friend. Not a classmate.

Not a pretty complication. A potential member of Group 144. That's more serious than politeness. Because it means even Harvey had acknowledged—this woman wasn't here to play. I raked a hand through my hair, tone going flat.

"Anyway. I hate this feeling."

"Which feeling?"

"The one where—" I frowned, hunting for the words.

"I'd already prepared to treat her like an administrative airdrop, and then she sits down, cuts three cans of my cola, and gives Harvey nothing major to pick apart. That makes it very hard to maintain the righteous hostility I had going." Jess collapsed laughing.

"That's the most honest thing you've said all day."

"This isn't honesty. It's a battlefield report."

"Translation: you've started wanting to kick her out slightly less."

"I didn't say that."

"But you thought it."

"I didn't."

"You did."

"Jess."

"Okay, okay." She raised her hands, still fighting the smile.

"Let me rephrase. You don't approve of her. You just…currently can't find sufficient justification to dislike her." Two seconds of silence. Then, with great reluctance:"…That works." Jess slapped her thigh.

"See!"

"Don't look so pleased." I glared.

"And this is temporary. She performed well today. That doesn't mean she won't fall apart three days from now in a rainforest. Strong on paper doesn't mean she won't drag the group down."

"Right, right." Jess nodded with absolute insincerity.

"Defensive reservation clause noted. Very you." I ignored her and looked down at the revised planning sheet on the desk. Nine cans of cherry cola. One light novel. Medical kit split two-tier. Replacement fasteners up to six sets. Watch rotation formalized. Decisions not by volume. …That last one was still infuriating. Which was also exactly why it stuck. Something occurred to me. I looked up.

"Did you notice? She and Harvey are actually similar."

"Obviously." Instant answer.

"Just similar in the worst ways."

"Be specific."

"Harvey is the type who calls you an idiot and reorganizes your pack anyway. Maki Kushima can't even be bothered with the insult—she just converts the stupid parts directly into a spreadsheet." Jess paused, then delivered the final line.

"One's got sandpaper for a mouth, the other's got a measuring rule for a brain. No wonder you looked like you were about to ascend standing between them." I thought about that. Damn. Pretty much exactly right. And the most frustrating part was that what these two had in common wasn't just intelligence, and it wasn't just being difficult to deal with. It was that neither of them accepted good enough as an answer. At this school, that kind of person is exhausting.

But on a planet that spits firestorms—that kind of person might actually keep you alive. I reached for the half-dead cherry cola on the desk and knocked back a mouthful. Aggressively sweet, aggressively artificial—but somehow, right now, it cleared my head a little.

"Bottom line," I said, setting the can down with a quiet clank.

"We watch and see." Jess raised an eyebrow.

"That conservative?"

"What else?" I crossed my arms and looked at the door.

"You want me to file a formal statement saying I hereby acknowledge that the Upper House precision model and the equipment bastard demonstrate observable survival value when deployed in the same team? I'm not that far gone."

"So you're not denying it. You just refuse to put it in writing."

"You've been talking a lot today."

"Because it's interesting." She laughed and hopped off the bed, walked to the desk, and poked the planning sheet.

"Honestly though." Her tone dropped, just slightly.

"Did you have even one moment—just one—where it felt like maybe things weren't so bad?" I looked at the sheet without answering right away. The light outside had come up, cutting through the window into this wrecked little room, falling across the papers and tape and replacement liner and cola can and the supply list that had been revised beyond recognition. By all rights, I should have been thoroughly miserable. And I was, in fact, thoroughly miserable. But—"… A little." I said it quietly.

Quietly enough that it sounded like a confession I wasn't proud of. Jess heard it anyway, and immediately put on the face of someone catching a crime in progress.

"Oh my."

"Say oh my again and I'm putting you in the bunk above Maki Kushima."

"That's not bad, actually—close-range observation of a premium case study."

"Then go yourself." I stood, picked up the sheet, looked it over one more time, and finally—reluctantly—folded it and tucked it into my notebook folder. That action probably said everything, really. If I'd actually thought it was garbage, I wouldn't have kept it. Jess watched me with the smile of someone who knew exactly what was happening.

"So. Conclusion?" I slapped the folder back onto the desk, lifted my chin, and delivered it in my usual tone.

"Conclusion: Maki Kushima is currently not useless. Harvey wasn't blind today either. Both of them are annoying. Usefully annoying." Jess started clapping.

"That's the highest certification Group 144 has ever issued."

"It's not a certification."

"Then what is it?" I thought about it. Then, with considerable reluctance:"It's temporarily not wanting to throw them out of the group." Jess laughed so hard she had to grab the desk. And I finished the rest of the cola in one go, acknowledging something internally with great displeasure— Shit. That live-deployment drill in three days might actually turn out to be, just slightly, not quite as much of a collective death march as I'd originally planned for.