Chương 9: 05.Ceasefire in Shower Stall 05-2

Twenty minutes later, radiating heat, hair half-dry, and with a marginally restored sense of human dignity, I walked back into Warehouse 6A. Honestly, just getting the dried blood clots, coolant residue, and unidentified biological debris out of my hair felt more meaningful than ramming an Imperial cruiser. When that hot water hit, there was even a moment—a very brief, very dangerous moment—when I almost wanted to thank the Federation.

Thoughts like that were about as safe as a fever, so I rinsed it down the drain with everything else. The moment Warehouse 6A's door opened, the familiar composite biohazard stench hit me again. But it no longer felt like I'm going to die. More like Right. This is reality. At least I was clean. That mattered. On the front line, getting through the day often had less to do with belief or flags, and more to do with whether you'd managed to wash your hair. Everyone looked up at once.

Reis was first, giving a low whistle.

"Oh?" He glanced past me toward the corridor, then back at me, cigarette still hanging from his mouth.

"You actually managed to put rules in place." Alvin leaned over his bunk rail, face bright with that particular love of chaos.

"I went to dump trash just now—there was an actual line outside." He grinned obnoxiously.

"Someone from another section even asked if Warehouse 6A had acquired some ultra-terrifying female soldier." I tossed my towel onto the bunk.

"Not a terrifying female soldier." I paused.

"Just a normal person who's had it with Federation bullshit." Reis took a drag.

"You have a very modern definition of 'normal.'""Right back at you." I eyed the cigarette.

"If you light up in here tonight, I'm stringing you up outside the bath entrance as a warning sign." Lin Wei came in right behind me and laughed immediately.

"We can write: 'Illustrated Consequences of Unauthorized Smoking.'" Alvin smacked his mattress, laughing.

"Fuck, that's ruthless." Reis didn't get angry. He just took the cigarette out, looked at it, then at the repair patch on my shoulder. Finally, he clicked his tongue in reluctant surrender.

"Fine." He stood, walked to the vent, and stubbed it out.

"I'll give the wounded a break tonight." I raised an eyebrow. Not bad. I'd expected to have to push harder. Turned out he knew when to yield. Warehouse 6A's power structure really wasn't about who shouted loudest—it was about who picked their moments. Yurik sat on his bunk, hair still damp, as economical with words as ever. His gaze flicked from my wet hair to the makeshift sign Han Xi had hung back on the door, then he said just two words: "It worked." I nodded.

"Obviously." Then, after a second thought, added: "Most problems in this world aren't unsolvable. It's just that previously no one was annoying enough." Han Xi was folding her clean clothes. Without looking up, she replied: "You're not annoying."

"Hm?"

"You're dangerous." I considered that for two seconds. Then admitted: "Fair. That too." Lin Wei sat on her bunk, rubbing in moisturizer, looking me over with obvious satisfaction.

"To be honest, you standing in that doorway looked exactly like someone collecting protection money."

"Not protection money." I corrected her.

"Basic hygiene rights." Alvin leaned farther over the rail.

"So is the Warehouse 6A Bathhouse Armistice Agreement officially in effect now?" I looked up at him.

"Yeah."

"Long-term?"

"Depends on my mood."

"Wow. Dictatorship."

"Correct." I dug out the repair patches and analgesic gel from my med packet, voice completely calm.

"The kind that amends its own constitution with a battle axe." Alvin immediately mimed zipping his mouth. Good. If nothing else, everyone here knew when to shut up. Post-shower, the real problem started: sleep. Not that I didn't want to. Warehouse 6A simply wasn't designed for sleeping. It was more like a shared sleep-deprivation lab, testing how long humans could maintain basic mental function under overlapping noise, stench, pressure, and social discomfort. I spent five minutes analyzing my bunk.

Lower berth, against the wall. Pro: no risk of rolling out and dying in the night. Con: terrible airflow, and Alvin was above me. Which meant my foreseeable future would likely involve midnight bumping, dropped objects, sleep-talking, and the occasional upside-down head asking questions like "What's the best swear in Imperial?" Exhausting just thinking about it. I loaded up my storage compartment one item at a time. Medical packet from the bay. Damp towel.

A can of expired cherry cola I'd smuggled off the last ship. And a paperback light novel, corners thoroughly crushed. Looked almost human. The kind of broke person who still remembered what they liked. Lin Wei spotted the cola and raised an eyebrow.

"You still have that kind of thing?" The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. I glanced at her.

"Strategic resource."

"Shareable?"

"No."

"Stingy."

"Correct." She snorted, but didn't push. Good. People who flood shared airspace with perfume should at least respect beverage sovereignty. I'd just sat down and started smearing analgesic gel along my ribs when Alvin popped over the edge again.

"Hey, newbie."

"You really are committed to speaking at the worst possible times."

"Thanks. I try to maintain professional standards."

"One more sentence and I mount your profession in the ceiling." He ignored the death threat completely, looking even more amused.

"I'm just curious about one thing." I didn't bother looking up.

"Anything you're curious about usually isn't worth hearing."

"That documentation guy who walked you back—" I looked up.

"Finish that and you get hurt."

"—was he the one you raised hell with on the bridge?" Reis had been cleaning his rifle. At that line, he glanced up too. Even Lin Wei paused with an expression that clearly said: There it is. Knew we'd get here tonight. Fuck. I knew it. Front-line soldiers gossip just like high schoolers in corridor clusters. Only difference is the rifles.

"Yes," I said, face flat.

"Ooooh." Alvin dragged the sound out, unbearably smug.

"So what's your point?" I asked.

"No point." He leaned on the rail, grinning like a man with outstanding debts.

"It's just rare to see someone like you actually remember to say thank you." Reis added from the side: "And let someone carry your meds into the room." Lin Wei pushed it further: "And call him by name." The analgesic tube nearly exploded in my grip.

"Do you people not have enough to do?"

"No," Lin Wei replied, admirably honest.

"It's just that your face looks very discussable." Deep breath. So my seconds at the door had already been filed as evening entertainment programming. Han Xi finally spoke up—not for them, not for me. Just to cut through the noise: "That's not what that was." The whole bay went quiet for a second. I looked at her. She looked back. Briefly, but with complete meaning. She understood.

Not whether I liked David—because I hadn't bothered to define that mess for myself—but she recognized something else: that look people get after surviving the same hell, when they instinctively check that the other person really made it out too. Not romance. Not yet, anyway. More like two people who'd crawled through the same exit from hell and needed visual confirmation the other wasn't a hallucination. I dropped my gaze and kept spreading the gel.

"Exactly." Alvin opened his mouth to try again, but Han Xi shut it down neatly: "You'd look like that too if you'd rammed a ship with someone." He closed his mouth. Reis chuckled, laying his rifle aside.

"Got it." Lin Wei clicked her tongue in disappointment.

"Shame. I was hoping for a live soap opera." I capped the gel and delivered the final verdict.

"Sorry to disappoint. You get a post-ramming trauma case tonight, not a romance arc." I sounded steady enough. Didn't change the fact that something felt slightly off inside. Not guilt—more like that reflex when you get called on and instinctively shove your answer back into your pocket. Annoying. This kind of thing didn't belong in Warehouse 6A. The place barely had oxygen. It didn't deserve ambiguity. Only after lights-out did I understand what people meant by "first night."

The moment the lights cut, Warehouse 6A changed faces. In daylight you could paper over a lot with sarcasm, showers, and pretending to be busy. At night, everything you'd held underwater floated up. The low, constant hum of the engines. The occasional creak of thermal expansion in the hull. Somewhere down a corridor, someone still dragging supply crates, wheels squealing against deck plates.

With Reis not smoking, the air smelled marginally better—but sweat and perfume lingered like a dream you couldn't quite wash off. Alvin rolled over three times before going still. Yurik went out almost instantly, quiet as a wall. Lin Wei hit herself with another shot of perfume; I nearly sat up to throw her and the bottle out the door. Han Xi shut down with brutal efficiency—horizontal, eyes closed, gone. I lay there staring at the underside of the top bunk. Not sleeping. Which was reasonable.

Today I'd killed people, seized a bridge, fired a main gun, rammed a cruiser, launched in an escape pod, gotten stitched up, met senior command, moved into Warehouse 6A, and restructured bathhouse policy. Full day. Full enough that my brain still felt like someone had used it as a cocktail shaker. I rolled onto my side. My ribs registered their complaint immediately.

"Hss—" Quiet. But not quiet enough. From the dark, Han Xi's voice came, flat as always: "Second drawer in your bedside locker. Medical bay pressure patch." I blinked.

"... How did you know?"

"Every injured transfer has the same first night." She paused.

"Put it on your ribs. You'll sleep better." I stared into the dark for a moment. Right. Maybe this room wasn't completely hopeless. There was still that particular front-line kindness—rough, unpolished, but brutally practical. Not much. But enough. I reached into the second drawer and actually found an unopened patch.

"Thanks."

"Mm." That was it. No more. Exactly sufficient. Once the patch settled, breathing got easier. Then Reis's voice came from across the dark.

"Hey, newbie." I kept my eyes closed.

"Do all Warehouse 6A personnel have a rule about talking right when someone's about to fall asleep?"

"That bathhouse rule you pulled today—" I almost thought he was about to pick a fight. Instead, he just said, in the most ordinary tone: "If anyone's still stupid tomorrow, I can take ten minutes at the door." I opened my eyes. I couldn't see his face in the dark, but it didn't sound like a joke.... Huh. That caught me completely off guard. I stayed quiet for two seconds, then finally answered: "Didn't you say you don't change your snoring, don't quit smoking, don't negotiate quality of life?"

"Yeah." There was amusement in his voice.

"But I never said I don't have a conscience." Fair enough. Everyone in this room turned out to be slightly more tolerable than they'd appeared on the surface. Only slightly. But in the Federation military, that already counted as a high rating. I was genuinely about to close my eyes when Alvin's voice drifted down again, quieter this time.

"Hey..." I shut him down immediately.

"Shut up."

"I haven't even said anything yet."

"The moment your voice starts, it's usually not worth hearing."

"That's prejudiced."

"Not where you're concerned." Half a second of silence from the top bunk, then muffled laughter.

"I just wanted to say—welcome to Warehouse 6A." I froze.... Fuck. Coming from him, that somehow actually sounded sincere. I lay in the dark for two seconds before letting out a very reluctant grunt.

"Mm." Then I added a follow-up so I didn't look like I'd gone soft: "If any of you disturb my afternoon nap tomorrow, I'm shoving that welcome right back down your throats." Lin Wei laughed from across the room.

"So fierce."

"I'm always fierce."

"We know, little hero." I rolled my eyes in the dark.

"Say that one more time." But this time she didn't push back. Just laughed and rolled over, her bunk creaking softly. The room finally settled into quiet. I stared at the shadow of the upper bunk, breathing Warehouse 6A's now marginally tolerable air. But the last thing that surfaced in my mind wasn't the battlefield. Wasn't the senior officer's commendation filing either. It was the medical bay. David pressing that repair patch against my shoulder blade. That quiet voice: "Relax." Fuck.

I immediately flipped onto my other side, forcing my brain to change channels. Why the hell was I thinking about that now? There were people everywhere. Alvin was directly above me. The air was garbage. This place needed a ventilation permit before it qualified for dreaming. Unfortunately, human brains specialize in replaying the most inconvenient shit at night.

I closed my eyes, surrounded by Warehouse 6A's rising snores, the ship's low hum, and lingering traces of cheap perfume, and reached one extremely practical conclusion: Starting tomorrow, I needed to get earplugs. As for David—that was a different kind of noise. Much more complicated to shut out.