Chương 92: 36.Argument 36-1

Twenty-four hours before the live-deployment drill officially started, I wanted to kill someone before dawn even broke. Not for ideals, the system, or the Federation. Because when Jess shook me awake, she was holding a towel that hadn't dried completely from washing—cold as pressing a dead person's face against my forehead.

"Rise and shine, acting squad leader." She stood by my bed, cheerful as a death omen that had learned to sing.

"Your morning hell has begun." I slapped the towel away and shot up from the bed.

"Touch me with that again and Group 144 loses a member today."

"Easy." Jess stepped back half a pace, grinning without conscience.

"Lose me and Harvey will just draft you as replacement." The dorm light was still grey, the sky outside like a pot of dirty water that hadn't come to a boil. The ceiling fan turned half-heartedly overhead. The laundry room was already thundering. The room held a compound of damp air, soap, the plastic smell of quick-dry fabric that wasn't quite dry, and a trace of canned meat grease from whoever had been eating contraband last night. I sat on the bed edge, raked a hand through my hair, and scanned across the room.

Maki Kushima was already in her outer uniform, pack leaning against her bed, sleeves rolled to precise folds, looking like she'd never been rumpled. That kind of person was infuriating just to look at in the morning. She was checking the timer on her wrist, and when she heard me get up, she glanced over once.

"You have seven minutes." I stared at her.

"Are you telling time or issuing a death notice?"

"The functions overlap." Shit. I genuinely suspected she didn't drink water in the mornings. She drank measuring rules. By the time we dragged our not-quite-awake souls to the training ground behind the equipment building, the sky was just beginning to lighten. The air still held that brief morning coolness before the heat turned everything rotten, but the ground was already sweating—wet earth and cold metal mixing in the low air.

The outdoor simulation track along the far edge looked like a wound deliberately designed to humiliate: sand pit, incline, low wall, rope net, crawl section, and a final stretch of broken rock. Harvey was standing at the start, four standard-weight packs at his feet and a training casualty dummy beside them—grey-green, ugly with functional realism. He saw us coming. Didn't bother with good morning.

"Three things today." He raised a hand and pointed along the course.

"First: loaded movement. Second: pace switching. Third: bring the body back." I looked at the dummy.

"How thoughtful. Corpse-dragging practice before breakfast."

"Better than dragging a real one this afternoon," Harvey said. That was too reasonable to argue with. Wasting breath felt inefficient. Maki walked to the packs and checked the labels.

"Total weight?"

"Base eighteen, shared additional four to six depending how you split it." Harvey looked at me.

"Today isn't about who can carry the most. It's about who's still making decisions at the end." Jess crouched and squeezed one of the packs. Her expression immediately soured.

"This is eighteen?" She looked up at Harvey.

"Did you take your math out to the field and leave it there?"

"Scale's over there. You can cry to it." I dragged my pack over and swung it onto my back. The weight hit my shoulder blades and pushed down, immediate and honest. Not unmanageable—but the kind that tells you from the first second exactly what kind of day it's going to be. Harvey nudged the dummy forward with his foot.

"Simple rules. First two sections individual. Third section starts two-person relay carry. Final section all four bring it to the finish. I watch, I don't help. Loose equipment, broken stride, bad rhythm—I note it. Too much talking—I note that too." Jess raised her hand.

"How many points does talking cost?"

"Depends how many people you drag down."

"Then Hoshino should start at zero."

"Say that again and I'll use you as today's first dummy."

"Good news—at least the group has a fixed resupply point before midterms." I genuinely wanted to reclassify her as training equipment. We got less than five minutes of warm-up before Harvey blew the start. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. First section: sand and incline. The first thirty seconds, everyone still moved like a person. Then the first uphill hit, and the weight started pressing down with complete honesty.

I adjusted my breathing, planted my feet, felt the shoulder strap dig near my collarbone. The sweat hadn't started yet but the heat across my back had already woken up. Jess was on my left, running and cursing simultaneously.

"Whoever designed this course—may their knees go first." Maki was on my right. No talking. Her stride was infuriatingly steady, like she'd pre-scheduled her breathing. What made it worse was that the steadiness wasn't slow—it was calibrated exactly to the point of no wasted energy and no dragging pace. I hadn't intended to watch her. I did anyway. Because last night's at least I can stand in front of you was lodged in my head like a thin needle—not painful enough to be critical, just constantly there, irritating.

Shit. I couldn't believe I was losing focus over one sentence. When the first section leveled back out, Harvey delivered a casual remark from the side.

"Hoshino. Right shoulder's working too hard. Adjust the strap." I reached up and pulled at the strap, and only then felt the weight distribution was wrong. Not too heavy. Wrong distribution. I frowned, reached back to check the external attachment point, and found a hard mass where I was certain nothing had been before. Before the second section entered the crawl zone, I stopped dead and swung the pack to the ground.

"Who touched my pack?" Jess nearly skidded into my back.

"What the hell—brake lights, please—" I ignored her and pulled the external attachment open. Two packs of water purification tablets. One compressed medical module. One waterproof sheet. All shared supplies. I looked up. My gaze went directly to Maki Kushima. She'd stopped too. She didn't look away.

"Me," she said.

"When?"

"Before we left." Her tone was as flat as reading a checklist.

"Your load distribution is more stable than mine or Jess's. Shared medical on your side is more efficient." I stared at her, and the anger came up fast.

"You redistribute the weight and don't say a word?"

"There wasn't much time, and the assessment—""I'm not asking about your assessment." I pulled the items out, voice going hard.

"I'm asking whether you think you need to say something before you go through someone else's pack." Harvey walked over, looked at the items on the ground, didn't frown.

"The configuration is sound." I turned on him.

"You knew?"

"Didn't know she'd load it directly. But she calculated right."

"Great. So now both of you are deciding what I carry." Jess stood to the side, looked left, looked right, and sighed.

"Congratulations, everyone. Morning hell has officially escalated to internal team warfare. Should we draw lots for whose portrait goes on the memorial wall?" Maki looked at the medical module in my hands, voice still steady—steady in exactly the way that made it worse.

"If this were the actual deployment, you'd be prioritizing procedure over outcome."

"If this were the actual deployment, you'd already know that touching someone's gear without notice is about one step from poisoning their food." Something shifted in her eyes, going slightly darker.

"I wasn't trying to harm you."

"I know that." I stepped forward.

"But you just made a decision for me." The air went taut. Wind scraped across the top of the obstacle course, setting the rope net swaying. Somewhere across the field another group had started training, whistle blasts drifting over in fragments, making the silence on our side feel more stuck. Harvey looked between us, voice cold as something just pulled from water.

"Are you done?" Neither of us moved. Harvey crouched, picked up the medical module from the ground, and pressed it into my arms.

"Then I'll say it once." He stood, gaze sweeping Maki first, then me.

"First: no one touches anyone else's gear without saying so. Second: no one refuses a reasonable rebalance because of pride. Third: from now on, all shared supply adjustments get discussed out loud." Jess immediately raised her hand.

"Fourth: can I breathe for a second? I almost became background debris in your conflict scene."

"No," Harvey said.

"Your job is to remember why this happened."

"Oh, that's easy." Jess counted on her fingers with great sincerity.

"Hoshino hates being managed. Kushima hates efficiency getting blocked by feelings. Harvey hates all of us. Conclusion: Group 144 is in excellent health." I almost got angry enough to laugh. Maki looked at me for two seconds, then reached out and took the medical module back.

"Fine," she said.

"This one's on me. I should have said something first." I paused. Not because the apology was moving. Because it came too fast. Fast enough that half the second wave of anger I'd been building had nowhere to go. Then her next sentence lit the other half straight back up.

"But the configuration still needs to change." I rolled my eyes immediately.

"Is your apology a buy-one-get-one deal?"

"It's not one apology. It's two separate matters."

"You'd be great at stabbing people with a pen."

"More efficient than stabbing people with emotions."

"…Kushima."

"I'm here."

"You're really asking for it right now." Jess was enjoying this with her whole body.

"Excellent—we've reached first-name basis. Emotional development is moving fast."

"Shut up," Maki and I said at almost the same moment. We both stopped. Jess bent over laughing.

"I love that sync rate. Very romantic."

"Keep going and I'll bury you first," I said. Harvey blew his whistle with visible impatience.

"When you're finished wasting your own lung capacity, we continue." Before the second section, we redistributed on the spot. This time Maki laid out every item she wanted to move and said it out loud. Her logic was the same clean blade as always: This goes to me—I'm managing night water treatment. This to Jess—her access speed is faster. This stays with you—you're more stable on turns. Every sentence precise, not a single wasted word. I listened, still not fully cooled down, and couldn't find a flaw to pick at.

More annoying. Crawl section, low wall, rope net—by the time we were through, everyone was breathing hard. Jess got her pack snagged on the second wall and nearly hung there.

"What do I look like right now?" she asked, struggling. I pushed her from below.

"A ham that tried to escape over a wall and got stuck."

"Thank you, very vivid."

"You provided the material." The real breaking point came in the third section. We started the relay carry on the dummy. The thing looked bad and dragged worse. Dead weight pulling straight down, the sound of fabric scraping rock long enough to make you nauseous. First rotation—me and Harvey—rhythm held. Second rotation—Jess and Maki—problems started immediately. Maki had the strength. The issue was she was too focused on maintaining cadence.

Jess was the opposite—explosive when she had to be, consistent as her commentary, which meant wherever the moment took her. They got the dummy to the rock slope before its right arm caught in a gap, weight lurching sideways. Maki went to pull instinctively, Jess simultaneously tried to yank it free, the two forces collided, and the dummy hit the slope with a heavy thud, half-flipped. The vein at my temple jumped.

"Stop! Stop stop stop!" Jess was panting and cursing simultaneously.

"This thing is less cooperative than an actual person!" Maki's brow was furrowed, still gripping the carry strap.

"Your left hand was too high—the center of gravity shifted—""My left hand was too high?" Jess stared at her in disbelief.

"You were pulling it like carry-on luggage—""Because your stride broke—""Your mouth is broken—" I moved in and grabbed the carry strap.

"Both of you, shut up." They both looked at me. I pointed at the dummy, teeth close to grinding sparks.

"If this thing could talk, its first words would be please just bury me."