Chương 113: 44.Confinement 44-3

When we returned to the main chamber, most people were still awake. D and the tall boy were running their second equipment check. The short-haired girl was dozing against the wall. Jess sat on her bed working a whetstone over her knife handle. Harvey was adjusting the bunker's temperamental air recycler. Akari was exactly where we'd left her, rifle in her arms, looking like she hadn't moved once. She looked up when she saw us come back together and said one thing:"Your face is red."

I nearly staged a secondary hemorrhage on the spot.

"It's from the heat!" I shot back immediately. Akari nodded, dead-fish eyes completely undisturbed.

"Mm. Probably." This woman genuinely deserved pillow suffocation. Maki, apparently deaf to the exchange, guided me back to the bed and opened a fresh dressing pack.

"Dressing change," she said.

"Now?"

"Yes. You pulled the wound just now." Thanks for the reminder—my side was already filing that report more aggressively than anyone. I had to turn carefully onto my side to give her access. Awkward enough on its own; worse because we weren't alone in the room. Everyone was decent enough not to stare, but you still knew they were there—breathing, lights, the faint creak of metal bed frames. The whole thing made me want to evaporate. When Maki peeled off the old dressing, her fingers were very light.

"Some seepage," she said quietly, "but the suture held. You're all right."

"All right is generous," I muttered into the pillow.

"I nearly died a very educational death in that washroom." She seemed to pause slightly, then said, very evenly: "You brought that on yourself."

"…You could at least pretend to be sympathetic."

"I just helped you wash," she said.

"Wasn't that enough?" My brain stalled completely. Right. That sentence hit harder than pulling the mag-spike. I tried to roll the other way, immediately pulled the wound again, and froze. The resulting position was spectacularly stupid—wanting to turn but not daring to, trying to look composed while my face burned. Jess watched for two seconds, then actually did something approaching human decency—she didn't say a word, just tossed her jacket over the corner of the bed, blocking some of the sightlines.

I looked at her. She was chewing a ration bar, pretending not to watch.

"What," she said.

"Your face is getting embarrassingly red. Preserving Frost 01's last scraps of dignity." Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

"…You're surprisingly decent today."

"Don't read into it. I just didn't want you getting so mortified you started swinging."

"Genuinely reasonable." Harvey called from across the room, flat: "Keep it down. The recycler's vibrating."

"Your life has no texture," Jess told him. Maki finished redressing the wound, pressed the clean adhesive strip down, checked it once more, and put her materials away. The whole process took a few minutes but felt longer than the meeting. While she packed up, I still hadn't gotten the heat out of my face, so I committed to staring very hard at the ceiling. Akari's voice came from across the room:"So you do get embarrassed."

I almost launched off the bed, then my side reminded me immediately why that was inadvisable.

"Do you ever sleep?!"

"No," she said, perfectly composed.

"And observing teammates is important." D laughed, finally drawing some attention away from me.

"Team lead, that kind of observation scares people off."

"Cooperation that scares easily isn't reliable," Akari said. … Infuriatingly, she had a point. In the latter half of that night, the firestorm kept its low growl outside while the bunker lights dimmed another notch. All eight people slowly found their positions and settled. Nobody fully relaxed, nobody completely trusting—but by this point, at least no one needed to sleep gripping weapons while watching everyone else. Team 144 and Akari's squad weren't at trust yet.

More like a collection of hard objects the system and Gale had jammed into the same tin, trying not to gouge each other while figuring out if they could temporarily push in the same direction. I lay on the bed, left side pulsing with heat but steadier than before. Maki sat nearby, back against the medical kit, eyes closed, hands resting on her knees—ready to be back on her feet the second someone needed her.

Akari held the final watch across the room, dead-fish eyes occasionally sweeping through the dim light—reading firestorm monitors, or reading this collection of problems she was temporarily bound to. I draped my forearm over my eyes, trying to quiet my brain. What stayed with me in the end wasn't the mag-spikes in the ravine, or the firestorm slamming the walls. It was Maki in the washroom, steadying me, saying in that level tone: stand up straight. Infuriating. I really was starting to waver. Dawn came slowly.

Not because this planet had learned gentleness—because the Purgation Gale retreated like a sore loser, walking away and coming back to throw two more punches. The bunker had shuddered all night, and by the time morning crept in, the wall-slamming roar had finally dropped from gods using the whole forest to beat us to gods still out there but too tired to swing full force. When I woke up, the first thing I felt wasn't light or sound. It was that damn suture line in my lower left abdomen, still there.

Not last night's blow Academic Affairs and the building up with it kind of pain—something subtler. Like someone had left a dull knife wedged in my flesh to remind me: good morning, you really did take a hit yesterday. I drew a breath and opened my eyes slowly. The main room lights were up a notch. The air recycler was still doing that irritating, reassuring hum.

The night-watch rotation had clearly gone a full round: D sat by the door polishing his reinforced shield; Harvey was crouched by the hardware, coaxing a heat-shocked connector back into compliance; Jess sat cross-legged at the table, poking a piece of cardboard with the corner of a ration wrapper; Maki had her back to me as she went through the medical kit again. Akari was by the observation window with the Type-99 in her arms, dead-fish eyes on the outside like she genuinely hadn't slept.

She was built for being a team lead. Not because she had any sort of fiery leadership aura. The opposite. Because she looked like she didn't care about the world, and when it was her job to watch it, she watched it with suffocating patience. I tried to sit up. My left side filed a formal complaint. I stopped, and Maki, who apparently had eyes installed specifically to monitor my stupidity, spoke without turning around.

"If you're awake, sit first. Don't get up in one go."

"…How the hell did you know what I was about to do?"

"Because every time you try to tough it out, the bed frame creaks first." Excellent. Even my hero complex was getting ratted out by furniture now. Jess looked up at me, grinning like she hadn't had enough fun last night.

"Morning, Frost 01. Congratulations, still alive—and your face looks marginally less like a death portrait than it did at midnight."

"Thanks. You're maintaining your punchable baseline nicely."

"It's called maintaining internal order." D chuckled from his side.

"If that's your version of order, making it to week two is impressive."

"Correction," I said, bracing myself and easing upright, teeth clenched through the pull, "we didn't just make it to week two. We dragged you in here with us."

"I'll give you that," D said.

"Efficient." Akari finally turned from the window.

"Main heatfront's passed. Residual burn's ongoing," she said.

"Surface temps dropping, but not safe to open yet—door isn't opening anyway."

"Thank you for providing intel and humiliating reality in one line," I said.

"You're welcome." She didn't even bother changing tone. Deeply annoying. Deeply useful.