Chương 151: 57. House Hunting Is Serious Business 1

The next day at lunch, I met with Aida Rosen alone. Not a secret rendezvous. Not a moonlit showdown. Simply because—if you're going to ask the Defense Committee Chair's daughter whether she can help squeeze eleven people into Platinum Bridge Street officer housing, a proposition that sounds like an institutional joke but might actually be entirely achievable, you'd want to pick somewhere without too many witnesses. Somewhere I'd be less tempted to throw my dignity into a flowerbed on the spot.

We met in the semi-covered walkway between the Upper House and the shared teaching block. The weather was excellent. Excellent in the way the Federation's machinery occasionally managed to perform look, we're actually quite civilized—sunlight coming through the atrium dome overhead, falling clean and bright across the benches, railings, and floor.

Clean enough that standing there, I had one brief moment of feeling like I was about to have a romantic encounter rather than a negotiation on legally maximizing subsidy extraction for high-grade officer housing. Then I looked down at the conditions list in my hand, and the romance died.

The page was covered in everything we'd hammered out last night and this morning: Eleven-person unit Men's floor Women's floor Common space floor Rooftop laundry Elevator Sufficient bathrooms Kitchen and dining space capable of sustaining eleven people Room configuration TBD, but not open-plan dormitory conditions Minimum multiple parking spaces Plus a dense layer of specifics Harvey and Lan had added—detailed enough that I was starting to wonder whether we were looking for housing or filing preliminary site survey requirements for a small tactical installation.

Aida arrived shortly after. Standard uniform today, jacket buttoned with precision, hair neat. She still carried that quality of someone who, dropped into a diplomatic setting, could dismantle you without once being impolite. When she saw me, she smiled slightly.

"Hoshino. Should I take you reaching out as a sign of progress?"

"If progress means I've finally learned to knock on the most useful door in any given system—probably, yes."

"That's a very practical answer." She came to stand beside me, tone as mild as ever.

"I appreciate practical people." I handed her the conditions list.

"Then you'll probably appreciate this." Aida took it and looked down. I'd expected some reaction when she got to eleven people, men's and women's floors, common space floor, rooftop laundry, multiple parking spaces—a raised eyebrow, a quiet laugh, some acknowledgment that first-years had a lot of nerve. Nothing. Not even a twitch. She read the list from top to bottom in complete silence.

Not fast, not slow—the pace of someone reading a document that mattered more than a student assignment but not enough to require an immediate position. That was, somehow, more unsettling than any visible reaction. Because there are only two reasons a person reads something like this without comment. Either they find it too absurd to bother with. Or they find it entirely reasonable and are already calculating the most efficient approach.

Given who was standing in front of me, I was unfortunately inclined toward the second. She looked up when she finished. And her first line wasn't this is difficult or this is negotiable. It was:"Do you have any personal requirements of your own?" I blinked.

"…Sorry?"

"This list is thorough." She lowered it slightly, fingertip resting on the itemized conditions, unhurried.

"Thorough in that it's almost entirely unit composition, logistics, functional infrastructure, pre-mission requirements. That's good—it means you're not making a nuisance of yourselves over comfort." She paused and looked at me.

"But I'm asking about you. As individuals." I looked back at her, momentarily at a loss.

"Individuals…meaning?"

"Meaning," Aida said patiently, "outside of being Squad 144, outside of being a pre-finals unit, outside of being a top-performing team—do any of you have personal conditions you're not willing to give up?" The moment that landed, something in my head went briefly blank. Because almost no one asked that. Not the Academy. Not the system. Certainly not the subsidy documentation. Most of the time, the rules only asked how many beds, how many people, how many forms, how many fields to fill.

They never asked what about you. I looked down at the page. There really were no personal requirements on it. Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. No I'd like it to be quiet. No certain people probably shouldn't be next-door neighbors. No if someone grinds their teeth at night I will become a danger to others. And certainly nothing like if possible, I'd prefer not to wake up to the kind of institutional white lighting that makes you want to be sick.

We'd written it too much like a unit. So much like a unit that I'd nearly forgotten the unit was made of people. I cleared my throat, looked away from the paper, and aimed for casual.

"My personal requirements are minimal." Aida's eyebrow shifted slightly, inviting me to continue. I slid my hand into my skirt pocket and kept my voice in the register of someone mentioning something entirely unremarkable.

"Just that nobody grinds their teeth or snores." A beat of silence. Then Aida laughed. Not the polished social smile from before, and not the mild amusement of an upperclassman finding a first-year interesting. An actual laugh. Brief, quiet, but with something genuine in it. She looked back down at the conditions list, then back at me.

"That," she said, "I'll look into." I almost thought I'd misheard.

"…You're going to look into it? What, interview everyone individually about their sleep habits?"

"If necessary." Her tone was perfectly level, as if this were a reasonable procedural step.

"At minimum, it's worth knowing who should be housed nearby and who needs to be physically separated." I stared at her, and a very specific sense of absurdity came over me. This entire conversation, from the beginning, was absurd.

Absurd because I was a first-year standing in a covered walkway in the Upper House teaching block, discussing floor configuration, bathroom requirements, and parking minimums for an eleven-person off-campus housing arrangement with the Defense Committee Chair's daughter, and treating snoring and teeth-grinding as a legitimate risk management variable. More absurd still: She didn't seem to find any of it absurd.

She actually looked like she was thinking about how to make this work in a way that resembled human common sense.

"So," I said, looking at the paper in her hand, slowly, "Platinum Bridge Street—you can actually make that happen?" Aida didn't answer immediately. She folded the conditions list back into a neat rectangle, handling it with the care of something worth keeping. Then she looked up, tone unchanged.

"One correction first," she said.

"It's not that I can make it happen." My brow furrowed.

"Then what is it?"

"The procedure already exists." She held my gaze.

"Most students don't know it does, and very few would think to pursue it at this stage." … There it was. That was the most disgusting part. Because what she'd just said was, technically, completely accurate. The procedure existed. The rules were written down. The conditions were there to be applied for. The only question was— Who knew how to read it. Who thought to try. Who had the nerve to push on it.

And who happened to have someone standing next to them who could translate knowing how to read it into actually getting it done. That was corruption at its most elegant. No back channels, no bribes, no violations. Just the path to better outcomes paved somewhere only certain people knew to walk. And when you finally found the entrance, a polite voice saying: Oh, this was always open. I laughed despite myself.

"The Federation is very good at theater." Aida didn't deny it. She tilted her head slightly.

"You're starting to understand how this works."

"No. I'm starting to find it disgusting. Disgustingly useful."

"Those aren't mutually exclusive," she said. …Also annoyingly correct. Wind moved through the walkway from the far end, lifting the folded edge of the paper in her hand. She pressed it down with one finger and continued, naturally:"I can make three preliminary inquiries about Platinum Bridge."

"Which three?"

"First, whether there are vacant properties suitable for an eleven-person unit. Second, whether the off-campus housing stipend and the Federal Youth Citizen Housing Allowance can be combined under a unit application. Third—" she paused half a beat, eyes settling on my face— "whether using pre-practicum military readiness preparation as the stated purpose could expedite the approval timeline." My first reaction wasn't relief. It was a deeper layer of the same absurdity.

Because she wasn't saying I'll find you a place to live. She was saying I'll identify which administrative artery to cut for the fastest result. This wasn't the world ordinary students operated in. This was where power started showing its useful face. Not opening a back door. Making you realize the building had doors all along, and someone simply forgot to tell you where the keys were kept. I looked at Aida, and the phrase Defense Committee Chair's daughter suddenly stopped being background information.

It acquired weight. The kind that could press down on people. The kind that could also, very lightly, push things that had seemed unreachable right in front of you.

"Do all you upperclassmen live like you're cheating?" I couldn't help asking. Aida smiled.

"Not cheating," she said.

"Just learning earlier that this world doesn't reward naivety." I was quiet. Because that was too close to a correct answer. Correct enough that I'd have to acknowledge it was true before I could even think about arguing with it. In the end, I reached out and took back the folded conditions list.

"Then I'll leave the inquiries to you," I said. Aida nodded, without ceremony.

"All right." She said it with the calm of someone for whom this was not an absurd undertaking—not a situation where eleven first-years might leap from Federation Academy broken dormitory to Platinum Bridge Street officer housing in a single step, but simply another item on today's list. And precisely because she was that calm about it, the sense of power really is corrupt hit harder than ever. Because for her, this probably was just another item on the list.

For us, it was potentially a complete restructuring of how we'd live for the rest of pre-finals. … The Federation really was fair, in its way. It just cut fairness into different grades and distributed them according to which floor you stood on. Aida seemed to read that I was internally condemning the system again, because the corner of her mouth curved slightly.

"Hoshino."

"Mm?"

"That expression you just made. It already looks like someone who's going into politics."

"Is that an insult?"

"No." Her smile was genuinely warm.

"It's a compliment. You've finally understood that finding the system disgusting and learning to use the system are usually the same lesson." … I'm keeping that one. One day I'll use it on someone else. We confirmed a few more details. I didn't lock in room types, keeping it as avoid open dormitory, doubles or limited singles if cost allows. She had no objections, only reminded me not to frame it as pursuing comfort—frame it as maintaining unit efficiency.

I mentioned the parking minimum; she nodded and said that was negotiable in officer residential properties. I even asked whether moving into Platinum Bridge would make us look like institutional favorites, and she answered without hesitation:"You already are." … Infuriating. But honest. After we'd finished, we walked back along the walkway for a short stretch. A few seconds of silence between us. Sunlight on the railings and uniform cuffs, warm in a way that felt slightly artificial.

Just before we parted ways, Aida turned her head again, like something had just occurred to her.

"One more thing."

"What?"

"If this moves into the concrete arrangement phase, someone may want to confirm a few things with you directly." My steps slowed.

"…Who?" Aida looked at me, expression composed.

"Not certain yet," she said.

"So don't worry about it for now." That answer was functionally equivalent to there may be a landmine ahead, but go ahead and act like you don't know. I understood immediately what she hadn't said. Not the Student Council. Not the dormitory office. Not any ordinary administrative clerk. The level of someone who could make Aida choose her words that carefully could only go up, not down. … Perfect. Power's corruption always comes with bonus surprises. I didn't press.

If she wasn't naming it yet, it wasn't time to name it. And I'd never liked putting my neck on the table before someone else had shown their hand. So I only said, calmly:"Understood. You ask first, then we'll see." Aida looked at me with something that read as mild satisfaction.

"Good." After she turned and left, I stood there looking at the conditions list—folded once, now unfolded again—and had a strange thought. Before yesterday, this had just been paper. After last night, it had become the consensus of eleven people. And now it had started touching power itself. Not abstract power. The kind that could turn don't even think about it into let me make some inquiries when it came to a place like Platinum Bridge Street. Honestly, it felt dirty. It also felt extremely useful.

If the Federation was a dog that bit people, power was the collar around its neck. This was the first time I'd seen that collar up close—close enough to start understanding how certain people grabbed it and turned the dog's head aside to clear their own path.