Chương 169: 64. Neighbor 1

By the second morning of the holiday, the first-floor dining table at 22 Platinum Bridge Street had been comprehensively militarized by Maki Kushima. I'd assumed that enormous table—the kind that could seat eleven people—existed so we could all sit around it like characters in a normal coming-of-age story, eating breakfast, drinking milk, bickering about who'd stolen whose pudding.

The actual function turned out to be: spreading out handouts, propping up tablets, laying out calculation sheets, drafting schedules, and having Maki Kushima sit across from me with an expression that said I will not be a Kushima if I don't get this brain of yours up to standard before the day is out, conducting emergency remedial sessions. I chewed on my pen and looked at the plan she'd compiled for me. Neat handwriting throughout.

License progress, academic reinforcement, simulator slots, practical exam application, motorcycle purchase feasibility, usage categories, projected monthly expenditure, parking location, methods for avoiding campus administrative oversight—all because I'd offhandedly complained that it would be easier with a bike, and she'd turned it into a coherent low-profile acquisition plan within twenty minutes. If this woman ever decided to go into political consulting, she'd probably be excellent at it.

I stared at the document.

"Aren't you a little too practiced at this?"

"Just organizing variables." Maki didn't look up, tapping twice on the tablet.

"Your biggest problem right now isn't whether you want to buy one. It's making the purchase look so boring that nobody thinks it's worth paying attention to."

"... That's depressing and completely correct." She made a sound of agreement and slid the paper slightly closer to me.

"On the budget side, your savings plus the subsidy differential during the holiday should get you into used civilian-spec range. A demo unit would be priced a bit better." I looked at the number and ran the calculation silently. Short. Not by much, but short by exactly enough—the way you miss a passing grade by two points, miss a bus by ten seconds, the way life always seems to come up one breath short of where you need it. Maki had clearly run the same numbers.

Her gaze rested on the figure for a moment, then she asked, very naturally: "For the gap—would you consider a loan?" I didn't drop my pen. Didn't slam the table, didn't stand up, didn't do anything from a cheap drama where the character immediately explodes and says you don't understand anything. I just stopped. Very briefly. Very quietly. Stopped. Like someone had driven a cold needle cleanly into my spine from behind. The pen pressed a black dot into the paper.

I looked at that dot and found my breathing had gone slightly wrong. A loan. Two remarkable words. Remarkable enough to drag the table, the handouts, the morning light, the smell of breakfast, and this absurdly large house at twenty-two—drag all of it back in one pull toward somewhere I had no interest in returning to. After my parents died, the adults who came to handle things said a lot of words. Condolences. Procedures. Insurance. Assets. Settlement. Debt. Contact person. Minor. Placement.

I didn't like any of them. Among the worst ones, loan was near the top. I set my pen down slowly. Steady movements, steady enough that the hand didn't feel like mine.

"... I don't touch that." My voice was quiet. Even, actually. Too even—the kind of even that had gone past calm into something closer to frozen. Maki looked up. One look, and she understood exactly what she'd stepped on. She didn't ask why. Didn't say just asking or try to walk it back. She just quietly closed her tablet, like she was putting a lid back over something that shouldn't have been opened.

"Alright," she said. One word. Then she reached over, pulled the budget sheet back, picked up her pen, and crossed that line out.

"We won't use that option." Her tone was steady, nearly clinical.

"We look only at what fits within a single payment. Taking more time is fine." I watched her pen move across the page. My throat felt dry. She didn't look at me. Just kept writing.

"If the budget doesn't reach, then we don't buy high-performance. We buy something that can handle commuting safely, carry a passenger, carry light cargo. The rest we revisit when the practicum stipend comes in." I didn't respond. She didn't push me to. This was the most dangerous thing about Maki Kushima. She wasn't the kind of person who backed you into a corner until everything came out. When she saw something cracked in you, she didn't reach in to examine it.

She covered it first, pretended not to see it, and waited until you decided on your own to speak. That kind of consideration was infuriating. Because it left you no excuse to be angry. Somehow, in the hour that followed, we actually finished the work. She explained, I took notes, and we moved through port district traffic nodes, peripheral resupply routes, and temporary transit permit regulations as though nothing had happened. I just didn't look up at her for the rest of it.

And she didn't mention those two words again. Stolen novel; please report. After lunch, I was in a mood—though I'd only admit half of it to myself. Honestly, I wasn't angry at Maki. Not entirely. She hadn't done it on purpose. She'd pulled back the moment she felt the ground shift, faster than a medical clamp. What actually bothered me was that I could still be affected by words like that. Which was embarrassing.

Especially after spending years working to build a version of yourself that looked like I'm fine, I'm functional, I know how to live. So after lunch I didn't talk to anyone. Not deliberately ignoring Maki—I just couldn't manage the face. If I'd sat back down across from her, I'd have been like a stupid cat that had just learned to scratch itself, pretending nothing was wrong while every hair stood on end. Too pathetic. So I went outside instead.

Platinum Bridge Street was quiet in a way that felt inconsistent with any of us being able to afford it. Wide roads, heavy tree cover, buildings that had all perfected the art of looking modest while clearly being expensive—the architectural equivalent of I'm very wealthy but I can't be bothered to announce it. I walked without direction. Just trying to let the low-grade irritation dissipate. By the time I'd looped back to the front of twenty-two, I noticed the mailbox cover hadn't latched properly.

Paper mail in this day and age was already the kind of thing you'd expect to see in a museum. I pushed the cover back and caught a glimpse of something wedged inside. An actual paper letter. Off-white envelope, corners pressed flat, paper stock thick enough that it clearly hadn't come from standard postal supplies. No electronic seal, no chip marker, no concession whatsoever to the current century—like someone had torn a corner off the old Earth era and stuffed it in there. I pulled it out and checked the address.

24 Platinum Bridge Street. Next door. Delivery driver, when was the last time you handled an actual letter. I nearly laughed. Obviously—something like this probably got sent less than once a year. The carrier had probably lost all feel for it, saw twenty-two and twenty-four differing by two digits, and just picked one. I could have left it in the box and let someone else deal with it.

But I was already in the middle of a pointless, energy-consuming bout of stubbornness that had no real target, and I had nothing better to do. I took the letter and walked next door. Twenty-four looked quieter than twenty-two from the outside. Not the dead kind of quiet—the kind that came from someone actually living there, keeping things in order, moving through daily life without incident. A metal nameplate was embedded beside the door. One character: Yang. I looked down at the envelope again. Address confirmed.

Right then. Side quest Cleaning Up After the Space Age's Backward Postal System officially commenced. I was about to press the doorbell when something beside the intercom caught my eye. Written directly on the wall in paint marker. The handwriting wasn't particularly neat—almost casual, really. But the content had real conviction. No politicians. I nearly laughed out loud. What the hell? What had this family been through to write that directly beside their own intercom?

And in that tone of I'm not here to debate, just read the warning. Brutal. I pushed down the amusement and flipped the envelope over. That's when I saw the recipient notation on the back. To Marshal and Mrs. Yang Below that, a line that seemed to have been added by the sender as identification: Federal Marshal I stood there in silence.... Wait. Marshal? Not the corporate bullshit kind—Operations Marshal, Marketing Marshal, Youth Innovation Star Marshal. The actual kind. The kind that meant something.

My brain quickly tried to reconcile the black-haired older man next door—the one I'd glimpsed sitting in a rocking chair reading, radiating pure I'm retired, leave me alone energy—with the words on this envelope. It fit. Annoyingly well. I stared at the intercom and thought seriously for three seconds. Three seconds is enough time to reconsider your life choices. It's also enough time for an idiot to decide to see a side quest through to completion. At the end of second three, I pressed the button.

The intercom beeped and lit up. I straightened instinctively, like a recruit pulled for random inspection. A few seconds later, a woman's voice came through. Not young, but pleasant—the kind of voice that time had worn into something softer rather than harder.

"Who is it?" I cleared my throat.

"Sorry to bother you—I'm a student from next door at twenty-two. A letter seems to have been delivered to our mailbox by mistake. I brought it over." A brief pause on the other end. Then I clearly heard someone laugh in the background. A man's voice, low and unhurried, like something had confirmed a prior expectation. The woman said warmly: "I see. Please wait just a moment." A click. The door opened a crack. The woman standing behind it was the same one I'd glimpsed from a distance before.

Golden hair neatly arranged, face marked by years in a way that was entirely unreasonable—not decline, but beauty aged into something quieter. She saw the letter in my hand and gave a mildly resigned smile.

"Wrong address again."

"Paper mail is rare enough these days that the carriers have apparently lost the feel for it," I said, handing it over. She accepted the letter with the care of someone receiving something fragile and old.

"That's true. People who still write letters are usually either very sentimental or very stubborn." From somewhere inside came the sound of a page turning. Then a man's voice, unhurried: "Could be both." I glanced inward without thinking. In the courtyard, the black-haired man in the rocking chair had set his book down and was looking my way. His gaze wasn't imposing—if anything, it was a little lazy.

But there was something about being looked at that way that made it immediately clear: this person, in his younger years, had not been someone you could easily deceive. He looked at me, then at the No politicians inscription beside the intercom, as though the current scene struck him as mildly entertaining. The corner of his mouth moved slightly.

"She pressed it?" he asked.

"She pressed it," his wife confirmed, a note of amusement in her voice.

"Then she's not a politician." I almost choked. What an extraordinarily low-cost, high-impact screening mechanism. His wife had the expression of someone long accustomed to this kind of commentary. She shook her head with fond exasperation and turned back to me.

"Thank you for bringing it over. You're one of the new ones at twenty-two, aren't you?"

"... New ones." I repeated the phrase. Something about it made me feel like I'd been categorized as a recently arrived juvenile animal that hadn't yet learned the neighborhood protocols.

"Yes. We just moved in."

"Then we'll be neighbors from here on. Please don't be strangers." She smiled.

"We bake sometimes. If we send anything over, don't feel you have to refuse." My first thought wasn't gratitude—it was: so this is what Aida meant by 'the neighbors are decent.' This wasn't decent. This was the kind of neighborhood that made you wonder if you'd accidentally moved into some sort of protected enclave. I nodded my thanks and turned to leave. But before the door fully closed, the man in the rocking chair spoke again.

"Twenty-two." I turned back immediately. He hadn't stood up. Still the same unhurried posture, fingers tapping the armrest once, like he was mentioning something in passing.

"If your group wants to be loud at night, wrap it up by ten." Me: "..."

"After ten, my wife needs to rest." Me: "... Understood." He gave a single nod, apparently satisfied. His wife laughed softly and offered me an apologetic look, though her expression made it clear she didn't entirely mean it. The door closed gently. I stood on the step of twenty-four, looking at No politicians for two seconds, and finally let myself laugh. The low-grade irritation that had been lodged in my chest since morning had, inexplicably, been half-dismantled by a misdelivered letter.

Life was strange sometimes. You get jabbed in an old wound by a couple of words, get too proud to go home, walk off the mood—and end up at a neighbor's intercom being told then she's not a politician, and somehow that's what puts you back together. I exhaled, turned, and walked back toward twenty-two. The light was getting late. Maki was probably— No. Not probably.

With her particular tendency to step on something, quietly register the full weight of it, and then spend the next several hours reviewing it alone—she was almost certainly already worrying. My pace picked up slightly without my deciding to.... Fine. Pride was pride. But it was time to go back and let the person who overthought everything know that I hadn't disappeared to the edge of the universe over two words.