Chương 210: 80. Too Close for Two 2

When we got back to the eight-person room, it was completely empty. I froze for a second, then caught up — right, of course. Anyone with a normal schedule was already out running day two. Only miserable night-watch survivors like us would come dragging our half-dead bodies back in at the exact hour everyone else was starting theirs. My whole existence narrowed down to one thought. Sleep. Now. Immediately. Right now. That was when Maki, completely out of nowhere, said again: "We're not on watch tonight."

"You already said that," I muttered, peeling off my jacket.

"My brain's running sleep-only mode right now. Please don't feed it duplicate data." She didn't say anything back. She just let her gaze rest on me for a second. Too bad I didn't have the bandwidth to analyze it. Because I was genuinely, catastrophically done. Captain Tobita's line last night — take turns resting — was, in hindsight, a bridge-grade gentle scam. Forget it. The second anything actually happens on watch, any theoretical rest you're owed shrinks down to a few minutes of closed eyes, tops.

The brain never really powers down. I hit the lights, let pure muscle memory steer me to my bunk, and climbed up. Then I stopped.... Wait. Why was my bed lumpy? I looked down. The blackout curtain was half-drawn, and under the thin blanket was an unmistakably human shape. Not the "maybe the bedding's just not flat" kind of lump. A real, fully occupied person had gotten in there first. My brain took a couple of slow seconds to stitch this back into reality.

"Maki, are you—" The shape under the blanket shifted. A second later Maki lifted her face out, her voice as level as if she weren't lying in my bunk at all, but sitting at her own station waiting for morning briefing to start. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

"Shut up and get in." I froze exactly where I stood. If I'd been even a little more awake, I probably would've had ten questions lined up. Like: Why my bed. Why did you get in first. Why are you inviting someone to sleep with you in the exact tone of a direct order. And most importantly — Do you have any idea how hostile this scene is to someone who just came off an entire night of bridge watch? Unfortunately, I was too tired.

So tired that all the questions that should've exploded only managed to form a neat little queue, and before any of them made it to deliberation, my body had already made the decision for me. I sighed, accepted my fate, pulled the curtain back, and climbed in.

"For the record," I muttered, wedging myself into the sliver of space left on the mattress, voice practically dissolving into the pillow, "if this is some kind of Kushima-family hazing ritual, I'm getting revenge tomorrow." Maki smoothed the blanket flat between us, tone flat to match.

"You'd have to have the energy." Damn it. She was right. The bed was narrow. Very narrow. Narrow enough that the second two people lay down in it, reality wasted no time reminding you what "eight-person dorm" means as a physical constraint. Through the thin blanket and the regulation-hard pillow, I could feel Maki right there — not pressed close in any dramatic way, no unnecessary tangling of limbs, just simply, plainly near. Near enough to hear her breathing, a little slower than usual.

Near enough that if I shifted, my shoulder would probably find hers. Near enough that the quiet stretch of time in the corner of the bridge last night came flooding back into memory, carrying warmth it had no business still holding. I stared at the dark underside of the bunk frame above and tried to steer my brain hard toward tired, want to sleep, and nowhere else. Maki spoke first.

"On the way down from the bridge, you nearly walked into the wall. Twice." I answered with my eyes closed.

"That's because I was navigating by soul."

"Your soul has terrible spatial awareness."

"You know that when someone's this exhausted, the last thing they want is somebody being reasonable at them?"

"I know."

"Then why are you still doing it?"

"Because you keep answering." I couldn't help it. I laughed — quiet, brief.

"Maki."

"Mm."

"Are you secretly good at coaxing people?" Half a beat of silence.

"No."

"Then what's this?"

"Making sure my partner doesn't drop dead in a corridor today." Right. Very Maki. Also completely unromantic. The strange part was, I didn't hate it. So we really did just lie there under the blanket and talk. Nothing monumental. I told her Squad Leader Kamishiro's line from that afternoon — "this isn't a place for you to be falling in love" — still made me want to find a vent shaft and crawl inside and disappear. Maki, perfectly calm, told me that was because my face had looked genuinely stupid at the time.

I said Captain Tobita's joke about the ship being short-staffed on everyone except the captain, the sonar operator, and tactical made me feel like the Yukikaze flying at all was some kind of miracle. Maki said flying wasn't a miracle — it was just the people who hadn't collapsed yet, holding the line by force. I asked her what her first all-nighter in the simulator bridge had felt like. She said it was quiet, but also annoying, because adults always assumed kids wouldn't remember.

And gradually our voices got lower. Low enough that some sentences just fell into the air unfinished, like neither of us really expected a full answer anymore. The last thing I remember is turning onto my side, my hand brushing her fingers by accident. She didn't pull away. I didn't move either. We just stayed like that for a moment — so brief it might've been nothing more than something I dreamed right before sleep. After that, I really did go under.