Chương 241: 95. Grouping 2

We hadn't even finished drying our hair before Victor called us back into the briefing room. He still looked like he'd just climbed out of a barrel of machine oil and taken two pulls off something industrial-strength on the way. The moment he planted himself at the front, the pressure in the room dropped half a notch for no logical reason. He didn't intimidate through force the way Takenaka did, and he didn't cut through you with a look the way Tobita did.

He just had to lean one hand on the lectern and hold that metal flask — half canteen, half blunt instrument — and your body started quietly assuming someone was about to die. The only question was whether it would be your grade, or your dignity.

"Sit down." Victor tapped the board twice with his marker.

"No preamble today. I've finished the scores. Here's the summary—" He lifted his eyes and let them drag, slow, across the room.

"This batch of yours is technically a little better than I expected." The room started to breathe. Victor stepped on it with his next line.

"But only in the sense that you've advanced from 'blowing yourselves off the hull' to 'almost blowing yourselves off the hull.'" Right. There he is. The Victor I know. D made a quiet, pained sound in the row ahead of me. Roy elbowed him immediately — the universal signal for don't summon death right now. Harvey had his notes board already flat on the desk, apparently treating this critique session as additional study material.

Jess sat diagonally ahead of me, face turned slightly to the side, the corner of her mouth exactly where it had been since she walked in. I was fairly sure she hadn't come for the scores at all. She'd come to watch me die.

"By group," Victor said, opening the record board.

"First — D, Roy." D sat up straight and made an extremely punchable go ahead gesture. Victor didn't even glance at him.

"Exterior bracket removal was fast, reporting nodes were correct, and you've both got nerve." D's see, I told you smile started to surface.

"Enough nerve to look like two idiots who just got a lighter and immediately headed for the bathroom to try it out." The room detonated. Roy covered half his face. D wore the expression of a man being nailed to a pillar of shame who was still attempting to maintain his composure.

"Instructor," he said, completely undeterred, "we did correct it in the second half, though."

"You did," Victor said, perfectly calm.

"Which is why you're sitting here listening to me tell you off, instead of in Medical listening to a nurse do it." The room laughed harder. Victor wrote a number on the board.

"Seventy-eight. Passing. Rationale: late-stage correction ability was adequate. Early-stage operation looked like two primates who couldn't read the manual but refused to admit it. Especially you, D—" He tapped with the marker.

"I'll say it once more. The vacuum arc welder is not for practicing gunfighter poses." D produced a deeply wounded expression.

"That pose looked good, though."

"Looking good doesn't seal a crack."

"... That's fair, but it hurts."

"Better it hurts you than you hurt the ship." Roy finally gave up and bent his head laughing. Next: Harvey and Aida. The tone in the room shifted the moment their names were called. Mostly because Harvey's posture was too upright — the posture of someone expecting to receive something — and Aida was simply not the type who generated disasters. As a pair, they radiated a stable no next-of-kin notification required energy. Victor glanced at them.

"Group two. Harvey, Aida. Cleanest procedural flow. No missed checks. Highest weld precision. Neatest tool handoffs." Harvey's eyebrows didn't move. His back got fractionally straighter. Aida gave a mild nod, the way you'd confirm tomorrow's weather. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

"The flaw is equally obvious," Victor said.

"Too much like a textbook." Harvey finally looked up.

"Instructor — that's a flaw?"

"Yes." Victor turned the marker in his fingers, tone lazy.

"A textbook doesn't suddenly have a partner who drops something next to you. A textbook doesn't have someone talking garbage on the comms. A textbook doesn't have a left-side thruster with a point-three-second lag. You performed well, but you trusted the procedure too much. Not vicious enough when things got messy." He paused.

"For students, though — good. Eighty-seven." A low oh— moved through the room. That was a high score. High enough that even D turned around and gave Harvey a thumbs-up. Harvey adjusted his glasses, expressionless.

"I accept that assessment." D immediately turned it into commentary.

"See, his face right now is saying it's a shame it wasn't a hundred."

"No," Harvey said.

"My face is saying you're loud." Groups three and four followed. Akari and Evelyn were the kind of pair who looked flawless in the first half and then started technically fighting each other in the second — not because either of them couldn't do the work, but because both of them could, and both of them thought their way was right. The result was a very sophisticated after you / no, after you standoff conducted on the exterior hull of a warship. Victor's assessment was precise:"Technical score eighty.

Communication score fifty. Combined seventy-six. You weren't playing a duet. You were both trying to conduct." Evelyn's expression locked up. Akari muttered something that sounded less like a complaint about the score and more like a specific objection to the phrase trying to conduct. Jess and Lan. The room quietly perked up when their names were called, because everyone already knew the problem with this pair was never going to be technical ability. It was going to be the humans involved.

"Jess, Lan. Fast start, accurate first moves, weld quality above average, field adaptability excellent." Jess immediately gave me a smug sideways look, the universal see? Then Victor delivered the rest of it.

"Comms discipline was a disaster. Like a street market." I nearly laughed out loud. Jess went completely still. Lan didn't even lift her eyes, like she'd seen this coming from the beginning.

"During the operation, effective commands between partners: seventeen. Useless commentary: twenty-nine. Jess, you personally accounted for twenty-one of those." The room went quiet. Then D fell off his chair laughing.

"Twenty-one! Were you doing an assessment or hosting a radio program?!" Jess spun around.

"At least I had content. Unlike certain people who just generate noise." Victor set his marker down on the desk.

"Seventy-nine. That score exists because Lan kept pulling you back." This time I actually heard Jess grind her teeth. Lan finally spoke, voice flat as a blade's back edge.

"I did my best."

"I know," Victor said.

"At least five of those points are compensation for psychological wear and tear." The whole room laughed. Even Roy covered his mouth. Jess sat back with an expression of profound injustice, clearly aware she had no angle to argue from, and settled for a sharp exhale and crossed arms. Before she sat down, though, she turned and looked at me — and the light in her eyes that said just wait until it's your turn was bright enough to navigate by. Finally. Victor turned to the last page of the record board.

"B-7." Maybe I imagined it, but I heard someone draw a very quiet breath somewhere in the room. Possibly that someone was me.

"Hoshino. Kushima." My spine went straight. Maki, sitting beside me, didn't change posture. But her fingers tapped the desk once, very lightly — a small, soundless thing. Maybe a reminder. Maybe just a habit. Either way, for some reason, seeing it made my chest settle a fraction. Victor didn't speak immediately. He looked at the record in his hand, then looked at us. The pause was under two seconds. Long enough for every potentially embarrassing moment between birth and now to run through my head in sequence.

"Exterior crack seal: passed. Flow bracket replacement: passed. Heat-sink line refastening: passed. Operation time: second fastest of the day. Weld quality: not the prettiest, but stable. Overall rhythm—" He tapped the board once with his marker.

"Best of the day." The room went quiet first. Then D produced a "Wow" loud enough to externalize my soul along with it. Jess turned around completely, wearing the expression of someone watching a star collapse backwards against gravity. Harvey, less theatrical, gave one quiet nod — like he'd already calculated this outcome and was simply waiting for official confirmation. As for me — My brain went blank for two seconds. Best of the day? Us? Seriously?

Victor clearly had no intention of giving me time to process that, and followed it immediately.

"Not because either of you is a genius who can weld through the universe with your eyes closed."... Right. There it is. Back to normal.

"It's because you knew when to move fast and when to slow down. You knew who was leading and who was covering. You knew when speaking was helping, not competing. Especially the live corrections — clean." His marker came down on the score column.

"Ninety-one." This time the room didn't oh— It actually went off. Ninety-one. Not a scraping pass, not a narrow lead — the highest score of the day, written on the board in plain numbers. D slammed the desk first.

"Ninety-one?!" Roy's eyes went wide.

"That's not just passing, that's a demonstration group." Jess stared at the board for two seconds, then very slowly, very deliberately, let her gaze drift to my face. Her mouth climbed, one degree at a time. I knew that smile too well. That was her I can work with this for at least three days smile. Harvey, after a brief silence, delivered his version of a compliment, which sounded nothing like one.

"Reasonable." D spun to stare at him.

"That reaction is too calm."

"Because their coordination was genuinely the best," Harvey said.

"And Kushima could hold Hoshino's rhythm down. Hoshino actually listened. That matters in fieldwork." Jess immediately latched onto it like she'd found fresh material.

"Oh — hold down."

"Shut up!" I finally snapped back into my body, which was probably already red enough to serve as a hazard beacon. Victor looked at me and, unhelpfully, twisted the knife.

"No need to blush. You did well today."... Thank you, Instructor. Without that addition, I might have survived this with some shred of dignity intact. The room laughed again. Beside me, Maki finally turned her head and said, low:"Congratulations." Two words. Very quiet, very brief — not really meant to carry. But my ears, with no sense of self-preservation whatsoever, heard only those two words. Everyone else's noise went somewhere far away. I cleared my throat and dragged my eyes back to the front.

"... You too."

"Mm." She said it so flatly. But I was certain her mood was good right now. Because there was a curve at the corner of her mouth. Shallow enough to almost not exist. That curve was more dangerous than ninety-one. Because it didn't go on the board. It went in my head, where it was going to make sleep very difficult tonight.