Chương 390: 177.Police Station 1

By the time I got Maki back to No. 22 Platinum Bridge Street, Roy and Lan were, unsurprisingly, still out. Which was not surprising in itself. If Roy and Lan ever got home before Maki and me, I'd start checking for cracks in the timeline. Especially after I'd accidentally walked in on a few scenes that definitely shouldn't be written into the tenant handbook, seeing the two of them out late at night only ever triggered one thought in my head— Ah. Out on a date again, probably. Good for them.

Some people are busy being in love. Some people are busy saving the country. And then there's the third type: people like me, who are busy cleaning up reality on behalf of the first two.

"I'm showering first." The moment we stepped in, Maki stripped off her scarf, sounding like she'd just come back from a stationery run, not from five straight hours of slicing a selection process into three pieces with a red pen. She hung up her coat, didn't even bother glancing back, and headed straight for the bathroom.

"You really do have your post-home sequence down," I said.

"What else would I do?"

"I don't know, maybe praise your Vice President for a job well done first." Maki didn't even slow. She just tossed the line over her shoulder, flat:"I already said it once." Then she shut the door. I stood in the entryway with my bag still in hand, staring for half a second before belatedly realizing: did this woman have any idea that the way she tossed that out—like a lazy follow-up jab—was harder to handle than a straight-faced "good work"? Damn it. Of course she did. No way she didn't.

I kicked my shoes straight and walked into the living room. D and Harvey were there, as expected. D was sprawled lazily across the couch. Harvey sat perfectly straight, the kind of posture that suggested he could find technical maintenance violations in a TV broadcast. The screen was playing some variety show; the host was making faces more exaggerated than anything out of our Upper House, reacting with loud, hollow amazement to absolutely nothing.

Jess was sitting cross-legged on the carpet, a giant bag of bubble gum by her side. She was chewing away like her only remaining life responsibility was rotating flavors from grape to mint. I was genuinely envious. This kind of mental state was practically an endangered species at our school.

"Jess—" I'd barely opened my mouth when the doorbell rang. Ding-dong. A perfectly ordinary sound. Which made it not ordinary at all. At this hour, there were usually only three kinds of people who rang the bell at 22. First, a resident who'd forgotten their keys. Second, someone coming to see one of the residents. Third, trouble. Based on my recent life experience, option three had an unreasonably high hit rate. I went to answer it, half-expecting Roy or Lan to have forgotten something.

Instead, when the door opened, it wasn't Lan, and it wasn't Roy. It was the captain of Hedwig von Wittelsbach's guard. I remember… Hild? She stood at the door, coat buttoned to the throat, shoulders straight. The whole man looked like a slim blade jammed into the winter night. His face was as cold as ever, professional to a fault—like even if the world blew up in the next second, he'd first confirm whether Her Highness had been affected, and only then start dealing with the rest in order.

"Something wrong?" I leaned against the doorframe and looked at her. Hild's tone matched her face; cold and exact.

"Is Her Highness with you?" My heart dropped in one neat thunk, and then it felt like someone poured a bucket of ice water down my spine. Every alarm I had flipped to maximum.

"No," I answered fast.

"After dinner, Hedwig said someone was picking her up. Maki and I headed back." The crease between Hild's brows shifted, barely visible.

"The driver has been waiting at the school gate for over thirty minutes. He did not see Her Highness." My brain lit up and started running. From the restaurant back to 22, riding a bike was about thirty minutes. Even without a car, if you wandered back by bus it was maybe forty-five. Which meant— Hedwig hadn't only just gone missing now. Whatever had happened, happened not long after we split up.

"She never made it back?"

"No," Hild said.

"And she has not made contact." Perfect. Absolutely perfect. The Third Imperial Princess of the Galactic Empire, on a freezing winter night, missing on Federal soil. If that wasn't trouble, I could legally change my name to World Peace in the morning. I took a breath and turned back into the living room.

"Jess!" She already had her ears up, bubble gum halfway between bites.

"What?"

"When Maki's out of the shower, tell her I'm going out to find someone." Jess immediately straightened up.

"Hedwig's missing?"

"Yeah." D hit mute on the TV. Harvey turned his head over. The loose, lazy evening air in the living room instantly collapsed in on itself, leaving nothing but tight, bare lines.

"I'm coming," D said.

"No." I was already at the shoe rack, grabbing my keys.

"More bodies just gets messy. You stay. Wait for Maki." Jess bounced off the carpet, chewing hard and waving a hand at me.

"Got it, got it. I'll tell the President when she comes out. Just go." I snatched my scooter keys and, at the door, gave Hild another look.

"You have a car?"

"Yes."

"Then you take the main roads and the school gate. I'll take the route back from the restaurant and the side streets," I said.

"If Hedwig really missed the car and she doesn't know these streets, she'll either drift toward places with people, or get dragged off into some side road." Hild stared at me for a second, measuring whether this civilian vice president was actually worth trusting. I didn't have the time or the patience for imperial background checks.

"If you waste time doubting me right now," I said, "she'll just get harder to find." He finally nodded.

"If we find anything within ten minutes, we contact each other."

"You'd better actually contact me," I said.

"Don't pull that imperial I will handle this myself aesthetic." Hild didn't answer, but his face said it clearly enough. You think very poorly of the Empire. Sorry. I had yet to be given a reason to think better. I pulled on my gloves and bolted outside. The night wind hit me full in the face, cold as a metal plate. The streetlights on Platinum Bridge Street lined up into a glowing chain, the pavement holding a slick sheen of wet. I swung onto my bike, turned the key.

The engine shuddered under me and dragged the last fog of fatigue out of my head. Hedwig was missing. Hedwig was missing. Those words were enough to give anyone stomach cramps. Not because I'd suddenly grown a conscience and turned into a model citizen with "international peace" carved into her chest, but because— If the Third Imperial Princess really managed to get herself hurt in the Federal capital district, I had no idea whether it would lead to a full-scale war between the Federation and the Empire.

But I knew my already fragile attempt at a "stable life" would be the first thing blown into dust. Fuck. They really never miss a chance to cause a problem. I headed for the school first. From the restaurant to the main gate, then down the branches afterward—I ran every route in my head. Hedwig wasn't Jess; she wouldn't get distracted by a hotdog stand. She wasn't Roy, who would automatically optimize every route for time.

And she wasn't Akari, whose dead-fish eyes alone were a ninety-percent deterrent to late-night creeps. If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. Hedwig was a different kind of trouble. Smart. Calm. Composed. And with a particularly inconvenient brand of pride.

That type, if she suddenly decided to walk on her own for a bit, wanted to "get some air," or to flip her royal switch off and pretend to be an ordinary person, then things very quickly stopped being ordinary. When I passed the school gate, the black sedan was still there by the guardhouse. The driver stood by the car, his face white enough to suggest he'd just been given an order somewhere between go fetch the sun back and bring me the moon, now. I didn't stop.

I swung off toward the side road leading to the bus stop and shopping street. If it were Hedwig, she wouldn't walk into a dead-black alley. But she wouldn't necessarily stand there obediently waiting for pickup, either. So I widened my loop. And that was how, at a bus stop so far out it practically fell off the map, I found her. The first thing I felt on seeing Hedwig wasn't relief. It was the urge to yell at her. Because there was no reason for any sane cadet to be waiting for a bus there.

That was already brushing up against the territory of Dunan Second Vocational School. Strictly speaking, the academy and the second voc school didn't have some epic blood feud. The problem wasn't hatred. The problem was hassle. According to several unnamed, clearly traumatized Senpais, the greatest consensus the two institutions had managed to reach over the years was: If you can go around, go around. Don't ask.

If you ask, the answer is: both sides have their own disasters to deal with, and nobody wants to take responsibility for the other side's life after school hours. And tonight, Hedwig was standing right there. And she wasn't wearing that imperial uniform that practically screams touch this and your entire family might die to anyone with half a brain. She was wearing our academy's Lower House uniform. Which was very bad.

In an imperial uniform, people would just write her off as a weirdo, a theater club member, or some rich girl with catastrophically bad taste. In a Lower House uniform, standing there, she sent a different kind of signal entirely— A lone, pretty girl, who clearly didn't belong to the local scene. Which, translated, meant: magnet for trash. And the trash was already here. Not one. Not two. At least seven.

I watched that cluster of reject humanity, who looked like they'd spawned out of the nearest garbage can, crowd around Hedwig, acting out a bargain-bin delinquent drama with a Showa-level stench that should have been extinct decades ago. Lines like "it's dangerous for a girl to be out so late," "wanna go for a ride," "we'll see you home"—all wrapped up in faux concern for "youth safety," but every comma reeking. Hedwig stood under the bus sign, back straight, face colder than the wind.

She wasn't panicking or screaming. She just wore a look that said, I don't want anyone touching me right now, and it would be a very bad idea if you tried. Unfortunately. Trash is bad at reading expressions. I killed the engine, didn't bother with the stand, and walked over with my helmet in hand.

"Hedwig." She turned and saw me. For half a second, something in her eyes loosened. Very brief. So brief it could have been a trick of the light. But I saw it. And that was exactly enough to make me even angrier.

"Come with me," I said. One of the guys—dyed blond, of course—stepped half a pace forward to block me, smiling the kind of smile that made you want to do something good for society with a blunt object.

"Hey, hey, no need to rush, sweetheart. The lady here didn't say she was leaving yet."

"She's not yours," I said, looking up at him.

"Move."

"Wow, touchy." Another one whistled, his eyes taking a slow, filthy tour up and down my body.

"Friend, huh? That works. Come hang out with us too." I had planned to do this the easy way—get Hedwig out and leave it at that. But the trash seemed very keen on upgrading themselves to curbside pickup. I stepped forward and reached for Hedwig.

"Come here." The blond idiot actually grabbed her wrist first, still smiling like he thought he was charming.

"No rush, we just wanna get to know each—" I slammed the helmet into his face. Bang. Not the pretty kind of sound you hear in choreographed fight scenes. The kind of sound that made you think something really had cracked. A second later, he went down hard, both hands clutching his face and shrieking like a stray dog that'd had its tail run over.

"Ah, fuck—my nose—! It's broken! Shit, shit, my nose is broken—!" Good. Nice to see some self-awareness. At least he knew which part had just been totaled. The second guy hadn't yet understood that he hadn't picked up a regular schoolgirl tonight. He reached forward and I drove my fist straight into his face. Solid impact. He didn't even get as far as a reaction; it was like someone had pulled his plug. He went straight down. I shook out my wrist and frowned at the rest.

"What the fuck?" I said.

"Seriously? You idiots wouldn't last ten seconds against D, and Roy's an accounting major." Hedwig stayed right behind me, quiet. I could feel her breathing at my right shoulder, cold but steady. At least she didn't try some kind of performative princess act. I'd give her that. I stared the rest of them down and added, clean and fast:"What? Tired? It's cold and you want to lie down? Go back to your own beds. Don't lie across the road like trash." I'll admit it. That was provocative.

And I was definitely a little wound up. Because these weren't soldiers. Not students. Not even passable opponents. Just a clump of men who thought a girl alone at night was a license to grab, tease, and see what they could get away with. You see enough of that and you get angry. See it up close and you want to erase it.

"Fuck you!"

"Get her!" Now it finally stopped being a Showa drama and started turning into an actual crime scene. I still thought that even if they all came at once, it'd be a quick garbage-sorting job. Then one of them lunged in from the side, fast enough to skim past my cheek. Not with a fist. With a knife. I only had time to turn my head. Even so, heat slashed across the side of my face, sharp and ugly—like someone had dragged a heated wire across my skin. I wiped at it on reflex. My glove came away red.

He stepped back, folding knife catching the streetlight for a second, and grinned.

"Tch. I was going to play a bit first." I stared at the blood on my glove, then at the knife in his hand, and felt my mood drop straight through the floor. Up until then, there had been room for "break them up, walk her out." That was gone. Because once a blade comes out, the category changes. From harassment to assault. From disgusting to authorized. I took all the irritation and flippancy I'd been carrying and shut it down, then looked up at him.

"Is that so." My voice went cold.

"Then none of you are walking out of here." The next few minutes, there really wasn't much to say. Because it wasn't a fight. It was clean-up. The one with the knife, I went for his wrist first; one kick, blade flying, then an elbow to drive him into the bus sign. The one who came in from behind, I just threw over my shoulder. He landed head-first on the bench and didn't even manage a proper groan. Two more rushed me together.

I cracked the helmet into the one on the left, swept the legs out from under the one on the right, and when my heel came down on his hand, grinding for weight, I actually had the idle thought: Yeah, I'm going to be writing a report about this force level later. The blond idiot with the broken nose was still trying to get up. I grabbed his collar, dragged him in close, and hammered my knee into his stomach. His whole face compressed like someone was wringing out his guts. Sorry. I was in a very bad mood.

By then, the remaining ones had started to get scared. Which was normal. Most trash works like that. They think they can swarm, press, and borrow strength from numbers and darkness to turn sleaze into courage. But once they realize the person in front of them isn't going to cry, run, or fold—and is, in fact, going to take them apart piece by piece and return them to the ground—they suddenly remember: oh, right, I can actually feel pain too. Too late. The knife guy went for the blade on the ground again.

I put my heel on his wrist and pressed, hard enough that I heard something in his bones complain. He screamed. I just found him annoying.

"Now you remember how to yell?" I looked down at him.

"Didn't you feel pretty cool when you pulled the knife?" He was crying, snot and tears everywhere, beyond swearing. Behind me, Hedwig drew in a sharp breath. Probably because she'd finally realized that my usual bitching, sarcasm, and impatience weren't the same category as what I did when I actually flipped. I glanced over my shoulder at her.

"Back up." She did. Half a step. Good. At least she could listen when it mattered. By the time the last person still able to stand had eaten a fist and bounced off the van parked by the curb, the street finally went quiet. Well. Not completely. Seven different flavors of groaning filled the air, overlapped with the wail of sirens approaching from a distance, together composing a fine little night piece I would have titled Chorus for Trash After Failed Sorting.

I stood there, breathing hard, the side of my face burning. Blood had slid down along my jaw and cooled in the wind. The helmet's shell had cracked at one edge; it was ready to retire with honors. Great. Nobody died. My helmet died first. Hedwig watched me silently, then finally spoke, voice low.

"Hoshino…" I turned my head. Her face was still pale, a red mark still printed around her wrist from where she'd been grabbed. But her eyes were no longer just that brittle, forced calm from earlier. Something more complicated had moved in. Relief. A little delayed fear. And just a hint of something that really had no business showing up right now, but did anyway—dependence.

"Shut up," I cut in first, voice still harsh.

"If you dare say something like 'you came' right now, like we're in some romance novel, I'm shoving you straight into the car." Hedwig blinked. Then she actually swallowed whatever she'd been about to say. She just looked at me, lashes dipping.

"... All right." Which, of course, was even worse. The patrol car and ambulance arrived nearly back-to-back. Their lights blew the whole street wide open and overexposed, and only then did it really hit me that we'd officially crossed from "rescue" into "congratulations, you'll be making a statement" territory. Hild arrived a few seconds after the police. He stepped out, looked at Hedwig first.

Second, at the seven scattered bodies on the pavement—some clutching their faces, some curled around their guts, one on the edge of tears. Third, at me. For a heartbeat, something in his permanently frozen expression shifted. Like he was mentally reconciling cadet vice president with person who just soloed seven street parasites into ambulances. I wiped the blood off my cheek and spoke before he could.

"I found her. Took out the trash while I was at it. If the Empire wants to send a formal thank-you note, keep it short. I still have class tomorrow." Hild was silent for two seconds. In the end, he just said:"... It is enough that Her Highness is unharmed."

"You imperial types really don't know how to make small talk." He ignored me and crossed to Hedwig, speaking low to check her condition. Hedwig answered a few lines, but her eyes kept coming back to me. It was a hassle. When a princess who had almost been dragged off the street was looking at you like she'd parked something in your hands temporarily, you really didn't know whether to head for the infirmary or the nearest shrine for a charm. The police's attention shifted to me fairly quickly.

"You did this?" one officer asked, pointing at the bodies.

"Did they line up and slam themselves into the pavement out of a sudden attack of conscience?" I said. The officer clearly didn't appreciate my humor.

"Miss, I'm going to need you to cooperate."

"I am cooperating." I pointed to my own face, then to the folding knife on the ground.

"They pulled a blade first. I just handled things thoroughly enough that we'd only need one round of ambulance runs." Which was true. And also the problem—I'd handled it a little too thoroughly. One officer knelt to check on the injuries, his face growing more complicated by the second. The other kept looking between me, the knife, and the groaning heap on the asphalt, like he was having to rebuild his understanding of what "teenage girl" meant under Federal law.

I knew very well there was no way I was walking home tonight. Self-defense was one thing. Putting seven people in the hospital was another. Sure enough, the older officer came back after a bit, his tone gentler but his words anything but.

"You'll need to come in with us and help with the investigation." I shut my eyes for a beat. There it was.

"I figured." I swore under my breath, then looked up at him.

"We talking protective custody or formal holding?"

"Come back to the station and clear up the details first."

"Translated, that means I'm not sleeping on time tonight."

"... More or less." I let out a long breath and turned to Hedwig. She was standing by the car now, Hild's coat around her shoulders, quiet in a way that didn't match someone who had just nearly been abducted and watched seven people get medically retired. But I could see the calm in her eyes was tightly held in place.

"Go back," I said. She didn't move.

"But—""No buts." I cut her off.

"You've done more than enough damage for one night. Let me swallow the rest of this on my own." Her lips parted, like she wanted to say something. An apology, maybe. An explanation. Or something else that would definitely only make my head hurt more right now. So I added:"If you really feel that guilty, stop going for midnight walks." Hedwig went quiet for two seconds. Then she said, very softly:"... I'm sorry." I froze.

Out of her mouth, that sentence was rare enough to be logged in an astronomical observation record. I turned my head away, pretending the wind had gotten something into my eye.

"Good." Hild stood beside her and dipped his head to me, just a fraction. Small. Almost purely professional. But for someone as cold as a human beverage cooler, it was practically gratitude.

"I will handle the follow-up," he said.

"You'd better," I told him.

"If I'm still in the station tomorrow, the first person who'll be keeping score won't be the Empire. It'll be the Seitokai President." That, apparently, finally hit something even more urgent than imperial security in his risk model. Hild paused, then, very unusually, added:"... Understood." I almost laughed. Good. At least there was one universal constant in this galaxy. No one wanted to take a full, frontal hit from Maki Kushima. In the end, they put me in the patrol car.

No cuffs on like some perp being dragged away. More like: Miss, please stop physically interacting with other humans, we're going to separate you from the environment now. By the time I slid into the back seat, the blood on my face had half-dried, and my gloves were a crumpled mess. Through the window, I could see Hedwig still watching me. The lights made her skin even paler than usual, like a bad omen that had just been yanked out of the center of a problem, but had left half her soul behind. Perfect.

I'd wanted a normal evening. Dinner, home, a few barbed comments at Maki, shower, bed. Instead, I was riding in a police car in the middle of the night, headed to the station for a "chat," and my only real hope was that whoever came to pull me out tomorrow had enough leverage. My stable life was, as always, exquisitely fragile. As the car pulled away, I leaned back, and only then did the pain and exhaustion really seep in. The cut along my cheek throbbed. My knuckles were hot. But my head was unnervingly clear.