Chương 66: 27.Wrong Place, Wrong Time 27-2

A little further on was the botanical greenhouse. I'd heard it mentioned today. Simulated Old Earth temperate climate, supposedly. Full of things the Upper House liked looking at — flowers, research samples, moss that looked expensive and probably was. Not somewhere for Lower House to dry socks. I was about to turn back when light leaked from the greenhouse direction. Not normal lighting. Normal lights are whiter, harder — like an instructor's tone.

This was cold blue, like someone had ground broken moonlight into powder and dusted it across the glass. Filtered through the dome panels, pressed low by darkness, just enough to outline the greenhouse's blurred interior like a flooded specimen hall. Then I heard voices. Low. Held down. Two people who both knew they had no business being there, working hard to talk each other into plausibility. I wasn't interested at first.

The Academy never runs short of other people's secrets, or the corpses they eventually rot into. But when I stepped closer and made out one of the figures, my feet stopped on their own. Linde. General Affairs Officer Linde Hoffmann. Always behind the issuing window, glasses cold, voice cold, even his paperwork-rejection gesture was refrigerated. Hard to imagine someone like that doing anything besides form codes and denied applications. He wasn't wearing his glasses.

Rather, he was holding them — thin metal frames dangling from his fingers, catching that ice-blue light. The glow fell across his face, cutting something impossibly soft into features that usually had the thermal signature of official stationery. The person in front of him made me think I was seeing wrong. Freya Nikaido. Chair of the Disciplinary Committee. If Linde was a walking requisition form, Nikaido was a breathing detention cell.

Her collar always buttoned like it was welded shut, cap pulled low, gaze thin as a blade. When it swept past, you instinctively checked which regulation you'd just violated. Right now, she was holding her cap. The platinum hair usually pinned under the brim and regulations had fallen over her shoulders, resting quietly against her uniform jacket. Moonlight filtered through the greenhouse dome and hit her profile, making her look pale to the point of transparency. Like ice. Like illness.

Like something kept in a glass case labeled HAZARDOUS — DO NOT TOUCH. My first reaction wasn't shock. It was the urge to laugh. So the Chair of the Disciplinary Committee was human after all. That discovery felt rarer than seeing her without the cap. Linde stepped forward slowly, like he was afraid of startling something. He reached out and touched her arm. Nikaido didn't pull away. Her shoulders didn't even tense — like this distance wasn't new to her. I pressed tighter into shadow and raised the recorder.

Test shot. No shutter sound. Good. Old equipment occasionally still has dignity. The greenhouse circulation system hummed low like distant tide crawling along the floor. Plant shadows swayed on glass, enough to make your skin crawl. I adjusted focus. Looking back through the lens, Nikaido had stepped closer, her forehead resting lightly against Linde's chest. In that moment, I almost wanted to applaud the entire Academy.

The people who catch curfew violations by day violating rules this comprehensively by night — that was textbook-level institutional irony. Not photographing it would be disrespectful to everything General Affairs and Disciplinary had invested in my education. I took another shot. Cleaner angle this time. Linde's hand at her waist. Nikaido's cap hanging at her side, brim nearly brushing his sleeve.

They were too close to explain as "discussing business" — unless the Federation had switched document review to mouth-to-mouth protocol.

"…You've been too obvious lately." Linde's voice was pressed very low. Through glass and mechanical hum, I only caught fragments. Nikaido didn't answer immediately. Two seconds later, her voice came through — still cold, but without its usual rigid edge.

"You made a mess of it." I paused. A mess of what? The list? Graduation? Some other institutional rot? I couldn't hear everything, but that line was enough. Enough to upgrade this midnight greenhouse meeting from simple rule-breaking to evidence that could bury someone deep. Linde murmured something else. I only caught "graduation." Nikaido looked up at him. Her face showed nothing, but she didn't push away.

The quiet between them didn't feel like tentative beginnings — it felt like they'd already walked too far in, to where stepping back meant stepping on air. Then she kissed him. Brief. Brief enough to doubt your eyes. But Linde went completely rigid — even the hand at her side tightened for a fraction. I could practically see his usual death-mask expression cracking open in ways that were probably embarrassing. I took another shot. This one would be worth the most.

Nikaido in profile, platinum hair falling down her back, Linde's hand pressed to her waist, their shadows overlapping in ice-blue light. Even a bystander could see: no regulation in existence could whitewash that distance. The next second, gravel rolled out from under my foot. This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience. The sound was small. But in that kind of quiet, it was fatal. Nikaido's head snapped around.

"Who's there?" Her voice came back instantly — cold, direct, edged. Like the last few minutes had been a hallucination produced by oxygen deprivation. I pressed flat against the wall and held my breath. The recorder was flipped back into my sleeve, its corner digging into my wrist. Linde took two steps toward the other side, apparently trying to circle around to the greenhouse entrance. I used that moment to edge back, sliding along the building's shadow, my soles barely making a sound.

I didn't stop until I reached the corner. My heart was hammering like the final laps of morning runs when the instructor decides to add weighted vests. Both palms were slick with sweat, but the recorder sat solid in my grip, like a piece of iron just pulled from the fire that I absolutely could not drop. Should have bought more anti-sweat patches. I used the window when Linde turned to check the other direction, inching back along the wall base, keeping my soles flat, breathing as shallow as possible.

The recorder's edge bit into my palm, cold as metal just fished out of ice water.

"Someone outside?" Linde's voice, pressed very low.

"Not sure." Nikaido answered faster.

"Could be the wind." Educational line. The Chair of the Disciplinary Committee personally covering for the weather. The Federal Meteorological Bureau ought to give her a commendation. I only really exhaled when I made the corner, but didn't dare stop—kept moving along the rear building's exterior wall. The night lights cut pale white squares into the ground, like the institution had pre-assigned burial plots.

Every square I stepped over felt like walking away from an extremely expensive, extremely inadmissible accident scene with my life still attached. By the time I reached the dorm side and could hear someone arguing laundry quotas in the washroom, someone upstairs kicking over an empty can, I finally felt like I'd returned to the normal world—the one where everyone wants to die but still has to queue up to wash socks first. Before heading back to the room, I ducked into the far stall in the washroom.

Hardly anyone around at this hour. One light half-dead, glowing like a patient on life support. I locked the door, leaned against the sink, and pulled out the recorder. My hands were still trembling—not much, but enough to remind me that adrenaline stays invisible until it doesn't, and then it's very present indeed. First I muted the sound, then ejected the storage card. It sat in my palm, thin and black—like a regulation-sized improvised explosive.

In terms of actual value, everything I'd bought today—new gear, cola, snacks, light novels—none of it came close anymore. I slid the card back in and started reviewing the shots one by one. First frame: slightly blurred, angle too sharp, but faces identifiable. Second frame was the money shot.

Linde's profile clear, glasses off his face, Nikaido's cap hanging at her side, the two of them close enough to constitute a live demonstration for the entire Academy on the subject of What Disciplinary Failure Actually Looks Like. Third frame went for the throat. The angle of Nikaido's upturned face, Linde's hand at her waist—even I was sweating on behalf of the Academy's personnel system. This wasn't rumor anymore. This was embodiment.

The kind any reasonable person would look at and know immediately: these two aren't reviewing procedures. I stared at the tiny screen for two seconds and nearly laughed. The Federation Academy spends enormous effort training us to identify camouflage, traps, and suspicious targets. The most successful target identification of my entire enrollment happened outside a botanical greenhouse. I memorized the image sequence, then moved to the next problem. First principle was simple: this cannot stay in the device.

I pulled the card out, leaving a blank test card in the recorder—just a few casual shots of corridors, exit signs, and a vending machine from earlier. If someone grabbed the unit right now, they'd find a perfectly ordinary Lower House cadet who'd bought a new toy and gone for a late-night test shoot. Ordinary to the point of boring. As for the real card, I considered several locations. Boot sole? Too obvious—first place anyone checks in a real search. Under the soap dish?

Classic and actually effective, but moisture damage was a risk. If the card corrupted, I'd want to kill someone. My eyes landed on the bag of light novels. Absurdly long title, cheap cover, standard paper, rough binding—born with a face that announced no serious person should waste time on me. That was its greatest asset: high visibility paired with zero dignity. Nobody would believe anything important was hidden inside, because the book itself was already a joke.

I pulled out volume one of That Time the Editorial Department Lost Their Minds and Made This Light Novel Title So Long, worked a gap between the back cover and dust jacket, and slid the card flat into the space. Perfect fit. No bulge, no warp. Closed up, it looked exactly as it had before. If I hadn't done it myself, I'd never have guessed that a light novel with a title reading like a psychiatric case report was housing photographs capable of giving both Freya Nikaido and Linde Hoffmann matching aneurysms.

A lot of things in this world lack dignity. Occasionally they're also useful. With the evidence sorted, I turned to the next question. Who do I test first? Not confrontation. Definitely not pulling out the photographs right now—that approach was equivalent to using your own skull as an alarm bell. What I had wasn't valuable because it could blow something up immediately. It was valuable because I knew, they didn't know I knew, and I still had time. So this wasn't about exposure. It was about reconnaissance.

Reconnaissance on how far the rumor had spread. Reconnaissance on who actually knew something versus who was just guessing. Reconnaissance on whether the Nikaido-Linde situation was purely personal, or already tangled up with something dirtier. I ran through names. D? No. Not that he couldn't be trusted—he was too direct. Hand him half a suggestion and he was fully capable of asking at breakfast the next morning, in full voice, "So are Disciplinary and General Affairs actually sleeping together?"

and taking the entire floor down with him. That wasn't reconnaissance. That was broadcast suicide. Harvey? Technically the most reliable, tightest-lipped. But the problem was he was too sharp. One extra question and he'd immediately calculate that I might be holding something. That wasn't unusable—just not as a first move. Letting Harvey know early meant admitting I'd actually found something. I wasn't ready to show that card yet. Jess. I barely hesitated. Three reasons.

First, she was already in the information flow—laundry room, dispensary counter, mess hall, dorm corridor. Whispers from all those places eventually drifted her way, and she knew which ones to take seriously and which were just bored cadets spicing up their miserable lives with creative fiction. Second, she was smart, but not so immediately calculating that she'd fold me into the equation right away. Not yet. She'd watch first, guess first, complain first, then decide whether it was worth deeper investigation.

That made her the right first layer. Third, and most important—we were close enough that I could ask like casual conversation, not interrogation. Real intelligence work never looks like intelligence work at the start. It should sound like an offhand comment. Like a throwaway question following naturally after snacks, night checks, and tomorrow's schedule. Like something you had no reason to ask, but asked anyway because you were bored, couldn't keep your mouth shut, and were unfortunately still alive.

I pushed the light novel back to the bottom of the bag, thinking: I have no idea whether the editorial department had lost their minds, but tonight that book had provided genuinely excellent strategic storage infrastructure. Before heading back, I checked the mirror once. Color looked normal. Eyes looked fine—none of that particular brightness that comes from fresh crime scenes.

As long as I didn't stand in front of Nikaido staring like an idiot, tonight's business could stay folded in my pocket, a knife not yet drawn from its sheath. When I pushed back into the dorm, Jess was sitting cross-legged on her bunk, today's pharmacy haul spread before her, sorting supplies like she was pre-categorizing for disasters yet to happen. She looked up—first at my empty hands, then my face.

"Test shots done?"

"Yeah."

"Machine working?"

"Still alive. More reliable than certain administrative departments in this school." She snorted and didn't follow up. I tossed the recorder onto the desk, blank test card inside, then opened a pack of salted crackers and sat back on my bunk. The most valuable thing I'd bought today wasn't the cherry cola. It wasn't the light novels either. It was two adults who thought no one was watching.