Chương 67: 27.Wrong Place, Wrong Time 27-3

My first thought upon waking was that I'd actually managed to sleep. Which was, admittedly, a little pathetic.

By all rights, if you spend your previous evening stumbling across the Chair of the Disciplinary Committee and the General Affairs Officer turning Academy regulations into decorative suggestions inside a botanical greenhouse—and incidentally photographing sufficient evidence to spike the blood pressure of the entire Disciplinary Committee—you ought to have insomnia, nightmares, or at minimum wake up three times to confirm you hadn't hidden that memory card somewhere catastrophically stupid. I hadn't.

Sleep wasn't great, but it wasn't a disaster either. Probably because the Federation's approach to physical destruction has always prized efficiency. Heavy armor class, off-campus supply run, hauling gear back, dividing spoils, then a midnight circuit to test-shoot the rear buildings and accidentally stumble into a high-level institutional incident—run that sequence, and no matter how tight your nerves are, your body will vote to shut down first. I sat up. The first thing I did was check the bag of light novels.

Still there. That Time the Editorial Department Lost Their Minds and Made This Light Novel Title So Long sat quietly at the bottom, looking exactly as cheap, tacky, and unthreatening as before. Nobody would know that the tiny gap between the back cover and dust jacket currently housed photographs capable of giving both Freya Nikaido and Linde Hoffmann simultaneous strokes. That improved my mood somewhat. The dorm was still quiet—not empty, just restrained. Someone tying their hair at the bunk edge.

Someone turning over under blankets. Someone dragging boots closer to their bed. A room full of people who knew exactly what they were going back to today, carving out a few final minutes of feeling human before the machine swallowed them again. I got up and started dressing. The quick-dry liner from yesterday was infinitely better than standard issue—at least it didn't make me wonder at 0600 whether the quartermaster had financial arrangements with sandpaper manufacturers.

The new socks felt normal in ways standard-issue socks never did, without that special sensation of actively cultivating blisters as a personal project. The double-layer belt locked down solid when I buckled it, unlike the issued version that started questioning its life choices after three minutes of running. I tightened my knee straps and clipped the new filter pouch to the side attachment point. Not because today had anything special scheduled. Just that I was starting to understand Harvey's advice.

Replace the parts that'll kill you first. Practical in a way that carried no warmth and no malice—just the bare structure of useful fact. Jess on the opposite bunk was already up, sitting on the edge tying her hair. She scanned me—liner, belt, straps—and nodded.

"You actually look like a person today." I pulled my jacket zipper halfway up.

"I didn't yesterday?"

"Yesterday you looked like someone whose own gear was going to finish her off before third period." I looked at her.

"Your encouragement has real texture."

"Can't help it. The Academy doesn't cultivate optimism. It cultivates accuracy." The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Hard to argue with. The dorm stirred around us. Voices started in the corridor. Plastic cups hitting metal sinks echoed from the washroom. The PA system's pre-activation hum rose from somewhere distant, like massive industrial equipment warming up, preparing to schedule our daily consumption. I picked up the light novel again.

That Time the Editorial Department Lost Their Minds and Made This Light Novel Title So Long. Just reading the title felt like witnessing a minor accident. I stared at it for two seconds, then pushed it back to the bottom of the bag with yesterday's snacks and shoved the whole thing to the back of my locker. Not buried deep, not obviously hidden. The more important something is, the less it should look like you're afraid of losing it. Basic operational logic.

I shut the locker and ran through today's schedule in my head. First period: Tactical Theory. The name alone was soporific. Tactical Theory's greatest achievement wasn't what it actually taught. It was the extraordinary efficiency with which it convinced your remaining living brain cells to voluntarily shut down.

The instructor would stand up front in that unnervingly steady voice that had no business existing in human society before 0800, walking through standard breach angles, textbook compartment progression, theoretical fire distribution models—all those answers that looked immaculate on paper and got half-destroyed by reality the moment they touched an actual situation. My only hope for this class was that it would be boring enough. Boring enough that I could prop my head up and quietly think about other things.

Like whether last night's photographs were sharp enough. Like whether Nikaido would look off today. Like whether Linde could still stand behind the General Affairs window looking like the most normal person in the school. Like when exactly I should start testing Jess—casually, without leaving marks. That thought almost made me smile. Twenty-four hours ago, my biggest problems were shoulder straps from heavy armor class, shopping lists, and whether to haul two dozen cherry colas back in one trip.

Now the list had expanded to include one Disciplinary Committee Chair, one General Affairs Officer, and a memory card currently residing in a light novel that had no intention of seeing daylight. Life planning really shouldn't be done too far in advance. The morning assembly whistle came fast. Cold, direct, no room for negotiation—like someone standing next to every eardrum reminding us: time's up, personal hours are over, you may now proceed to be today's consumables.

I grabbed my textbook and clipboard and walked out with Jess. The corridor was filling. Grey uniforms, footsteps, low complaints, someone cramming the last of a nutrition bar into their mouth mid-stride. The stairwell smelled of cleaning fluid, dry fabric, cheap shampoo, and insufficient sleep. If the Academy ever registered that combination as an official fragrance, I'd suggest calling it Youth Pre-Mortality. We went downstairs, through the assembly area in front of the dorms, toward the academic building.

The sky was up. Thin clouds, morning light clean and slightly cold. The building facades came out white under it, ground markings sharp to the point of severity. Whatever looseness yesterday's off-campus run had introduced was mostly gone. The Academy had recalibrated back into the machine I knew: orderly, punctual, expressionless—as if yesterday everyone had simply been let out of the box briefly for air, and today was back to assigned slots. Jess walked beside me, looking down at her schedule.

"First period, Tactical Theory. How thoughtful of the Academy to arrange such dignified mental euthanasia first thing in the morning." I grunted.

"At least we don't have to run."

"Right. We just sit there and watch the instructor deliver standard compartment-clearing procedures like a funeral eulogy." We were almost at the plaza in front of the academic building when the PA system fired. First, a short tone. Then that voice—always neutral, always calibrated, never carrying an unnecessary syllable of feeling—dropped cleanly from every direction at once.

"Lower House cadet, Hoshino Shimo—" My pace broke for a step. The broadcast didn't pause, smooth and worse for it.

"Please report to the faculty office immediately. Repeating: Lower House cadet, Hoshino Shimo, please report to the faculty office immediately." I stood there. The clipboard in my hand suddenly felt entirely ornamental. People kept moving around me, kept talking. Some didn't even register what that kind of announcement does to one specific person's heart rate. The morning light stayed the same. The wind stayed the same.

The Academy continued operating as if nothing had happened, because for everyone else, nothing had. But in that moment, several possibilities had already cycled through my head. Follow-up paperwork from the off-campus day. An instructor calling someone in. Some bureaucratic registration procedure. Or— I didn't let myself finish that one. Because when something is actually wrong, it doesn't need you to think it through. It walks over on its own. Jess turned her head slowly and looked at me.

"…Oh." I stared down the long corridor toward the administrative building and let out a breath.

"I'd rather go sit through that boring Tactical Theory class right now." Jess nodded.

"Congratulations. You don't even get that today." I tucked the clipboard under my arm, turned, and started walking toward the faculty office. The morning light was very bright. Bright enough that every pane of glass looked like it was watching.