Chương 81: 33.All Accounted For 33-1

When Maki Kushima spread that planning sheet across the desk, the room's atmosphere shifted instantly—from three girls arguing in a dorm to someone's about to hold an impromptu tactical briefing, no credit hours included. She didn't rush to start writing. First, she took the supply sheets that Jess and I had crumpled into chaos and smoothed them out one by one, sorting them by function. Food. Medical. Water purification. Shelter. Repair. Fire-starting. Fastening. Personal items.

My twelve cans of cherry cola and three light novels got isolated on the far right, like a batch of war criminals awaiting sentencing. I was immediately offended.

"What's with that look?" I tapped the desk.

"Don't look at them like battlefield trash. That's psychological sustenance."

"I'm not denying their function," Maki Kushima said evenly.

"I'm establishing their cost."

"Sounds exactly like denying them."

"Not denying. Pricing." She picked up her pen and wrote a line in the margin—neat enough that I briefly considered donating my notebooks as negative examples.

"No supply is a question of do we want to bring it. It's a question of what do we sacrifice to bring it." Jess sat on her bed with her chin on her knees, looking thoroughly entertained.

"Hoshino," she said cheerfully, "translated into human speech: every extra can of cola you drink might cost a life."

"Shut up."

"I'm just helping you process premium vocabulary." Maki Kushima was already moving. Not the fake kind of busy work—drawing circles and writing pretty headers. She pulled out our original four-person baseline sheet, wrote Current three-person configuration in the corner, and recalculated total weight, distributable weight, and individual load limits from scratch. I stood beside her watching, getting more irritated by the second. Because she wasn't showing off. She was dismantling the skeleton of my original list.

"Hold on—" I pressed my hand over a column she'd just crossed out.

"Why are you cutting the backup fire-starter from two sets to one and a half? What kind of math is one and a half?" Maki Kushima didn't even look up.

"Because if Harvey Knox's toolkit includes a standard spark module and dry tinder cores, you don't actually need a complete second hard-case fire-starter. One primary unit and one replacement core set is sufficient." I frowned.

"You haven't even seen Harvey's toolkit."

"I haven't seen it physically," she said.

"But if he's the equipment maintenance type as documented, and currently your most reliable repair asset, it's impossible he wouldn't have them." She said it with such matter-of-fact certainty that I couldn't find an angle to argue from. Jess delivered a leisurely finishing blow from the sidelines.

"That's some nasty logic, Hoshino. Translation: if Harvey didn't bring them, Harvey isn't reliable." I turned to look at her.

"Whose side are you on?"

"The entertaining side." …Of course. Completely unsurprising. Maki Kushima gently slid the paper back and kept writing.

"Next, water purification tablets. You've got standard per-person allocation plus three days reserve—total approaching nanny-level safety margins. Looks great for theory class. Looks terrible for actual load-bearing."

"Terrible is better than dead," I said.

"Which is why I'm not cutting them." She tapped another column with her pen.

"I'm redistributing. Half the tablets go into individual first-aid kits, half into shared supply. Prevents a single loss from wiping out the group's entire purification capacity." If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. I looked at that line and said nothing. Because… it made sense. Damn it. The more sense it made, the more infuriating it was.

Every revision she made followed the same logic—never textbook this is unnecessary, cut that—but always: When something goes wrong, what fails first? What failure drags the whole group down? What's genuinely important but doesn't justify its full weight? In short, she treated every piece of gear like something waiting to betray you. I hated that approach. It also felt strangely familiar.

Because this school had been teaching us exactly one thing— Anything that looks stable should be assumed to fail at the worst possible moment.

"Two rolls of medical tape isn't enough," Maki Kushima said. I perked up immediately.

"Oh? Finally caught you out. That's a field-tested configuration."

"It's not a quantity problem." She glanced at me.

"It's a type problem. You have one waterproof roll and two breathable support rolls. In high humidity, skin fails before bandaging does. The ratio needs to flip." Jess laughed so hard she nearly rolled off the bed.

"See, Hoshino? You finally met a woman who doesn't just tell you you're wrong—she can tell you exactly which item you bought wrong."

"Keep talking and I'll classify you as expendable assets."

"I love that classification. Very tactical." Maki Kushima ignored our noise entirely, pen moving rapidly down the sheet. She cut the redundant hard canteen, kept the collapsible water bag. My third light novel, which I'd tried to sneak in, got moved without ceremony to Not Recommended. But she shifted one of them into a new column: Stress Stabilization Supplies, with a handwritten note: One volume only. Rationale: emotional maintenance cost lower than weight penalty. I stared at that line for two seconds.

"…Are you filing my light novel for legal residency?"

"Yes," she said, perfectly calm.

"Because completely eliminating low-cost stabilization sources isn't necessarily efficient." I looked at her despite myself. This person had a problem. A very high-end problem. Jess was clearly delighted, holding her stomach laughing.

"Congratulations, Hoshino. Your On the Matter of Whether the Editorial Department Has Lost Their Minds, Given That This Light Novel's Title Is This Unreasonably Long has just been upgraded to official strategic asset."

"Don't read the full title like you're proud of it."

"I absolutely will." When Maki Kushima's pen reached the cola column, it finally paused. I went on high alert.

"Let's be clear—that's non-negotiable."

"It's not non-negotiable," she said.

"It's a bargaining zone."

"What's the difference?"

"Non-negotiable means it can't move." She looked up at me.

"But you already accepted keeping one light novel, which means you're willing to trade." I was momentarily speechless. Jess sucked in a delighted breath.

"She's got you, Hoshino. She clocked that you're the type who argues all the way down while making concessions."

"You're really asking for it today." Maki Kushima looked down and wrote a number in the cola column. 12 → 8 I reached out immediately.

"No." She didn't fight me for the pen. She just turned the sheet around and pointed to another column.

"Four cans in exchange for high-salt compressed rations and extra electrolyte powder. Not because cola is bad—because during high-heat depletion windows around firestorms, your body won't thank you for feeding it only sugar and artificial flavoring."

"I'll thank myself."

"Your kidneys won't." Jess coughed through a laugh. I glared at that number for three full seconds, then ground out:"Ten."

"Eight."

"Nine."

"Eight. The light novel was already a concession."

"…You're fucking insufferable."

"Thank you," she said.

"That means I'm still doing something right." I genuinely wanted to flip the chair. What was worse was knowing she was correct. So in the end, twelve cans of cherry cola were legally executed down to nine. She said eight, I said ten, and Jess played unprincipled mediator, saying then nine—a number that leaves everyone equally unhappy. And somehow, that actually stuck. And I accepted it. The humiliation of this fact stood on its own.

"Last item." Maki Kushima set down her pen and pushed the revised sheet toward me.

"Route responsibilities and night watch." I looked down. She'd taken the vague rotating we'd written and broken it into actual roles: First watch: Kushima Second watch: McCallow Equipment check and close-out: Knox Contact response and close-range action: Hoshino And beside it, she'd added one line: Decision order not to be determined by volume. I exploded on sight.

"Hey!" Jess collapsed backward laughing.

"She's coming for you specifically! She's absolutely targeting you!"

"This isn't targeting, it's objective documentation—" I slapped the desk. Maki Kushima looked up, expression infuriatingly calm.

"If you object to that phrasing, I can change it to not to be determined by speed of emotional escalation."

"Are you trying to get killed?"

"Hoshino," Jess wheezed, "version two is more accurate." I took one slow breath. Then another. Then one more. Fine. Stay calm. Can't strangle the marginally useful Upper House girl yet—she still has pages left to revise. I was lining up my next complaint when there was a knock at the door. Not Linde's panicked machine-gun knocking. Not Maki's earlier metronomic official knock. More like—someone who knew we were inside and couldn't be bothered to knock more than necessary. Knock. Knock.

"Hoshino." The voice from outside was as familiar as anything I owned, flat as a worn blade.

"If you're still alive, come out a second. That batch of quick-dry liners had sizing issues. I brought replacements." Jess and I both looked at the door. Her eyes lit up immediately.

"Oh—" she stretched the syllable, grinning with zero good intentions.

"Speak of the equipment bastard." My scalp prickled. Not because Harvey's timing was bad. Because it was too perfect. Maki was halfway through revising our supply sheet, the room still smelled of cherry cola and ink and that specific atmosphere of first contact that had almost—almost—resolved into something functional. Throwing Harvey into this was like dumping accelerant next to a campfire.

"Hold on." I signaled Maki to stay quiet and went to open the door. Harvey was standing outside. Same half-dead calm expression, holding a clear storage bag—replacement liners, two rolls of fresh tape, and components I couldn't identify but were probably there to prevent me from doing something inadvisable. His gray eyes came up, scanned me once, then moved past my shoulder into the room for exactly one second.