Chương 371: 162.As Always 1

I was on my bike, the Galactic Empire's Third Princess riding behind me, cutting through the evening expressway of the Galactic Federation's capital district. It was genuinely disastrous. Three things that belonged to three entirely different categories of joke, somehow strung together onto the same string. The evening transitway stretched ahead like a river of light someone had domesticated by force. Overhead, the freight lanes hummed in constant streams.

Farther out, the skyline was chopped into pieces by skybridges and holographic advertising — the Federation's signature aesthetic, extremely good at spending money, and even better at making you forget where it went. Glass. Light curtains. Maglev rails. Massive building volumes. The low-glow warning towers of the military-government district, far off in the middle distance. All of it stacked neatly together, like someone had turned the word civilization into an exhibition hall and started selling tickets.

Wind pushed at the edge of my helmet. Hedwig's voice came through the comm.

"Your capital... is quite beautiful." I almost said, on pure reflex, thanks, sponsored jointly by fiscal deficit and bureaucratic disease — and thought better of it.

"The Imperial capital's probably more beautiful," I said. Silence on the line for a beat. Then Hedwig admitted it, clean and direct.

"It is. If you're only looking at the palace, certainly." I couldn't help the small pull at the corner of my mouth. That was very Hedwig. No showing off, no false modesty — just stated flatly, like water flows downhill.

"But Asgard is more than just the palace." She stopped there. The pause was short — short enough that anyone who didn't know her might blame the comm lag. To me, it sounded exactly like someone braking, with real precision, right at the edge of a line she had no intention of crossing. I didn't push. Some things, if you don't ask, you can still pretend it was just manners. The moment you ask, you have to admit you actually wanted to know. And I'd already admitted too many unnecessary things today.

That I'd turned back. That I was giving her a ride. That I'd handed over the second helmet even after spending the whole ride telling myself it was inconvenient. So I chose the mature option. Which meant shutting up. Unfortunately, maturity has about a ten-second half-life.

"When I said 26 Platinum Bridge Street earlier — why did you react like that?" There it was. I'd known it was coming. Hands on the grips, watching the flow of headlights and guide lines ahead, I had a brief, genuine urge to pretend the comm had cut out. Too bad Hedwig wasn't Jess. Jess would've laughed first, then said oh, bad signal. Hedwig doesn't do that. Hedwig just waits, quietly, and that particular silence carries more pressure than any actual interrogation.

"Because I live across the street," I said. The second it was out, it felt too bare. Too much like a confession under questioning. So I added:"More precisely — I'm co-renting No. 22 with Maki and a few classmates." A soft sound of realization came through the comm.

"Oh. What a coincidence."

"Yeah." I kept my eyes on the road, expressionless.

"A real fucking coincidence." I could reasonably picture Colonel Leo Wiesland, at this exact moment, sneezing for no medical reason at all, somewhere in his office. Not a cold. Just someone, at a considerable distance, aiming a very specific and very personal curse across the city with enough resentment to cross spatial boundaries. How could it possibly line up this cleanly. The capital district was enormous. The administrative apparatus was endless.

There were dozens of designated residences for foreign dignitaries. And somehow they'd landed on 26 Platinum Bridge Street. If this was genuinely just coincidence, then starting tomorrow I'd be willing to believe every one of Dr. Steiner's compounds really did have scientifically valid fairy-tale subtitles. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. Wind scraped past on either side. Traffic slid along with us. Hedwig was quiet on the back seat for a moment.

Then:"In that case, I look forward to being in your care, Lieutenant Hoshino." I nearly steered us into the median.

"Don't talk about living across the street like you're formally onboarding into my life."

"Am I not?"

"No."

"I see." Perfectly calm. Calm enough to make me want to hit something. That's the thing about Hedwig — she never pushes back hard, never goes for cheap sarcasm. She just sets a completely ordinary-sounding sentence down in front of you and watches you set yourself on fire over it, entirely on your own. I ground my teeth.

"And living across the street doesn't mean you can show up whenever you feel like it."

"I understand."

"Good."

"I'll knock first." That wasn't the point. The worst part of that line was how genuinely cooperative she sounded. Not provoking, not twisting the knife — just since procedure matters to you, I'll follow procedure. Fuck. It made even being annoyed feel like I was the one throwing a tantrum. All I could do was roll the throttle a little harder and let the bike drift off the exit ramp toward the lower streets around Platinum Bridge.

The high-altitude lights of the city gradually gave way to the warmer glow of residential blocks — shop signs dropping lower, closer, looking more like a place actual people lived. Funny, really. A district holding tens of billions of people, and the only parts that ever felt like someone's life is happening here were these half-old, half-new neighborhoods. Platinum Bridge was exactly that kind of place. Just outside the Academy. Rent survivable. Close enough to the supply street and the campus. Transit decent.

Safety rating passable, provided you had the sense not to wander around at three in the morning. Bluntly: the kind of place where people with tight budgets, long problem lists, and strong opinions about quality of life — but no money to back them — eventually got kicked here by reality. And I was currently ferrying the Galactic Empire's Third Princess back into exactly that. Just picturing it made a blood vessel behind my eyes throb. Turning into the street, I saw the light outside No. 22 from a distance.

Not just the light. Someone was there. The first person I saw was Maki. Maki Kushima stood at the bottom of the steps outside No. 22, a convenience-store bag in one hand, the top open enough to show a loaf of bread and two cans. The night wind lifted the hair at her temple. Her posture was exactly what it always was — ordinary, quiet, like someone who'd simply stepped out to wait for a housemate to come home. The problem was: the more ordinary Maki looked, the more I wanted to die.

Because that usually meant the real danger hadn't started yet. She looked up, saw me, then her eyes dropped to the back seat. And stopped. No explosion in that second. No dramatic lightning in the background. But I swear I heard something in the air go click. I was done for. I hadn't even parked yet and I was already deciding whether the funeral flowers should be white or yellow.

"... Oh." Maki spoke first. One syllable. Just one. But the amount of information compressed into it could have funded an entire graduate seminar on human emotional compression technology. I killed the engine, pulled off my helmet, and gave a dry, half-suicidal laugh.

"I can explain."

"Hoshino." Maki looked at me, voice unhurried, almost level.

"Every time you say that, things have usually already passed the point where a good explanation exists." Right. No argument there. Hedwig slid off the back seat — clean, efficient, like the person who'd just ridden through the Federal capital's expressway behind me was an ordinary new classmate, not the Third Princess of the Galactic Empire. The problem was, she obviously wasn't. And the helmet on her head was, of all things, that helmet.

For one wild second I wanted to lunge forward, snatch it back, hide it behind me, and while I was at it, shoot out every camera on the street. Unfortunately, a person can't survive on ideals alone. Maki's gaze dropped naturally to the helmet. Held there half a second. Only half a second. But the pressure packed into it was enough to make me instantly replay every stupid decision I'd ever made in my life. Hedwig, of course, spoke first, with perfect manners.

"I am Hedwig von Wittelsbach. It seems I'll be living across the street. I look forward to your acquaintance." Maki looked at her.

"Maki Kushima. Likewise." Normal tone. Normal phrasing. Normal courtesy. At a moment like this, normal was the biggest anomaly in the room. I opened my mouth to smooth things over, and the second-floor window slammed open.

"WAIT — no way, seriously?!" Jess's voice went off like a flashbang with zero regard for the neighborhood's dignity, and what little of it the street had left evaporated on the spot.

"Hoshino, you went out for a check-in at Command and came back with the Princess on your back seat?! And she's wearing your—""Jess. Shut up." I shouted up at the window, genuinely tempted to rip the whole frame out with her still attached. She flinched. For half a second.

"I'm just showing concern for my roommate's love life—""This has nothing to do with anyone's love life!"

"That sentence makes it sound like it has everything to do with it!" I genuinely wanted to die. Maki let out a small breath — the kind that meant she'd already processed the situation, sorted it into categories, and was preparing to work through it item by item.

"Come inside," she said. To me. And to Hedwig. I blinked.

"Huh?" Maki lifted the bag slightly, expression unchanged.

"It's cold. Whatever needs explaining doesn't need to happen on the curb with Jess providing live commentary." A protest floated straight down from the window.

"I'm not providing commentary, I am bearing witness to history—""Jess." Maki didn't even look up.

"... Fine. Shutting up." Same two words. When I said them, it sounded like a street brawl. When Maki said them, it sounded like a court ruling. The gap was wide enough to file a formal complaint with the Ministry of Education. Hedwig looked at No. 22, then across at No. 26, then asked, perfectly level:"Would my coming in be an imposition?" Every alarm in my head went off at once. That line was too clean. It wasn't simple politeness — it was throwing the decision straight back.

If Maki said no, that was an invitation. If she said yes, it made No. 22 look petty. This woman had been across the street for maybe three minutes and already knew how to serve from the hardest possible angle. I looked at Maki. Maki was looking at Hedwig. Both of them quiet — the kind of quiet that looks, on the surface, like nothing more than doorstep small talk, while underneath, something I had zero interest in examining was already running, quietly wiring itself together through the air between them.

Then Maki smiled. Barely. Faint enough that a stranger would've read it as simple politeness. I knew better. That smile usually meant Maki had decided to get serious.

"Not at all," she said.

"Since Hoshino went to the trouble of bringing you here safely, the least we can do is offer a hot drink." Standing between them, I got a premonition — very clear, very ominous, entirely unromantic. The bloodbath had begun. And I was the unlucky patch of floor placed dead center of it.