Chương 372: 162.As Always 2

Honestly, once you've lived with No. 22 long enough, it's just what it is. The stairs are a little worn. The lock jams sometimes. The entry light shines like an act of charity some nights and dims like it's setting up a ghost story on others. The shoe rack never fits everyone's shoes. The umbrella stand permanently holds two broken folding umbrellas and one golf umbrella nobody remembers buying. In short: exactly what you'd expect from a household of cadets held together by shared rules and shared poverty.

But the moment I pushed the door open and let Hedwig step inside, No. 22 stopped feeling like just that. It felt like something with no business being here had swept a scanner-beam across the whole room. Not because Hedwig was radiating gold. The opposite, actually. It was precisely because, in that Federation uniform, she looked like she could genuinely belong to this world, that it felt wrong.

Like someone had taken a ceremonial blade — Imperial-issue, built for a display case — and quietly slotted it into our kitchen's knife block. Same blade. But the air pressure in the whole kitchen had changed.

"Pardon the intrusion." Hedwig said it standing in the entryway. Simple. Polite. I still cursed, internally. Fuck. The Third Princess, standing in my entryway, saying pardon the intrusion. Who writes this script.

"Not at all — come in." Maki answered first, tone as steady as if I'd just casually brought a normal classmate home, instead of ferrying an Imperial princess all the way from Joint Operations Command to Platinum Bridge Street. She set the bag by the table, bent down, and pulled a clean pair of house slippers from beside the rack. Smooth. Natural. I nearly applauded. That's the terrifying thing about Maki Kushima. Anyone else in this situation would've blue-screened for at least three seconds. Not Maki.

She processes there's a guest first, and decides afterward whether anything else needs handling.

"These are new. Wear these for now." She set them in front of Hedwig.

"The floor's cold."

"Thank you." Hedwig glanced down and changed shoes, unhurried. Maybe it was my imagination, but that one small motion — head bowed, swapping into house slippers — sent a wildly absurd thought through my skull: We're done for. She's actually in. The first head over the second-floor railing belonged to Jess.

"Wow—" She dragged the syllable out long enough to score the entire building.

"Hoshino, you leave for Command and come back with a complimentary princess for the house across the street? Is the Federation running some kind of loyalty program now?"

"No." I set my helmet on the cabinet, voice flat.

"And shut up."

"Half shut," Jess said, perfectly deadpan.

"Shut the other half."

"That's a gross violation of free spee—" Maki looked up. Jess swallowed the rest and pressed her mouth into a line. Good. At least one recipe in this household still worked. From the living room, a chair leg scraped the floor. Harvey, who'd been sitting at the table, looked up — at me first, then at Hedwig, then let his eyes settle on the helmet for half a second. He didn't ask anything. Just gave a calm nod.

"Welcome." Most people process shock first, then comprehension. Harvey processes acceptance first, and pieces the intelligence together privately, on his own time. By the window, Akari turned from a terminal screen that had been stuck on the same page for a while. She looked at Hedwig for two flat seconds, like a precision instrument recalculating the apartment's current population density and trouble coefficient.

"Enough chairs in here?" That was her opening line.

"There are," Maki said.

"Good." Akari nodded.

"If not, I've got a folding one in my room." There it was. The romance of the Lower House. Some households, faced with a princess at the door, think diplomacy, protocol, bloodlines. Ours thinks: do we have enough seating. Movement in the kitchen. Roy leaned out from behind the counter, mug in hand. Lan stood just behind him, shoulder nearly brushing his, sliding the kettle aside. Their proximity was too easy, their motions too synchronized. One look, and I moved my eyes elsewhere. Pike Six. The hotel. The door.

The hallway at night. Not a memory a cadet needed resurfacing right now. Thank you. Roy cleared his throat.

"... Extra cup?"

"Two," Lan said quickly, tone flat as a correction.

"Jess will steal one."

"I don't steal, that's strategic sampling," Jess protested from the stairs.

"You drank my cocoa down to battle damage last time," D's muffled voice came from the couch. Only then did I register that Dwight "D" Barkley was sunk deep into the corner of the sofa, probably too stunned by the entryway chaos to get a word in. He raised his heavy face, looked at Hedwig, then at me, expression grave enough to be evaluating a war-game outcome. After about three seconds of serious consideration, he delivered his conclusion.

"Oh." Perfect. Its own kind of stability. Hedwig stood at the border between entryway and living room, quietly taking it all in. Maki fetching cups. Jess half-suppressed on the stairs. Harvey watching me with a look that said I know there's a story here but I can't be bothered to dig it out yet. Akari running backup logistics on furniture. Roy and Lan showing far too much synergy in the kitchen. D sitting there like a reliable, easily overlooked low-pressure system. That's No. 22. A mess. Too many people.

Too much stuff. Too many secrets. Everyone with their own damage, all of it amplifying together — and somehow, precisely because there was so much of it, some kind of balance held. Like a ship patched together with tape, loose screws, and everyone's bad habits. Wrecked. But it sails. Hedwig finally spoke.

"It's... livelier than I expected." Jess jumped straight in.

"This is the streamlined version. It was worse before the Upper House seniors moved out for third year." Streamlined version. Hearing it, something complicated moved under my ribs. She wasn't wrong. Since Ash, Aida, and Evelyn ended their leases and left, No. 22 had more room — and the absences were more visible for it. Empty bunks, empty shelves, a table set for fewer people. All of it a clear reminder: this place was never fixed. People cycled through. Some things stayed behind unsaid.

Maki came back with the drinks, one in front of Hedwig, one handed to me. Heat bled through the ceramic into my fingertips, irritating me for no good reason.

"Thank you," Hedwig said.

"Don't mention it." Maki sat across from her, easy in her posture.

"The place across the street must still be a mess — big day, I'd guess."

"Yes. My staff and your government's people are handling it." Hedwig set the bag with her Imperial uniform by her feet, tone level.

"I was simply dropped off here first." I nearly scalded my tongue. Dropped off here first? That was a strange way to put it. This wasn't a temporary storage locker for royalty. And yet — nobody in No. 22 seemed to find anything wrong with the sentence. Jess even wore the face that said ah, I see, got it. I badly wanted to know what Jess thought she'd gotten, and also badly didn't.

That face only ever meant one of two things: the situation genuinely made sense, or it was deeply strange and Jess had decided to treat it as sensible for now, purely so she could weaponize it against me later. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. Neither option was good. Maki smiled faintly.

"Then the timing's good," she said.

"Until things settle across the street, knowing how our door works isn't a bad thing to have." Hedwig looked up at her.

"May I?" Level. Direct. No real heat behind it. But the air tightened, just a fraction, in that instant. Sitting between them, watching Maki, watching Hedwig, watching the drink in my hands, I felt exactly like I'd been calmly lowered into a pot that hadn't started boiling yet. Maki stayed perfectly composed.

"Of course," she said.

"You live across the street. We'll be seeing each other one way or another." From the stairs, Jess let out a small, ambiguous "oh—" and swallowed the rest under one look from Harvey. Hedwig nodded.

"Then I'm in your care." I drank. Too hot. Hot enough that I nearly swore. I didn't. I just felt the heat slide down my throat and understood, with total clarity: Hedwig wasn't here for a look around. This wasn't a courtesy stop. The address across the street was real. This door opening tonight was real. And starting now, No. 22 — a boat that wasn't stable to begin with — was carrying one more piece of cargo: extremely valuable, extremely troublesome, and apparently unaware of either quality.... Fuck.

I just hoped the rent wouldn't go up because of this. The door closed with a soft click. Just once. And somehow, after that single sound landed, all of No. 22 slid into a strange, narrow silence. Not real quiet — this place is incapable of that. The fridge hummed low. The kettle had just clicked off. Somewhere upstairs, some ancient fan nobody claimed ownership of ground on, sounding one step from expiring. Even so, I could feel it, with total clarity: Every set of eyes in the room was on me.... Fuck.

Standing in the middle of the living room with my cup, I felt less like I'd just seen Hedwig off and more like I'd personally wired a timed explosive to the doorframe, and the whole house was now lining up to ask: excuse me, how many seconds until this goes off — or is it already going off? The first detonation, of course, was Jess.

"All right, starting now!" She bounced down the stairs like the silence order from five minutes ago had never happened.

"Post-incident debrief, item one — Hoshino Shimo, did you go to Joint Operations Command to check in, or to pick up the Empire's Third Princess for home delivery?"

"Neither," I said, flat.

"Then what was that on your back seat? The Federation's latest standard-issue supply drop?"

"If the Federation's gotten poor enough to hand out princesses as freebies, this country's closer to collapse than I thought."

"But you brought her home."

"It was on the way."

"On the way from Command, to 26 Platinum Bridge Street, with her riding your back seat, wearing your spare helmet?" She paused deliberately, wearing the exact expression I knew too well — the one that always made me want to bury her in the flowerbed.

"—Wasn't that helmet originally for Maki?" The cup in my hands nearly cracked.

"Jess," I said, evenly.

"Mm?"

"You'd better let your eyes take shifts sleeping tonight." She lit up instantly, delighted. That's Jess McCallow. A woman who treats other people's social death as daily entertainment, and conscientiously follows up with an observation log. Harvey had stayed quiet this whole time, tool pen still in hand. Normally that kind of silence would be reassuring. With Harvey, it just meant he was waiting for you to bury yourself deep enough that he could finish the job with a single shovelful of dirt.

Sure enough, he looked up, voice level as an equipment check.

"Did the helmet fit?" It took me a second.

"... What?"

"Hedwig." His tone stayed level.

"You bought that spare to Maki's measurements, didn't you? It didn't look loose on Hedwig, so their head size must be close." I went quiet for two seconds. This man wasn't here to rescue me. This man was here to file a technical appendix. And the worst part was, there wasn't a shred of malice in it. He was simply, rationally, meticulously supplying additional data — a precision instrument built for the specific purpose of making you more uncomfortable.

"Thank you for the valuable sizing note," I said, dead flat.

"I'd almost managed to forget it. Now I won't." Harvey nodded.

"You're welcome." No. I wasn't thanking him. On the couch, D finally finished chewing through the situation, half a beat late as always. Mug in both hands, brow furrowed, working through it like a live-fire debrief. After roughly three seconds, he arrived at his conclusion.

"So there's a princess living across the street now." The room paused. I looked at him and, for a second, genuinely felt like crying. Not out of gratitude. Because that sentence was, somehow, the cleanest, least weaponized, most factually accurate summary anyone had offered all night.

"Yes," I said.

"There's a princess across the street. Congratulations, everyone. Life at 22 Platinum Bridge Street has officially been upgraded to an international incident." D nodded slowly, like accepting a cruel twist of fate.

"Oh." There it was again. That man is genuinely something else. Half the things that pass through his mouth come out sounding like an irrefutable, objective disaster bulletin. Fire. Blackout. Equipment shortage. Or — a princess across the street. Akari, by the window, pushed her glasses up and let her eyes settle on me.

"Clarifying one point," she said.

"Is Her Highness the Third Princess living across the street, or going to be coming over often?"

"Currently the former," I shot back.

"Currently is a very interesting word," Akari noted, calm.

"Don't pick up Maki's habit of parsing word choice. It's terrifying."

"Terrifying usually means effective." These people are all weirdos independently. It's only when the target becomes me that they suddenly demonstrate a level of teamwork I find deeply unpleasant. That's cohabitation for you. Or shared malice. In the kitchen, Roy washed his cup and set it on the rack, graciously opting out of front-line combat. Lan wiped the counter beside him, equally silent. Both of them nearly faded into the background.

Maybe it's some inherited psychological damage on my part, but every time I catch Roy and Lan in the same frame looking this natural together, my brain automatically supplies Pike Six — that door, that wall lamp, that angle of hallway I was never supposed to see. I looked away immediately. No. This house cannot process two categories of secret at once. Not tonight, at least. Jess, naturally, caught the pause.

"Oh—" She dragged it out, face lighting up.

"Hoshino, that look just now was very suspicious."

"The look I'm giving you right now is also very suspicious. Want to analyze that one instead?"

"I don't analyze. I specialize in fanning flames." Almost admirably honest, that one. Only then did Maki finally set her still-steaming cup down. Clk. Not loud. But the whole living room pulled back half an inch on its own. Not because Maki did anything. Because everyone here knew: when Maki Kushima actually decides to speak, it usually means the chaos is about to shift from farce into systematically cataloged farce. She looked at me.

"Setting the helmet aside for now." I nearly choked on my own spit. Setting aside. Does she know that phrase is worse than actually bringing it up? It's exactly like a judge saying we'll leave the most serious charge for later — meaning every charge before it can still nail you flat.

"Is everything at Command settled?"

"More or less." I cleared my throat, deciding to report while I was still alive to do it.

"Hedwig's placed in the Lower House. Housing's across the street. Enrollment and residence are both Federation-arranged. And tonight was just her stopping in — not a formal visit."

"Just stopping in," Jess repeated instantly.

"And you picked her up on your motorcycle."

"Because she'd been left waiting at the door."

"So you went soft."

"I did not."

"Then why'd you turn back?"

"..." I stalled. Damn it. Right. Why had I turned back. In my own head, the whole sequence had been perfectly clean: rode out, felt something off, circled back, confirmed she was exactly where I'd left her, then — basic decency plus a healthy dose of Federal embarrassment — gave her a lift. Perfectly reasonable. So reasonable I hadn't even thought it needed defending at the time. Then Jess compressed the entire thing into one line: Then why'd you turn back?

And suddenly the whole sequence sounded like a choice loaded with personal intent, private feeling, and content unsuitable for reading aloud in mixed company. I opened my mouth. What came out was stiff.

"Because she was still standing there." Jess blinked.

"So you couldn't leave her."

"I did not say I couldn't leave her."

"Then what was it? Civic responsibility for the Federation's streetscape?"

"Yes. Exactly that."

"Hoshino," Harvey said, level as a technical report, "are you aware that excuse sounds even more like couldn't leave her than actually saying couldn't leave her would?" I sincerely believe that if I ever bury certain members of this household in the backyard, it shouldn't count as a criminal case. It should count as natural selection. Maki took a sip of her drink, not smiling much — just the faintest movement at the corner of her mouth. Very brief. But I saw it. Done for. Even Maki was laughing at me.

The thing I hate most in this world is being seen through, and then getting that particular look back — fine, I know, I'm not going to say it out loud yet — which somehow sits worse than an outright verdict.

"Anyway," I said, dragging the subject back onto any kind of track by force.

"Starting today, an Imperial Third Princess lives across the street. This is trouble. Serious trouble. Everyone please pretend you don't know. No staring, no gossip, and absolutely no behavior that turns this building into a campus tourist attraction." Jess raised her hand.

"Question."

"Denied."

"What if she comes over on her own?"

"..." I took a slow breath. That question was infuriatingly practical. Practical enough that I didn't want to answer it.

"Then... we handle it normally," I said.

"Which normal?" Akari pressed, with real academic rigor.

"No. 22's everyday normal, or our open-for-guests normal? Those two have a significant standard deviation."

"We have an open-for-guests mode?"

"We do," Harvey said flatly.

"It consists of gagging Jess first."

"That is a gross overreaction!"

"No," Roy called from the kitchen.

"I think it's the most cost-effective security measure this house has." Lan folded the dish towel and nodded.

"Agreed." Jess stared at all of them, the very picture of someone who'd just been collectively betrayed. Nobody paid her any attention. I leaned back in my chair, suddenly tired. Not the physical kind. The other kind — where you go out for a single check-in and come home to find your life quietly updated with three new chapters, two side-quests, and one high-risk new neighbor.

"Still," D said, mug in both hands, delivering his conclusion at his usual half-beat delay, "at least she doesn't seem like a bad person." The living room paused. This time, even Jess didn't jump in. I looked down at what was left in my cup. Two seconds passed.

"... I know," I said, low. That was exactly the problem. If Hedwig had been arrogant, stupid, drowning in entitlement, treating everyone as background scenery — this would be simple. Dislike her, guard against her, keep your distance. Easy. But she wasn't. Hedwig was the kind of person who carries her own plastic bag of old Imperial uniforms and stands outside Joint Operations Command waiting for a ride that hasn't come.

Who says, without a shred of self-pity, that years at an Imperial academy taught her nothing but which fork to use. Who stands in our entryway in a Federation uniform and says pardon the intrusion to Maki Kushima. Who, when I asked in the most embarrassingly oily tone possible whether she wanted a ride, sat down on the back seat without blinking. That type is the worst. Because you can't flatten her into a single position. And you can't comfortably hate her, either.

"Hoshino." Maki said my name. I looked up. Her expression was steady, like the entire siege that had just happened was a necessary formality, and now, finally, we'd reached the part that actually mattered.

"Who lives across the street isn't your decision."

"I know."

"Whether she comes over often isn't yours alone to decide, either."

"... I know that too."

"So stop scaring yourself ahead of schedule." I went quiet. Not comfort. Not an order. More like someone reaching over, catching your brain right as it was about to fly off the table, and setting it back down in front of you: not that far. Not tonight, anyway. I pulled one corner of my mouth up.

"Put that way, it sounds like the whole trip today was wasted effort."

"No." Maki's smile stayed faint.

"You got her here safely, at least." Jess produced another deliberately drawn-out "oh—". This time I didn't need anyone to stop her. I just looked straight at her.

"Say oh one more time, and tomorrow I'm sending that secret photo collection of Harvey sleeping on your terminal straight to the man himself." Jess turned instantly to stone. Harvey slowly turned his head.

"... What collection." The living room went dead silent for two seconds. Then Jess took one enormous step backward from the stairs.

"Wait — Hoshino — family doesn't hurt family—" I finally laughed. Not because I was in a particularly good mood. Purely because, in the middle of this entire chaotic mess, finding someone who was going to die before I did felt like something worth cherishing.

And as Jess began plotting her doomed escape, Harvey rose from his chair with no expression whatsoever, and D sat there holding his cup, seriously weighing whether secretly taken sleeping photos counted as classified military intelligence — I thought, for one second, that maybe tonight wasn't so bad after all.