Chương 391: 177.Police Station 2

First time in a police station— Oh, excuse me. This wasn't the first time. By the time they walked me into the Dunan Capital District Precinct, the first thing that rose in my mind wasn't fear or regret. It was a flat, almost irritated sense of déjà vu. For example: The harsh white lighting behind the front desk that always made it feel like your entire life was on trial.

Or: The way the duty officer looked me over from head to toe and back again, eyes full of that particular doubt that says, how did something that looks like an underage girl put seven people in ambulances? And: That initial attempt to handle everything like a civilized society, followed shortly by the realization that civilization was usually just chaos in a well-pressed jacket. They'd said no cuffs at first.

Technically, they had plenty—knife at the scene, witnesses, Hedwig, her guard captain, the driver, street cameras working overtime like they'd been chasing a year-end bonus. On paper, a person like me—who'd gone overboard but still hypothetically fell under self-defense—ought to get hauled in for a statement, dumped into a waiting room, loaded up with coffee that tasted like someone had strained it through paper pulp, and then released into the custody of the school or some responsible adult.

That was what I thought too. Until the duty officer pulled up my record. I watched his face, which had been arranged in the classic Miss, please cooperate with the process expression, spend three seconds looking at the terminal— Then lock into something else entirely. First freeze. Then go stiff. Finally settle into an expression that really didn't belong on an officer of the law: Holy shit. Yes, that one. Not respect. Not fear.

More like: Did I almost just bring a high-risk asset into my station under the category of "lost student"? I didn't need to see the screen to know what he'd found. The Talrand death-row report. Homicide charges. Criminal record. Frontline deployment. Forty-something Imperial soldiers cut down in a single battle. And several more entries with classified black bars thick enough to swallow a person.

It was like you opened what you thought was a student's make-up test file and found battlefield clearance reports and half a black dossier attached. Wanting to revisit your handling approach was understandable. I wasn't unreasonable. So I played along. I lifted my hands as the officer stared at me with that stapled-on holy shit face.

"... what's with that look?" I asked, generous enough to match the mood.

"If you're going to cuff me, get on with it. Standing there hesitating just makes it look like I'm embarrassed on your behalf." He clearly hadn't expected that. He blinked, then muttered:"It's procedure."

"I know." I flexed my wrists.

"Make it quick. I'm already tired." That particular wish was granted promptly. Click. When the metal closed around my wrists, I actually felt a strange little flash of nostalgia. …Not exactly the sort of thing you record in a wholesome coming-of-age memoir. The young officer walking me in stayed very, very quiet. Quiet like he was afraid I'd use the cuffs to dismantle the table, then rearrange the entire station. I couldn't help looking over at him.

"Why are you acting like you're trying to keep three meters of minimum safe distance from me?" Your throat moved.

"I'm not."

"You are."

"…"

"Relax." I leaned back in the chair, being as reassuring as I knew how.

"I'm too tired to redecorate the station." Your face drained another shade. Good. My comforting skills were, as always, deeply educational. The interrogation room was even uglier than I remembered. White walls. Metal table. Two chairs. One light designed to make you feel like you were being prepped for dissection. These rooms weren't built for questions. They were built to make you wonder if you'd been a mistake from birth. My interviewers came in a pair: one older, one younger.

The older one had deep eye-bags and a face that read I've handled worse than you. The younger looked like he'd walked out of the academy last week, uniform sharp, expression stuck around I know I'm supposed to stay calm, but the person in front of me just hospitalized seven assholes. They sat me down, cuffs still on. The older one opened a folder and glanced up at me.

"Hoshino Shimo?"

"For the moment."

"Tonight, near the bus stop by the Second Vocational School perimeter, you and seven injured parties were involved in an altercation—""Correction." I lifted my hands.

"Seven pieces of trash, not seven injured parties. The injuries are the result. Trash is the baseline." The younger officer's pen stalled halfway. The older one stared at me and, instead of snapping, looked almost like he'd just confirmed something.

"You're very articulate."

"Years of training," I said.

"Then you should also know it's in your best interest to lay things out clearly."

"I'd love to." I leaned back and answered politely.

"So let's start by fixing the terminology. Was it 'an altercation'? Or was it 'they surrounded someone, grabbed her, produced a knife, and I intervened'? Those two versions go very differently once they enter the system." The older officer was quiet for two seconds. Good. First volley, returned. The first rule of counter-interrogation is simple: Don't let them define the event. They say "altercation," it suggests a mutual brawl. I say "intervened against grabbing and knife-brandishing," it becomes something else.

It wasn't a word game. It was about nailing down who crossed the line first. Places like this thrived on ambiguity. Blur the edges and responsibility became easier to distribute. Unfortunately, I had always taken a very dim view of being used for equal-opportunity liability sharing. The older officer set his pen down on the table. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"Fine. Then you talk. From the beginning."

"From the beginning is long," I said.

"And you already have half of it in your files. Hedwig left dinner, we split. The driver was supposed to pick her up and didn't see her. Her guard came to 22, confirmed she wasn't there. We split up to search. You should have the timestamps on all that." The younger officer nodded on reflex, then realized he probably shouldn't be nodding along to a suspect's narrative and physically pulled his neck back. I almost laughed. Second rule of counter-interrogation: Answer only within the necessary scope.

Let them admit what they already know. I didn't need to fill in the whole story. Whatever they had, they could say it themselves. That way, every word I added landed with weight, instead of me gift-wrapping myself into a neat little package and handing it over. The older officer watched me, looking like he finally understood how a girl who still looked like a student could have ended up with so much material on a planetary criminal file.

"And after that?"

"I found her at a side-line bus stop near the Second Voc perimeter." I said.

"Seven males surrounding her. At least one already had a grip on her wrist. Another had a folding knife out. Pay attention to the order: they circle, grab, and pull a blade—then I step in." The younger officer couldn't help himself.

"But judging from the scene report, you…didn't hold back."

"That, I agree with," I said.

"If you want to write 'excessive force,' I won't object. As long as you clearly record on what grounds I used it. Don't make the knife and the grabbing disappear and leave just 'she sent them to the hospital.' That's not a statement. That's creative writing." The older officer studied me for a long moment.

"You've had counter-interrogation training before?" I blinked at him.

"Which kind? The formal course, or the kind people pick up if they want to survive coming back?" The younger officer sucked in a breath. The older one didn't press. He just noted something down. I doubted it was complimentary; probably something like response skills advanced, lexical sensitivity high, do not process as standard juvenile case. Wonderful. Exactly the kind of glowing reviews I'd always wanted in government systems.

We spent the next half hour in that precise, polite, mutual-strangulation atmosphere finishing the first round. They asked about the order I hit people in; I broke down exactly who grabbed first, who flashed the blade, how I initially intended to walk her out, and at which point I stopped being willing to play along. They asked why I'd gone that hard and I told them:"Because if I only made them hurt, they'd have been back on their feet in two minutes." This was the truth.

And the truth, in places like this, usually sounded very unwelcome. Midway through, the younger officer clearly couldn't hold it in.

"You could've just pulled her away, so why—""Because they didn't let me," I cut in, looking him straight in the eye.

"And before you ask me why I didn't just walk away with her, maybe first ask those seven pieces of trash why they didn't walk away the first time they were told." His mouth opened. No words came out. The older officer showed, for the first time, a flicker of something that looked a lot like tiredness.

"You don't like being led."

"Who does?" I said.

"Especially when I'm the one still bleeding." That was probably the most persuasive line I'd delivered all night. Because the older officer finally seemed to remember I wasn't sitting there intact and arguing for sport; I had an actual cut on my face, my knuckles were swollen, and there was dried blood on my sleeve. Civilized society always worked like this. They would ask first why you'd hit someone so hard, and only half a beat later remember—oh, right, you were bleeding too.

Once the first written statement was done, they didn't release me. Naturally. Out of seven, there were fractures, concussions, and one confirmed broken nose. Until the hospital finished reporting back, the police weren't in a position to treat me as a standard witness who got a pat on the shoulder and a thanks for your time. So I was held. Not in one of those photogenic barred cells—after all, I was technically a student, with a school and an imperial princess attached to the file.

Call it "protective custody" or "continuing to assist the investigation," it all meant the same thing: No sleep for you tonight. Fantastic. They parked me in a small, institutionally cold room. Someone did a basic patch-job on my cheek. The cuffs got swapped for something closer to we know you're not going to tear the door off right this second, but we're staying cautious. Outside the window, the sky slowly turned white. I sat there with my back to the wall, more awake than I wanted to be.

Not because I was in good shape. Because once things went quiet, the earlier scenes started rewinding on their own. Hedwig at the bus stop. The red mark on her wrist. The half-formed sentence I'd cut off before she could say it. And that last, soft— I'm sorry. Ridiculous. A princess goes for a midnight walk, steps right into a no-go zone, nearly turns the whole thing into an international incident… and then she's the one apologizing to me. None of that was logical.

The least logical part being—that I actually kind of responded to it. I tilted my head back against the wall and closed my eyes.

"So annoying…" The duty officer glanced at me through the small window, probably assuming I was complaining about the police. Unfortunately, no. I was complaining about life. The next morning, when the police system finally creaked into motion, I was out almost as soon as humanly possible.

"Almost" being the operative word. There was still an entire sequence of things civilized society excelled at: ID verification, supplementary signatures, provisional case registration, school contact, guardian responsibility transfer, scheduling follow-up appearances, and more stamps and signed forms than a sane person could keep track of. It felt like dragging yourself back from a battlefield only to be told you had to prove you were alive at the admin desk before you could reclaim the right to keep breathing.

Compared to last night, though, this was practically tender. When I stepped out of the station doors, the morning air was so cold and clean it felt like someone had poured ice water through my head. The exhaustion from the night before was only then starting to seep into my bones. The cut on my face pulsed and burned, my fingers were visibly swollen from punching, and every muscle complained. Perfect. Exactly my ideal way to start the day.

Injured, sleep-deprived, with another colorful annotation on my criminal record, and still expected to show up on time as Seitokai Vice President. Someone flung something toward me from a distance. My hand came up on reflex. The flare of pain in my fingers made me almost fumble it, but I managed to catch it. —My bike keys. I looked up. Maki Kushima stood by the parking area outside the station, coat buttoned, scarf perfect, looking as cool and composed as six in the morning itself.

If my face didn't hurt, I might've actually thanked the universe for at least one thing staying reliably in order. Then she opened her mouth, and that particular sentiment was precisely dispatched.

"You really are a walking problem, Hoshino Shimo." I weighed the keys in my hand and couldn't help laughing.

"I thought you'd leave me in there a few days." She smacked me on the back of the head. Not hard. But very precise. And on sleep-deprived nerves, spectacularly effective.

"In your dreams," Maki said.

"If you're not around, who's running errands?" I rubbed my head and clicked my tongue.

"Oh, so you were short on slaves."

"You're very clear on your position," she said.

"Thanks. I pride myself on understanding how organizations efficiently exploit bottom-level labor." She gave me a look. It was light, but I still read it just fine—first checking whether I'd misplaced any limbs, then deciding it was safe to keep talking to me like this. Very her. And good. If she'd opened with some overly gentle line, I'd have started wondering whether I was the one who'd cracked his head last night.

"How's the face?" she asked.

"Still attached. Hasn't fallen off yet."

"I meant the cut."

"Oh." I touched the bandaged strip along my cheek.

"Hurts a bit, but it's fine. What surprises me more is that you came yourself." Maki reached over to straighten my half-collapsed scarf, moving as quickly as if she were just realigning a crooked form.

"Who else?"

"Roy?" I said.

"A male finance officer waiting outside the station to pick someone up—that has a very contemporary social-services absurdist vibe."

"Roy got thrown at the budget first thing this morning."

"Not surprising."

"Lan's doing equipment and venues."

"Also not surprising."

"Jess heard you went in and got so excited she almost wanted to bring snacks to visit." I paused.

"... Does she think the station is a zoo?"

"More or less." I laughed. When I stopped, that tight knot that had stretched from last night to now finally eased a little. The world really was strange. Sometimes the most reassuring thing wasn't someone gently saying it's okay now. It was someone smacking you on the head, calling you a pain in the ass, and still personally standing at the police station door waiting for you to walk out. It didn't make sense. And yet I'd been falling for that nonsense more and more lately.

"What about Hedwig?" I asked.

"Home safe," Maki said.

"Her guard compressed the report into something as favorable to you as possible. The school stepped in too, or how else did you think you were walking this quickly?"

"I figured." I stretched, and instantly pulled something in my shoulder, sucking in a breath.

"There's no such thing as free justice."

"That wasn't justice."

"What was it, then?" Maki looked at me, voice flat.

"You hit too hard. They just happened to deserve it more. That's what made the outcome tolerable." I had no counterargument.

"So I should thank those seven for being trash?" I said.

"You should be thanking Hedwig's side for playing along," Maki shifted her gaze from my bandage.

"If it were just your style of fighting, today would not have gone this easy." I leaned back against my bike and tilted my head at her.

"You worried about me?"

"No."

"You sure."

"I'm calculating losses."

"What kind of losses?" Her expression didn't flicker.

"Vice President absent, Seitokai workload goes up."

"Wow. Cold."

"And," she added.

"And?" She paused, then added, just as level:"If that face really got carved up, it would be loud." I stared.

"... How is that a reason?"

"A very practical one."

"President."

"Hm?"

"Do you have to aim for the hardest possible angle every time you open your mouth?" Maki didn't answer. She just handed me a helmet. It was clearly one she'd brought for me. Right size. Visor clean. Unlike the heroic, freshly deceased one from last night. I took it and looked at her.

"So are you giving me a lift, or am I riding myself back?"

"You beat seven people into the hospital last night and want to prove you can handle one-handed riding today?"

"Not really. I'd actually prefer to be a wounded soldier and enjoy some post-battle treatment."

"Then get on." She said it so easily that it threw me a little off-balance.

"... Maki."

"What now?"

"Aren't you being a little too nice to me today?" She looked at me, brows motionless.

"If you'd rather I send you back in for another round of questioning, I can arrange it."

"No thanks, this is great." I pulled the helmet on. One of the most important survival skills in life is knowing when to shut up. Especially when you've just spent the night in a station, are standing next to the Seitokai President at dawn, and she's handing you protective gear she brought herself. Any extra show of bravado at that point is just begging for humiliation. I climbed on and swung into the back seat. Before Maki started the engine, she tilted her head slightly.

"Hold on."

"It's not my first—" The bike rolled forward the next second. I swallowed the rest of my comeback and my hands—very honestly—caught the back of her jacket. The morning wind was still bitterly cold, but compared to the cold in the back of a patrol car, this felt normal. Normal streets. Normal engine noise. Normal route back to school. And in front of me, that cold, allegedly unfeeling Seitokai President, who had nevertheless showed up in person outside the station.

I watched her back for a moment and realized that last night's entire mess only really ended here. For now. Because I knew that once we were back to school, back to the Council, back to the regular schedule, there was a whole sequence of Maki-brand post-incident accounting waiting for me. But for some reason, I wasn't that scared of it. Maybe because I'd already beaten the worst part of the night to death. Or maybe because— No matter how much she complained, the one who came to get me was still Maki.

It didn't make sense. But it worked. It was enough to let an exhausted, bruised woman who'd just been released from a station sit quietly in the cold morning wind, for once, and not say anything.