Chương 398: 182.Free Labor 1

Getting back on the bike, the way Hedwig's arms settled around my waist hit harder than anything back at that little park. It wasn't like I'd never given anyone a ride before. It wasn't like no one had ever held on from behind. Thick jacket, scarf, uniform, gloves—every layer that should've blocked sensation was in place. On paper, this level of contact shouldn't have been worth a second thought. But the moment Hedwig's arms closed around me, something in my chest jumped anyway. Not violently.

Not enough to send us skidding into a snowbank. But clear. Clear like someone had tapped a fingertip against a heart I'd only just managed to get back to normal, and reminded me: sorry, you're not the Vice President who can play dumb through the rest of this anymore. My throat went dry. I gripped the handlebars and stared into the wash of headlight and snow. This feeling was not allowed.... At least not in theory. Hedwig and I were not the same kind of person.

Different countries, different status, different positions. Even what you called us when we were seen in public belonged to two entirely separate sets of rules and ceremony—enough to crush a normal person flat. She was Hedwig von Wittelsbach—the one with a guard captain calling to confirm her location, the one whose car getting stuck on an elevated road became a priority issue.

I was just Hoshino Shimo, the Vice President who gets smacked in the face with forms by Maki and sent to clean up after trash cans and overblown quotes from the Broadcasting Committee. The gap wasn't small. I knew that. Of course I knew. But people are cheap animals. The more you know you shouldn't, the more likely something is to spike exactly when it shouldn't. Hedwig's arms tightened, just a touch. Not exactly a squeeze. Not enough to call deliberate.

But just enough to shove me out of the fantasy where I survived this ride home by playing dead. I pulled another breath of burning-cold air in and finally lifted a hand to nudge her fingers, just a little, through the layers.

"... Your Highness," I said, low.

"If you keep that up, I'm going to have a hard time controlling myself." The second it left my mouth, I wanted to bury myself in the nearest snowdrift. Too direct. Way too direct. So far off my usual style it felt like the part of my brain that used to be pinned down by process charts, Council workbooks, and survival instincts had just declared a wildcat strike. The headset was silent for half a beat. Then Hedwig's voice came through the helmet mic—soft, very close.

"What is it?" she said.

"Just this and you're already rattled?"... Ruined. I almost did slip. Not figuratively. Actually. If that line hadn't spiked my reflexes hard enough to freeze my hands, the front wheel might've gone out. Tomorrow's headline would've written itself—Vice President and Secretary Nearly Exit World Stage in Snowstorm Thanks to In-Ride Verbal Provocation. I clenched my jaw.

"Hedwig."

"Hm?" That "hm" was too calm. Calm like she hadn't just reached through my already-frayed nerves and flicked them with one sentence, and really was just asking about the road. My ears felt hot under the helmet. I forced my voice level.

"Did you decide tonight you weren't going to let me off easy?" A trace of laughter slipped through the mic.

"I didn't," she said.

"I just wanted to confirm whether what you said back there in the park still stands." I shut my eyes for a second. Perfect. Absolutely perfect. Not only had she heard it, she'd brought it along for the ride. So that was that. The most dangerous kind of person wasn't necessarily the one always charging ahead.

Sometimes it was the one who stayed quiet, never seemed like trouble, and then, the one time she chose to step forward, did it with such accuracy it felt like she'd used a ruler—aimed exactly where you least wanted to look. I cut the speed down again. The snow was thicker now, the beam of the lamp carving an endless stream of white flecks across my view like the entire city had agreed to cover for tonight. Snow on the trees, on the fence rails, blank white under the lamps.

Everything so quiet that every word Hedwig spoke through the mic seemed to be pressed right against my nerves.

"Could you shut up for three minutes?" I said.

"Is that not allowed?"

"No," I said bluntly.

"I need to focus."

"Oh," she said.

"So the Vice President's concentration varies depending on who's on the back seat."

"One more word and I'm logging this as an official incident."

"Title?" she asked. Of course she did. I almost laughed from sheer frustration.

"During the Return Trip Through Snow, a Certain Princess Engaged in Sustained Psychological Interference with the Driver, Severely Compromising Mission Efficiency." Hedwig went quiet. Then:"And the conclusion?" she asked. I hesitated. Her timing tonight was unfair. I waited until we'd eased past a particularly icy turn before answering, low.

"Conclusion," I said, "the driver's willpower has not suffered irreversible damage, but is approaching caution level." She didn't answer right away. I'd been hoping she'd finally let it go. Instead, a second later, her arms tightened again. This time there was no way to pretend I'd imagined it. She was doing it on purpose. My spine went hot and prickly.

"Hedwig!" I hissed.

"You really—""Alright," she said at last, laughing softly like she was being generous.

"I'll stop teasing you." The words themselves were harmless. The problem was that after she said it, she didn't let go. Not immediately. Not at all. She just maintained that extra, unnecessary, very illegal distance. I felt thoroughly played. Completely, professionally played.

"This counts as not teasing?" I asked.

"Mm," Hedwig said.

"Just holding on properly."

"Your definition of 'properly' needs work."

"It's snowing. The road's slick. I'm afraid we'll fall."

"Try that line on Jess."

"And on you?" I choked. Because she asked it too lightly, too innocently. But I could hear it—she wasn't actually asking whether I believed her. This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it She was asking: are you going to call me on it? If I didn't, that was tacit consent. If I did, we'd be peeling this conversation raw.... Shit.

How had I ended up in a situation where I was riding through a snowstorm, holding my ethics together with one hand and fencing semantics with the Council Secretary on the other? A normal student's life is supposed to be exams, clubs, homework, maybe one annoying committee. Mine had drifted steadily into: clear year-end messes, escort the imperial princess home, nearly suffer an arrhythmia courtesy of the helmet mic. Nothing about this storyline was normal.

I bit down on the next corner, then finally snapped back:"Whether I believe you isn't the point right now."

"Then what is?"

"The point," I said, "is that if you keep this up, I will do something not particularly consistent with the Vice President's professional ethics." Hedwig was silent for a couple of seconds. Then:"Like what?" she asked. I knew it. I knew she wasn't going to let it go. And the worst part was, I couldn't bring myself to hate it. I flicked my eyes to the rear-view mirror. Of course I couldn't see her face properly—only the outline of helmet, scarf, and how close she was sitting.

That faint shape was enough to conjure up all kinds of images I had no business letting loose. I jerked my gaze back immediately.

"Like stopping," I said. Her breath caught through the mic. Good. At least I wasn't the only one going down. I pushed—no, "pushed" wasn't the right word. This was more like a drowning person grabbing for anything to pull the other one a bit under too, so I wouldn't be the only idiot.

"And if I do stop," I added, voice dropping, "I can't guarantee I'll manage the kind of restraint I pulled off back there." The mic went dead quiet. Just the wind, the engine, the snow ticking on the casing, and my own pulse acting like it had a grudge. After a long moment, she spoke again. This time her voice was softer. Slower.

"... Hoshino Shimo." Hearing my full name from her made my back tighten again.

"What."

"Is your expression," she asked, "terrible right now?" I almost laughed. This woman—"You can see it?" I asked.

"Not all of it," Hedwig said.

"But I saw it once already. In the park." My throat clenched. She really dared bring it up. Calmly too, like she was giving me a recap of how I'd messed myself up tonight.

"And you still dare tease me," I said.

"Because that expression…" she paused, and I could hear the small smile, "is cute." That time I really did almost veer.

"Hedwig!"

"I mean it."

"Shut up."

"Okay." She said it too fast. Too obedient. Which only made it feel more deliberate. Then her forehead rested lightly against my back. Through the jackets. Through winter. Through the shake of snow and wind, it shouldn't have been much. Which is what made it worse. It didn't feel like a game. Or a joke. It felt like that was where all the earlier teasing and probing and deliberate little pushes had been heading—the simple, quiet way she finally leaned in. That, more than anything she'd said, was what did me in.

My voice was gone for a bit. Streetlights slid by, one pool of light after another. The snow glow stretched the road out to forever. The city was buried deep enough into winter that every sound was distant—but the weight and heat at my back were painfully, insistently present. It took a long time before I managed a breath that wasn't ragged.

"Hedwig."

"Mm."

"This is really against the rules," I said. Her voice came through the mic, muffled by my jacket, but with a laugh she wasn't bothering to hide.

"How long are you sentencing me for?" she asked. I blinked, almost laughing myself.

"Depends on the aggravating factors," I said.

"And right now?"

"Right now you're a repeat offender," I said.

"Zero remorse, actively escalating."

"Sounds serious."

"Very."

"And how is the Vice President planning to handle that?" I stayed quiet for two seconds. The snow kept coming, the road kept unspooling in front of us, and the wind somehow wasn't that loud anymore. I knew the safest answer here was to joke it away. Toss it back to the Council, to procedure, to traffic safety. It's what I'm good at. But too many things had already been said out loud tonight. Pretending suddenly felt cheap.

So I gripped the bars, stared into the snow-bright road, and said, low:"I'm going to remember." She was quiet for a second.

"Remember?" she asked.

"Yeah." I said.

"When the weather's better, the road's clean, and my head's closer to functional, I'll decide how to officially deal with you." She laughed for real this time. Not loud. Not high. Close and low, like it seeped straight through my back.

"Okay," she said.

"I'll wait for the Vice President's notice." Done for. I'd thought the park was the worst point. It wasn't. The worst part wasn't her asking whether I'd dodge, or seeing exactly how close I'd come. It was that once she understood it, she chose to match it. Deliberately. That was the real test of lifespan. I held the speed at a safe crawl, taking us through one snow-laden street after another. Hedwig really did stop teasing me after that. She just stayed where she was, arms around me. Somehow that was worse.

The quieter it got, the clearer it was that nothing she'd said earlier had been a joke. She knew exactly what she was doing—and she was very calmly handing me a very precise kind of permission. The worst thing? I was… happy about it. That was the part I liked least. By the time I finally killed the engine, I realized I'd made the entire ride without letting a single breath go all the way out. Not a metaphor. My shoulders were still locked.

My fingers were clamped around the grips like I'd just piloted us across a minefield, not the city. I eased the bike into place, dropped the stand, and shut it down. The engine went quiet and the world snapped into an almost exaggerated silence. The snow kept falling. Fine, dense, ticking on the helmet, landing light on scarf and shoulders like it was in no hurry to let the night end. The entryway light above us cast a warm circle, framing us and the thin layer of powder on the ground.

The only sounds were the wind, and my own heart, which had clearly stopped taking orders from central command. Hedwig didn't get off right away. Her arms were still around my waist. Just for a second. Half a second. But that half second stretched stupidly long—long enough for me to start seriously wondering how much of that cling on the ride had been about "safety" and how much had been very conscious of what it was doing to me. I cleared my throat and tried to sound like someone who had a baseline of self-control.

"... We're here."

"Mm," she said behind me. Muted through the helmet, but close. Too close. Like she wasn't quite ready to shake the ride off like snow. Two more seconds passed before she finally let go and climbed down. The frame lifted lightly. Which, for some reason, left everything feeling emptier. I took my own helmet off. The air bit at my face, cooling an already-overheated brain enough that some usable parts clicked back into place. Hedwig unbuckled hers as well.

Her hair, flattened and tangled from the strap, had snow caught in the ends where it brushed her scarf and coat. She ran a hand back through it. The motion was utterly ordinary. Given tonight, I still found it unsettling. Pathetic. When had I become this cheap. Hedwig had stood in front of me and redone her entire hairstyle before; back then the only thing I'd thought was, of course the princess even keeps her hair in order.

Now she took one helmet off and my brain wanted to default to content that wasn't going to help me sleep. Wrong. Extremely wrong. She handed the helmet back. I reached out to take it, and our fingers brushed. Very short. Too short for the snow to melt. But enough to freeze me for a breath. She watched me. Said nothing. That was the worst of her tonight. She didn't push, didn't force, didn't snap things open. She just… looked. Quietly.

Long enough to make me feel like my entire working system from the daytime had been reduced to loose parts. I hung the helmets back on the hooks, using the motion to steal half a second to reset my face.

"The snow's heavier," I said. This sentence was stupid. Stupid enough that I almost laughed at myself. Because unless she'd had her eyes shut the whole ride home, there was no way she'd missed that. This level of conversational filler basically amounted to me admitting on the spot: sorry, the Vice President's brain isn't quite up to the task, please accept this weather report as a stalling tactic. Hedwig laughed under her breath.

"Mm. I noticed," she said.

"…Good."

"But you took the trouble to remind me," she added, looking at me.

"So I should respond." I gave her a look.

"Are you really insisting on etiquette at a time like this?"

"It's not etiquette," she said.

"It's responding." There it was again. Respond. The word was too generic to carry this much weight. For anyone else. Tonight, after the park, after the ride, after that slow strangling of my rational capacity, it was suddenly a problem. I shifted my eyes away, looking at the thin layer of snow on the seat.

"It's late," I said.

"You should go in. It's cold."

"Hoshino Shimo," she said. I looked up. She stood in the porch light, snow dusted across her lashes. She was very calm. Too calm for what came next.

"Back in the park, and on the way here," she said, "I wasn't making fun of you." …I knew it. She always did this. Say nothing, say nothing, then go straight for the joint. I was quiet for two seconds before answering, honestly:"I know." She seemed to ease, a little. And not. She just kept watching me.

"Then what you said," she asked, "does that stand too?" Snow fell—on my shoulders, on her hair. I suddenly had the strong impression that this particular snowfall had a grudge against the Seitokai. Of all nights, it had to pick tonight to turn the world into something that did not suit clear thinking. I exhaled slowly.

"Hedwig," I said.

"Have you noticed you're very good at backing people into corners?"

"Am I?"

"Yes." I met her eyes.

"And you do it in the most innocent-looking way possible." She went quiet, actually looking like she might be considering that. It didn't last long. A second later, she spoke again, in that same flat, unreasonable calm.

"But if I don't ask," she said, "you'd probably act like nothing happened tomorrow." That one hit clean. Too clean for me to deny. Because she was right. If we'd ended the night right here, I probably would've shoved myself back into the Vice President mask come morning—drown in process charts and meeting minutes and committee corpses, pretend the snow, the park, the ride, the breath and heartbeat were just weather-induced lapses. It's what I'm good at. It's also the worst thing about me.

I pressed my fingers briefly against my brow, then let out a low breath.

"... Fine," I said. She waited. Didn't press. I dropped my hand and finally looked her in the eye.

"They stand," I said. Her gaze shifted, just slightly. My throat was dry, but I forced the rest out.

"What I said there, and on the road—it all stands," I said.

"I wasn't joking. And it wasn't just my mouth running away." She didn't rush to answer. But I saw her breathing skip, just once. Subtle. Quick. If I hadn't been watching every micro-reaction she made tonight, I might've missed it. It was a petty comfort. At least I wasn't the only one wrecked. The corner of my mouth twitched.

"But," I added, "that doesn't mean you get to treat me as some new, easy-to-bully form of transportation." This time she really laughed. Light, but not hiding it.

"I haven't been using you as transportation."

"Sure you haven't."

"Honestly," she said.

"It's more that…" She trailed off. She'd been doing that a lot lately—stopping exactly where it would annoy me most.

"That what?" I asked. She held my gaze, then said, slowly:"It's more that sitting behind you feels safe." That shut me up. Not because it was grand. Exactly because it wasn't. It was light, plain, the kind of thing Hedwig said when she meant it. Harder to dodge than any talk of like, want, or avoidance. Because it was true. I turned my head aside and coughed.

"Planning to make sure I don't sleep tonight, are you?"

"No," Hedwig said.

"Just responding to you." There it was again. Respond. Damn that word. I shook some of the snow off the handlebars, purely to give my hands an excuse to move. If I stood here any longer, I was genuinely at risk of doing something I'd have trouble explaining to Maki tomorrow. … Maki. At that thought, the heat that'd been humming under my ribs all night cooled a notch. Not gone. Just—like snow hitting hot water. Still there. Changing shape. Hedwig must have noticed that tiny pause, but she didn't chase it.

That was another of her infuriating strengths. She'd push. She'd close the distance. But the second she felt the line I wasn't ready to cross yet, she stopped. Like this wasn't about winning. It was about reaching that point and standing there with me. I looked up.

"Alright," I said.

"We're done for tonight. If you don't go in now, your guard captain's going to arrive in a snowplow." She watched me for two seconds, then nodded.

"Okay." She said it. But she didn't move immediately. Just stood there like she had something else to say—or like she just didn't quite want to let the night go. Honestly? Same. But there are times when, if you don't shove yourself back half a step, you won't be able to walk back at all. The park had been enough. The ride had been enough. If we kept standing here, if we kept talking, the night would end in a different kind of incident report.

I was about to nudge her when she reached out and brushed the snow off my shoulder. The motion was light. Natural. Then she looked at me and said:"Goodnight, Shimo." I froze. There was nothing remarkable about the sentence on its own. Except that it was the first time tonight she'd said my name like that. No paperwork. No meeting. No one else between us. Just standing in the snow, saying it clean. Not fair. My throat moved. It took me a second to get my response out.

"... Goodnight, Hedwig." She heard it, smiled—small, faint, and unmistakable—then finally turned and went inside. I watched her walk away, the light catching snow on her shoulders and hair. Just before the door closed, she half-turned, looking back once. Just once. Enough to make sure the rest of tonight's sleep would die in the crib. The door shut.