Chương 303: 128.Third Planet 1

Morning in the medical station carried a very particular Yukikaze-brand cruelty. Not that someone would slam a tactical briefing into your face the instant you opened your eyes — though if it were Ash, he honestly might — but that this ship had no concept whatsoever of you nearly died yesterday, so the universe gets to pause today. It didn't pause. The reactor kept humming. The ventilation kept running.

The shipwide PA still hit its scheduled intervals, using that excessively calm voice to remind everyone about shift changes, supply checks, and do not touch whatever Harvey left half-modified last night, or you'll be personally responsible for the consequences. The world is very large. Trauma is very small. At least, that's how the system sees it. When I woke up, the first thing I smelled was disinfectant. The second was coffee. The third was the faint, plasticky smell of a medical patch being peeled off.

The three scents combined into a morning greeting that essentially said: Congratulations on surviving. Don't expect today to be comfortable either. I blinked twice, vision not quite focused, when Aida's voice drifted over.

"If you're awake, make a noise. Don't play dead. I had enough of that last night. I don't need a second round this early."

"... Your bedside manner," I croaked, "makes you a genuine heretic in the medical profession."

"The fact that you can still give me grief means your brain's intact." Aida looked down, peeling the old dressing off my wrist with a speed that suggested she was afraid the ship's medical budget would collapse the second she hesitated.

"I'm relieved." I looked down at my hand. The bruising was still there, darker than last night, dragging several ugly streaks up from the wrist. On a normal day, I might have logged this with professional detachment: Enemy trash had decent grip strength. Pinning force comparable to an industrial clamp test. Right now, looking at it just made me angry. And not just angry. Mixed in with the anger was something else I couldn't quite name — something closer to nausea.

Aida probably caught the shift in my expression, but didn't ask. She just soaked a pad in antiseptic, pressed it down, and delivered a parting jab while she was at it.

"Don't make that face," she said.

"You look like someone just dropped your limited-edition dessert on the floor." I was quiet for half a second.

"... More or less." Aida's hands paused. She looked up at me. Then she let out a very knowing "Ah."

"Still thinking about the bra?" I turned my face away.

"Don't talk about it in that tone. You sound like you're ordering off a menu."

"What do you want instead? Should I fly the flag at half-mast for it?" She smoothed the next patch on, perfectly calm.

"Relax. I thought about it last night. Legally, I can't recommend you dismember an Imperial soldier. Emotionally, I fully support you carrying that grudge into retirement."

"I'm not planning to retire."

"Even better. Hold onto it for life." I almost laughed. Almost — because the next second, I saw it. On the chair beside the other side of the bed, folded with uncharacteristic neatness. A clean set of clothes. Including underwear. New. The color and cut were both deeply understated — understated enough to say, I know you don't want to deal with this right now, but you still need something to wear.

The sizing, the selection, even that quality of being practical to the point of almost feeling gentle — a quality that clearly wasn't Aida's style — told me exactly who'd prepared it in one second flat. I didn't say anything. Aida followed my gaze, the corner of her mouth twitching.

"She went digging through the supply lockers first thing this morning," she said.

"Actually came back with two options. Stood there staring at them for three minutes before finally picking the one on the left. Very thorough research process."

"... Does this medical station have too much free time on its hands, if you're observing things like that?"

"It's not that I have free time. It's just very hard not to watch when someone's standing next to a hospital bed with the expression of a person defusing a bomb." My ears had started to burn. I was about to fire something back when a very deliberate throat-clearing sounded from the next bed.

"Let me add," Jess said, propped up on her half-raised bed, leg still immobilized, color better than yesterday, but her signature punchable spirit already back to about seventy percent capacity.

"It wasn't three minutes." She held up a finger.

"It was four and a half. Halfway through, she even held it up to the light. Like it wasn't underwear at all, but some critical optical component that was about to decide the fate of the Federation." My urge to throw a pillow at her came roaring back.

"Aren't you supposed to be critically injured?"

"I am," Jess said, entirely unrepentant.

"But I'm a critically injured patient with functioning eyes." Aida pressed the last strip of tape into place and finally straightened up.

"Excellent. It seems both of you have recovered enough to generate mutual noise pollution. Medically, that's an optimistic recovery trajectory. Socially, my ears aren't in for a peaceful day." Jess tipped her chin toward her.

"So where's Kushima?" Aida glanced toward the corridor.

"Washing her face. If she'd stood in here another half hour looking the way she did, people would start assuming the medical station took in three casualties last night — the third one having simply scared herself half to death." I looked down at the edge of the blanket and said nothing. Jess went quiet for two seconds too. For her, that qualified as a rare phenomenon. Then she let out a soft breath, eyes drifting to the ceiling.

"Honestly," she said, "I assumed the first thing she'd do coming in would be hacking people apart, and the second would be yelling at me while she was at it."

"Your first prediction was accurate," I said.

"The second wasn't wrong either, really." Jess's mouth pulled sideways.

"She just didn't have time to get to me. The look on her face when she saw you — I don't know how to put it. If the ship had shown up ten seconds later, she'd probably have wiped that entire base off the planetary map." Aida glanced at her.

"You're being unusually candid today."

"My painkiller dosage is perfectly calibrated today," Jess said.

"Just enough to make me tell the truth. Not quite enough for it to sound like last words." I closed my eyes.

"The two of you running a psychoanalysis panel next to my bed this early is genuinely bad for trauma recovery."

"This isn't analysis," Aida said, tidying her tray with breezy indifference.

"It's called helping the patient place her emotions somewhere more manageable."

"Translated into human speech?"

"If you keep bottling it up, you'll probably explode at a very inconvenient moment later." She paused.

"Like, say, if someone accidentally mentions a bra."

"... Enough."

"Understood, Miss Bra."

"Aida."

"Fine, fine. I'll stop teasing." She said she'd stop, but her tone still carried that infuriatingly soft edge. Honestly, I've long suspected she studied "caring for people" and "driving people insane" as the exact same professional skill set. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. But oddly, at a moment like this, her approach was more useful than a solemn, sincere "are you okay?"

Because the second someone treats you like fragile porcelain that might shatter on contact, you start wanting to smash it yourself just to prove a point. The door opened. No knock. Very Ash. He walked in looking so bad you'd think he was the one who'd spent the night tied up in an Imperial garbage den. His uniform jacket was immaculate, collar without a wrinkle, but the shadows under his eyes had already given away seventy percent of his I am completely in control act. He swept the room with his eyes first.

Saw I was awake. Saw Jess was still alive. Saw Aida changing dressings. Then he looked like he let out a breath of relief — and immediately looked annoyed with himself for feeling relieved, which only made his expression worse.

"So neither of you died," he said. I looked at him.

"Your bedside manner this morning is giving Aida a real run for her money."

"That means you're recovering well enough to be picky." Ash walked to the foot of the bed, arms crossed, the picture of I'm only here for a routine check.

"Physical status?"

"Passable."

"Define passable."

"Can talk. Can breathe. Temporarily suppressing the urge to kick you out of the medical station."

"Better than I expected." He said it, and his gaze dropped to the bruising on my wrist for half a second, then moved away. Fast. Fast enough that he probably hoped no one caught it. I understood, in that instant, exactly why he looked so terrible today. Not because there'd been too much trouble. Not because the plan had gone sideways. But because the whole incident had stepped outside the boundaries of what he'd assumed he could control.

For someone like Ash, losing control of a situation is already infuriating on its own. What's worse is when the center of that loss of control turns out to be someone he'd already filed away as reliable, usable, capable of holding her own. In other words: this ship normally treats me as a combat asset. But use an asset long enough, and somewhere along the way, without anyone quite noticing when, the asset turns back into a person.

And the kind of person where, if she almost didn't make it back, the whole ship would feel wrong. That thought shifted something in my chest, quietly. Jess had clearly caught the same thing, and moved in for the kill, lazy as ever.

"Captain, sir," she said.

"Right now, your face looks exactly like someone whose most important spare part just got tampered with." Ash didn't even glance at her.

"If you still have the energy to talk garbage, your painkiller dose isn't high enough."

"See," Jess turned to me.

"Textbook emotional management failure."

"Shut up and rest." Ash finally looked at her.

"Admit you were worried first."

"What I was worried about was whether the medical station's noise levels would exceed safe parameters the moment both of you woke up."

"Oh. So not because we almost died down there." Ash didn't answer right away this time. The room went quiet for a second. He stood at the foot of the bed, eyes on me, like he was weighing whether to just say what he actually meant. In the end, he didn't take too long a detour.

"I don't like losing usable combat assets," he said.

"Especially the kind that shouldn't be lost."

"That sentence sounds incredibly inhuman," I said.

"I've never run this ship on humanity." He fired back instantly.

"Then why did you come running to the medical station first thing this morning?" Jess asked.

"Checking materiel losses?" Ash looked at her for two flat seconds.

"To confirm whether the person among us best at holding the line in a crisis can still function as a menace today." I blinked. Jess raised an eyebrow. Even Aida looked up from her tray with an expression that essentially said: wow, he's saying something that almost sounds human today. Ash seemed to realize he'd let that slip too far and immediately snapped his face back into a hard line.

"Don't misread that," he added.

"That wasn't a compliment."

"That kind of clarification," I said, "is like throwing someone into the ocean and then tossing them a life ring. What's the difference?"

"The difference is I actually threw the ring." Jess laughed out loud on the spot, laughed hard enough to jar her injured foot, and immediately winced. Aida pushed her back down while cutting in, perfectly calm:"Alright. I am now officially declaring that all three patients in this room require emotional recalibration. One nearly died and is still acting tough. One nearly had her foot crushed and is still running her mouth. And one is clearly worried sick but insists on sounding like a logistics report."

Ash gave her a cold look.

"I'm not a patient."

"Then what are you? An insomniac captain?"

"I'm here for a status check."

"Status checked. Result?" Ash was quiet for half a beat, eyes moving from me to Jess and back.

"Result: today, no one treats either of them as normal personnel fit to return to duty." I blinked.

"Wait — you said that?"

"I don't repeat myself." Jess let out a low whistle.

"Did the sun rise out of the reactor this morning?" Aida offered a very professional smile.

"Noted for the log: the captain has finally learned to express concern in a complete sentence."

"I have not."

"You have."

"I'm maintaining the ship's combat readiness."

"Sure. Caring-type combat readiness."

"Aida."

"Yes, Captain." Watching them, I almost wanted to laugh — not because any of it was especially funny, but because the whole scene was so completely Yukikaze. Yesterday we were throwing our lives at monsters, storms, and human garbage in an Imperial underground facility. This morning, first thing, we're in the medical station taking turns slapping each other with sarcasm and spreadsheet-formatted concern. Absurd. Reassuringly so. The door opened again. Maki walked in.

She'd clearly washed her face — the hair at her temples was still faintly damp, uniform changed, the whole of her back to that composed, self-contained look suited for a Kushima family instructional poster. But look closely, and the exhaustion hadn't cleared from her eyes, and the direction her gaze went the second she stepped in was far too obvious. Me first. Confirming I was sitting up, awake, no pieces missing. Only then did she register the other three in the room. Ash raised an eyebrow.

"Good timing." Maki stopped.

"Problem?"

"Yes." He tilted his chin toward her.

"Keep an eye on her." The room went quiet for a beat. I caught up first.

"Wait — what do you mean, keep an eye on me?" Ash's expression didn't change.

"Exactly what it sounds like. You're not fit for solo movement today, and Aida can't be attached to you twenty-four hours straight. Since she's the one who refused to leave your side last night, she can take responsibility for you." Maki stood by the door, clearly not expecting him to be quite this blunt, her eyes flickering — very briefly, very visibly. Jess perked up immediately.

"I support this. Extremely reasonable. The way she was standing guard last night, if a mosquito had flown past the door she'd have chased it down the corridor with an axe."

"Jess," I ground out.

"Present."

"You're really asking for it today."

"Thanks. Working on my recovery." Aida nodded, clearly enjoying herself.

"I support it too. Medically, Shimo needs someone who'll shove her back into bed before she tries to tough something out. Psychologically, she needs someone she'll actually listen to. Tactically, Kushima already proved last night she has the fastest response time on this particular matter." I looked at Maki. She didn't agree right away. Didn't refuse right away either. She just stood there, quiet for two seconds, then said, perfectly even:"No objections."

The moment those words landed, everything mildly indignant, mildly embarrassed, and mildly bewildered at being looked after all jammed together in my chest into something I couldn't quite name. Ash looked like something had finally been settled to his satisfaction, his expression a shade less terrible.

"Good," he said.

"Then it's decided."

"Isn't that a little dictatorial?" I asked.

"If you want a democratic vote, I can call the whole ship in right now." He looked at me, tone as punchable as ever.

"Though I'm guessing you don't want to know how many people would vote for Hoshino Shimo should probably not be wandering around alone today." I paused.

"... What does that mean?" Aida slid the knife in for him, perfectly naturally.

"It means that after you were brought back last night, enough people came by to ask about you that I nearly started handing out numbered tickets." She kept sorting vials as she spoke.

"Harvey came by — said to tell you when you woke up that he still owes you a complaint about the reactor data. Lan came by, left a hot drink, and left. Roy tried to come in; I sent him off to do something useful. Even D stood outside the door for three minutes, then asked exactly one question: can she still yell at people?" Jess added the finishing shot.

"I can confirm. That question sounded exactly like the Yukikaze version of is she still alive?" I opened my mouth. Nothing came out. Aida, clearly unwilling to give me room to dodge, kept going.

"And Akari sent a message — says if you're awake, send her one word back, or she'll spend the whole day wondering if the position correction she transmitted yesterday was 0. 3 seconds late. As for the captain—""That's enough," Ash cut in immediately. Aida shrugged.

"Point being, you can relax." Her tone finally shifted into something more sincere.

"You weren't the only one holding on yesterday. And you weren't the only one who didn't realize how scared you'd been until after you got back." The room went quiet. Even Jess didn't say anything right away. I looked down at the fresh tape on my wrist. It took several seconds to find my voice.

"... Am I really that much trouble?" Jess answered first.

"Yes." Aida answered second.

"Extremely." Ash, arms crossed, added flatly: "And frequently." Before I could even roll my eyes, Maki crossed to the bedside. She didn't joke. Didn't join in on picking at me. She just set the folded clothes down beside the bed, then touched my uninjured hand, very lightly.

"But important," she said. Six words. No decoration. None of the borderline-crossing warmth from the middle of the night before. Simple enough to pass as a statement of fact. Which is exactly the kind of thing that leaves you nowhere to hide. My throat tightened. I nailed my eyes to the folded clothes so my face wouldn't broadcast anything else to the room. Jess produced a very tactful cough.

"Alright, I take back what I said. It's not the sun rising out of the reactor today. It's that the people on this ship worst at talking like humans have all simultaneously caught something." Ash let out a cold snort.

"If you're recovered enough to provide running commentary, physical therapy starts this afternoon."

"See," Jess said to me.

"Told you he's actually worried. He just wraps it up like a threat."

"You'd better shut up," I finally found my voice, "or the second your foot heals, I'm kicking you off the training deck myself."

"You have to recover first."

"I will." I'd only meant it as a comeback. But once it was out, I found I actually meant it — not the stubborn, defensive I'm fine. Something quieter than that. Because there were people waiting for you to recover. People checking whether you could still swear at them. Someone who went hunting for clean clothes for you first thing in the morning. Someone who talked about maintaining combat readiness but walked to the medical station before his mouth finished the sentence.

Someone whose trash talk never let up, but who genuinely treated the fact that you were both alive as something worth breathing a sigh of relief over. This broken ship — loud, broke, dangerous, rules all over the place, full of people who were either foul-mouthed or strange-tempered, occasionally breaching doors with half a lander. But at moments like this, you realized you'd been quietly slotted, without noticing, onto their small, messy, awkward list of people who mattered.

Probably not near the bottom of it, either. I let out a slow breath and looked at Ash.

"So, Captain. Does this mean I can legitimately stay in bed all day?" Ash looked at me for two seconds.

"No." Knew it. His next line came fast.

"But you can legitimately stay in the medical station until Aida clears you." Aida nodded, satisfied.

"I like that one." Jess raised a hand.

"I'd like to apply for equal treatment."

"You don't have standing to apply," Aida said.

"Why not?"

"Because you're not going anywhere regardless." Someone finally laughed. Jess first, then me, then even Aida a little. Ash's mouth didn't move, but the face that had been sour enough to serve as a tactical weapon since he walked in had at least stopped looking like he was about to drag someone off to write a report. Maki stood by the bed, one hand still on the rail, not speaking, but not moving away either.

Whatever had nearly crushed everything last night was, slowly, clumsily, and very sincerely, being pulled back by this ship's ordinary rhythm. Not forgotten. Not fixed. Just — with people around, you didn't have to carry it alone until morning.