Chương 417: 193.Morning After New Year

I've always thought the most dangerous part of anything that shouldn't happen in a duty room isn't the moment itself. It's dawn. Because no matter how chaotic things get at night—lights off, door shut, snow falling—you can still tell yourself it was just the atmosphere. Just an impulse. Just the natural fallout from losing control in the minute after the Federation New Year's countdown.

But the moment it gets light, the moment the windows start going pale and the corridor fills with morning light again, and the pen, the radio, the flashlight, and the patrol log on the duty desk all return to their proper places—you realize, very clearly, that last night wasn't atmosphere. It was fact. The kind of fact that leaves marks. I stood at the sink behind the duty room, staring into the mirror, and pulled my uniform collar up for the third time. Useless. Wrinkled stays wrinkled. Messy hair stays messy.

The sleep deprivation under my eyes wasn't something a few splashes of cold water could fix. Not to mention that small, suspicious patch of faint red on the side of my neck—mostly hidden under the edge of my scarf, but still visible at the wrong angle. … Perfect. First day of the New Year, and I looked like an official document someone had botched and didn't have time to reprint. Fabric rustled very softly behind me. I looked up and saw Maki in the mirror, walking out from the break room.

Maki looked a little better than I did. Only a little. Her uniform jacket was buttoned properly, her hair tied back again. At first glance she already looked close to the same Council President who could chair a meeting without blinking and press three duty rosters and four problem students back into order in a single move. Unfortunately, I'd known her too long. Long enough to notice that today she'd pulled her collar half a centimeter higher than usual, and buttoned her cuffs a beat slower than usual.

She was doing damage control. And doing it very hard. Which meant I hadn't been the only one who'd lost control last night. That gave me a deeply uncharitable sense of balance. Maki stopped beside me. Her gaze landed on my reflection and paused for a second.

"Move your scarf a little more to the left," she said. I didn't move.

"Council President, right now that sentence sounds like instructions for disposing of a body." Her brow twitched slightly. She reached out—without asking—and adjusted the scarf herself. Her fingers brushed the side of my neck, and I locked up on reflex. She froze for half a beat too, but finished the motion anyway. In the mirror, the two of us were standing very close. Too close to be just pre-handover grooming. I stared at her reflection. Maki didn't look at me.

Her eyes stayed on the scarf edge she'd just adjusted, and she said, perfectly level:"At least it's less obvious this way." I was quiet for two seconds.

"You know that sentence sounds more like an admission than any actual admission would?"

"Hoshino Shimo."

"Present."

"If you still have the energy to talk nonsense from here on out, you're writing the handover log alone." Looking at her, I suddenly wanted to laugh. Not because it was funny. Because even now, she could still repackage everything back into the shape of an official threat. What kind of upbringing wires "heart rate completely off the rails" and "sorting handover documents" into the exact same behavioral logic? I was about to say something when the front duty room door opened. Then, footsteps. Not fast, but distinct.

Two sets. One steady. The other carrying a trace of exhaustion, like someone who'd just finished a fairly long walk in the early-morning cold. Maki and I went quiet at the same time. The wall clock kept ticking. Morning light had already pushed through the curtain's edge, a thin white layer sharpening the room's outline. I looked at Maki—strictly speaking, I looked first, and half a second later she finally looked back. There was none of last night's heat in that glance.

Just one very practical fact: The relief shift had arrived. And the two of us, in our current state, looked nothing like a clean end to a night shift. More like survivors of a crime scene.

"…Too late," I said quietly. Maki pressed her lips together, voice equally low.

"Go out first."

"One thing," I said, straightening up, trying to at least resemble a presentable Vice President.

"If Lan gives us that should I even be standing here alive look, that's on you."

"If Roy looks more like he wants to die than usual, that's your fault."

"Why?"

"Because you look more like the perpetrator."

"… That bias is way too obvious." We didn't have time to keep arguing about who looked more like the perpetrator. Maki went out first. I followed. The moment I stepped out of that small back space—still holding the heater's warmth and the night's residue—I felt it clearly, like stepping out of a crime scene into daylight. The front duty room was already mostly lit. Morning light fell sharply over the duty log, flashlight, thermos, and radio on the desk.

It fell just as sharply over the three people standing in the doorway. Lan was at the front. She looked crisper than usual today. Morning light came in over her shoulder, making her face look almost too clean. She held a duty clipboard, clearly here for the handover. Beside her, Roy's complexion looked worse than that clipboard—like a piece of paper folded and unfolded one too many times.

Call it tired, call it haggard—either way, it was the kind of face that made you wonder whether he'd pulled a night shift or absorbed the entire Federation's psychological pollution on its behalf. And the third person. Jess leaned against the doorframe, making zero effort to hide that she was here for the show. The kind of expression that said: I've already worked out seventy percent. I just need the remaining thirty confirmed. We're done for. For a moment, nobody in the duty room spoke.

Not because everyone had perfect manners. Because silence finished the identification faster than words could. Lan's gaze landed on Maki first, then slid to me and paused. Not long. But I'd bet she clocked at least three things in that pause: Maki's collar buttoned too high, my scarf wrapped differently than usual, and neither of our expressions looking like people who'd just finished a normal night shift. Roy took half a beat longer to catch up.

He looked at Maki, then at me, then at the door behind us leading to the break room. What little color his already pale face had visibly drained another shade. I suddenly felt a little sorry for him. Because not everyone wants to walk face-first into someone else's aftermath on the first morning of the New Year. The one who finally broke the silence was, of course, Jess. She didn't laugh out loud. Which was somehow worse.

She just let her gaze travel slowly from my crooked scarf to Maki's overly proper collar, then back to my face, and said, in a tone bordering on awe:"… Wow." Two syllables. Impact level: live ammunition. I stood there and, for the first time in my life, understood that a person really can exist simultaneously in the states of not wanting to die and wanting to vanish on the spot. Maki recovered function before I did.

She stepped forward, picked up the duty log, movements as steady as if nothing had happened, tone as calm as if this really were just an ordinary handover.

"Thanks for your work," Maki said.

"No major incidents on campus overnight. Patrol logs and gate confirmations are all here. The second patrol round ran seven minutes behind schedule. I'll add a note explaining why." I'll add a note explaining why. I nearly choked. How were you planning to phrase that? Following the Federation Standard Time ritual, a brief breakdown of order occurred in the rear of the duty room? Lan took the log without flipping it open, just looked quietly at Maki. She wasn't like Jess, who'd stir a scene up for sport.

And she wasn't like me, whose instinct at a moment like this was to babble my way to safety. What made Lan dangerous was that she took everything in first, and only then decided whether to speak. That was usually far more pressure than someone laughing outright. After two seconds, she said, very evenly:"… You two worked hard last night." The sentence itself was completely normal. The problem was where she paused.

That pause landed too precisely—precisely enough that even I could hear it: she wasn't particularly interested in knowing exactly what had been hard, but she clearly already suspected the hard part hadn't been limited to the patrol. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. Roy, beside her, seemed to finally work up the nerve to insert himself into the official handover. He cleared his throat.

"Um…should we go double-check the gate again now?" I understood instantly—he was trying to hand the scene an exit. Good man. Unlucky man.

"No need," Maki answered at once.

"Locks are in normal condition. No irregular entries recorded after midnight." Roy nodded and didn't press. He probably knew some doors were better left unopened today. Then Jess finally moved. She pushed off the doorframe and walked over, slow, like she was afraid a quick step might startle some rare animal. When she reached my side, she tilted her head and murmured, low enough that only I could hear:"Happy New Year, Shimo." I closed my eyes.

Said at midnight last night, that sentence would've been completely normal. Said right now, it was a precision strike at the spiritual level. I ground my teeth and answered, dead-faced:"You'd better shut up." Jess's mouth curved. To her credit, she didn't add fuel to the fire. She just stepped back half a pace and spread both hands, indicating she'd been remarkably well-behaved today. Well-behaved my ass. She just knew she didn't need to. The scene was already enough to kill me ten times over.

Lan finally opened the duty log. When she reached the time entry for the second patrol, her eyes lingered a second, but she didn't ask. She just finished the page in silence and closed it.

"I've got it from here," she said. Not an eviction notice. But it carried a very clear courtesy—like telling us: you two should disappear now, before this routine morning handover mutates into a full-scale interpersonal disaster drill. Maki gave a small nod.

"Thank you." Then she turned and looked at me. Very briefly. But I understood. Go. Now. Immediately. Do not leave any new evidence. I wanted to protest—why was I the one being marched out by her eyes like a criminal? But given my crooked collar, my half-fixed hair, and Jess's eyes, which had practically already drafted the full screenplay, my rational mind admitted Maki's judgment was probably correct this time.

So I said nothing, grabbed my gloves off the desk, shoved them into my coat pocket, and followed her toward the door. Passing Jess, she leaned in again, voice still low enough not to reach Lan and Roy, but deliberately loud enough that I couldn't possibly miss it.

"I only came to watch the handover," Jess said with complete sincerity.

"And I got fallout of this caliber on the first morning of the year. Worth it." I didn't even break stride.

"Say one word at 22 Platinum Bridge Street, and I'll show you what the first domestic incident of the New Year looks like." Jess laughed. Not a chaos laugh. More like the laugh of someone who genuinely believed being alive was great, and the world deserved a few more days of her attention. I just felt exhausted. When we stepped out of the duty room, the morning light was brighter than before. The snow hadn't stopped. The front courtyard was white and still.

All the messy, burning things from last night—the ones that had nearly scorched through both the shift and our sanity—were wrapped inside this excessively peaceful morning, like none of it had happened. But I knew it had. Maki knew too. Lan had seen it. Roy had probably caught seventy or eighty percent. And Jess—that woman had probably already drafted three full volumes in her head. I stood at the top of the steps, drew a lungful of freezing air, and felt something absurd settle over me.

The first morning of the New Year. No bells. No greetings. No soba. No voice in the dark saying right now, I just want to be with you. Just the aftermath of disheveled clothes, and the reality that once duty ends, nobody can put themselves back exactly the way they were. … What a great omen. After we left the duty room, neither of us spoke right away. It was already light out, but the light was thin—like someone had soaked the whole school in a layer of white that hadn't finished melting.

The snow was still falling, fine and quiet, settling on the courtyard and the railings, like everything that shouldn't have stayed in that duty room last night had been given a coat of nothing happened overnight. … Nice try. Maki walked beside me, coat buttoned properly, scarf tucked back into place. From behind, she'd almost fully restored the look of the Maki Kushima who could stuff herself back into order no matter how chaotic the world had just been. Unfortunately, I knew better.

I knew exactly how she'd pulled me into the dark last night. I knew how hot her voice had gone when she said I'm not the Seitokai President right now. And I knew how unnatural her fingers had been at dawn, brushing the side of my neck while fixing my scarf. So the more fine she looked, the more I wanted to laugh. And the less I actually could. The bike was parked by the side of the school building, near the wall and the shed. A thin layer of snow covered it; the seat was freezing.

I pulled my gloves back on, brushed the snow off, and buckled my helmet. Halfway through, Maki was already standing beside me. She didn't get on yet. Just watched me straighten the bike, start the engine, plant my feet. Her gaze was very quiet. Quiet enough to be impossible to ignore.

"Get on," I said. A perfectly ordinary sentence. But the moment it left my mouth, even I could hear something was off about it. Maki probably felt it too, because she paused half a beat before answering, low:"Mm." Then she swung a leg over and sat behind me. My spine went completely taut. Not from the weight—Maki was never heavy. The real problem was distance. A back seat isn't like walking side by side, or talking across a table.

The moment she sat down, the thin margin of air we'd both been pretending still existed between us got pressed flat. Flat enough that I could clearly hear her coat hem brushing my jacket, and feel her knee graze my lower back as she adjusted her seat. … Great. First morning of the year, and even starting the bike felt like a criminal prelude. I took a breath and gripped the handlebars.

"Hold on," I said. This time Maki didn't move right away. Maybe a second. Maybe less. Long enough to think through several things I shouldn't be thinking. Too short to pretend the pause hadn't happened. Then I felt her hands land. Not a full embrace. Not that easy, practiced kind of hold. Maki's hands first rested, carefully restrained, on either side of my coat—like she was still saving herself a margin to call this just carpooling, just a normal way to sit.

But the moment the bike rolled out of the lot and the front wheel wobbled slightly over a patch of snow, her grip tightened at once. The next second, her arms slid around from behind and locked around my waist. … Ah, we're done for. If last night's events in the duty room could still be pinned on the dark, the heater, Federation Standard Time, and Toshikoshi soba, this had nowhere left to go. It wasn't impulse. It wasn't a kiss that got out of hand halfway.

It was simply: she was sitting behind me, the road was icy, so she had to hold on. Perfectly reasonable. So reasonable I had no grounds to say a word. Which was exactly the problem. Too reasonable is its own kind of hard to handle. I rode out through the school gate. Cold wind slammed into me head-on. The helmet swallowed most of the noise—leaving only the engine's low vibration and the faint crunch of tires over thin snow rising up through the frame. The streets were empty.

At this hour, only early buses, snowplows, and a handful of people who had no choice but to be awake on New Year's Day. The city felt half-asleep; even the traffic lights seemed to cycle a beat slower than usual. Maki stayed quiet behind me the whole way. So did I. Not because there was nothing to say—because there was no way to say it. Too much wind, the engine too close. Through the helmets, anything we tried would come out as meaningless broken syllables.

So all the words stayed pressed down in my throat, turning into other things instead—her arms around my waist, the body heat I felt more clearly with every turn, the fact that the person behind me, without a single word, had more presence than every traffic light on the road combined. I could even tell she wasn't holding on with the same force the whole time. On straight stretches, she'd loosen slightly. Before a turn, or wherever the snow looked slicker, her hands would tighten without her seeming to notice.

The changes were tiny. But with her sitting behind me, any tiny change got amplified past all reason. I stared at the road and had a sudden urge to swear. Not at Maki. At this damned shared-seat distance. Because it made too many things too clear—clear enough that I started guessing whether she'd really calmed down yet, whether she was also regretting not letting go sooner back there in the dark. Great. First morning of the New Year, and my riding was fine. My brain was the one skidding.

Two intersections later, Maki nudged me lightly with her knee. Not an accidental bump. A deliberate signal. I hesitated half a second, then felt one of her hands shift up, fingers tapping twice against the front of my jacket. Meaning: pull over. I checked the road, eased off the throttle, and steered into a small pull-off near the river embankment. Almost nobody came here at this hour. A row of bare trees, a snow-dusted railing, the gray-white surface of the river beyond.

The city in the distance hadn't really woken up yet—just scattered traffic and a thin, washed-out strip of morning light. I stopped the bike and killed the engine. The moment the engine died, the world went distinctly, abruptly quiet. Just wind. Snow. And the faint ringing left over from the helmet. Maki didn't let go right away. That alone made the hand I'd raised to unbuckle my helmet stall halfway. After two seconds, as if she'd finally registered it, she slowly pulled her arms back and got off.

Not rushed—but that unhurried quality was, right now, more dangerous than rushing would have been. Like she knew that holding on half a second longer would make a lot of things even harder to pretend away. I took my helmet off first. Cold air punched in immediately, chilling my flattened hair. Maki took hers off too. Her long hair, pressed by the rim, fell back with an uneven curve. She tucked it behind her ear, exposing her profile and the still-faintly-red tips of her ears. …

She definitely hadn't fully recovered. I hooked my helmet over the handlebar and leaned against the bike.

"You held on that tight the whole way," I said, "and you're only stopping now? A little late, don't you think?" Maki looked at me. Her expression was steadier than before dawn, but not the flawless composure she usually wore. More like a mirror carefully wiped clean—the surface spotless, but the fingerprints from last night still faintly visible underneath.

"The road was slippery," she said. I almost laughed.

"So even Maki Kushima uses that excuse."

"It's not an excuse."

"Then what is it?" She didn't answer right away. Wind moved along the embankment, lifting the hem of her coat. She stood there, helmet in hand, gaze drifting to the river before slowly coming back. The pause wasn't long, but it was obvious—obvious enough that I could almost hear a sentence turning halfway in her head before she pressed it back down. Then, quietly:"If we hadn't stopped, you probably would've ridden all the way back pretending nothing was wrong." I blinked. … Damn it. Too accurate.

Accurate enough that arguing felt like a waste of energy. I leaned against the bike, watching her, and after a moment asked:"What about you?" Maki looked up. I didn't dodge. I threw it straight back.

"If we hadn't stopped," I said slowly, "could you have pretended you were fine too?" Snow kept falling. Light, slow, fine enough to look like the morning light itself splintering into pieces. Maki stood less than two steps away, helmet in hand, knuckles a little pale—cold, or gripping too hard, I couldn't tell. She looked at me, lips parting slightly, but nothing came out right away. Maki lowered her eyes to the helmet in her hands, and after a moment spoke again.

"I wasn't trying to force you to stop."

"I know."

"I just…" She paused. That kind of hesitation was rare on her, and real.

"I didn't know how to sit behind you the way I normally would, after all that." I looked at her and, despite myself, almost laughed. Not because it was funny. Because the way Maki Kushima said things like that was simply unfair. She hadn't delivered anything dramatic. She hadn't pushed the moment to its limit. But it was exactly this clumsy, restrained, and already-too-honest way of speaking that hit the hardest. I pressed my fingers to my brow, trying to look less pathetic.

"You know," I said, "if you could still hold Council President mode right now, I'd actually have an easier time." Something faintly resigned moved through her eyes.

"You're better at handling that version of me."

"Yeah." I was blunt about it.

"Because that version is stubborn, cold, full of rules—but at least it's trouble I'm familiar with."

"And now?" I paused. Snow settled slowly on her shoulders and my sleeves. Bit by bit, light, but it wouldn't stop. Mornings like this make you feel there's no need to rush your words. We'd already stopped, after all. We'd already torn a hole in the pretending-nothing-happened act with our own hands. Forcing it back together now would just look ugly. So I looked at her and said, honestly:"Right now, you feel more like a new problem." Maki blinked. Then she laughed, very softly.

Not the almost-undone laugh from last night. Not the polite half-smile she wore in front of people. Smaller, fainter, but more real. Gone as fast as snow melting on contact—but on her face, that was already enough to throw my chest off rhythm again. This morning was deeply unfair. I was the one who couldn't take it and stopped the bike. I was the one who tore the silence open first. And somehow I was still the one falling apart worse.

"Shimo," Maki said. That tone. Not a command, not a reminder, not the full-name precision strike she used when I'd pissed her off. Just a simple call of my name. And that alone made it impossible to pretend I hadn't heard.

"What." Regrettably, that was still the most spineless response I could produce. Maki didn't laugh at me. She set her helmet down on the seat, then reached out and lightly touched the front of my jacket. She'd probably only meant to straighten something. But once her hand landed, it didn't pull back right away. Just that—brief, small—but enough to drag everything barely settled between last night and this morning back up to the surface.

"What I said last night," she said quietly, "wasn't because of the New Year. It wasn't the atmosphere." I didn't move.

"I know."

"You know?"

"I know." I looked at her hand, then back up at her.

"Why do you think I stopped the bike?" After that, we were both quiet for a moment. The silence was strange—not because there was nothing left to say, but because some things had already been said. Push further and it would be too much; pull back and it would be dishonest. What was left was this: neither of us moving another step, and yet already more dangerous than moving closer would have been. Maki's fingers tightened slightly, like she'd finally made a decision, and she brushed a bit of snow off my collar.

"Let's head back," she said. I raised an eyebrow.

"Is that a normal let's head back, or the kind with something else folded into it?" Maki looked at me. In weather this cold, her ears were still somehow managing to flush red again, which was frankly unreasonable.

"Both," she said. …Perfect. She really did know how to say almost nothing and still leave you with no way out. I laughed under my breath and picked my helmet back up.

"Fine." Before I put it on, I looked at her one more time.

"Just so we're clear," I said, my voice finding a bit of its usual footing, "if you hold on that tight the whole way back again, I might have to stop one more time." Maki didn't fire back right away. She just watched me, then said, very softly, very simply, with absolutely no intention of denying it:"Then stop." Heat flared under my ribs so fast I nearly forgot to buckle the helmet. I dropped the visor and started the engine.

When Maki climbed back on, she didn't hesitate the way she had before, and she didn't bother resting her hands loosely on either side of my coat. She simply wrapped her arms around me. Naturally—as if what we'd said by the embankment had already stripped away the last unnecessary excuse for that posture. The engine rumbled to life. Wind came at us again. But this time I wasn't nearly as scrambled. Not because anything had gotten simpler. Because I finally didn't have to pretend this ride was about nothing.

The person on the back seat was still there. Her hands were still there. The morning was still cold, the snow still falling. Back home, I'd still have to face Jess's unbearable spectator face and the entire pressure-cooker atmosphere of 22 Platinum Bridge Street, ready to blow at any moment. Plenty of trouble. Way too much trouble. But as the bike slid forward again, I realized at least one thing no longer needed guessing. Last night wasn't atmosphere. It wasn't the New Year.

It wasn't some one-minute accidental slip. It was Maki Kushima, sitting on my back seat. It was the fact that her holding onto me was enough, all on its own, to make me pull over by the river.