Chương 428: 201.Tense String 2

The Lunar City. Copernicus. Spaceport. When I arrived, the second-years on the school trip had already gotten there. Looking out across the ground: a full field of dark uniforms. Neat, quiet, upright — like someone had dumped a whole crate of young military cadets onto the spaceport floor and then smoothed them flat. The sight was honestly impressive, provided you didn't know how many of these people read the itinerary as a tactical map, and how many read a tactical map as a club activity.

I stood a little apart, watching for a few seconds.

"... Huh?" Wrong. I looked again, and only then remembered what was missing. The Upper House contingent wasn't there. That was expected. Why would those young lords and ladies attend a two-day-one-night school trip so shabby it barely scraped by with a teachers' presence — a poverty worn with backbone?

That bunch was probably right now sitting in a luxury cabin, in coats worth more than a person, flying toward some star system whose name reeked of private estates, delivering "how beautiful the universe is" sentiments from the deck. They called it beautiful. The people below them, doing the math on fuel, escorts, and airspace risk, probably wanted to toss them all into the void. As for the faculty... I swept my gaze around the outer ring of the crowd once more. I really didn't see many proper adults.

"Bold move, school." I muttered quietly. Relying on only the student council and the Disciplinary Committee, and still letting an entire year group out. That approach in an ordinary school would have gotten the parents' association burning down the gate by petition. Too bad this wasn't an ordinary school. This was the kind of school where even the school rules read like mobilization orders, and the creases in your uniform pressed tighter than an ordinary household's manners.

When you got down to it, this school trip had never felt like a school trip. More like a budget-grade foreign deployment exercise. I looked at the group of students again. Not bad. On the surface, at least, they looked like soldiers. The ranks hadn't degenerated into a tourist group. Voices stayed low. Reactions to assembly and movement weren't slow. Even a few people who normally slouched in the classroom, all sprawl and no posture, suddenly shaped up a bit once they were out of school and on new ground.

The most frightening thing about this school, evidently, wasn't how well it taught people — it was cramming "discipline" into the bone; by the time you walked out of the gate, it grew out of your gait on its own. While I stood there, objectively and nastily grading the entire second-year class, a voice I knew too well — and didn't particularly want to be known with in public — came crashing through the crowd from a distance.

"Ah! Found you! Found you, Shimo!"... Great. Jess. I looked up and saw Jess waving, charging at me from the other side of the crowd with the momentum of someone afraid I might vanish to the far side of the moon again at any second. Behind Jess: Maki, D, Harvey, Roy, Lan, and Akari, all present. Hedwig stood a bit further back, wearing her usual expression of not being too eager to warm up to the world. Fair enough. If the world wanted to use you as a key every day, failing to warm up was only natural.

"Where the hell did you go." Jess gasped first the moment she reached me, then immediately glared.

"We thought you'd been picked up by the Lunar City as a specimen for display."

"Depends whether the exhibit hall accepts such low-value specimens." I said.

"Still knows how to talk back. Looks like you're fine." Jess delivered her diagnosis with satisfaction. Maki ignored Jess's theatrics and did a head-to-toe scan of me first. That look wasn't ordinary concern; it was more like an extremely composed human-parts verification procedure. Left hand, right hand, shoulders and neck, gait, eyes — even whether my breathing was a touch faster than usual, Kushima Maki had probably logged on the side.

"You okay, Shimo?" Maki asked, flatly. I knew that sentence contained far more than the peacetime-flavored question of "did you sleep well last night." Maki was asking: hurt, exposed, followed, or have you done something you can't take back.

"Fine. More than fine." I answered just as flatly. Maki looked at me for two seconds and didn't call it on the spot. Good. That was one of the things I appreciated about Kushima Maki. She didn't not ask — she knew when not to ask in front of a crowd. I turned my gaze to the pair beside her — one tall, one short, styles divergent as two different disaster warnings.

"What about you two — how did the matches go?" I was asking Akari and D. Akari still wore that lifeless expression like she'd just walked out of a room after a power outage. But this time, Akari actually flashed me a small V-sign. On someone else the gesture might be ordinary; on Akari, it was roughly equivalent to a volcano proactively reporting itself safe.

"I came first." Akari said, flat as a weather report.

"Ace of the marksmanship team."

"Congratulations." I said, quite sincerely. Akari nodded. The nod was very slight, but a nod after a V-sign basically counted as her being in a good mood today.

"Shimo, I've failed you!" The next second, D's voice jacked the room's volume back up. That black wall — I'm not being poetic, D genuinely looked like a heavy-armor shield that apologized for itself — came lurching over with watery eyes and a grief-stricken tone, as if the home planet had just fallen.

"I talked all that big game, and I only got third!" D clutched his chest in apparent devastation.

"First and second absolutely cheated!"

"You can't blame yourself for that, D." Akari naturally reached over and patted D's head, tone as flat as ever but the motion as practiced as soothing a large dog.

"The top two both underwent mechanization. The first place was fully prosthetic-bodied."

"At that point it's not even a competition anymore." I said.

"It's more of an arms expo."

"Human brain plus mechanical prosthetics — unbeatable." Harvey summarized from the side, with a researcher's tinge of reflection.

"If it's only speed, stability, and correction rate on the table, D's loss isn't unjust."

"Harvey, your method of consolation is consistently unlikable." Roy heckled from the side.

"I call it honesty."

"Honesty and punch-worthiness aren't always far apart." Lan added flatly. Looking at these people, I felt something strange. Last night I was in the Imperial Hotel, listening to aristocrats and prince-faction people squabble over the Hohenzollern fortress behind Hedwig like bugs about to be scalded by hot water. Now, on this side, they were still arguing over whether the shooting competition had been ruined by cyborg fairness. The same universe. Two entirely different absurdities.

"What about you?" Jess leaned her face in.

"Bring back any souvenirs?"

"I did."

"Really?"

"Fatigue and sleep deprivation." Jess immediately went "tsk."

"Who'd want souvenirs like those." Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

"Good, I'll keep them myself then." Everyone laughed a little. Even the taut inspection feeling in Maki's eyes eased slightly. Then, inevitably, my gaze landed on the person at the back who hadn't said much. Hedwig. School uniform immaculate, posture clean, standing there like a thin blade properly sheathed. Not the kind of beauty that glowed brightest, not the kind of cuteness most likeable — but a refinement that had never intended to be comfortable for everyone.

She hadn't come over, hadn't shouted like Jess, hadn't checked that my limbs were still attached like Maki. Hedwig simply looked at me. Briefly. One glance. But I knew now that wasn't merely a classmate's glance. In my eyes, behind Hedwig now stood not just a name. But Elizabeth von Hohenlohe. And Hohenzollern. And the reason both princes would rather turn this whole school trip into a slaughterhouse to strike first. So that one glance suddenly weighed a lot more.

Hedwig must have sensed I was looking at her half a second longer than usual, and her brow twitched very slightly.

"What." The voice was cold as ever.

"Nothing." I naturally drew my gaze back.

"Just confirming you're still alive." Jess snorted. Harvey turned his head away. Lan raised an eyebrow. Roy wore an expression that said "that was very Hoshino-Shimo." Maki didn't laugh, but looked like she'd expected me to say exactly this, a trace of helplessness passing through her eyes. As for Hedwig — Hedwig looked at me for a second, then gave a very light "hmph."

"Well, that must disappoint you."... Oh. I almost applauded Her Highness on the spot. Biting back. Good. At least she wasn't the type who, after learning she'd been treated as a key, could only survive on stony looks.

"No." I said.

"You being alive is more troublesome for me — but better for everyone." This time it was Hedwig's turn to study me, as if judging whether I understood how much, or was simply spouting some very characteristic nonsense of mine. In the end she said nothing, only lifted her chin a fraction and turned her gaze away. A tiny gesture. But I could tell Hedwig wasn't angry enough to actually leave. Good. Looked like we wouldn't need to stage a public princess-and-classmate rupture at the spaceport today.

The itinerary that followed was, in theory, a school trip. In practice, it was more like a large group of future would-be soldiers being moved in an orderly fashion from one over-air-conditioned educational facility to another over-air-conditioned educational facility. First, the Lunar City History Museum.

In a tone so standard, so steady, and so well-suited to hypnotizing an entire year group, the guide walked us through the construction history of Copernicus Lunar City, early lunar colonization, the light-shielding system, oxygen recycling, gravity simulation, and how humanity had, step by step, with steel and bureaucracy, forced a place onto the lunar surface where people could work, quarrel, fall in love, and even host banquets.

As I walked, I looked at the pioneering-era tools carefully preserved in the display cases. Strange, honestly. When humanity first pioneered the moon, it relied on courage, technology, and resources. Later, once the moon was truly lived in as a city, the reliance shifted to regulations, hierarchy, and more resources. When you got down to it, civilization's evolution sometimes just meant writing "in order to survive" into a thicker manual.

"What are you thinking?" Maki walked up beside me, voice low.

"About how humans are really good at packaging survival as a great endeavor." Maki glanced at me.

"Your observations since this morning have been very unlikable."

"Am I usually likable?"

"No." Maki answered remarkably fast.

"Which is exactly why I said 'since this morning.'" I tipped my head to look at her. Kushima Maki didn't change expression, as if that last remark wasn't a heckle but some geological survey record. At times like this I always felt that if Maki didn't go military in the future, she'd have a bright career in interrogation. She could drive a person to confess voluntarily using nothing but a flat expression and one precisely-aimed truth. After the history museum, the observation gallery.

The view there was excellent — vast spans of the Lunar City's outer ring architecture and, off in the distance, the engineering facilities sunk in darkness. The students scattered in twos and threes: some studied seriously, some took photos, some pretended to enjoy the scenery while actually sneaking snacks bought along the way. The Disciplinary Committee caught two, the student council talked the two back, everything orderly enough that I began to wonder if the itinerary was going too smoothly.... But fine.

If the day would go smoothly, let it go smoothly. At least until the banquet began, these people were entitled to a few hours of being ordinary students. After noon, the school arranged several visit points that were educational and also quite good at letting your soul leak out through your eyes. The energy-control exhibit hall, the lunar transit hub, and a permanent hall dedicated to the modern history of Federation–Empire space routes.

Harvey enjoyed himself thoroughly; D's eyes started losing focus by the third exhibit; and Jess, after being reminded a second time to "please not lean on the display wall," exuded the aura of a person ready to retire on the spot. Roy was in charge of the route. Lan was in charge of the time. Akari looked like she wasn't listening at all, but had memorized every exit and camera angle. Maki kept the few of us who didn't look capable of touring the whole place safely, held together in formation.

As for Hedwig — Hedwig was quiet the whole way. Not a sulking kind of quiet — she was simply used to keeping half a step of separation between herself and the crowd. But now that I knew what I knew, every time I looked at Hedwig, I felt her shoulders carried not a school bag, but an entire fortress, a family name, and a balance of power half the Empire didn't want to admit to. That feeling was annoying.

Especially when the person in question still looked like nothing more than a female student who'd stand obediently before a guide map, brow slightly knit, annoyed the guide was talking too slowly. By evening, the itinerary finally wound down. The students returned to the lodgings to tidy up, preparing for the evening's joint banquet of the Federation Military Academy and the Imperial Military Academy. On the surface, the event was called exchange.

In practice, it was more like packing two groups of future soldiers who hadn't yet officially drawn pay into the same hall, to see whether they'd start comparing in manners first. The moment Jess heard about the banquet arrangement, she perked up.

"I heard dancing with the other side's student council is a tradition." The way Jess said that, her expression was as sly as someone who'd already turned the dance floor into a battlefield in her head, and decided who should fall first.

"A tradition, huh." I repeated.

"That's right, a tradition." Jess winked.

"Friendly exchange, cultural interaction, deepening the bond between the two schools, and seeing who steps on whose feet first."

"That last part of yours is the real main point, isn't it." Roy said.

"I think it's quite reasonable." Harvey, surprisingly, nodded.

"Physical coordination is also part of tactical ability."

"Harvey, please, once in a while, take your life out of tactical analysis for some air." Lan said serenely.

"I did." Harvey said.

"But after taking it out, I still found tactical analysis easier to understand." D quietly asked Akari from the side: "Can dance order be decided by shooting rank?"

"No." Akari answered quickly.

"And you're too big — spinning around might fling someone across the room."

"... Wah." I nearly laughed. Then, naturally, I glanced at Hedwig. Hedwig had also just heard Jess's line about "dancing with the other side's student council is a tradition," and her expression cooled by a degree. Not surprise — plain displeasure. That kind of displeasure that says "I know this boring tradition will land on me sooner or later, but I still want to register my contempt for it." I understood instantly.

"Maki and I will handle it." I said. Everyone looked at me at once. I glanced at Kushima Maki again.

"We can't exactly send Hedwig." Maki picked it up almost without pause.

"I have no objection." Hedwig frowned.

"Who said I need you two to—""You do." I cut her off with great sincerity.

"Your face right now looks like someone who'd, before the first dance even ends, casually pop the shoulder joint of the other school's student council representative." Maki added a knife stroke, flatly.

"And you don't like being touched." Hedwig was silent. Jess looked at me, then at Maki, and finally produced an extremely problematic smile.

"Ohh — I see."

"Your 'I see' sounds dirty." I said.

"I didn't!" Jess protested immediately.

"I just thought you and Maki have a nice little classmate friendship."

"Classmate friendship loses thirty-percent credibility the moment it comes out of your mouth." Lan said. Maki, for her part, didn't even acknowledge Jess. She just put the itinerary into the folder in her hand, her tone as steady as if she were discussing the duty roster assignment.

"Tidy up first. We regroup before the banquet." That was Maki, all over. When everyone's brains started sliding toward strange directions, she'd drag the whole thing — very unromantically — back to the process. To some extent, her existence was one of the main reasons this group still ate on time. I didn't say anything more. After all, the person who needed protecting — I never intended to neglect her tonight anyway.

After evening fell, I first returned to my original lodging, packed my things briefly, and checked out. My hands weren't slow, but my mind kept running the layout. Banquet hall entrance. Side doors. Service routes. The second-floor private room area. Positions offering a view of the whole hall. Positions from which I could both reach Hedwig fastest and drag her out fastest. At moments like this, I always felt I should be more of a student.

At least in theory, on the evening of a school trip, a female student shouldn't be folding clothes while planning evacuation lines for the banquet in her head. Too bad theory usually only held for textbooks and the more slowly dying. I packed the last item into my bag and zipped it shut.

"... All right." Then I left. By the time I reached the Imperial Hotel, the students had more or less already filed in. The Imperial Hotel at night was even more like a carefully polished lie than by day. Warm lights, soft carpets, metal and glass polished as if no one had ever bled on them.

Who'd have thought that yesterday I'd been here in a server's uniform, carrying champagne, topping up glasses, and casually disposing of a baroness; and today the same building would put on a face of civilization, exchange, tradition, and youth, to receive the students of two schools. Truly remarkable.

"Shimo." Maki's voice drifted over from a short distance. I turned. Kushima Maki had already changed into the formal uniform for the banquet, standing under the light, crisp and clean as if she'd just stepped out of a "standard military-cadet etiquette" textbook. Hedwig, Jess, Harvey, Roy, Lan, Akari, and D were nearby too, each tidied up respectably. Only I knew that probably half the danger in this venue dressed better than it looked.

"About to begin." Maki said.

"So I see." I drew my gaze back from the hall, the stairways, the servers' routes, and two spots that looked like ordinary décor but would hide a camera very well, and nodded to Maki. Then I looked at Hedwig. This time, not far away. Not separated by the crowd of an entire spaceport. Hedwig was right there. In a uniform similar to ours, standing in the lamplight before the banquet began. On the surface, she was just one member of tonight's Federation Military Academy student delegation.

But I knew she was worth more, and more dangerous, than anyone else in that entire banquet hall. Princess. Key. Hohenzollern. Elizabeth von Hohenlohe. That line that might one day flip the entire border firepower structure of the Empire. All of these things stood quietly, on the shoulders of a young girl. And she herself was probably still annoyed that this banquet was such a hassle. I suddenly felt like laughing. The world really knew where to hide explosives.

"What." Hedwig noticed my gaze and asked coldly.

"Nothing." I said.

"Just thinking you'd better not wander off tonight." Hedwig frowned.

"What do you take me for."

"A high-value fragile item." I said honestly. She shot me a glare.

"... Shimo. You really know how to make people angry."

"Thanks." I said.

"I consider it a specialty." Jess beside us had already started snickering. Maki let out a very light sigh, as if entirely unsurprised that I'd say such a thing to the least appropriate person, three minutes before the banquet began. But Hedwig didn't actually turn and walk away. Good. Then there was still hope. From the other end of the hall came the chime announcing the banquet's opening. Soft, formal, respectable enough to make a person want to roll their eyes.

I loosened my shoulders a fraction, then straightened again.

"Let's go." I said. On the surface, we were attending the two-school joint exchange banquet. In reality, we were walking into a place where people had been conspiring loudly in the private rooms yesterday and would be putting on an air of youthful peace today — to see whether tonight turned out dancing first, or trouble first. To be honest, I didn't particularly want either. Too bad this world never asks what I want.