We made it back to Building C without dying, which I was counting as a personal victory. The elevator ride was quiet in the good way. Naomi got out with and headed to her dorm to get ready.
I pushed open the door to 5E.
Hikaru was at the kitchen sink.
In the full Obsidian uniform, hair immaculate, back straight. Washing dishes. There was an actual pan on the stove with a clean dish towel folded next to it, a plate drying on the rack, the specific evidence of soone who had gotten up at a reasonable hour and cooked themselves breakfast like a functional person with habits.
Huh. Hikaru cooked.
The apartnt slled faintly like eggs and sothing with soy sauce.
I registered all of this in about two seconds.
Then Hikaru turned off the tap, turned around, and we made eye contact.
The blush was imdiate and total. It started at the collar of her uniform and went straight up to the tips of her ears, deep red across pale skin, her red eyes going wide for exactly one second before she did a short, stiff nod in my direction, grabbed her bag off the kitchen chair, and walked out the front door at a speed that technically counted as walking but had the energy of a full sprint.
The door closed behind her.
I stood in the hallway for a mont.
Then I stood in the kitchen for another mont.
Then the entirety of last night played back in approximately four seconds of highlight reel and I put my hand over my face.
Right. Yeah. Hikaru heard everything.
Everything.
Hikaru had been awake in the apartnt when Naomi and I finished, got in the shower together, discussed the morning-after pill situation, talked about devotion percentages and stolen abilities, and then I had asked Naomi to stay the night.
I lowered my hand slowly.
Hikaru Tanaka, who was secretly a girl, who had kept an airtight disguise for however long she’d been running this operation, had spent her first week in a new country listening to her male roommate have loud, passionate sex with her classmate.
No wonder she couldn’t make eye contact.
No wonder she left at the speed of soone being chased.
I went to the kitchen and looked at the clean pan on the stove, the dish towel folded with military symtry, the single plate dried and stacked on the rack.
I turned on the tap and drank water straight from my cupped hands because I was an animal, then headed to the bathroom.
The shower was already warr than yesterday. Hikaru had probably used it first and the building’s pipes had compensated. I got the water running hot and stood under it for longer than I had ti for, because my muscles were screaming and heat was the only thing that helped.
The system ticked in my peripheral vision. Lifespan counter. Just over six days, fourteen hours remaining. Endurance at 9/10, one segnt from D-rank. If Misato’s session pushed even halfway as hard tomorrow, I’d hit it. Strength moving. Agility starting to show actual numbers.
Wave Motion sitting in my active slots, Copper rank, waiting.
Six days. It was a working window. Ti to operate. Get to Friday’s assessnt. Bank the Midnight Foxes quest. Find the next target.
Belle.
The thought arrived clean and organized while I had shampoo in my hair. Belle Fox, who had been watching all morning with those amber-brown eyes doing their math, who had clocked the hickey on Naomi’s neck and filed it under useful information. Belle, who sat in the lottery section and sent texts about hating morning and chips costing too many points, who laughed genuinely exactly twice the first day I t her and then spent the rest of the ti calculating whether I was worth investing in.
Belle’s base attraction had been twenty-four percent yesterday. After a full day of shared training, watching push through Misato’s circuit, seeing what my ability did for Naomi’s performance.
It was probably higher now.
I rinsed the shampoo out and thought about this carefully.
Belle wasn’t Naomi. Naomi’s thirty-four percent was real. She’d seen the disaster in the straining uniform, the man who could barely do a single pull-up, and decided to help anyway.
Her interest at the beginning wasn’t a calculation based on my potential. It was just... hers.
Belle’s interest was more complicated than that. Belle saw soone useful. Soone who might be worth attaching to early before the value beca obvious to everyone else. That was fine. I could work with transactional. I understood transactional. I’d been transactional for three days running and it was keeping alive.
The question was how.
Naomi I’d approached honestly, shown her the death tir, told her the truth. That had worked because Naomi’s default setting was to help people who were genuinely struggling. Belle’s default setting was to maximize return on investnt.
Different approach. Different angle.
I turned off the water and toweled off quickly.
The uniform slid on cleaner than yesterday. The shirt didn’t fight my stomach as hard. The body was shifting, faster than I’d expected.
The Silver-tier essence working through my system plus the Limit Breaker plus Misato’s genuinely horrifying training schedule was adding up to sothing.
I checked the mirror.
Sa face. Amber eyes, brown hair that needed a cut, jaw slightly sharper than day one. Sa person, technically.
But the uniform fit better. Not well, but better.
I grabbed my bag, locked the apartnt behind , and took the stairs down because I had energy left and the elevator felt like giving up.
Naomi was waiting in the lobby.
She’d fixed her braid, changed into her full uniform, got her bag sorted, and still made it downstairs before . Her pink and black striped hair was neat against the black blazer, the Obsidian trim on her shoulder, her long legs in regulation tights. She was eating an apple from sowhere, chewing thoughtfully while she looked at the notice board on the lobby wall.
She heard coming down the last flight and glanced back.
"You look better," she said.
"The bar was low."
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