Chapter 527 | A Personality Disorder

Chapter 527: 527 | A Personality Disorder

I sat.

Not on the couch next to her, because proximity to Hikaru required the same caution you’d use approaching a cat who had decided to tolerate you but hadn’t committed to not clawing your face. I dropped into the armchair across from her, leaned back, and let my legs stretch until my boots almost touched the coffee table. Hikaru’s red eyes followed the movement and then returned to my face with the same flat assessment she gave everything, including breakfast, opponents, and the weather.

"Formation for tomorrow," she said. "Your call puts me on detection alongside Fox."

"Yeah."

"I’m better on assault."

"I know."

She picked up her mug and drank, holding it with both hands in a way that made her look seventeen instead of whatever ancient thing she actually was behind the disguise and the military posture and the three years of lies. The glasses caught lamplight. The shojo manga sat in her lap with a shirtless samurai on the cover and a woman clinging to his arm, and neither of us acknowledged its existence because some things exist best in the space between what people admit.

"Fox’s detection runs Silver tier with her buff active," Hikaru said. "Mine runs through Phantom Edge. We operate on different frequencies."

"That’s why I paired you. Belle reads mana signatures and material density. You read movement and spatial displacement. She tells us what’s there. You tell us when it decides to attack."

Hikaru considered this for a beat longer than she would have six weeks ago. The old Hikaru would have dismissed the logic and repositioned herself without consultation, because the Ice Prince of Obsidian did not take suggestions from lottery winners who could not run a mile. The current Hikaru weighed the reasoning against her own experience, and her jaw worked once before she offered the smallest possible nod.

Progress. The slowest, most reluctant progress in the history of human relationships, but progress.

"The kelp creates natural cover to a depth of twelve meters," she said. "Phantom Edge cuts at ten meters maximum. If the alpha surfaces from below the kelp line, I won’t see the spatial displacement until it’s already in striking range."

"How much warning does that give us?"

"Two seconds. Maybe three if it moves slow."

"It won’t move slow."

"No."

I rubbed the back of my neck where Addison had left a bite mark that Peterson, that spiteful bastard, had deliberately refused to heal. The graft pulsed once, warm and steady, registering Hikaru’s pale blue ring in the back of my skull. Thin. Faint. Structurally significant in a way Yumi’s crystal plate had confirmed, though Hikaru existed in a frequency range none of the others occupied, covering gaps in the field that would otherwise remain empty.

She did not know about the rings. She did not know about the weapon. She did not know that her very existence as someone who trusted me was feeding a resonance field that would eventually power something designed to kill the things that built Void Gates around training exercises.

What Hikaru knew was that I had found her bleeding on a bathroom floor and chosen to protect her secret instead of exploiting it. What she knew was that I’d told her she could exist in her own apartment without her binding. What she knew was that I’d read her shojo manga recommendations and cried at Chapter thirty-seven and told her about it with zero shame, which had cracked something open behind those red eyes that she’d spent three years sealing shut.

"If it surfaces inside the formation," I said, "Blair’s the first line of response. Her fire is weaker in humidity, but she can still put out enough heat to slow something for a few seconds. Naomi drops from altitude and hits it with concentrated Wave Motion while Jordan pins it with shadows."

"And you?"

"I make the call. That’s what field lead does." 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ

Hikaru’s mouth twitched. On anyone else it would have been invisible. On the Ice Prince of Obsidian, A-rank blade with an invisible death aspect, it registered like a billboard.

"You’re getting better at this."

"At what?"

"Leading." She set the mug down and wrapped her arms around the manga, holding it against her chest like a shield. "When you arrived, you couldn’t navigate the campus. You got lost seven times on your first day."

"Six. Belle exaggerated."

"Belle does not exaggerate. Belle documents." Hikaru pushed her glasses up her nose. "You got lost seven times, you couldn’t run a mile, and you nearly passed out during Garrett’s baseline assessment. I thought you would wash out in two weeks."

"That’s fair. I thought I would wash out in two weeks."

"You didn’t."

"No."

She stood up from the couch and walked barefoot to the kitchen. No sound on the tile. The sleep shirt slipped off one shoulder. The shorts showed most of her legs.

I looked at the tactical map on my tablet. I did not look at Hikaru in civilian clothes with no binding. I’d made that agreement with myself months ago. The complications weren’t worth it. She hadn’t invited them.

The System disagreed with this decision. The System was frequently unhelpful.

Hikaru came back with two mugs of green tea. She handed me one. The ceramic was hot against my palms. I processed this information slowly: she’d made a second cup. At some point during the evening while I was reviewing formations. While she was reading alone.

She’d been expecting me to come home.

I held the mug and tried to parse that data without assigning it more weight than it deserved. Hikaru had made tea. People made tea. It didn’t mean anything specific.

Probably.

"The support flank position," she said, sitting back down and pulling her feet up onto the couch. "Blair will resist it."

"Blair already resisted it. Belle showed her math until Blair ran out of counterarguments."

"Blair doesn’t run out of counterarguments. Blair runs out of patience and agrees to preserve her own sanity."