Chapter 36: “The Unspoken Pact”

  Scene 1: Monday Homeroom – “Survived the Wreck?”

  —-: Ren

  The classroom clock ticked like a hammer against Ren’s temple.

  Everyone was seated—but no one looked awake. Not really. Not after the week they’d just had.

  Half the students had bags under their eyes. The other half stared at the front chalkboard like it owed them an apology.

  Ren sat second row, center aisle. Not by choice. Mei had rearranged seats during strategy week, and she claimed the energy was “more aerodynamic” this way.

  Rin was two seats to his left. Silent. Posture perfect. Not looking at him.

  Hana sat behind him. Pencil already spinning between her fingers in that nervous little flick that always meant she was thinking three layers ahead but too scared to say any of it out loud.

  The classroom door creaked open.

  And in walked Ms. Shiraishi, in heels too sharp for this hour and a blouse so wrinkle-free it might’ve been armored.

  She set her slate down with a clack.

  Then stared at them all like she was gauging whether anyone had the strength to survive another lecture.

  She didn’t smile.

  Instead, she said flatly:

  “I hope you all survived last week’s self-destruction.”

  A beat.

  Taiga coughed into his sleeve.

  Jiro muttered, “Yikes.”

  Half the class winced.

  Ren didn’t move.

  Shiraishi raised an eyebrow. “No comments? No poetic postmortems? Not even a snarky rebuttal from the peanut gallery?”

  Saki raised her hand.

  “Denied,” Shiraishi snapped before the hand got halfway up.

  Then she tapped her slate. The wall projection flickered to life, showing a side-view schematic of the Silver Dart—scuffed, patched, and fully diagrammed in redline updates.

  “Let’s review,” she said dryly. “One—public meltdown in the hangar. Two—loss of team cohesion. Three—unauthorized diagnostic overlays using emotional resonance coils—what even is that?”

  Hana sank two centimeters in her chair.

  Ren stared at the diagram and willed himself not to melt.

  Shiraishi continued.

  “Four—unauthorized sabotage in the faculty bathhouse involving antigravity soap. Five—romantic entanglement rumors in the student press. And six…”

  She paused.

  Then looked directly at Ren.

  “…You won. The race.”

  Everyone blinked.

  Ren sat straighter.

  “Barely,” she added, “but you did. You all didn’t explode midair. Congratulations. That is—technically—progress.”

  Then she turned off the projection.

  Silence.

  She folded her arms, heels echoing on the wood floor as she stepped forward.

  “Now. If you’re all quite done bleeding on the tarmac, we have a team to rebuild.”

  No one dared breathe.

  Then, at the very back, Taiga raised a hand.

  She glared. “Yes?”

  “…Are we allowed to say something poetic now?”

  She stared at him. Deadpan.

  Then—barely, almost imperceptibly—smiled.

  “You can say it while scrubbing the grease traps.”

  Taiga deflated.

  Ren? Just let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding.

  The week had begun.

  And somehow, they were still here.

  Scene 2: Team Reinstatement – “Next Blowout, You're Grounded”

  —-: Rin

  The inspection bay still smelled like solder and storm fallout.

  Rin stood with her arms crossed just outside the red tape line, watching the final stamp being pressed into the inspection report by a mechanical scribe. Its long, needle-like stylus hissed steam every time it punctuated a word.

  Silver Dart – Status: Cleared

  Crew Dynamics – Status: Conditional

  Yeah. That sounded about right.

  Shiraishi stood nearby, flanked by two engineering aides and a tactical observer from the board. The woman had a monocle built into her left temple with adjustable brass gears. She hadn’t blinked once.

  Rin didn’t flinch under the scrutiny. But she felt it—like dust settling in her lungs.

  The Dart looked fine.

  Better than fine.

  Polished, realigned, pressure-tested. Her stabilizers gleamed under the bay lights, new crystal fusing twinkling faintly where Hana’s work had sealed the microfractures.

  Everything about the ship looked ready to race again.

  So why didn’t Rin?

  “Ms. Shiraishi,” one of the aides said, tapping a datapad. “No energy anomalies. Control matrices are fully recalibrated. Autopilot protocol has been disengaged and reviewed.”

  “AI core?” Shiraishi asked, not looking up from her tea.

  “Stable. No trace of ghost config override since the last sync.”

  Shiraishi turned then, directly to the team standing nearby—Ren, Hana, Jiro, Taiga, Mei, and herself.

  “Good,” she said.

  Then:

  “You are reinstated.”

  Taiga pumped a fist in the air, nearly smacking Jiro in the chin.

  Ren exhaled hard. Mei didn’t even blink—already analyzing the next 12 variables.

  Hana looked down and gave a small nod.

  Rin?

  She just kept her arms folded.

  Shiraishi stepped toward them now, heels tapping on the steel grate floor.

  “But let me be crystal clear,” she said, voice lowering. “If I get even one more report of intra-team sabotage, emotional meltdowns mid-flight, or confetti-based psychological warfare—”

  She looked at Taiga.

  He tried to smile. Failed.

  “—I pull the plug. On everything. Understood?”

  Everyone nodded.

  Except Rin.

  Shiraishi locked eyes with her.

  “You included.”

  Rin met the gaze. Held it.

  “…Understood.”

  The headmistress gave a small, sharp nod. Then turned on her heel and strode off, clipboard steam trailing behind her like mist in a thunderstorm.

  The others started murmuring, voices low.

  But Rin kept her eyes on the ship.

  On the Dart.

  On the place she nearly broke—and almost broke someone else with it.

  It stood there, gleaming like a second chance.

  Not a reward.

  A pact.

  Don't waste this.

  She didn’t plan to.

  Scene 3: Mei’s New Role Begins – “Don’t Disappoint My Math”

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  —-: Ren

  The strategy room still smelled faintly of chalk dust, ozone, and someone’s long-abandoned sandwich.

  Ren sat up straight as the projector powered on, casting a shimmering diagram of the Dart’s updated flight path on the wall. The others sat around the half-moon table in varying states of half-awake: Taiga chewing on a pencil, Jiro sketching stabilizer mods in the margins of his flight log, Hana running calibration loops through her slate like she couldn’t blink without coding something.

  Rin sat directly across from him. She didn’t fidget. She didn’t yawn.

  She just watched.

  And Mei?

  She stood at the head of the table. Tablet in one hand. Stylus in the other. Not nervous. Not apologetic.

  Just calm. Calculated. Commanding.

  “The reentry vector at Kyokuto is purposefully narrowed,” Mei said, tapping the diagram. “We’re expected to shave speed for safety at Ring Seven.”

  She paused.

  Looked around the room.

  “We’re not doing that.”

  Ren blinked.

  Mei’s eyes narrowed slightly, expression unreadable behind her lenses.

  “If we reduce vertical pitch by 0.3 and let the left aileron torque with delay-crank stabilization—thank you, Hana—we can thread the ring without speed bleed. Barely.”

  She flicked a finger. The diagram spun.

  New numbers populated. Angles. G-force estimates. Crystal stress overlays.

  It was beautiful.

  And terrifying.

  Taiga raised a hand halfway. “Just curious. Are we trying to win, or are we trying to time-travel by shattering the atmosphere?”

  Mei didn’t smile. “Both would be efficient.”

  Jiro muttered, “Well, I, for one, welcome our new tactician overlord.”

  Mei ignored him.

  “I’ve divided the race plan into micro-sync intervals,” she continued. “Each of you will study your node map. If anyone guesses mid-run, you throw off the sequence.”

  She set her slate down, flat.

  “For this to work, we do not improvise.”

  Her eyes moved across them all—landing last on Ren.

  “You don’t have to be brilliant,” she said. “You just have to follow the math.”

  She picked up her slate again. Took one step back.

  “But if you do disappoint my math…”

  Pause.

  A beat.

  “…I’ll let Rin fly solo.”

  Hana choked on her tea. Taiga gasped like he’d witnessed a marriage proposal.

  Rin raised one eyebrow, half-daring Mei to prove it.

  And Ren?

  Ren just smiled.

  Small. Real.

  Because for the first time in weeks, he wasn’t carrying the weight of leadership alone.

  It had shifted.

  Perfectly.

  To the girl who once whispered strategy from the rafters—

  Now standing in front of them all like she’d been born to do it.

  Scene 4: Hana Returns to the Workshop – “I Designed This for You”

  —-: Hana

  The workshop welcomed her like an old friend who wasn’t sure if they’d been forgiven.

  It smelled exactly the same—brass polish, mineral oil, and the faint electrical tingle of residual crystal current. Everything was in the right place. Her place.

  But for some reason, stepping through the threshold made her hesitate.

  Only for a second.

  She exhaled through her nose, shoulders back, tool pouch clipped snug against her hip. The whiteboard schematics from last week’s meltdown were still half-erased—someone had drawn a mustache on a pressure diagram. Probably Taiga.

  She walked past it. Straight to the bench.

  Her latest design lay waiting under a linen cover. She peeled it back.

  A new stabilizer coil assembly, humming faintly with passive crystal resonance. Thinner than the standard frame. More flexible. Forged to shift with instinctive torque, not static input.

  In short:

  It would only work if Rin flew the way she flew—tight angles, aggressive yaw cuts, no pre-brief delay.

  Hana stared at it, her own handwriting scrawled in ink beside the crystal brackets:

  Adaptive Looping Response Coil – V.3

  “If she’s gonna fly like a storm, give her lightning rods.”

  Her stomach twisted.

  Then Rin’s shadow fell over the workbench.

  “…You made that for me?”

  Her voice was quiet.

  Hana turned. Rin had her jacket off, a wrench still in one hand. She hadn’t announced herself. She didn’t need to.

  “Yeah,” Hana said. “I—yeah.”

  She tapped the top crystal housing. “It adjusts lateral resistance based on micro-pressure input. But it only works if you don’t overcorrect on the spiral dive. If you do, it fractures.”

  Rin stepped closer.

  “You built something that could shatter if I mess up?”

  “No,” Hana said. “I built something that works if you don’t doubt yourself.”

  Rin blinked.

  Just once.

  Hana cleared her throat and looked down. “I know we don’t… talk. But I’ve been watching your runs. Since way before the Dart.”

  She nudged the stabilizer an inch forward.

  “You’re hard to build for. You fly on gut, not math. But I figured if I could make something that responds faster than your nerves, maybe…”

  She stopped.

  Words ran out.

  Rin looked at the design again. Turned it once in her hand.

  Then said:

  “This feels like cheating.”

  Hana raised a brow.

  Rin smiled—barely.

  “I mean it in a good way.”

  Hana let herself smile back.

  Just a little.

  Then Rin set the stabilizer down gently and said:

  “You think this’ll hold through Ring Seven?”

  “I know it will,” Hana replied.

  Their eyes met.

  Not rivals.

  Not even teammates.

  Just two halves of the same machine—finally syncing up.

  Scene 5: Ren & Rin Quiet Talk – “Are You Mad?”

  —-: Ren

  They sat on opposite sides of the observation deck—one long bench split by a gap where someone had spilled oil three days ago and no one had cleaned it.

  The school below was winding down, light fading over the west towers, copper roofplates gleaming dull gold in the sunset. Airships drifted in the far-off sky like slow-moving thoughts. The wind up here was high and soft, tugging at collar hems and loose bangs.

  Ren wasn’t sure how he ended up sitting there.

  Or how Rin ended up beside him.

  But here they were.

  She didn’t look over when she asked:

  “Are you mad?”

  Ren stared at the ring of metal scarring his glove—still faintly stained from the hangar blowout.

  “…Yeah,” he said.

  The breeze whistled faintly between the pipes above them.

  “I figured,” Rin replied.

  She leaned back against the railing, arms draped loose over the edge, legs crossed like this wasn’t the hardest thing she’d said all day.

  Ren scratched behind his ear. “But not for the reason you think.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’m not mad that you pushed me.” He paused. “I’m mad that you didn’t tell me why.”

  That got her attention.

  She didn’t flinch, but he felt it—the subtle shift in posture, the slow exhale through her nose.

  He didn’t press.

  He just let the moment breathe.

  Rin looked down at her gloves. “Because if I’d said it out loud,” she murmured, “you’d have stopped me.”

  Ren didn’t deny it.

  Rin kept going, eyes still on her hands. “I thought if I pushed hard enough, maybe I could erase it. The loss. The failure. What I left behind.”

  She shook her head. “That’s not strategy. That’s desperation.”

  Another silence.

  This one… softer.

  Ren leaned forward, arms on knees.

  “I still trust you,” he said.

  Rin turned her head. Slowly.

  He met her gaze. “Even when you don’t. Especially when you don’t.”

  Her mouth opened. Closed.

  Then she looked away, blinking too quickly.

  “That’s stupid,” she said quietly.

  “Yup,” he replied.

  They sat like that, side by side, sunset pouring over the railing and pooling between their shoes.

  And for the first time in weeks, the silence didn’t feel like a wall.

  It felt like the start of something rebuildable.

  Scene 6: Crimson Gale Walks By – “It Takes Guts”

  —-: Rin

  The hallway outside the turbine lab was too narrow for pride to pass cleanly.

  Rin had just finished rerouting the coolant manifold reports when she caught the reflection in the copper-tinted window: tall silhouettes, polished jackets, the sharp gleam of Crimson Gale’s insignia.

  Her old team.

  Walking in formation like a well-oiled blade.

  She didn’t flinch.

  Didn’t pause her stride.

  Just kept walking down the hall, her bootsteps steady against the tile.

  “Rin.”

  The voice came like a blade through velvet—Fuyuki, their old secondary pilot. He always used to talk with one hand in his pocket like he owned the sky.

  She slowed.

  Turned slightly.

  The rest of the Crimson crew stood behind him—arms crossed, all with the same look. Mild interest. Polished boredom. Superiority dressed in school uniform trim.

  “You look busy,” Fuyuki said. “Must be hard patching together a team from scraps.”

  Rin offered no smile. “Scraps fly faster than bloated egos.”

  That raised an eyebrow.

  One of the others—Chiyo—tilted her head, eyes narrowing at the new stabilizer coil in Rin’s hand.

  “Oh,” she said lightly, “you’re still customizing parts for other people’s ships?”

  The blow was neat. Clean.

  Rin felt it land somewhere in her ribs.

  Fuyuki smiled thinly. “Takes more than patched metal and borrowed designs to become legends.”

  And there it was.

  That was always the wound, wasn’t it?

  Not the crash.

  Not the fallout.

  But the quiet implication that she had been less than what they needed.

  That she didn’t belong.

  Rin let the moment breathe.

  Then she tucked the stabilizer into the crook of her arm, stepped forward until the air between them tasted like crystal dust and carbon heat.

  Her voice was low.

  Even.

  “You’re right.”

  Chiyo blinked.

  Rin continued.

  “It takes more than parts and pilots and pretty uniforms.”

  A pause.

  She smiled—sharp and clean and utterly real.

  “It takes guts.”

  Fuyuki’s smile faltered.

  “And I’ve still got some left.”

  Then she turned on her heel.

  Didn’t walk away.

  Flew.

  And as she did, her grip tightened on the stabilizer—not like a weapon.

  Like a promise.

  Scene 7: Dorm Wars Begin – “Quack, Confetti, and Curry Gas”

  —-: Jiro

  You could always tell how stable a team was by how weird their dorm hallway smelled.

  And tonight?

  Hinode’s main student wing smelled like metal polish, burnt rice, and confetti glue.

  Jiro tiptoed past the common lounge barefoot, holding a ladle like a weapon. The lights flickered once—nothing suspicious—until he heard it:

  QUACK.

  Loud.

  Mechanical.

  Unforgiving.

  “Oh no.”

  Too late.

  Steam hissed from behind the bulletin board vent—and a small, copper-plated duck launched into the air, its beak flapping and tiny feet kicking like a drowning automaton.

  “LIGHT DEACTIVATION DETECTED,” it squawked.

  “WAKE UP, LOSERS!”

  A flood of blinding yellow light spilled from its crystal belly as it circled the ceiling.

  Someone screamed. Probably Taiga.

  Jiro ducked into the stairwell, only to step directly into a cascade of pink confetti rigged to explode on movement.

  “SAKI,” he groaned, wiping paper hearts from his hair.

  Down the hall, Taiga’s laugh echoed like thunder on tin.

  “You think that’s funny? Wait till you see phase two!” Taiga shouted.

  Saki replied from the girls’ hall without missing a beat: “Unless your ‘phase two’ includes vacuuming my sheets, you’re going down, grease-boy.”

  At this point, the entire hallway lit up with booby trap energy.

  Someone had sabotaged the water spigots. One toilet now flushed up. Jiro didn’t ask questions.

  Hana peeked out of her room holding a capacitor wrench. “Why is my soap levitating?”

  Rin emerged from the other end of the corridor, deadpan. “Taiga modified the thermal cleanser to react to changes in air pressure.”

  Hana blinked. “Why would he do that?”

  Jiro muttered, “Because he’s bored and slightly unwell.”

  And then, as if on cue, the hallway vents clicked.

  And the smell hit.

  “Jiro,” Mei said from above, having appeared on the stairwell balcony with perfect stillness, “did you forget to close the curry valves in the communal kitchen after dinner?”

  He paused.

  Then very softly: “…Maybe.”

  Below them, a hissss signaled the vaporized curry concentrate now flooding the entire first floor’s ventilation system.

  Taiga sniffed. “I’d eat it.”

  “You’d eat sandpaper,” Rin replied.

  SLAM.

  A door at the end of the hall swung open, and Grandpa emerged in a night robe, hair in curlers, and holding what appeared to be an actual fuel injector like a club.

  “You goblins got three seconds before I test combustion ratios in this hallway.”

  Silence.

  Even the duck powered down.

  “Good,” Grandpa grunted. “Now sleep. Or burn.”

  He shut the door.

  Steam hissed.

  The dorm, for one miraculous moment, fell into peace.

  Jiro, covered in glitter, leaned against the wall and muttered:

  “I miss the emotional meltdowns. At least those didn’t quack.”

  Rin chuckled.

  Hana actually smiled.

  And Mei?

  She simply said:

  “Stabilizers check out.”

  Scene 8: Final Scene – “Not Flying Solo Anymore, Huh?”

  —-: Ren

  The hangar was quiet again.

  Not empty—just resting. Like a dragon with its eyes half-closed.

  Ren crouched near the undercarriage, one gloved hand tracing the coolant line from port 6B to the junction coil. The pressure was balanced, but there was still a faint flicker in the readout.

  Hairline crack. Right where the torsion clamp met the frame.

  It wasn’t urgent. Wasn’t dangerous.

  But it was his job to notice.

  He reached for the toolkit on his left—only to find it sliding toward him on its own.

  Grandpa.

  The old man didn’t speak. Just settled onto the floor beside Ren with a quiet grunt, pulled out a small welding pen, and clicked it on. The tip glowed orange, then blue.

  Together, they worked in silence.

  No lecture. No “back in my day.” No mention of the race or the article or the way Ren’s voice still cracked on hard days.

  Just the hum of the ship.

  And the soft tap, hiss, tap of metal being mended by hands that had done this more times than Ren could guess.

  When the crack was sealed, Grandpa clicked off the pen and set it down with surprising care. His fingers lingered on the frame a moment longer than needed.

  Then he spoke—low and gravel-deep.

  “Not flying solo anymore, huh?”

  Ren didn’t answer right away.

  He looked at the weld. Smooth. Clean. Stronger than before.

  Then up at the ship—at her silver lines and stubborn engine hum, her patched plates and fire-forged wings.

  And the voices that had filled this hangar over the last few weeks: Hana’s soft calculations.

  Rin’s barked commands.

  Jiro’s chaotic laughter.

  Taiga’s bad singing.

  Mei’s near-whispers of perfect math.

  And his own.

  Still finding its shape.

  Still flying.

  “…No,” Ren said at last.

  “Not anymore.”

  Grandpa grunted—satisfied.

  Then stood, wiped his hands, and walked off toward the storage lockers without another word.

  Ren stayed a minute longer.

  Just listening.

  The Dart hummed softly behind him.

  Whole again.

  And waiting.