Chapter 37: “Night Class Tactics”

  Scene 1: Night Strategy Session – “You’re All Wrong… and Here’s Why”

  —-: Ren

  The old lecture hall wasn’t meant for brilliance.

  It was meant for snoring. Late-evening yawns. Emergency makeup tests. A place where students sat half-melted over desk slates, bathed in weak lamplight and bad decisions.

  But tonight, the air crackled.

  Because Mei was teaching.

  Not presenting.

  Teaching.

  The team sat in a tight cluster near the front—Ren, Rin, Hana, Jiro, Taiga, even Saki (who claimed she was “just observing for journalism integrity” and definitely not live-blogging).

  The projection board shimmered with a full 3D render of the Kyokuto course. Rings flickered in sharp arcs, flanked by directional indicators and danger zones highlighted in glowing amber.

  “Look at Ring 9,” Mei said, tapping her stylus. “What do you see?”

  “Sharp left dive,” Ren said. “Flick turn after.”

  “Wrong.”

  Everyone blinked.

  Mei zoomed in, recalibrating angles with a swipe. “It’s not a turn. It’s a bluff.”

  The schematic shifted—showing how the ring was offset from the wind stream. A shortcut shimmered behind it. Dangerous. Fast.

  “Every team will try to thread it directly,” she continued. “But if we veer wide and loop under, we gain three seconds and dodge the bottleneck.”

  Taiga squinted. “But don’t we lose points if we skip the ring?”

  “Not if we finish first.” Mei didn’t blink. “The Kyokuto system favors time bonuses over ring consistency. You can miss one ring if your maneuver scores high enough in risk offset and finish delta.”

  Everyone stared.

  “Wait,” Hana murmured. “So the scoring’s not about doing everything right…”

  “It’s about doing the right thing at the right time,” Mei said. “Like chess. But faster. And with more fire.”

  She tapped again, loading the next sequence: evasive maneuvers against a formation boxout.

  “Observe,” she said calmly, “what happens when your enemies forget their engineer matters.”

  The sim launched.

  Three enemy crafts moved to block the Dart on a straightaway.

  Mei activated a side loop—one Rin had pulled off two weeks ago by accident.

  Then overlaid a vertical climb that no one had ever tested.

  Boom—open sky.

  The Dart surged through clean.

  Silence.

  Taiga whispered, “We’re gonna kill somebody.”

  Mei simply turned back to the team, face lit in profile by the projection glow.

  “I don’t need you to fly perfect.”

  “I need you to trust me.”

  Ren felt the weight of it—real and steady.

  Not pressure.

  Anchor.

  He glanced at Rin. She didn’t speak. But her eyes? Watching. Calculating.

  Hana leaned forward, scribbling notes with trembling fingers.

  And Ren?

  Ren just nodded.

  Because somehow, in the middle of the quiet, Mei had pulled the team tighter than any crash or victory ever had.

  She didn’t fly.

  But she made it possible for all of them to.

  Scene 2: Flight Psychology & Cockpit Communication – “Left, Left—WAIT”

  —-: Hana

  Hana had barely finished copying Mei’s tactical notes when the lights dimmed and a crisp voice cut through the room like steam through silk.

  “Communication determines everything.”

  Heads turned.

  Headmistress Aoi stood at the entrance, arms folded, black gloves tucked under one elbow. The copper trim of her long coat shimmered with crystal-thread embroidery—subtle, elegant, and terrifying.

  No one had seen her in a class in weeks.

  No one ever expected her to show up for this.

  She walked forward with slow, deliberate steps, eyes passing over each of them like she was scanning their flight records in real time.

  “You’ve learned how to fly,” she said. “But do you know how to talk?”

  Taiga raised a hand. “Uhh, I talk constantly—”

  “Incorrectly,” Aoi said, cutting him down with the precision of a diamond saw. “And at the wrong moments.”

  Taiga shrank an inch in his chair.

  Aoi gestured toward the cockpit simulator in the back of the room. “Up. Engineer. Tactician. Pilot. In the seat.”

  Hana blinked. “Me?”

  Mei rose beside her.

  Ren followed, confused, as Aoi pointed him toward the main pilot’s chair.

  “Split-role command,” Aoi said. “Three people. One goal. You’re not individuals in a race. You’re organs in a single body. If the heart hesitates or the lungs yell at the wrong rhythm, the body dies.”

  She activated the sim.

  “Let’s see how your body holds up.”

  The cockpit shimmered to life around them, enclosing them in dim red lighting. Turbulence levels cranked up early—winds buffeting the virtual craft as warning lights flickered on.

  Hana gripped the side panel, recalibrating stabilizer intake. “Left! Shift!”

  “Already adjusting,” Mei said, her voice clipped.

  Ren started to lean—just as both girls said, at the same time:

  “Left!”

  “Left!”

  “No wait—!”

  The simulator jerked.

  An alarm blared. A warning flashed:

  COLLISION TRAJECTORY LOCKED

  Ren swerved, Hana yelped, and the whole sim spun out with an ominous grinding noise before freezing mid-fail.

  Outside the dome, Taiga clapped slowly.

  Aoi? Didn’t smile.

  She approached the cockpit window with the air of someone visiting a crime scene.

  “Why did you fail?”

  Ren hesitated. “We gave the same order.”

  “Wrong,” Aoi said. “You gave the same word. But not the same signal.”

  She gestured to Mei. “You speak in fragments. Efficient. Sharp. But useless if your pilot can’t parse tone under strain.”

  To Hana: “You react like you build—fast, fragile, and afraid to override. That’s hesitation disguised as politeness.”

  To Ren: “And you assume everyone will align around your instincts.”

  She tapped the window once.

  “They won’t.”

  Silence.

  Only the cooling hiss of the sim chamber filled the space.

  Aoi folded her arms. “Learn your cockpit. Learn your team. Learn the language that only the three of you speak.”

  She turned, heels clicking toward the door.

  Then paused.

  And said softly—almost too softly to hear:

  “Rin never talks during maneuvers.”

  Ren looked up.

  Aoi didn’t turn.

  “Because if she opens her mouth, she doubts. And if she doubts…”

  A breath.

  “…she bleeds.”

  The door closed behind her.

  Inside the simulator, no one moved.

  The silence wasn’t awkward.

  It was sacred.

  A reminder that in the sky, words aren’t just commands.

  If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

  They’re lifelines.

  Scene 3: Flashback – “Silence After the Crash”

  —-: Mei

  The hum of the dorm power coils usually helped her think.

  Tonight, it only made her feel like she was back inside the engine.

  The room was dark. Not from any switch flipped—just… forgotten.

  Her notes lay open on the desk: wing curve schematics, predictive torque analysis, fuel dispersion timelines down to the microsecond. All perfectly aligned.

  Unlike her memories.

  She stared at the page, but saw only the past.

  ––

  Her old cockpit was smaller than the Dart’s.

  Tighter. Barebones. The kind of ship you flew young because you were too eager to notice it wasn’t built for safety.

  Akio always flew with his seat one notch too far back, elbow out the window like he was teasing gravity. “You do the numbers,” he’d say, “and I’ll make ‘em look good.”

  He never checked her math. Not once.

  He never had to.

  Until the wind shear.

  Until the fourth loop when the engine caught an echo pulse—one of the new Kyokuto fields. Not mapped. Not her fault. She still replayed it like it was.

  The warning came late. A flicker in the left intake line.

  She called it out. “Akio—vectored pulse surge—”

  Too late.

  The ship bucked sideways like it had been slapped by a god. A shriek of metal. A spin she couldn’t counter.

  She remembered the moment before the scream.

  Akio had looked over. Smiled.

  “Brace.”

  And then:

  Silence.

  Not the crash.

  Not the alarms.

  Not the med teams.

  Not the static in her ear from his comm going dead.

  It was after.

  After they pulled her from the wreck. After they said, he shielded the core with his body. He saved the tactician. He saved you.

  The silence after that—after she woke up and realized she didn’t even remember his last words—

  That silence never left.

  ––

  Back in the present, Mei closed the notebook.

  The air in the room felt too full. Like grief had mass.

  She walked to the window and opened it.

  The wind moved through her bangs like breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.

  Then she whispered—so quiet the night had to lean in to hear:

  “I’ll speak now.

  But only when it matters.”

  The wind didn’t answer.

  It didn’t need to.

  She’d already made her promise.

  Scene 4: Shiraishi’s Soft Spot – “I Never Had a Ren”

  —-: Shiraishi

  The faculty lounge was dim, lit only by one reading lamp and the gentle clink of ceramic against ceramic.

  Shiraishi sat at the long table, red-ink pen in hand, a stack of performance rubrics slowly being bled dry one point at a time. Her wrist ached. She didn’t stop.

  The door creaked open behind her.

  She didn’t turn.

  Only one person on staff wore shoes that polite.

  “Aoi.”

  “Still grading,” Headmistress Aoi said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Still breathing,” Shiraishi replied. “Barely.”

  Aoi crossed the room without ceremony, setting down a porcelain teacup beside her colleague. Then she sat, her uniform pristine even at this hour, her eyes not tired—but thoughtful.

  The kind of thoughtful that came with knowing just how much was at stake.

  They sat in silence for a moment, the kind older women shared when they'd fought too many battles to pretend they were surprised by the next one.

  Then Aoi spoke.

  “You never let anyone fly the Dart when you were young.”

  A beat.

  Shiraishi didn’t answer immediately. Her pen scratched one final correction—‘Recheck wind curve assumptions. You’re not piloting a kite.’ Then she set it down.

  “I didn’t trust them,” she said simply. “Any of them.”

  Aoi lifted her cup. “But you trust this crew.”

  Another pause.

  Shiraishi leaned back in her chair. Her gaze drifted toward the window—the view angled just enough to see the hangar lights still glowing like fireflies trapped under glass.

  “…I never had a Ren,” she said.

  Aoi tilted her head slightly.

  “Or a Hana,” Shiraishi continued. “Or even a Mei. Back then, it was always pride. Politics. Parents with money demanding podiums. Pilots who thought instincts beat engineering.”

  She crossed her arms.

  “They’d never understand a ship like the Dart. Not really.”

  Aoi’s voice was gentle, but firm. “And now?”

  Shiraishi’s lips curled—not into a smile, but something quieter. Warmer.

  “Now they’re flying her.”

  She took a long sip of tea, savoring it.

  “I didn’t think I’d ever let go,” she said. “Not of that ship. Not of that sky.”

  She tapped a finger on the rim of the cup.

  “But they’re not flying for medals.”

  “They’re flying for each other.”

  Aoi nodded slowly, her expression unreadable. But her eyes?

  Bright.

  Shiraishi exhaled. Not tired. Not weary.

  Just... ready.

  “And I trust them.”

  They sat without speaking for several more minutes. The quiet was no longer heavy.

  It was earned.

  Scene 5: Ren Sees Her – “That Was Amazing”

  —-: Ren

  The last students filtered out of the lecture wing, boots clanking against the steel steps like tired echoes.

  Ren stayed behind.

  Not because he had anything to prove.

  But because he’d noticed something.

  A tremor.

  Barely visible.

  Ms. Shiraishi had finished her post-brief recap with her usual surgical calm, listing flight pair assignments and cautioning everyone not to overload the gyros in the new lateral ring setup.

  But when she picked up her datapad?

  Her fingers shook.

  It wasn’t dramatic. Most wouldn’t have caught it.

  But Ren had.

  He stepped forward, just as she reached for her coat.

  “Ms. Shiraishi?”

  She looked up. Expression blank at first—then registering him as if calculating whether this was about flight logs or disciplinary forms.

  “It’s late,” she said. “Don’t loiter.”

  Ren smiled—soft, a little shy. “I just wanted to say…”

  He hesitated.

  Then said it plainly.

  “That was amazing.”

  Not loud.

  Not performative.

  Just true.

  She blinked. The datapad lowered slightly.

  Ren rubbed the back of his neck. “Not just the diagrams or the wind modeling. The way you broke it down... I think a lot of us heard something different tonight.”

  She studied him.

  Then—slowly—she exhaled.

  Something behind her eyes softened. The tension in her jaw eased. She didn’t nod.

  She bowed—barely. Just a tilt of her head, graceful and quiet.

  Then she said:

  “Thank you.”

  And turned, coat slipping over her shoulders in one smooth motion as she stepped into the corridor’s shadows.

  The lights dimmed behind her.

  Ren stood there for a moment longer, surrounded by chalk dust, datapad glow, and the warm silence left in her wake.

  He didn’t need to say anything else.

  He already had.

  Scene 6: Rin’s Frustration – “You Need Me to Fly It Right?”

  —-: Hana

  The hangar was empty except for the faint hiss of cooling metal and the low glow of the stabilizer bench.

  Hana was recalibrating the torque curves for the fifth time when the footsteps arrived—quick, sharp, and unmistakably annoyed.

  Rin.

  She didn’t stop walking until she was right beside the bench. Arms crossed. Flight jacket still half-zipped, sleeves flared like she’d flown here herself.

  “Okay. What is this.”

  Hana didn’t look up. “What does it look like?”

  “A stabilizer designed for someone with a death wish.”

  Hana did look up at that. “Good. Then it matches your flight style.”

  Rin’s eyes narrowed. “You need me to fly it right, don’t you?”

  “No.”

  Hana stood. The word echoed more than she expected.

  “I need you to fly it like you.”

  That made Rin pause.

  Not because she disagreed.

  Because she didn’t know how to argue with it.

  Hana stepped around the bench, placing one hand gently on the new stabilizer core. “I didn’t design this for optimal paths. I designed it to catch your instincts. The things you do before your brain has time to argue.”

  Rin blinked.

  “But if I misfire the dive curve, it’ll overload the coil housing.”

  “Only if you hesitate.”

  A long silence stretched between them.

  Hana inhaled slowly. She hadn’t meant to raise her voice. But something hot was building under her ribs now—years of tinkering in the shadows, of building things that worked for everyone but her.

  She met Rin’s gaze, firm.

  “You said once that you fly best when no one’s telling you how.”

  Rin flinched—just barely.

  “Well, I’m not telling you how.”

  “I’m building for who you already are.”

  The lights from above flickered once—probably Taiga messing with the dorm grid again—but the timing felt deliberate, like punctuation.

  Rin looked down at the stabilizer.

  Then back at Hana.

  She uncrossed her arms.

  “…You really think I’m still that pilot?”

  Hana didn’t hesitate.

  “I think you’re more.”

  Rin didn’t reply.

  But her hand landed gently on the bench.

  Not as a demand.

  As a thank you.

  Scene 7: Taiga’s Support Drone – “GO DART OR GO HOME!”

  —-: Jiro

  The practice field was calm.

  Too calm.

  A cool midnight breeze swayed the floodlights just enough to make the grass ripple. The Silver Dart rested in its hangar cradle like a beast in hibernation.

  Jiro crouched beside a calibration console, triple-checking the gyroscopic readings for the lateral mod.

  It was peaceful.

  Until he heard it.

  whrrrrrr-click-hiss-WAAAHHH-PLINK

  “Taiga?” Jiro said without looking up. “What are you doing.”

  From somewhere in the shadows of the launch ramp, Taiga’s voice floated back:

  “Absolutely nothing dangerous!”

  Those words meant one thing:

  Panic. Immediately.

  Jiro stood just in time to see a small, disc-shaped machine rise from behind a crate—half drone, half tea-kettle, with bronze stabilizers and what looked suspiciously like repurposed megaphone parts strapped to the top.

  Taiga cheered. “She lives!”

  Jiro took a slow step backward. “What is that?”

  “Support Drone Version 2.2,” Taiga said proudly. “Morale booster. Proximity-activated flight mascot. Also… possibly armed with glitter.”

  The drone blinked red.

  Jiro’s voice dropped an octave. “Why is it blinking?”

  “It’s motivating.”

  The drone shrieeeeked to life—its crystal core spinning too fast—and launched itself skyward with a noise like a banshee inside a trumpet.

  Then it began to chant.

  “GO DART OR GO HOME!”

  “GO DART OR GO HOME!”

  “ERROR: TOO MUCH DART!”

  “RECALIBRATING DART LEVEL!”

  Rin stepped out of the hangar, her wrench still in hand. “What the hell is—”

  “GOOOOOO DAAAAART—!!”

  The drone looped once, clipped the floodlight pole, sparked like a firework, and dive-bombed the practice field at full speed.

  Everyone screamed.

  Except Taiga, who whispered, “Magnificent.”

  The drone struck the turf like a meteor, scattering glitter, compressed air, and at least one broken speaker diaphragm across a ten-meter radius.

  Silence.

  Smoke.

  Then a single, robotic cough from the crater.

  “...home.”

  Jiro turned slowly to Taiga, brushing glitter from his shoulder.

  “I hate you so much.”

  Taiga gave a double thumbs-up. “That’s the spirit!”

  From behind them, Saki—who had absolutely filmed the entire thing—sighed contentedly. “This’ll do numbers.”

  Rin groaned and walked away.

  But she was smiling.

  Just a little.

  Scene 8: Late-Night Workshop Crew – “Behind the Scenes”

  —-: Hana

  The workshop at night was a different animal.

  No clatter. No voices echoing off the rafters. Just the low, sacred hum of machines resting between miracles.

  Hana moved with precision—not because anyone was watching, but because it was the only way she knew how to breathe. The new stabilizer mods had passed initial calibration, but she was still tuning the alloy response to Rin’s updated torque curve.

  Across the bench, Ren tightened a pressure valve on the Dart’s dorsal intake. His sleeves were rolled up, forehead damp, a smudge of engine soot across his cheek like a smirk that forgot to leave.

  Mei sat behind the two of them, cross-legged on a storage crate, surrounded by half-drawn schematics and a half-empty tea thermos. She hadn’t spoken in ten minutes.

  And yet—

  “Your left bracket’s slipping by two degrees,” she said without looking up.

  Ren froze.

  Hana laughed softly. “She’s right.”

  “Unfair,” Ren muttered, adjusting the bracket. “She has echolocation or something.”

  Mei didn’t reply, but a smug sip of tea said everything.

  The silence returned.

  But it was a good one.

  Steady. Laced with trust.

  Hana adjusted the crystal housing with a fine-tuning wand, fingers brushing Ren’s as he reached to stabilize the other end. Neither of them said anything.

  She didn’t pull her hand back.

  Neither did he.

  The spark was small. Barely a flicker.

  But it pulsed with the same rhythm as the ship’s core.

  Behind them, a soft whirr—the sound of a datapad recording.

  Saki, unnoticed until now, leaned against the tool locker, camera lens glinting like mischief incarnate.

  Ren nearly dropped the bracket. “Saki—what—how long have you—”

  “Midnight feature,” she said brightly. “Silver Dart: After Hours. I’m thinking moody lighting, dramatic tension, lingering stares—very slice-of-life romance.”

  “Delete that,” Hana said, pink blooming at the tips of her ears.

  “Too late,” Saki replied, backing toward the door with a grin. “I’m thinking... pilot love triangle exposé. Hashtag trending.”

  “Saki!”

  But she was already gone.

  Ren chuckled under his breath.

  Mei didn’t even look up. “If she adds music again, I vote we replace her with the drone.”

  Hana shook her head, smiling despite herself.

  And the ship?

  The ship hummed.

  Whole. Balanced.

  Ready.

  Scene 9: Closing Scene – “The Perfect Curve”

  —-: Rin

  The night sky above the training field wasn’t black. It was bruised blue, veined with faint glimmers of vapor trails and old light from older stars.

  Perfect for flying.

  The Dart hovered in warm idling hum, crystal cores aglow with the faintest pulse of calibrated energy. Not full thrust. Not rest.

  Anticipation.

  Rin sat alone in the cockpit, fingers wrapped around the throttle like it might bite her if she flinched.

  She hadn’t told anyone she was doing this test run.

  No Ren.

  No Hana.

  Definitely no Saki.

  Just her.

  And the stabilizer Hana built like a dare wrapped in a gift.

  Fly it like you.

  She inhaled.

  The cockpit didn’t feel tight tonight. It felt sharp. Clean.

  Like it was waiting for her decision.

  She toggled the first ring into simulation mode—ghost arcs lighting up across the field. The path was aggressive. Twists laced with drop curves and lateral destabilizers.

  The kind of run you didn’t finish unless you were half-mad.

  Rin grinned.

  “Let’s find out.”

  She launched.

  The Dart surged forward with a low growl—faster than she expected—but smoother. The new stabilizer clung to her instincts like silk to heat, catching every twitch of her wrist, every shift in her core posture like it had been built from her muscles.

  The first dive rolled into a pressure-cutting left spiral.

  She didn’t think. Just moved.

  And the ship moved with her.

  The stabilizer didn’t resist. It sang. A perfect harmonic oscillation through the hull as she clipped the lower ring at just the right tilt—barely brushing the arc edge.

  Left-right-twist—wait—pull—boost—

  She looped.

  Hard.

  The G-force crushed her ribs, then released like a wave crashing off crystal.

  And then—

  The curve.

  She dropped altitude at a near-vertical pitch, leveled mid-spin, flared the stabilizer without stalling—and slipped through the final arc like a thread through a needle.

  She exhaled.

  No alarms.

  No drift.

  Just… sky.

  And her.

  The Dart coasted back into hover mode, steam venting softly through the side channels, casting gentle halos into the dark.

  Rin sat back in her seat.

  Her hands were shaking.

  Not from fear.

  From relief.

  Not because she’d done it.

  But because someone—Hana—had known she could.

  And built for that.

  She didn’t speak.

  Didn’t need to.

  The perfect curve had said everything.