I couldn’t rest in the dormitory right after coming back from the gym.
No matter if it was just a vessel, with the real Ailey in my room, I simply couldn’t calm down.
Ailey knew that very well, and she even teased me for it, which made it even harder.
In the end, I had no choice but to keep going outside.
“How about storing the railgun inside the unit?”
“Don’t talk nonsense.”
“You said Heat weapons could be stored.”
“I said Heat weapons could be stored. I never said it was practical.”
The students who didn’t return to their family homes during vacation were usually commoners or lowborn.
I did go outside, but even after going out, there weren’t many people to meet.
Even normally, the only people I met were Ian and Ran, and now that it was vacation, the only people I had to meet were those two.
The only noble staying at the academy until dispatch was Aaron, and our gym times overlapped anyway, so I didn’t particularly want to call him out separately to meet.
But I had nowhere to go.
Even the maid café, which was always open for club activities, was closed during vacation.
I couldn’t talk in places like the library.
In the end, I came to the easiest place.
“Why exactly are you doing this here?”
Professor Sumeragi set down her teacup.
“There’s a large hologram projector here.”
“And there’s a professor here who can give immediate feedback.”
It was Professor Sumeragi’s office.
It had everything needed to talk about customizing a Titan.
There was a projector that could display as many Titan holograms as we wanted, a professor who gave fast feedback, and drinks too.
There wasn’t even a hologram projector in the hangar better than the one in her office.
This was a sweet deal.
“Fine. Well, Cadet Ian is in my club, so I’ll let that pass. But what about Cadet Deep?”
“I’m the one who made Ian join Professor Sumeragi’s club.”
Professor Sumeragi seemed to have nothing to say to that and slightly opened her mouth.
Then she immediately changed the subject.
“Did you take some kind of medicine? You haven’t stuttered at all since earlier.”
“Huh?”
“Huh?”
Since when had I stopped stuttering?
Since when had I been under the mistaken impression that I was still stuttering?
“The ranking announcement?”
“Yeah, I think it might’ve been around then.”
“Then the final exam?”
It might have been from then.
In any case, not stuttering was a good thing.
“If not for you, Professor, I might not have noticed.”
“No one around you noticed?”
“Everyone’s more interested in my piloting skills than in me.”
“Seriously?”
No.
These days, I knew.
There were a lot of people interested in me too.
My fan club kept getting more members, so there was no way I wouldn’t know.
“The frequency of your stuttering had been decreasing steadily.”
“That’s true.”
It was in the first semester that I pulled that h-h-h-honey bullshit on Ran, but by the second semester, it had reached a level where it didn’t interfere with conversation.
At some point, my stuttering hadn’t interfered with conversation at all.
Around then, no one really paid attention to it anymore, so I naturally stopped noticing too.
My smartwatch vibrated briefly.
Ailey must have known.
She probably knew and just didn’t say anything.
Because she was curious who would notice first.
I didn’t know if it was because our sync rate was high, but I could immediately tell what she was thinking.
Come to think of it.
Even being an otaku, having low self-esteem, and being lowborn weren’t reasons to stutter.
Should I seriously get a brain scan or something?
I’d have to get a physical exam when I advanced to the next year anyway.
I could just ask them to include a brain scan then.
“That’s that.”
Ian reached out over the hologram projector.
Ailey’s Titan vessel spun around once.
“We don’t need more customization than we already have. On the contrary, removing things is more certain.”
“Still, some degree of adjustment is necessary, isn’t it?”
“That’s true.”
Professor Sumeragi pulled over a chair and sat down in front of us.
She brought drinks with her too.
There wasn’t any flavor written on it, so I just opened one and drank it.
It was cucumber soda.
Cucumber soda was drinkable now.
I didn’t want to realize that I’d completely become a person of this world through something like this.
“The north is a snowy region. Not just a simple snowy region, but one surrounded by rugged terrain.”
When Professor Sumeragi gestured, the hologram background was replaced by a snowfield.
“There are even crevasses covered in snow along the way, so you can fall through even while hovering.”
The moment Ailey’s hologram was about to fall, Ian and I grabbed the hologram at the same time.
“We’re also devising methods to increase the output of the hover devices and reduce the unit’s weight in preparation for that.”
“It’d be perfect if we removed the equipment stored inside the manipulators and reduced the number of generators by one.”
Going back from a triple generator to a dual generator.
I didn’t like it much, but it was a reliable method.
Ailey had already been lightened as much as possible.
Instead of using heavier and sturdier materials for the armor, we had adjusted it by ricochet angles.
Because she was lightened to that degree, the weight the triple generator took up in the overall load was much higher than on other Titans.
“Right now, power production exceeds usage, doesn’t it?”
“Correct.”
“Of course. Considering Titan Ailey’s load and size, the most appropriate option would be a single medium generator. You got greedy from there and installed a small dual generator system.”
To be precise, she had been equipped with a small dual generator system from the start.
I didn’t know what kind of person her former user had been, but it must have been someone who had to move urgently.
Or she had been an experimental Titan meant to test efficiency, without any user.
If possible, the latter was easier on my mind.
I didn’t want to think about Ailey’s previous pilot.
I didn’t particularly want to know, and I hoped there would be no need for me to know.
“I thought of the triple generator system because I wanted to maintain hovering indefinitely.”
It would have been even better if it could override Ailey’s dual generators.
“In terms of win rate, it was a decent idea, and it would have been effective in practice too, but it’s better not to use it in the north.”
Professor Sumeragi firmly shook her head.
“You’ll understand once you go north, but Titans as small as Cadet Karina’s White Bunny didn’t appear for no reason. There are plenty of situations where being smaller and lighter is actually more advantageous.”
“Then what kind of armaments would be good?”
“Most of the Alliance forces use high-mobility types. There’s no need to use pile bunkers or grenades. Rapid-fire long-range equipment would be better.”
As expected, it was a good idea to talk in Professor Sumeragi’s office.
“As for purchasing equipment?”
“Our team has the top-ranked and second-ranked students, doesn’t it? It’s better to buy Market goods as they are.”
Of course, since we had ties to Darka Sinis, we could buy parts cheaply from the black market too.
But asking for a price lower than the Market where we could receive both the top-ranked discount and the second-ranked discount at the same time was ridiculous.
You’d need to have no conscience to name a price like that.
“What if we ask Darka Sinis to make it even cheaper?”
And Ian had no conscience.
You couldn’t expect a conscience from someone who swiped thrusters from the imperial family.
“We’re getting a lot of sponsorship now, so let’s not do that.”
“That’s true.”
The thrusters he had swiped were returned.
It was before the final exam against Princess Saya, to overhaul the thrusters’ performance.
Since we couldn’t modify borrowed items, we bought entirely new ones and replaced almost everything from scratch.
In any case, Ian insisted it hadn’t been theft but a strategic redeployment.
If I said it wasn’t, I might get hit with a spanner, so I agreed unconditionally.
Wasn’t the pilot supposed to have the highest authority on the team, and the engineer the lowest?
It didn’t really feel that way.
Against Ian, you couldn’t help becoming polite.
Because if you said something rude, your head might get split open.
He was basically a real manners-injector.
“Oh, and also.”
Professor Sumeragi went to the corner and brought out a box.
“This is something Professor Zeke requested.”
Click.
The box opened.
“He asked me to customize something that was nothing special. He even said he’d pay me. Well, since it was meant for Cadet Deep, I just did it for free.”
A walking assistance device.
It looked much cleaner than the one I was using now, and sturdier too.
“He said the one you’re using now was a spare he bought for a former student. This one went through my hands, so it should be much better.”
Honestly, I wasn’t particularly uncomfortable even now.
I removed the assistance device on my leg and put on the new one.
“Ah.”
I understood why it was a newer model.
“It’s much lighter.”
“The material itself is different. He asked me to make it sturdy, so I used titanium delta alloy used in Titans.”
Titanium delta alloy, used in Titans that needed to be lightened, like high-mobility types or support types.
“Then it’s bulletproof.”
“If you ever get shot at, stick your leg out first.”
I wasn’t going to get shot, but in any case, I had a protective device now.
I moved my leg several times, then bowed my head.
“Thank you.”
“I only made it because I received an order.”
“You made it for free.”
Why was she suddenly denying it in such a strange place?
She didn’t look cute at all even when she did that, so I wished she’d stop.
Professor Sumeragi made a strange expression, then lifted her chin.
“If you’re grateful, do me one favor.”
Professor Sumeragi had an especially large number of favors to ask.
“Yes, after I hear it.”
“Usually, this is where you say you’ll do it.”
“After I hear it.”
I’d clearly said I would hear her out, but she frowned slightly.
This was that.
“You were going to ask me to be your teaching assistant, weren’t you?”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“You were going to ask me to be your teaching assistant.”
“I said I wasn’t.”
She was.
This was why people shouldn’t trust other people carelessly.
“That was the second favor. The first favor was one Professor Zeke asked for.”
I knew it.
“What’s the first favor?”
Ahem.
“To come back alive. Nobles usually hear wishes for their safe return before they leave, but he said Cadet Deep is lowborn, so there probably wouldn’t be anyone to do it for you.”
“Professor Zeke said that?”
“That professor makes me suffer so much because of you, Cadet Deep. You do know that, right?”
I didn’t.
How was I supposed to imagine that side of someone who always beat the crap out of me in sparring?
I hadn’t known, but.
“That’s not a difficult favor.”
Now that I’d heard it, it was a favor I could accept as much as she wanted.
Live.
And come back.
The academy wasn’t my home, but it was certainly a place to return to.