Chapter 3: How Am I to Answer?

Chapter 3: How Am I to Answer?

CHAPTER 3

HOW AM I TO ANSWER?

The Actaeon bombing in Sankt Jeder claimed the largest number of lives yet.

It was also the first Actaeon bombing carried out with clear malice. She exploded in the middle of a large Holy Birthday market, without avoiding people or issuing any warnings. What’s more, the girl carried a large number of nails. These metallic fragments heightened the killing potential of her blast, and she’d intentionally walked into a crowd to blow herself up, deliberately picking a place of celebration, where people were allowed to be happy despite the difficult times.

And the worst part of all that, as if to precede this tragedy—the truth about the Actaeon had been disclosed to the public.

The Republic. Again, the Republic. Secretly developed suicide-bombing weapons. Suicide bombs using Eighty-Six as components.

Following this, the news coverage on the Actaeon resumed in full force, with people demanding that they be hunted down, that every last one of them was captured and disposed of as soon as humanly possible. Human-formed suicide-bomb weapons were dangerous enough by virtue of being indistinguishable from normal people, so anyone suspected of it should be arrested right away. Along with the terrible, inhumane Republic people who made them.

As he listened to such radio shows, Miel frowned, feeling a chill of inexplicable terror run through him. The news hadn’t been so vicious when he first came to this country, nor had every show on the radio dripped with clear enmity and suspicion.

This was true of both the Actaeon and Republic people like Miel. It didn’t feel like they were…hateful or scornful of the Republic, but more like…

“They’re afraid of us…?”

Usually, the staff officers and battalion captains would set the TV in the dining hall to the morning news to catch up on recent events, but at this point, Shiden and her group couldn’t stand to watch it. It was all reporting and arguing about the Actaeon.

“It’s such a shitty mood,” Shiden whispered to no one in particular.

“I’ve seen this mood before,” Raiden replied. “Who did wrong, who’s at fault, who’re the traitors…and how you should punish said traitors.”

Yes, it was like when they were little in the Republic, and the early stages of the Legion War were all over the news.

Of course, back then, Shiden thought of it in simple terms. The Empire was the bad guy, and her now-late little sister parroted her. But Raiden had been kept safe in the Republic for longer, so maybe he saw what the news was like after that. How the people and the news fanned each other’s emotions on.

“It’s like they’re looking for…,” Michihi whispered. “No, like they crave an enemy… An enemy that’s not the Legion, but one that’s more simple.”

An enemy that’s easier to one-sidedly trample—that’s weaker and fewer in number.

“…This is what Lord Willem feared,” Jonas whispered as TP approached the window, trying to open the half-closed curtain.

His black eyes seemed to be looking in concern past the room, to the base outside the lodging facility.

“…What do you mean, ‘this’?” Lena asked dubiously.

Jonas looked at her in confusion for a second before nodding. “Oh, right, you can’t hear it… The civilians are clamoring outside the base. Maybe they’re trying to make demands of the army HQ, or they’re just trying to agitate the passersby. ‘Tell us the truth. Apprehend anyone related to the Actaeon, the Republic people, the evacuees. Disclose the location of wounded and returning soldiers. We know they’re infected, so just exterminate them all.’”

Annette looked up at him in shock. Using the term exterminate on human beings was horrible enough, but what’s more—

“Wait… You can hear the voices from outside the base that clearly? With the window closed?”

“House Degen is a bloodline that carries that kind of power among the Onyxes.”

Superior combat prowess was the Onyx race’s unique power, with some clans among them having particularly sharp senses. The family of Willem, the chief of staff—or rather, his old warrior clan’s attendant family had this power as a result. Or perhaps they secured and kept hold of this power over time because of their position as attendants.

“Dear cells only behave similarly to viruses, but they’re not capable of being contagious. But the civilians seem to believe the Actaeon are infected with a bomb virus, and there are loud voices demanding that those who are infected are dealt with. Or otherwise, that they let the civilians deal with them.”

In other words, discover, quarantine, and dispose of the “infected.”

But of course, since no one was actually infected, there was no one to discover or quarantine. The army and the police were occupied with disclosing accurate information, which made them come across as unconcerned about the “suicide-bomb virus” or, at worst, as attempting to hide information after the fact, which further angered the citizens. And the outcome of that was this situation.

“…There are already a few cases of victims of the bombings and their families hunting down returning soldiers and their refugees in what they call an Actaeon hunt. They were influenced by that theory that the origin of the virus is the Legion…and that everyone on the battlefield and all areas near it are already infected.”

The civilians were already harboring discontent at the displaced evacuees for eating away at their peace and abundance, so they clung to whatever reasoning let them lash out and expel them. They expanded the label of Actaeon from the Dear cells test subjects and attached it to the territory evacuees, since they were disturbing their peaceful lives.

And then they appended it to the army staff, who kept letting them down and losing. If the infection originated from the battlefield, then those living in the capital area, far from there, must be clean. And since they were clean, they wouldn’t need to be expelled—it was an easy logic to embrace.

Jonas narrowed his eyes. His keen hearing likely picked up on what Lena couldn’t: awful words of rejection and anger repeated ad nauseam.

“It makes them think the Republic, with its many betrayals, is the true evil, and that evil should be expelled…that they’re allowed to expel the Republic’s people so long as they have a justified reason. This is what he feared.”

Meanwhile, the soldiers on the battlefield, who were all presumed to be possibly infected, didn’t want to see themselves as targets to be expelled.

“…Human suicide bombs are just messed up. There’s no way a virus can turn people into bombs.”

They weren’t Actaeon. They didn’t have some suicide-bomb virus.

“Are you sure they’re not some kind of new self-propelled mine…? Maybe they just hid it well because it’s indistinguishable from a human…”

After all, if they had a bomb in their body, surely it could be taken out with an operation. If it was a disease, it could be cured. If they were originally humans, they could just say what happened, and everyone would be glad to help them, right?

But they didn’t do it, so they must be some new model of self-propelled mine. Didn’t it prove that they were some hostile weapon that couldn’t be operated on and didn’t obey humans? Right?

“And they all hid the case with the wiretaps, right? The Republic, the Eighty-Six, the high-ranking officers.”

When the chips were down, the major nobles, the generals who sat in the comfort of their safe offices in the capital…

“Maybe they’re hiding something else from us. Something they don’t want us to know.”

“—I wish they could take the bombs out of us with an operation.”

Pinning a worm onto a fishhook and throwing it into the water, Citri muttered this as she watched ripples spread over the water’s surface.

They moved through the Vesa territory while avoiding the camps set up by the western front’s army, and they were drawing closer to the defensive formation set along the Saentis-Historics line. But currently, they were in a deep ravine inside the woods, meaning their voices wouldn’t travel too far, so Kiki and the rest were enjoying fishing while chattering loudly. Yuuto did warn them they might scare away the fish, but they turned out to be pretty successful. In fact, Yuuto was the only one who was oddly unsuccessful.

Having apparently given up, he sat by the riverside without his fishing rod and looked at the water sparkling as it reflected the faint winter sunlight filtering down through the treetops. Hearing her comment, he glanced over at Citri, and she continued speaking.

She was quite proud of everything she did today. She made the fishing rod herself, was brave enough to pick up a worm from under an overturned rock, and pinned it to the hook without his help. So since she was capable of doing that…she wanted to talk about this, too.

Yuuto hadn’t asked what clarity did to them in that research laboratory, probably because he could sense they didn’t want to talk about it. And that consideration from him was why she wanted to tell him.

To tell him the story of their…of her weakness and her cunning.

“Like I mentioned at first, the Actaeon were given a set time limit, after which they would detonate, but the setting was incomplete.”

Mines activated by having pressure applied to them, but they also had a safety feature that made them explode after a set time, and this was much the same. Having mines remain buried in a battlefield long after the fight was over was dangerous, and digging up countless mines took time and effort. It was necessary at times to have one’s weapons self-destruct so they didn’t end up hurting the people of your own country.

But in the case of the Dear cells, the researchers weren’t able to perfect this safety feature, both in animal and human experiments.

Yuuto returned his gaze to the glittering stream.

“…And that’s why you all decided to run away from home before December.”

“Yes. Our time limit was set to this year’s Holy Birthday, so we have no way of telling when in December it might happen. Honestly, it’s gotten dangerous even earlier than that, so we should have fled sooner.”

As a safety measure, they were injected with activator cells that would interact with the Dear cells, awakening them after a prescribed time. But they’d activated ahead of schedule, making the Actaeon detonate at unpredictably early times.

If they were set to detonate in ten days, it could end up being several days earlier or several days later. And when set months or years ahead of time, the discrepancy grew even larger. A weapon that could explode unpredictably during transport or standby was a weapon that couldn’t be used, but at the same time, there was no sending a person who’d been turned into a bomb onto the battlefield without a means of disposing of or detonating them. Especially if those people had been forcibly turned into bombs.

The detonation-disposal feature might have been workable had a mechanical component that triggered it been included, but the Dear cells were designed to sow doubt in an enemy country by being injected into people who would be taken prisoner. A mechanical component would be foreign to their bodies and therefore easily detectable, defeating the purpose of the safety device.

“…To begin with, the Dear cells aren’t as simple as the Republic said all those years ago, when they threatened the Empire with turning animals into bombs.

“The activator for it has to be implanted surgically, and we were put to sleep during the surgery, so we don’t know exactly where the cell tissues were placed. And since the Dear cells are made from the Actaeon’s own cells, they aren’t considered a foreign object, and no scan can distinguish them.”

Citri and Yuuto couldn’t hear any birds, perhaps because they were so close to the battlefield, and it was so cold that they couldn’t hear any insects chirping, either. All they could catch was the murmuring of the stream, the occasional rustling of leaves in the distance, and Kiki’s, Ashiha’s, Imeno’s, and Shiohi’s voices as they played together.

“And even if there was some other way of spotting the Dear cells, there’s always the risk of us detonating during the inspection or the operation. The doctor and nurses trying to help us could end up dying, so I doubt the Federacy would even attempt to save us. And if it did, that’s all the more reason those doctors shouldn’t have to die…and more than anything…” Citri paused there.

She decided to tell him about her weakness and cunning. But even so, baring her foul nature for this strong person to see took courage.

“…I was scared the Federacy would treat us like guinea pigs, too. That they’d lock us up, cut us open, and kill us.”

So she ran, never telling a soul. She knew she’d die either way, but nothing scared her more than being treated the same as in the Eighty-Sixth Sector’s laboratory again. The idea of being locked up and killed was scarier than anything.

“You…were scared of dying,” Yuuto whispered softly next to her, so as to not be heard by the others.

She felt a tug on her rod. She caught a fish. She pulled the rod back, catching the splashing fish, and after mustering up the courage, she smacked it against a nearby rock to kill it. This would be their meal for the day.

The Federacy government didn’t stop the free press. Calls demanding the Actaeon be hunted down were projected freely over the airwaves, reaching all over the Federacy. Even to the front lines, where the soldiers originally there mingled with troops from the frontier areas.

Isolate the frontier evacuees who come from areas infested with the new self-propelled-mine virus. Don’t let the useless serfs, who only eat away at our food, threaten the people’s safety anymore.

The soldiers from the capital area were incensed. They were out here, fighting and putting their lives on the line, while the ingrateful serfs threatened their families back home.

The soldiers from the frontier areas were incensed… They were out here, fighting and putting their lives on the line, while the invaders in the capital tried to expel their families.

And despite all that, they— we still have to fight to protect the serfs, the invaders.

Ever since the tragedy in the market, Shin had been hearing of increasingly worrying events, both on the front lines and on the home front. This made him all the more annoyed that he couldn’t demand Lena’s release.

The Federacy military was fracturing from internal discord. The split and enmity didn’t target just the Republic people, but everyone from every direction. And if that enmity was to become violence—like, for instance, Lena getting hurt by the effects of it—the Federacy military as a whole would go out of control and lose all its order and integrity as an organization.

So to maintain the Federacy military’s structure as an army and a fighting force, they couldn’t return Lena to the front lines.

He wanted to end the war with her. But if Operation Overlord was to be carried out for certain, they couldn’t afford to let the Federacy’s military fall apart. And considering her safety, it was better to have her stay on the home front instead of sending her to the front lines, where it wasn’t unthinkable for one of their own soldiers to aim a gun at her for being from the Republic.

But even knowing this, Shin couldn’t restrain his anger. After all, this was being done against her will, her freedom was being infringed upon, and he could only idly look on. Lena wasn’t the kind of person to want to be one-sidedly protected, and he didn’t want to be deprived of her presence this way, either.

If it wasn’t for his duties as commander—if him slipping away wouldn’t affect the command and morale of the Strike Package as a whole—he’d have rushed over to take her back as soon as possible… This sense of responsibility weighing on him so heavily annoyed him the most. The fact that he had to act the part of the responsible, understanding adult and couldn’t go help her made him outraged with himself.

And on top of all that, he was angered that the only thing he could do was sit there and deal with his conflicted emotions.

“Dammit…!”

At this point, the reporting on the Actaeon was no different from the kind of news they saw in the Republic back in the day, when the Eighty-Six were blamed, excluded, and sent to the internment camps.

This scared Dustin.

If every show on the news and every civilian regarded them as enemies, it seemed increasingly likely the Federacy wouldn’t try to save Citri and the others; instead, they would actually hunt them down and kill them. They would do what the Republic did: deem them as criminals and cattle, then murder them all.

With that thought in mind, he pored over a map of the battlefield, examining the route Yuuto had told him. Niva Nova to Noidafune, then Niantemis, and then to the Republic territory of Neunarkis.

“…Ha.”

A smile of self-derision spread over his injured, scratched lips. The estimated path Yuuto had told him… He couldn’t make sense of it.

From the Vesa territory to the combat territory of Niva Nova. Then south to the combat territory of Noidafune, then west to the combat territory of Niantemis, and further west from there to their destination at Neunarkis.

Dustin and Amari would have to slip through both opposing armies to get there. It was doubtful they’d arrive on schedule, but Amari did tell him the waypoint they were headed for. But still, he couldn’t see the route they’d take to get there. Even accounting for any detours available along that route, and the predicted positions of the Legion patrol units, which they would have to sneak past.

With just those instructions, Dustin couldn’t meet them. He didn’t have the navigation skills required to guess Yuuto’s route.

“Ha-ha, right… All I can do is follow the path he gave me. Even if she asks me to come help her, I can’t find my way…”

—How long will this continue?

Just shouting those words wasn’t enough. It was never enough, but all he did was shout them. He did nothing else, simply blaming everyone else. He was all talk and incapable of action.

He lacked the means to reach her, the skill to survive the trip. And even if he did find them, how was he going to save her? Dustin didn’t have the medical knowledge to extract the Dear cells.

—How long will this continue? How long will I stay like this? So powerless? So blind to how powerless I am? Blind to how I think like I’m doing something, but I haven’t achieved anything?

He clenched his hands, the sound of the map crumpling in his grip resonating in his ears like mocking laughter.

As she stood in the dark, empty meeting room, looking at his back—which was hunched over in what appeared to be silent wailing—Anju finally made up her mind.

“…Dustin.”

Dustin wouldn’t return alive on his own. Then she’d simply have to take him along with her. To guide and protect him as they headed to the place he sought, where his childhood friend was waiting. With her skills cultivated through her many years as a Processor, Anju could do it.

Cheat for me. Don’t die.

Those words were poison for Dustin. Those words bound him like a curse, and as the one who put that curse on him with the face of love, Anju knew it was up to her to lift that curse.

“Dustin, listen…I’ll come with you. I’ll guide you there.”

They’d be treated as deserters, but she didn’t mind. It wouldn’t cause their comrades much trouble, either. She felt bad for Shin, who was torn between his feelings for Lena and his duties as commander, but in the end, she was just one platoon’s captain. Her leaving wouldn’t impact the entirety of the Strike Package’s morale and fighting potential as much as his would.

She knew it. This was cheating. And not something as harmless as Dustin’s modest, all too pure wish—but genuinely unfair cheating. It was betrayal, the kind there could be no going back from. But if nothing else, this would protect Dustin’s heart.

“We can still make it, I’m sure. If we go there together now…let’s go save her.”

Dustin didn’t turn to face her for one long moment. But then he turned his cold, argent eyes to look at her.

—Together. Let’s go save her.

You told me…to not die. To return alive, even if I have to cheat to do it… You put the curse on me, ordering me to abandon Citri. And yet…

“You’re telling me that? This has nothing to do with you, Anju.”

Yes, if he accepted Anju’s help, he’d probably get to Citri in time. An Eighty-Six Name Bearer, and one of the most veteran of them all, could slip through the Legion forces and reach Citri’s whereabouts.

Unlike Dustin, she could do that.

Unlike Dustin, she was strong.

And that was why this had nothing to do with her. His weakness, his frustration at how powerless he was, was something Anju was utterly detached from. And so if nothing else, her words— I’ll guide you there —were like her holding his weakness and sloth up for display. He didn’t want her to direct those words at him.

“I’m tired of having the witch’s curse on me… Just leave me alone.”

And only once he said that, he finally realized it. Only when he heard the sharp intake of breath behind him did the meaning of what he just said register in his mind. What letting his emotion and anger getting the better of him made him say.

He hurriedly spun around, only to find Anju had turned her back and run off. The sight of her long bluish-silver hair trailing behind her like an afterimage lingered in his eyes. And for this reason, Dustin couldn’t see what expression she made in that moment.

He could only stand stock-still until Frederica hurried in to take Anju’s place—having “seen” this, or perhaps simply realizing something was wrong—and angrily and aggressively called him a fool.

“What are you doing?! That’s a minefield over there!” Henry barked angrily, spotting a soldier from another company drive young, inexperienced soldiers ahead into a minefield.

It was one corner of the front lines where there somehow wasn’t any fighting. Despite that, the soldiers were all smirking as they replied, intent on using the fresh batch of newly arrived soldiers for target practice or to clear the mines.

“C’mon, we’re just sending him back to Mommy.”

“We need to make sure they’re not some of those new self-propelled mines, you know? If they make it back, they’re a mine; if they don’t, congrats, they’re all one of us .”

“Come on, it’s just a little prank. They’re odd-colored anyway.”

Odd-colored . People whose skin color, hair color, or eye color didn’t match. They themselves didn’t actually believe these soldiers were self-propelled mines; they simply admitted, with a smile, that they were only doing it because these were people of a different race. They were having fun persecuting someone, openly using it as one of their few ways of having fun on the field of battle.

“You think you can pull pranks like this here? Hell, you think this is a prank to begin with? I’ll report it to the higher-ups. I’m not from your company; I don’t have to stay quiet about this. Try telling that to your battalion commander or an MP.”

He had to go that high up because, much to his amazement, even the captain and vice captain for this company were in on this. The soldiers eyed him with hostility, annoyed that he’d rained on their parade repeatedly.

“Aww, just shut up…!”

“Keep your nose out of our business, Weißhaare! You think you can talk when you’re from the Republic ?!”

But their insults only emboldened him.

“Yeah, I’m from the Republic. And that’s how you know that when I say you’re going to regret what you’re doing, I mean it!”

The company captain looked taken aback when Henry shouted right at him. As he inched away from him, startled, Henry thrust a finger at his face. He remembered hearing somewhere that pointing at someone kept them from blending in with a group as a faceless member with no responsibility, instead marking them as an individual who could be taken to task for their choices and actions.

“You—yes, you, First Lieutenant Kareli. Simoni Kareli. I heard you just got married, right?”

“What are you—?”

“Can you tell your wife what you just said to me? Can you boast to her that you chased people from other races until you drove them to get killed by the Legion? And what about when you have children? Can you tell them that Daddy abandoned kids their age to die just because of their race? No, you can’t. You won’t, First Lieutenant. And neither can you, or you, or you!”

He pointed at the faces of everyone present here. Everyone wore the same weird expression people had when their individual thoughts were painted over by the group they were in.

The soldier he’d named and singled out from the group averted his eyes in guilt, his face going red in what might have been anger. The blind anger of being pulled out of the safety of a group and backed down into individuality, where one could be blamed and shamed for their actions.

“I—I just don’t have to tell—”

“Are you stupid?” Henry cut him off mockingly. “You think people won’t find out? It came out when the Republic did it, and the whole country was trying to hide it then. But the world at large found out. So what you’re doing is bound to come to light. Let’s see you, then, when you get called demons for what you did. When you get called inhuman monsters for the rest of your lives!”

He’d started laughing without even noticing it. His lips curled up like a gash cut across his face, and he bared his teeth with a maddened glint in his eyes.

“And even if that doesn’t happen…even if no one else ever finds out, you’ll know it. Everyone else might not know, but you will. So there’s no running from this. The truth will thrust itself before your eyes someday. You’ll do it to yourselves. I—”

Yes, I…I’m part of the Republic, which drove out and slaughtered the Eighty-Six, even when it happened to my stepmother’s family, Claude’s family. I looked away and carried on with my life. And so—

“I’m the same! I abandoned my family. For ten years, I walked around like nothing happened, like everything was fine. But it wasn’t fine—my little brother was still alive. And when I found out, I fell apart. I realized myself that I was scum who’d thrown his brother to the dogs and lived for ten years like I’d done nothing wrong!”

And that’s why Henry couldn’t forgive this. He couldn’t pardon his own sins. He kept blaming himself for the fact that he’d looked away from the expulsion and slaughter.

“So there’s no running from this. In ten years or so, when your children grow up, or when you just see some kid in town, the guilt will come crashing down on you like a hammer. There’ll be no escaping it. You’ll catch up to yourself someday. So stop this, before it comes to that. Before you become like me!”

“F-fine, I get it! Shit!” First Lieutenant Kareli said, looking at Henry with fearful eyes as he angrily stomped on the ground like an outraged child.

“I’m not in the mood anyway after all that shouting. Let’s stop this and not do it again. Satisfied?”

It seemed this attempt to placate Henry was closer to telling him to keep his mouth shut. He then glanced over at the young soldiers.

“…Sorry. Our prank went too far.”

Not that this could be written off as a prank.

As he left, the child soldiers followed. This was their unit, and they had no choice but to follow. One of them turned to look at Henry before they left. He was dark-skinned, with pale-golden hair and bright-colored eyes.

“—Weißhaare.”

Henry froze where he stood. The boy was right, and Henry didn’t get involved to come across as a hero to be thanked, but still.

First Lieutenant Nino, who’d hurried over upon hearing of this altercation and seen it all happen, placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. It was him who’d told Henry about Claude’s phone call, and the two started talking as a result.

“First Lieutenant… I understand.”

“…Yeah.”

“…Captain Nouzen.”

Shin realized that he must have really been visibly angry if a foreign soldier, Olivia, had to call out to him.

“Captain Olivia. I…”

As a soldier from another army, Olivia wasn’t under Shin’s command, and despite them both being the rank of captain, Olivia had been an officer for longer, to say nothing of him being older and an adult. Not that he was far enough in age to be his father…but he was like an older brother or cousin and, therefore, someone Shin could complain to.

“What should I do? I’ve been sitting still, waiting for this to resolve itself and for her to come home, but that hasn’t happened. It’s getting worse, in fact. I feel like I should have ignored orders to begin with and gone to take her back. Do I have to obey these orders all the time because I’m a commander, a soldier? I want to go save her, but if I do that—”

Me, as operations commander, as a commanding officer, as a soldier, as the leader of the Strike Package’s Processors… But Lena’s not here, and I want to go take her back…

“Does growing up and not being a child mean…nothing goes your way, and you can’t do anything about it?”

Hearing Shin’s truly childish question, Olivia replied concisely:

“Yes.”

His blue eyes looked hard and cold.

“Being an adult means you stop being a child under the protection of grown-ups. It means having things you need to protect that aren’t just your own well-being. It means you have to take responsibility for more things. It means you don’t just live for yourself, and that when you need to make sacrifices for your choices, you’re not the only thing you might have to sacrifice.”

“…”

Just like that one-eyed major general, who’d done everything in the name of the Federacy, of the mission, of not letting child soldiers become killers. He took on that task, even though it meant leaving his wife and children behind. And he did it with the intent of entrusting the future his wife and children would live in to the Federacy military—to Shin and the Strike Package.

I want to tell him that I am a soldier. He was the one who told me to live properly.

“And yes, the reason you don’t know what to do right now is because you understand the weight of your responsibilities. Because you’re weighing the outcomes of your choices. You care for Colonel Milizé, and you care for your comrades, and you know you have responsibilities to follow…and on top of all that, you know you can’t expose Colonel Milizé to danger. You’ve already made your choice, knowing now is the time to wait and protect the place she will return to.”

“…But.”

He couldn’t tolerate it anymore. He couldn’t help but feel there must be a way to make sure everything went well for both Lena and the Strike Package, and he couldn’t tolerate the fact that he couldn’t find it.

“Captain, you saw the previous operation. There isn’t always an ideal choice that makes everything turn out right. Sometimes, your only option is to pick the one choice that doesn’t have the worst possible outcome.”

And sometimes, things came to the point where you simply had to accept that there were losses you couldn’t recoup. He thought back to the Hail Mary Regiment, who’d lost their friends and their homes over and over until they couldn’t take it anymore. He thought about their female commander and those boys whose names he never knew.

They couldn’t take it anymore, and their actions led to catastrophe. They neglected to make the choice that didn’t have the worst possible outcome, and they charged down the most terrible path.

…I thought the worst of them.

Only now, when he was backed against the wall himself, did he realize that. He didn’t want to lose anymore. To not have anything taken away from him again, and having to put up with that impulse, hurt so much.

It only hurt so badly because he cared so much.

As Shin hung his head, Olivia regarded him with a strained smile.

“But all that said, you still need to vent your anger, right? Honestly, next time, you should do something to let off steam before you get that bad… For the time being, I got you permission to do some brawling practice in the maneuvering grounds. We can go for a round now, if you’d like.”

Managing something akin to a smile, Shin said jokingly, “I see. I’ll use your chest for that one, then, Captain.”

Olivia’s smile deepened. “That’s some odd nuance… Just letting you know, I’m not as good with antipersonnel combat as I am in armored combat. I’ll have First Lieutenant Shuga come along—”

“Raiden won’t be enough. You’ll need one, maybe two more people.”

Shin mockingly said something quite rude about Raiden despite his absence, only for Raiden to suddenly walk over and tell him bluntly, “Figured you’d say that, Shin…so I asked your beloved priest to come over and join in.”

Shin looked past him, shuddering, and saw him—the priest—looking less like a person and more like a grizzly bear that’d forgotten to hibernate, flexing his bulky, muscular arms.

Shin felt very overwhelmed all of a sudden.

Rito and the others could clearly see that Shin had a lot of pent-up frustration from Lena being in custody following the Actaeon affair. So perhaps as a way to let off some steam, Shin started having a friendly hand-to-hand brawl with Raiden, Olivia, and for some reason, the military priest, much to the shock and surprise of even the Eighty-Six.

The priest being a monster was nothing new, but Raiden was going all out, and Shin was definitely more savage than they’d seen him during training. Olivia fell out of the running first, antipersonnel combat not being his forte, but the boys and girls who’d gathered around to watch saw him off with calls of “Good fight, Captain!” and “I’m surprised you challenged the cap’n to a fight when he’s in such a crappy mood.”

“…But man, the cap’n’s really in a foul mood today… Vice Cap’n Shuga’s putting up a good fight, even if he has the reverend helping him,” Rito grumbled, taken aback.

“Mmm, this is some interesting stuff they’re up to. Maybe I can help ya if honor allows it, Li’l Werewolf!” Shiden stepped up to the plate, chanting a line from a movie she saw at a film festival the other day, and joined the match. Raiden jumped up and charged Shin in tandem with her, rushing past the priest. At this point, Shin’s expression took on a shade of clear anger.

“We’re supposed to join in here, right?”

“Come on, let’s go, Marcel!”

“Me too?!”

And so Tohru, Claude, and Marcel also entered the fight, and with Marcel instantly getting knocked out, the battle became a four-on-one. But despite that, eventually, the eastern front’s Reaper was able to defend his honor and beat all of them back, and it didn’t even completely exhaust Shin. He was gasping for air, though.

The priest, who had moved strictly to defense once Shiden joined in, asked:

“Did you calm down some?”

“Yes. Cleared my head, for the time being,” Shin replied, wiping away sweat with his sleeve.

Tohru fell over and demanded Shin get them drinks, with Shiden pumping her fist and voicing her agreement.

“You’re asking me to brew you tea? Me? Of all people?”

Shin really did seem to have relaxed a little, because he was able to joke like usual. Raiden patted him on the back of the head from behind.

“Just don’t outright state you’re going to mix up the sugar with the salt.”

“No, with cornstarch.”

“I mean don’t play with food, moron. The way things are now, the guys in Supplies will have your head.”

Seeing this, Rito, who’d mostly kept his voice down as an onlooker so far, whispered:

“That’s actually not that bad. It’ll turn to, like, tea jelly.”

“That might have actually tasted nice, if it wasn’t Captain Nouzen making it…,” Michihi, who approached them, said with a strange half smile.

“…Maybe we should have Yuuto try it and tell us how it tastes when he comes back.”

Yuuto, who’d entrusted the information on the Actaeon with the Republic and left with those girls. He, who was now a fugitive on the run from the Federacy military and the police.

He knew this would happen, which was why he didn’t tell a soul and departed by himself, taking all the responsibility for it on his own. And yet…

Michihi smiled softly. “Yes… When he comes back.”

True to Yuuto’s statement, it took some time, but they slipped through the western front’s defensive line in the Niva Nova combat territory, as well as the Legion’s patrol lines. It was a brief and yet long trek.

They were now in the western side of the Noidafune territory, by now firmly within Legion turf, and stopped deep in a nameless forest on its northern fringe. They were by a large lake, also nameless save for whatever local name the residents who’d lived nearby once gave it. And scattered at the edge of that lake, by the shadows of the long tree and all over the branches, were white, long-necked birds.

Even Shiohi, whose drooping eyes tended to be sleepily half-open, looked at them with wide eyes as she whispered:

“…Swans?”

“There’s a few swans here, but…these are mostly geese.”

Or maybe ducks—Yuuto couldn’t always tell them apart. He’d seen fowl like these, which weren’t chickens, in the Eighty-Sixth Sector. They were edible if they hunted them down.

Some of the cattle and livestock that’d been freed during the evacuations likely ended up running because of the fighting that followed, leading to them gathering in Legion-controlled areas. This let them avoid animals like bears and wolves, which the Legion did recognize as offensive targets, allowing smaller livestock to live safely here even after the front line was pulled back.

Then again, foxes and birds of prey weren’t targeted by the Legion, either, and these livestock were domesticated animals that were used to living under the care of humans. Yuuto pondered that finding prey probably wasn’t a problem for any mountain cats or foxes living nearby.

But Yuuto didn’t speak these violent thoughts aloud, so Citri and the others didn’t know about them. Instead, they approached the birds, making quacking sounds at a flock of geese that were used to being cared for by humans, and grinned at them happily.

“They’re so friendly!”

“So cute…and fluffy…!”

Oh…

After seeing this, Yuuto realized that it would be best to give up on catching one of them for dinner.

Not only was he incapable of saving Citri, but he also hurt Anju on top of that. He said something unthinkable to his precious girlfriend. That realization finally drove Dustin to a corner. Maybe he should have just rushed out to the battlefield to find her, even knowing he’d never make it. Considering the state he was in, maybe he should just betray Anju and set out, returning or surviving be damned.

He wanted someone to agree with him. Tell him he was right. But no one indulged him that way, so he called out to Amari again, seeking words that would spur him on. But the moment she saw him, Amari’s eyes widened.

“…I’m sorry. This is a bit late to say, but perhaps I shouldn’t have told you after all.”

“Did she say anything else? Did Citri say anything else?”

Their words overlapped, but he was unable to stop himself and kept going. He didn’t care for her apology. Citri’s words mattered more. He wanted to be told Citri blamed him for his powerlessness. That she said something that would send him charging to the battlefield without looking back, running until he exhausted all his strength.

“Did she ask why I didn’t save her? Call me scum? Say I should just…die?”

Amari cocked her head a little. Dustin’s expression was visibly awful, so she wasn’t too taken aback by how incoherent he was being. But…

“She didn’t ask to be saved…”

“Look, Yuuto!”

Citri hurried over to him, one of those birds—a goose or a duck—in her arms. Apparently, the goose had jumped into her arms for want of attention, and Citri looked as ecstatic as a child.

“It’s really friendly! And spoiled, too. It likes getting pats. Come on, Yuuto, try patting it!”

Her pale-violet eyes twinkled with joy, and for the first time, he saw her make a truly carefree smile. He reached out almost unconsciously, spurred by her words—not for the goose looking at him with its black eyes, but for Citri’s long flaxen hair. For her smooth, pale cheek under it, dirtied by their long journey.

Citri’s eyes widened in surprise, but she didn’t run.

But the next moment, a bird on the lake—a real swan—let out a monstrous screech that one would never expect from its graceful form and flew away from the water. And despite the sound coming from another creature, it was a distress cry, and it made the geese flee in a panic. The one sitting in Citri’s arms likewise flew off in a flutter of feathers.

“Ah!”

“Whoa!”

The two got out of the way, of course, and he pulled his hand away before he could touch her. The other geese all flew off around them, filling the area with feathers. It was almost like snow—except it was too fluffy and dirty. They peered at each other, looking absurd with feathers covering their head and hair.

And then Citri and Yuuto both burst into laughter at once. Both of them tried to laugh it off, to pretend they didn’t notice that strange impulse that had guided them a moment ago.

Amari’s expression looked dubious, like she was confused as to why he had to think about this in a way that made everything more complicated than it should be.

“She just said she wanted to see you. That she wanted to see her friend one last time… She was worried about you, what with the offensive. But after hearing you were fine, she said she wanted to see you before the end, because you were her best friend… Oh, right.”

As Dustin held his breath, she continued, looking like she just remembered something.

“She said she wanted to apologize to you proper. For breaking a promise that you’d go to school and play together tomorrow. To apologize for disappearing.”

Those were words he didn’t expect. And…honestly, once he stopped to think about it, it was an obvious wish to make. It left Dustin stunned.

“…She wanted to see me for that?”

He hardly even remembered it anymore. He couldn’t even come up with the idea of her wish being something as simple and obvious as wanting to see a friend again.

How would I even save Citri? When did I start assuming Citri even wanted me to save her? I’m acting like I’m some kind of chosen one, some savior. Or some kind of saint of penance, shouldering the sins of the foolish. I treated Citri, and all the friends who got taken away from that new town, like they’re a tragedy that happened to me. I held them up like a banner, to show off that I’m on the right side, that I’ve known tragedy.