Let’s say for the sake of argument that there was a nonsense user who believed that killing was wrong. How would he respond to these questions?
“What’s wrong with killing people on the battlefield?”
“What’s wrong with a serial killer killing people?”
He would probably answer like this: the very existence of battlefields and serial killers themselves is wrong. Okay then, what about these questions?
“Is it wrong for a dog to kill someone?”
“Is it wrong for an earthquake to kill people?”
Would he say that the very existence of dogs and earthquakes was wrong? Not a chance, that would be mere sophistry. Reasons that come from conviction and convictions that come from reason are completely different things.
It is a firm and unassailable fact that there exist situations, circumstances, where one must kill. Yes, a reason to kill someone always exists as a certainty. Even when there’s no reason why you can’t kill someone, there is always reason to kill someone. So the important thing is to live out your days creeping around trying to avoid ending up with such a reason─and at that point in my thought process, I slowly opened my eyes.
Another hour had passed─Hime-chan was waggling her finger around as always (did it entertain her?), Aikawa was fast asleep where she had plopped herself down─and I got to my feet.
“Huh? Where’s you going, Master?”
“…The bathroom.”
“Understood. I’ll go with you.”
Don’t be ridiculous.
Reining her in as she started to stand up, I told Hime-chan the truth: “I’m going to strike out on my own, if you don’t mind.”
“On your own?”
“Yeah. Sorry, but I’m sick of playing detective.” I bobbed my head at her. Then, undoing the triangular sling Aikawa had made for me, I released my injured arm. “It’s like Aikawa said, I don’t seem to be able to handle it when I ‘can’t see what’s coming.’ It’s a new discovery for me. Though Shiogi said something about how ‘not understanding something’ makes her anxious… So maybe it’s something like that. I don’t mind vagueness, but I don’t much care for uncertainty… I guess I really am inflexible. Anyway, I’ve hit my limit, I can’t wait around here like this anymore.”
“That’s…” Hime-chan pursed her lips and looked up at me accusingly. “Samurai down, Master!”
Was she telling me to commit ritual suicide, because I was running away from battle?
No…she probably just meant to say simmer down.
“That doesn’t make any sense! Don’t you understand that if you stay with Ms. Jun, you’ll be absolutely safe? Even getting out of the academy will be easy if we just leave everythings to her. Now that we’ve managed to get them in a stalemate, why do you need to go acting so recklessly?”
“I don’t feel like arguing about it.”
“Too bad, because you’re going to listen to what I have to say. If you go off like a loose cannon, Master, it’ll endanger Hime-chan and Ms. Jun. As long as we’re a team, your everequal and opposite reaction directly affects our prospects.”
It was a serious moment, so I didn’t bother to correct her.
“I’ve considered that. Hime-chan. In this situation it’s actually better if I’m not here. You put it very aptly yourself: you’re not good for much─but I’m good for less than that, I’m a total amateur. Your best bet is to get rid of the dead weight.”
“That’s just─”
“One thing’s for sure,” I said over the end of her sentence, squashing her counterargument. “It may well be that it wouldn’t make much of a difference to Aikawa. My weight probably doesn’t mean much to her, dead or otherwise. But─here’s what occurred to me. No, what I realized─no, no, what finally dawned on me, I guess you could say. As long as I’m with Aikawa, I’m safe. Not only that, it could even start to make me feel a little cocky. The thought of being on the side of humanity’s strongest really fires me up─but that’s a problem. I don’t want to be fleeing the battlefield because of that.”
A blood-soaked room. Covered in gore. The assembled pieces of Noa Origami. The world’s strongest, sleeping so peacefully on the floor that I couldn’t even hear her breath. And in that environment, a nineteen-year-old straggler and a seventeen-year-old deserter were having this childish argument. Dammit, if this wasn’t comical, what was? If this couldn’t be called buffoonery, what could?
“In which case─I’m nothing but a thief. I’m the lowest of the low, slinking around and somehow managing to stay alive. ‘Aikawa’s so strong that it’s nothing for her to parcel this out to me’─that’s the kind of grubby little parasite I am, no sense of crime and no feel for punishment. There’s been a lot going on lately, so I totally let it slip my mind. What kind of life I had chosen for myself.”
I don’t provide anyone with anything.
So I don’t accept anything from anyone.
I refuse anything and everything. That…was just about the last source of dignity I had left.
“Aikawa’s job this time around was to rescue you… It’s got nothing to do with me. This is absolutely, totally, positively someone else’s affair, and I’m only in the way. And that’s no good at all. I…don’t want to repay kindness with injury.”
I may not have much in the way of strength of purpose.
But a certain mulish pride, that much I’ve got.
“But, Master─”
“You’d better stop calling me that. I’ll never be able to be friends with someone like Aikawa. There’s no reason for you to call me that.”
I casually brushed her off, and for a moment Hime-chan looked hurt. I headed for the door, which could easily be unlocked from the inside. Though the mechanism had been destroyed by the jolt of electricity, of course, so it had to be done with brute strength.
Being protected by Aikawa. Which isn’t even a burden for her. Protecting Hime-chan. Feeling the desire to protect her, feeling fulfilled by that. Clasping hands. Becoming friends, cooperating.
I get it now, what a dreamy relationship.
So that’s exactly what it is: a dream.
A dream is just a dream, after all.
“But, um…Mast, er.”
“I told you to stop calling me that… Better learn some manners, kid.” I turned around, and put my hand on Hime-chan’s shoulder. Squeezing it a little─to demonstrate my refusal. “Please stop expecting me to be nice to you. Don’t expect to get close to me. That kind of thing─rubs me the wrong way.”
“─Ah.”
Hime-chan shrunk from my words.
Look how easy it is.
How easy it is to break someone’s trust.
Tenuous goodwill crumbles so easily,
And once again I’m on my own.
“I’m sick of pretending to be friends. This is my way of running away, Hime-chan. Just like you’re doing. Then again, our opponents may be a little thrown off because of it─so you and Aikawa should feel free to do whatever you want in that window.”
“Why… Why are you acting so distant, likes we were strangers?”
“Because we are strangers.”
“But Ms. Jun─”
“I don’t want to get in Jun Aikawa’s way. Even if I wouldn’t make for much of an impediment.”
I was playing up the stoicism a bit, to be honest, but that was just my mulishness again. Putting an end to the conflict between resignation and compromise.
Do you not understand what I’m saying?
Do you not understand where I’m coming from?
Do you not understand me?
Hime-chan.
That’s a truly wonderful thing.
It goes without saying that Hime-chan was right. I was in the wrong. I couldn’t have been more blatantly wrong. But─I had hit my limit. This was the limit for wrong me doing the right thing. I had no way of explaining that I had crossed a threshold. And I had no interest in explaining it in the first place.
Yup, that’s how it was in the end.
The nonsense user refuses to make friends, even with Jun Aikawa.
“But, but─”
“Okay then, bye-bye.”
Without waiting to hear the rest of what Hime-chan was going to say, I closed the door. Aikawa was one thing, but with those skinny arms and that slender frame, there was no way Hime-chan was up to the task of opening it. Even once Aikawa had woken up, I had no expectation that she’d come and save me if I decided to go off on my own. She’d said so herself. I mean, who knows, maybe she wasn’t even asleep now. I’m sure she has no problem feigning sleep. Deception is her stock in trade.
Just like that pantomime routine she used to get me here.
“The crazy thing is, it doesn’t make me dislike her even a tiny bit…”
That’s probably because I like Aikawa, from the bottom of my heart. I like her, though that’s worlds away from liking her.
“…”
Nevertheless. I couldn’t see myself being good-natured enough to lounge around carefree and comfortable now that I’d finally cottoned on to the fact that she’d deceived me.