Zelene’s response was firm.
✦ ✦ ✦
<<—No.>>
✦ ✦ ✦
Yatrai raised his brow. It was the first time he heard Zelene’s tone take on a human intonation. Seeing his reaction, Zelene carried on. Yes, she did consider death for the moment all hope was lost. Indeed, death was the proper end for a mechanical ghost like her. However—
✦ ✦ ✦
<<No. I won’t die. I cannot choose death yet. Because those boys—Shinei Nouzen and Viktor Idinarohk—have yet to give up.>>
✦ ✦ ✦
Even now, they were still out there, fighting. So for as long as there was a chance any information she could give them would contribute to their operations, to their victory, she had a duty to watch their battles to their conclusion.
✦ ✦ ✦
<<I cannot afford to die yet.>>
✦ ✦ ✦
Though they were given permission to leave the base, they had to do so in civilian clothes and with the military police following them.
I guess I am a Republic soldier…, Annette thought.
As she walked through the streets of Sankt Jeder, she saw the news being broadcast on the street television.
“…They’re reporting on it.”
Information about the “wiretaps” had finally been disclosed to the press. The wiretaps were the source of the information leak to the Legion. Since the Legion could still be listening in on their transmissions, the army couldn’t afford to share that information soon after the arrest. It had now been quite a while since the roundup, and the exact dates of when it happened were cleverly left unmentioned, but there were no lies in the report.
The Republic used Eighty-Six children in an act that breached the Federacy’s faith.
“Yeah, that explains it.”
Annette felt hard gazes on her from passersby, probably because of the reporting. There were many Alba citizens in a multiethnic country like the Federacy, and when she was in civilian uniform, there was no immediate way of identifying Annette as a Republic soldier. This implied a general drop in the popularity of Alba across the country, not just Republic citizens.
She heard comments from the crowd like “Hey there, Weißhaare,” a derogatory term for the silver-haired Alba. The military police moved in quickly to block out their looks and insults.
“We’re sorry, Major. You’re cooperating with us, but our people say things like that…”
“Is it just around town, or do Alba soldiers get looked at like this, too?”
A soldier who spent most of their time inside the base likely knew how Alba were seen there. The military police officer made a bitter expression.
“I’m ashamed to say that they do.”
“Native Alba are treated this way, too, and volunteer soldiers from the Republic are seen as traitors…”
The news was full of debates that criticized the Republic, which only made the voices in the crowd all the more enraged. “This is why you can’t trust those weißhaare,” they said. “Cowardly Alba. We saved their lives, and this is how the traitors repay our kindness.”
“This is why those poor Eighty-Six children took revenge on them like that.”
Even comments like that went unsilenced. “The bastards in the Republic treated the children so awfully that they decided to collude with the Legion to take revenge on them”—so said one indignant voice in the crowd.
I agree, the Republic are bastards, but…, Annette thought with a sigh.
She had a strange yearning for another one of those paper cups of caramel coffee with a cute cat drawn on it.
✦ ✦ ✦
“What, Theo, you one of those wiretaps, too? They put a quasi-nerve crystal in you, did they?” one colleague asked in a poor attempt at a joke.
“Not anymore, the Federacy took it out when they picked us up. Wanna see the scar?” Theo replied indifferently.
“Uh… Sorry. I didn’t think they really put one in you…,” said the colleague apologetically.
It wasn’t funny, but it wasn’t worth getting mad over, either. The colleague apologized profusely, but Theo shook his head, said it was fine, and then returned his ear to the mobile phone he’d been holding away from his mouth while conversing with the man.
During operational hours, using a cell phone for personal calls was frowned upon from an information-security perspective, but Theo was on break, and he was currently in an instruction unit’s base. He did need to watch what he was saying, but he was allowed to make the call.
“…Mister?”
“Oh, sorry, ignore that… How are you doing, Miel? How’s life over there treating you?”
He was speaking from Sankt Jeder to a boy who lived in a territory on the western frontier, one of the evacuation sites for Republic refugees—Miel Renard, the bereaved son of Theo’s old captain.
That’s right, Renard—“fox.”
It was only now, years later, that Theo realized this was why the man had used a fox as his Personal Mark. Incidentally, the captain’s name was Sylvain, so his name meant “forest fox.” His son’s name, Miel, stood for “honey”—“honey-colored fox.” Apparently, their entire family had some kind of affinity for foxes.
“Some stuff happened in a city where all the important people live, but my town is fine. The facility manager and the other Federacy soldiers are all nice. Oh, and…”
“Mm?”
“The food’s really good.” Young Miel sighed profoundly. “Real meat and fish taste so good. And eggs and milk and jam and cakes…”
Theo couldn’t help but smile. That was good to hear. “Once everything settles down, I’ll take you fishing. And we can make cakes and jam, too.”
“Yeah!” He could almost feel the boy nod excitedly and lean in over the phone.
But then Miel hushed his voice.
“Say, hmm… Is everything okay on your side, though, mister?”
“My side? Why?”
“There’re more scary people around there, right? What do they call them…? They have those really long names.”
What was he talking about?
“When the Republic lost in the last large-scale offensive, they said it was all your…all the Eighty-Six’s fault. They gathered around and protested that you didn’t fight hard enough.”
“…Oh.”
He meant the Bleachers. Theo didn’t remember their full name, either, but since their slogan was reclaiming the pure white, Shin took that and started calling them “bleachers,” which caught on among the rest of the group.
“Those guys are only…wherever the Republic people are, so they’re not in the capital.”
“Oh, really?”
“But what do you mean ‘more’ scary people?”
Theo heard that after the second large-scale offensive, the Bleachers lost the civilians’ support and had a stark drop in their political power.
“Well, the important people who’d say stuff like that didn’t come back, but there’s more people bad-mouthing you. They say the Republic wouldn’t have fallen if the Eighty-Six fought right, and they should be fighting instead of them now.”
The leaders who failed to reclaim the Eighty-Six and didn’t save the Republic had all been driven out for their incompetency, but the people had still inherited their rhetoric of pinning the blame of defeat and military duty onto the Eighty-Six. With no one to lead or control them, these ideas continued to swell up on their own among the people.
“After we came to the Federacy, a lot of people had to go join the army. And now their families and the people who didn’t want to enlist are unhappy with that… They’re rioting all over the place every day.”