As operations commander and his lieutenant, Shin and Raiden—as well as Kurena and Anju, who were also among the first Eighty-Six to be taken in by the Republic—were recognized as the leader figures and were therefore quite busy. This included managing the armored divisions and planning for the next operation in secret. Despite not being able to fully take their places, the other platoon leaders of the Strike Package, including Claude and Tohru, picked up whatever small tasks those four weren’t able to attend to.
Like, for instance, looking after Dustin, the weakest of the Processors.
Standing at the entrance to Dustin’s room, where he had shut himself off and refused to leave, Tohru said, “Try to eat something, Dustin. You could at least come out at mealtimes.”
Sitting in his small room, as cramped as a corridor, Dustin remained seated on his bed and refused to raise his head.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Eat even if you don’t have an appetite. Eat even if they’re serving you those nasty synthesized rations or if you just saw something get blown to chunks. If you don’t, you won’t have the strength when the time comes.”
That was how things worked in the Eighty-Sixth Sector. The scrap monstrosities kept on attacking no matter how sick one got or how many people died, so they knew they needed to have their stomachs full of something so they could fight whenever the need arose. This would no doubt be the same on the Federacy’s battlefield, and Dustin was a Processor, just like Tohru and the rest. So Tohru had to come to Dustin’s room to ensure he did what he needed to do.
“If you don’t like people worrying about you and calling you over, I could bring Claude to stand here with his sour face. Come on, go get something to eat.”
“…You’re worried about me, too.”
Tohru scoffed. “Yeah, I’m a captain in the Strike Package worrying about a soldier who can fight. Don’t act all spoiled, moron.”
He treated him as a fellow Processor, but Tohru wasn’t going to buddy up with him. Shutting himself off in his room for today was tantamount to selfish behavior on the battlefield, especially toward someone who brought food to his doorstep every day without complaint.
Dustin looked at him with a feeble, bitter smile.
“Yeah, you’re right… Then while I’m being spoiled, will you ignore what I’m about to say?”
He couldn’t tell this to Anju. Nor could he tell Kurena and Frederica, since they could pass it on to her, and Shin, Raiden, and Vika were too busy. Marcel would listen but take this pointless story more seriously than Tohru would.
Tohru shrugged and then turned around indifferently, as if to say, I’ll listen to you, so come on. Dustin started talking, faltering over his words.
“…She was a kind, pretty girl. A bit like a princess.”
“You mean Citri?” Tohru asked without turning around, still walking ahead.
“Yeah.”
She was like a princess who loved fairy-tale heroes. When Dustin was younger, he was like a knight who swore loyalty to that princess.
“She was a princess I had to protect… That’s what I thought.”
But—
—Dustin. You mustn’t look outside tonight.
When his mother said those words, he could tell something was wrong by looking at her pale, slender face, so he obeyed and went to sleep that night without opening the curtain. He remembered it to this day. The eerie silence of the morning that followed.
When he left the house, Citri didn’t come out to greet him, and both she and her parents were gone. When he saw there was no one in the streets or the shops, he hurried to school. Running through the deserted town, he prayed, hoping he’d find someone there, that the place where he spent time with Citri and his classmates would still be there, unchanged.
But even when he got to school, there was no one around. He never cared much for the news before, but he started watching it desperately…and they said all sorts of weird things. That people of other races were enemies. Citri and her people were traitors. They spoke obvious falsehoods like they were the absolute truth.
But contrary to Dustin’s belief, everyone else around him started believing the weird things the TV said. The stains weren’t human to begin with. An unevolved lesser species. Swine in human form. Parts for a drone that fought the Legion.
Even though Citri and everyone else were actually human.
At the time, Dustin didn’t know the words to correct everyone. All he could do was helplessly stare in stunned silence at a world gone mad. He couldn’t commit to the role of a fairy-tale knight when he was needed most. That was why…
“This time…I want to save her.”
This was why he volunteered to join the Strike Package, to sweep away the Republic’s sins—it was the penance he had to pay.
✦ ✦ ✦
The Eighty-Six were driven out of the Republic to the Eighty-Sixth Sector, and only a few million people survived. They came from all sorts of places, and likewise, the Actaeon were from varied backgrounds.
Kiki said she was born in a town with many old steeples. Shiohi was born in a village where the mountains of the Alliance were visible. Karine grew up in the southern vice capital of Euztiria. Imeno spoke of seas of golden, swaying wheat, while Ashiha told with amusement of days spent looking after sheep. They all had families and friends.
Citri’s turn came last. She spoke of moving to a new, pretty town and eventually of the childhood friend she grew up with—the kind, dependable boy next door who was like a fairy-tale prince. Of how she waved her best friend good-bye one day, never to see him again.
“…That’s why I wanted to see him. So he wouldn’t worry about me.”
With a faint smile relishing sweet reminiscence, Citri cast down her eyes and finished her story.
…Have you heard of a man called Dustin Jaeger?
Dustin was Alba, but he was also of Imperial descent, so she’d been worried he might have gotten sent to the camps, too. But as she lived outside the rules, she overheard researchers speaking of the events of the Revolution Festival and mentioning his name, which made her only more concerned.
The final Revolution Festival, just before the large-scale offensive. The name of the student who gave the valedictorian speech.
—How long will this continue?!
He said this to the faces of all the Republic’s citizens. And if she was the reason he said that, if he felt like he’d abandoned or failed to protect her and openly opposed the Republic for it…
“I wanted to meet him, to make sure this wasn’t a curse on him…but if meeting him now would burden him with a curse in its own way, I think maybe it’s for the best we didn’t meet.”
Just knowing he was safe, that he survived both this offensive and the one before that…
“I’m…fine with that much.”
“…”
Yuuto had to ask himself if that was true. If there was nothing else he would have done, had he been in Dustin’s shoes. He, who couldn’t even shoulder a single curse.
“Hey, you’re last in line…” Imeno leaned in. “What was your hometown like, Yuuto?”
“I hardly remember it. I didn’t have the time to.”
Imeno gave a small “ah” and fell quiet, but Yuuto carried on. He tried to piece together what bits and pieces of that scenery lingered in his memories.
“I think my roots are from a region far away from the Republic. As I remember it now, we had different customs than the rest of town. So we were…not quite ostracized, but…”
For example, the kind of fairy tales he was told. The way they made tea. He could hardly recall his mother’s and relatives’ faces, but for some reason, the strong, sweet fragrance of that tea remained in his memories.
He had to throw everything away to survive. The yearly survival rate in the Eighty-Sixth Sector was 0.1 percent, but Name Bearers lasted longer, meaning fighting alongside the same Name Bearers for years was fairly common. Like Shin and the four other members of the Spearhead squadron, or Shiden and the Brísingamen squadron, or Claude and Tohru.
But Yuuto really was alone. The members of his last squadron and the acquaintances he knew beforehand had all died. He truly joined the Strike Package with none of his comrades left alive.
“I probably just wasn’t lucky. To begin with, Name Bearers—surviving veteran soldiers—tend to get sent to the most heavily contested areas, and I think both me and all the people around me weren’t strong enough to protect others on top of ourselves.”
And so, still as weak as he was, without protecting anyone or even trying to protect anyone…he survived alone.
Since he never tried to protect anyone, no death ever hurt him, and even though he remembered others, he never truly felt for them. Without ever noticing the warped loneliness he felt.
—Maybe it’s best that I don’t meet him, so I don’t burden him with a curse.
I’m not sure about that. Never having to be hurt, but also having no one to think back on fondly. If that’s how I have to live my life, maybe…
“Having to carry the burden of someone’s curse…would have been better.”