You kill me.
✦ ✦ ✦
Oddly enough, he wasn’t conflicted about it at all.
“Okay.”
This is what Cap’n Nouzen always did. Exactly what he did to comrades who were about to die.
He took out the assault rifle his unit had for self-defense, extended the stock with swift motions, and aimed. A rifle’s bullets had faster initial velocity and a heavier weight, making them more reliable than a pistol’s.
He aligned the sights with the girl. She closed her eyes with a smile.
“Thank you.”
“Yeah.”
He pulled the trigger. Shot through the chest from close range, the girl crumpled to the ground with a smile.
✦ ✦ ✦
And then…
✦ ✦ ✦
The heat burning through his mind, all the thoughts and perceptions and judgments, everything was blown away.
…Huh?
All the colors he could see changed into a dizzying, haphazard swirl. Dots of white and black filled one side, and then the colors stopped changing. Ah, no, red spread over the speckled ground. Crimson spilled in random patterns over the white of snow. A sharp noise echoed in his ears—he knew this sound, but the blankness in his head kept him from remembering what it was.
Shot through, he tumbled off his unit and slammed on his side into the snowy mud without bearing himself. But at this point, Rito couldn’t tell what was going on. The impact of his fall made him face another direction, and he could see military boots approaching his field of vision. They stopped right in front of him.
He couldn’t look up, but he heard a voice from above. He couldn’t grasp the emotion or meaning of those words anymore.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Murderer.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“…?”
i am rito
an eighty-six
✦ ✦ ✦
so i am not a killer
✦ ✦ ✦
Hearing footsteps approach from between the broken trees, before Lerche even turned around, her sensors focused on the sound of the voice calling out to her and Ludmila. The footsteps implied the body weighed roughly a hundred kilograms, and it was the voice of a woman. Her voice was oddly upset, and her tone came across as alarmed.
“Y-you two. Are you Eighty-Six…? No, what do I call you? Are you with this boy…?”
“Ah, no, we are not Eighty-Six,” Lerche said and turned around.
If this person assumed the word Eighty-Six was a disparaging one that should not be used, she must have been from the Republic. Having reached that same conclusion, Ludmila turned her head and optical sensor to look at her as well…
“What’s more, the Eighty-Six themselves wear that name with pride. That title is not a mark of shame, but…”
But then Lerche trailed off as the woman came into view. At that moment, Ludmila felt her nonexistent heart freeze over with shock.
The woman was young, short, and slender. But the reason they had calculated her weight as heavier was because someone else was in her arms. Her slender arms, her chest, her cheeks, and even her moon-colored hair were stained with red, and the woman was sobbing.
“I’m sorry. I…I couldn’t save him. I heard his voice, so I knew he was there, so I should have come closer. I couldn’t save him, I didn’t make it, he’s so small, but I couldn’t protect him. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”
Lerche stood beside Ludmila, her Emerōd eyes as wide as they could be. Ludmila didn’t have a feature that would make her shudder, and yet she trembled, freezing up, and tried to call his name.
“Sir…”
Stop.
Lerche, don’t.
Please don’t remind me of his name, of that fact.
Once… When was it? Yes, it was the previous me. He looked at me with fear. He said he didn’t want to die, that death scared him. In looking at us, this person made that realization. And that put me at ease, the knowledge that this person would not die the way we did.
And yet this person…
✦ ✦ ✦
“Sir…Rito…”
✦ ✦ ✦
Having us, birds of death, call his name would only be an ill omen and a disservice. And so Lerche, who had made an attempt to not call people by their names, spoke his name with a dumbfounded expression.
The bird of death that would never call the living by their name called his name—it was clear, without a doubt, that the boy was dead.
Held in the woman’s arms with his skull shattered from a gunshot, its contents, his life, and his personality spilling out—was Rito Oriya’s dead body.
✦ ✦ ✦
Being nearly half buried in the snow-specked mud turned out to be a blessing. Henry crawled out along with the subordinates who’d hid with him in the same place—the same trenches—for roughly half a day.
“…How many made it?”
First Lieutenant Nino, the company commander who’d sat beside him in the trenches, sighed at that question, his face dirty and emaciated.
“You, me, this boy right here, and about ten troops or so.”
“Me too, for what it’s worth. And seven of my men.” First Lieutenant Kareli wobbled over.
In other words, these twenty or so men were the sole survivors out of two companies numbering four hundred troops in total, the rest either routed or dead.
There was no sign of any Legion or friendly troops in sight as they looked around the battlefield, which was covered in corpses and wreckage.
“The western front—or rather, the Harutari reserve position managed to stave them off. Let’s take this chance to rendezvous with the closest position…”
But then he saw First Lieutenant Nino grimace and the child soldier stiffen. This made Henry pick up on the hints.
“…Right. No position would accept a Republic soldier, would they?”
And though he left it unsaid, they weren’t likely to take in the child soldiers, who were a minority in the Federacy.
First Lieutenant Nino shook his head. “It’s not about you. I doubt anyone’s going to let other units join them at this point. They think everyone but themselves is the enemy… Everyone feels this way now.”
“None of them were willing to rescue or offer covering fire for us…,” First Lieutenant Kareli said bitterly. “And they knew our unit got left behind here.”
But that said, the Legion’s scavenger units, the Tausendfüßler, would come before long. And even if they didn’t, it was only a matter of time until the next Legion offensive began. If they were going to survive, they’d need to return to their army’s territory. And yet…
When the realization hit Henry, he got to his feet. It took a moment’s hesitation, and he had to swallow his guilt, but he steeled himself. His life wasn’t the only one hanging in the balance here, and he didn’t want to make Claude angry anymore.
“Let’s go to Rüstkammer base—the Strike Package’s home base.”
His subordinates eyed him dubiously. First Lieutenant Nino raised an eyebrow, and First Lieutenant Kareli looked alarmed. But Henry carried on, undisturbed. This was one thing he could believe in, even in this situation. Even in a situation like this, Claude and the Eighty-Six who fought alongside him…
“I have a little brother. I’m sure they’ll take us in.”