Yuuto’s declaration made Dustin crack a pained smile. That went without saying, after all.
“Yeah, you should be. I’m not qualified to do it.”
Not me, who couldn’t—who failed to choose her.
Not me, who chose someone other than her.
“I already have the Snow Witch’s curse on me. The Snow Witch took her aim and shot me down. So I’m not qualified to take Citri’s hand anymore.”
The gentle curse that the kind witch placed on him—a curse that drove him to survive.
Dustin exhaled, chuckling with a hint of contempt. Yes, that went without saying—he didn’t have to go out and announce it. But Yuuto didn’t pick up on that nuance.
“Besides…she left it for you. Because you were the one who was with her in her final moments, and no one else. She decided she’d become your curse to carry.”
Didn’t she?
Yuuto smiled softly. It was a pained smile that stood for the tears he didn’t know how to shed yet.
“…True.”
Words and wishes. Prayers and emotions. All things people directed at one another were curses. They bound one’s legs, keeping them from going on, warping their path forward. They made one take wrong turns, even changing their soul in definitive ways at times.
Could the curses one accepted despite that at least be called love, then?
✦ ✦ ✦
The Federacy capital of Sankt Jeder couldn’t withstand the worsening public order borne of the clashes between the residents and the evacuees. Destabilizing factors were able to take the president of all people hostage, showing that the capital’s police lacked the teeth to uphold the peace.
And with that pretext, a few divisions were deployed in Sankt Jeder and its outskirts. Among them were the Brantolote archduchy’s Flame Leopard Division and the Nouzen marquessate’s Will-o’-the-Wisp Division. At the same time, the media was being suppressed. Demonstrations, gatherings, and protests were forbidden. There were crackdowns on civilians walking after sundown, with the formal reasons being maintaining blackouts and keeping up the public order.
The citizens felt suffocated by their life being overturned in the space of one night, at the sight of crimson and black uniforms controlling their city, but there was nothing they could do. This wasn’t the police, but the army, and armored divisions at that. Even if they grouped up, unarmed civilians couldn’t fight them off.
And so all they could do was wait, their frustrations building up without an outlet.
✦ ✦ ✦
But on the other hand, there were those who regarded the majestic sight of armored weapons—heroic, crimson Vánagandrs—lording over Sankt Jeder with a sense of genuine relief. Those who were used to being ruled, who took obeying the dominion of the former nobles as a given.
This meant they didn’t have to do anything anymore. No need to make decisions, to shoulder responsibilities. They wouldn’t have to engage in the tiring, bothersome act of using their own will and responsibilities to lead their lives.
If they did that, the other citizens wouldn’t have to ask them why they wouldn’t act like them. The other civilians wouldn’t call them lazy and good-for-nothing anymore. The other civilians wouldn’t blame them for everyone being unable to live peacefully. They wouldn’t be faced anymore with the powerlessness of having to abandon others.
It would all be so much simpler. So much more peaceful.
We shouldn’t have become the Federacy. We shouldn’t have become citizens.
✦ ✦ ✦
The Federacy no longer had enough people to send military police to what was, on paper, a backwater evacuee sector. Thanks to that, the people of the Republic didn’t have to live while surrounded by guns. But despite that, the Republic people had to face what was effectively an internment.
The discrimination of the Eighty-Six and the ineffective Republic volunteer soldiers. The wiretaps and the Actaeon. A declaration of independence that almost seemed to have been coordinated with the Legion’s attack.
Suspicions and accusations piled up, leading to the surrounding citizens building up a wall that surrounded the evacuee sector. The Republic’s people were closed up by fences, like livestock, with vigilante corps being established to keep the people from straying outside them. The citizens acted as if by isolating and shutting off the Republic people, they’d be able to excise the calamity that was upon them. That maybe, if they did that, even the Legion would eventually disappear.
Like an attempt to pass the buck. Like escapism.
“…Why did it come to this?”
The Republic people were stunned as they looked up at the fence—a fence built in a hurry, but still much too high. The height of this wall stood for the sheer intensity of the Federacy people’s hostility. The sight of this enmity put in tangible form, thrust before them so blatantly, was a horrifying one. It was the kind of malice that a normal person would hide out of shame, but it was displayed with such brazen, collected indifference that it scared the Republic people into stunned silence.
Everyone around them was, by now, nothing but animals and demons in human form. These weren’t people…and maybe there were no people left across this whole wide world.
“We just wanted to live in peace.… A peaceful life—that’s all we asked for…”
✦ ✦ ✦
“The Actaeon are all presumed dead, and the Bleachers’ remnants have all been exposed. However, given the state of the war and home front, we will need you three to stay in the military headquarters base.”
In other words, Second Lieutenant Jonas Degen maintained the facade of a cold expression while he kept his regret and conscience suppressed. Having already seen through this mask, Lena, Zashya, and Annette faced Jonas with expressions that were equally as cold.
“We have no problems with you commanding the Strike Package. We will leave the RAID Devices with you, and you are free to contact them daily. We will provide you with any necessary intelligence needed to command the war, including for the Rüstkammer theater, and I will join as a staff officer going forward.”
Jonas kept his eyes fixed on Lena, who remained silent. No matter how she may have felt about it, as a Federacy soldier, Jonas couldn’t allow Lena to do this.
“But we cannot approve your return to the Rüstkammer base. Colonel Milizé, Major Penrose, I’m sure you two are aware of the army’s collapse and how it has caused a decline in the standard of living. More than anything, the fear of being overrun by the murder machines has been weighing on the people, and the civilians are looking for soldiers to vent their frustrations on. We cannot return you to the front lines, in the name of your personal safety.”
And as Republic soldiers, Lena and Annette knew all too well what civilians in search of someone to vent their frustrations on were capable of.