“Junji. Did you hear?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“Who’d have thought he’d be on the battlefield barely a month after enrolling? And as a special ensign, no less.”
“They say he took out multiple medium-class monsters and even a large.”
“A large one…? They’ll make him an ensign for real on graduation, then. Maybe even a lieutenant.”
“Could be. He’ll make ensign, at the very least.”
“He’s gotten the jump on us by more than a year.”
“Yeah.”
Normally, graduates of the military academy were commissioned as warrant officers, expected to spend a year in the field before being promoted to ensign.
However, Keita’s performance had already earned him a promotion, effectively skipping that one-year requirement altogether.
It might only be a year, but it meant he would be dealing with drastically different kinds of missions.
While the majority of the class got their hands dirty as warrant officers, Keita would already be commanding troops on the battlefield as an ensign. There was no contest in terms of who would get ahead faster.
True, cadets bound for the military university took a slightly different route, but either way, the starting line wasn’t the same.
When Kazunari first heard about Keita’s promotion, even he had brushed it off as rumor. It had been officially recognized by the Second Division, though, meaning it wasn’t a lie or an exaggeration.
“I guess we’re not supposed to feel jealous, huh?”
“Yeah.”
Fighting on the battlefield just a month after enrollment, putting up incredible results, and getting promoted… Who wouldn’t be jealous?
How had he gotten deployed so fast? What kind of shady trick had he pulled?
It wasn’t just students from Class B who were giving him envious glances and suspicious looks, but upperclassmen as well. If Kazunari hadn’t heard about Keita’s circumstances, he might well have felt the same way.
But he knew better.
Keita wasn’t like the rest of Class A, who’d been raised and trained for the battlefield since the moment they were born.
They knew Keita was a victim of war.
They knew he had no family connections or backing.
They knew he’d joined the military to protect his little sister.
They knew the mech assigned to him was an experimental hybrid-type unit that no one had ever piloted before.
They knew it had been developed by a new, nonconglomerate company, and because it wasn’t a big-name product, it was considered expendable.
They knew the top brass didn’t care if he died, which was exactly why they had allowed a student to be deployed to the battlefield for field tests in the first place.
In other words, Keita had only been sent out there because it was convenient for the higher-ups. He’d fought like hell just to survive and come out on top by sheer force of will.
Is that really something to be jealous of? No way.
You didn’t look at someone like that with envy.
“I’ve made up my mind, Junji.”
“About what?”
“I’ll admit, I didn’t know how to act around him, so I’ve been keeping my distance.”
“…Same goes for me.”
Guys like them never usually crossed paths with war victims, so it was little wonder they weren’t sure how to approach Keita.
Or so they’d thought. But that had been naive.
Now that Kazunari realized that, he had to change. He had to.
“From now on, I’m done seeing him as just a victim.”
“You mean…?”
“I’m not saying I’ll forget what he’s been through. I’ll keep that in mind as a lesson to myself. But that’s separate.”
“How so?”
“Maybe the idea won’t sit well with the purists, but it would be wrong to ignore his achievements simply because he doesn’t come from a military family. He’s not just a victim. He’s a comrade who’s proven he belongs on the battlefield with the rest of us.”
“…I see.”
That said, Keita did technically outrank them now.
The rest of them would catch up soon enough.
“First things first, we need to take a look at that mech of his. Of course, we won’t just extract intel; we’ll also share what we know. I can count on you to help, right?”
“No problem.”
And so, these two young men, representatives of the Seventh Division at the academy, acknowledged Keita as a comrade and decided to finally try to get to know him.