“When can we leave here?”
“In two or three days, probably.”
Kuklo’s stomach grumbled as soon as he heard Cardina’s estimate. “What about food?”
“The point is for us to think about what we’ve done. Why would we get any?”
“Nothing to eat, then…”
Knowing that he wouldn’t be getting a meal made him want one even more. Still, he was only mildly hungry and could bear it. He’d fought against hunger for most of his life. A two or three day fast would certainly affect him but hardly make him throw in the towel. If he was desperate for food, he should be able to find some by searching his cell diligently. A few days were a mere blink of the eye.
Kuklo got on all fours like a beast, then closed his eye to cut off his sense of sight. With no information coming from his eye, his hearing grew sharper. He could hear footsteps.
“Someone’s coming─” Kuklo whispered and quickly lay back down, pretending to be asleep. Of course, that was not all he was doing. He had his ear to the ground, trying to do whatever he could to find out more.
While the footsteps were clearly approaching the disciplinary cells, the question was to whom they belonged. Kuklo was on alert at first because it could be a raid by Xavi, but the rhythm of the footsteps indicated that it wasn’t him. Given where they were, it could be an instructor on patrol. The footfalls were awfully soft for that, though, and the span of the steps suggested that it was a woman, not a man. Probably around Sharle’s…
Whoever it was stopped in front of his cell. Kuklo could sense he was being watched, perhaps through the slit on the door, but the observer didn’t seem to bear any harmful designs. Just moments later, the eyes were no longer on him, and the presence left the door.
The person who’d been watching Kuklo began walking to Cardina’s cell. This time, there was a small knock.
“Are you awake, Cardina?” The voice had to be the visitor’s. It was a woman’s, and a whisper.
“Is that you, Rosa? What business do you have down here?”
“Just saying hello. And I should be asking you that.” The woman Cardina had called Rosa sounded rather vexed. “I don’t know what you were thinking, but everyone’s talking about you now.”
Cardina breathed a deep sigh. “I guess that was about as flashy of a greeting as you could get, wasn’t it…”
Are the two friends? Their casual back-and-forth suggested that Cardina and Rosa knew one another.
“I hadn’t planned on coming back to the academy, but…I guess you could say fate played a little trick on me.”
“You mean rejoining the corps right as everyone thought you’d left, then getting put in a disciplinary cell before even saying hello?”
“I meant all the stuff that led to this.”
“Like what?” Rosa did not seem aware of the misfortunes that had visited Cardina. The training academy was in a location isolated from the outside world, so it was no surprise she hadn’t heard. The only people in the Training Corps who knew everything had to be Kuklo, Cardina, and Jorge. The other instructors, perhaps privy to bits and pieces, probably had to keep them under wraps considering the sentence’s nature.
After another deep sigh, Cardina spoke to Kuklo. “This is Rosa Carlstedt. She’s one of the recruits receiving special training from Instructor Jorge.”
“Those remedial lessons? You’re training to use the Vertical Maneuvering Equipment?!”
“Huh?!” the woman named Rosa let out in surprise. She must not have expected Kuklo to be only feigning sleep.
Kuklo was surprised, too, but by something else: the fact that a woman was attempting to master the Vertical Maneuvering Equipment. Since the machinery guided its user to wherever she needed to go, steering it didn’t require formidable muscles. In fact, they only got in the way of three-dimensional movement. Yet no matter how hard Kuklo tried to imagine it, he couldn’t picture a woman heading toward a Titan using the Vertical Maneuvering Equipment, and the reason was simple. He kept being reminded of Sharle.
“I kind of owed him for something, so I swallowed my pride and decided to come back.”
“Whatever it is that happened, can I assume that you intend to graduate this time?”
“Reluctantly, yes.”
“Really?”
“I seem to have lost a lot of credibility.”
Rosa sighed in response. “Of course you have.” Cardina’s departure from the Training Corps must have been sudden, and she couldn’t be blamed for being skeptical.
“Sorry, I should have introduced you earlier─the talk of the town, Kuklo.”
“Kuklo? I think I’ve heard that name somewhere…”
“That’s because you probably have. He’s the Titan’s son that Xavi claims to have punished.”
What exactly Xavi had said about the “Titan’s son” was unclear, but it was easy to imagine him gleefully spinning yarns of his heroics. Yet Xavi probably knew little about his Titan’s son, nor, in all likeliness, did he care to. The fact that he’d defeated a Titan’s son sufficed, though even that was no fact. In reality, Xavi knew practically nothing about Kuklo.
“He’s the Titan’s son…” Rosa said pensively, as though it concerned her.
“Aren’t you scared of me?”
“Scared? Because you’re a Titan son?!”
“Yes.”
“I may still be in training, but I’m a soldier. We learn about Titans. It’s not hard to figure out what’s true and what’s not.”
“He had us confused for a while, though,” Cardina said of Xavi. His bragging must have commenced as soon as he’d joined the Training Corps.
“Child-sized Titans exist, but there are no records of a Titan ever giving birth,” Rosa explained matter-of-factly. “Still, to think you were with the famous Titan’s son.”
“It’s a long story. He came here on Instructor Jorge and Commander Carlo’s recommendations.”
“Killing Ogre. That is my goal.”
“Ogre?”
“That’s the name of the Titan that ruined his life,” Cardina supplemented.
“I need the Vertical Maneuvering Equipment if I’m to kill a Titan. That’s why I came here.”
“So you have an actual goal in mind, unlike Cardina.”
“Such a mean way to put it.”
“Well, you earned it. He seems to have potential, though. He has a lot to learn as a soldier, but he must have what it takes if Instructor Jorge recommended him. And─” Rosa suddenly cut herself off. “Anyway, I see that you two mean it.”
“And you came all the way here to find out?”
“Of course I’d want to know. There’s a strong chance we’ll be in the same team.”
“I see. So you’re the one leading up the flunkers now.”
“Yes, because a certain someone actually dropped out.”
Cardina grunted, the barb finding its mark.
“Well, I should get going…” Rosa opened the slit at the bottom of the door and shoved a piece of bread torn in half and an apple through it. “It’s probably not enough, but you did cause a problem large enough to land you in a disciplinary cell. I hope you think about what you’ve done.” With that, she closed the slit and walked away.
“Always so serious. Why can’t she relax a little?”
“I think there is such a thing as being too relaxed, too,” Kuklo noted with some dismay.
He bit into the dried-out piece of bread.