Azuma was Charon’s captain. If anyone was going to break the silence, it was up to him.
“Everyone.” Azuma’s voice diffused softly throughout the room, his tone gentle but sharp. They all turned to stare. “I understand how you must feel… I still haven’t fully accepted this myself.”
The truth behind the Extermination Bureau—that it was no more than a facility for lab rats.
“However, that doesn’t change what we need to do, does it?”
“Maybe not…,” Rindou said, scratching his head reluctantly. “But I don’t understand how you can be so okay with all of this.” He glared at Azuma. “You’re saying everything we’ve done up until now has all been some faceless jerk’s experiment. That it was all for shits and giggles. How are you not losing it right now? That would mean that what happened to Sakura when she became a hero, to all of them… They were all just somebody’s guinea pigs.”
Rindou was right; there was nothing Azuma could say to that.
“And you’re fine with this?! With letting something like that go unpunished…?!” Rindou demanded.
“Of course I’m not fine with it.”
Azuma’s voice was hard as steel, as if he was barely containing his anger.
Azuma’s reaction seemed to have spooked Rindou. Azuma, however, ignored him and let out a loud sigh. This was a ridiculous amount of information to unload on them all at once. It was too much to expect them to process it all immediately.
Koyuki was the next to speak. “I can’t do this. I can’t do this right now.”
For Koyuki, the Extermination Bureau was both her youth and her curse. It was all she had ever known. She couldn’t bear it—the idea that it had all been fake.
She jumped to her feet, knocking her chair back with a clatter, and rushed toward the stairs. Kaguya knew exactly where she was heading.
Toward their room to bury herself under the covers on the top bunk.
Azuma stared at Kaguya, who made no attempt to follow, slightly surprised.
“Shouldn’t you go after her?” he asked.
“No, it’s better this way.” Kaguya wasn’t going to chase her. Koyuki had just learned something earth-shattering and was probably at her lowest. “Charon’s members aren’t weaklings. You’re the one who taught me that, Captain Azuma.”
“Of course…”
Behind them, they could hear Rindou and Haru squabbling among themselves. It sounded like Haru was trying to soothe Rindou, who was having difficulty keeping his rage in check. Haru’s voice also sounded like it was on the verge of tears. It seemed even Haru was tempted to cry over what they had just learned.
Haru had gone out in search of information on her own and had found what she was looking for. Kaguya could only imagine how she must have looked when she had sent the photograph of those design specs to Azuma. And then she had trudged all the way back to the barracks only to hear what she must have already known.
She was likely experiencing as much turmoil as the rest of them.
Kaguya, for her part, was taking it all in stride. Maybe the information wasn’t as great of a shock for her in the first place as it was for Charon. But more importantly, she had already faintly suspected something like this.
She had been carrying a sneaking suspicion for some time now that something wasn’t quite right with the Bureau. That feeling had now simply been given form.
But while she might have been calmer than the others, she was far from fine.
“I…I have to…”
After a moment of hesitation, Kaguya headed up the stairs toward their rooms without saying anything. Not to comfort Koyuki, who had already left. No—Kaguya needed a moment to herself as well. Now that she had put all of this out into the open, she felt a clamor building in her chest. Something she had to work her way through…
As Kaguya reached for the door to their room, Koyuki stepped out from inside, her eyes slightly puffy.
“Ah…”
“…”
They stared at each other for a few seconds.
And then, at the same time, they both broke into smiles. The tension finally broke. Koyuki was the first to speak.
“What? Don’t tell me you were worried about me. Or were you running off to cry again yourself?”
“N-no, I was just, um…” Kaguya was too embarrassed to admit that was exactly what she was about to do. “I was just wondering what was for dinner. I left today’s menu in our room.”
“Relax. I’m only teasing you. And I’m not such a baby that I need anyone to make a fuss over me.”
They spoke almost as if they were exchanging friendly banter. Somewhere along the way, the relationship between them had developed to the point where they no longer needed to hold back with one another.
“Hmph…”
However, it probably wasn’t so easy to switch tracks on a dime like that. Koyuki turned her head upward, likely holding back tears.
“Geez. I had kind of suspected something like this, but to be confronted with it out of the blue like this…”
“Wait, you suspected?”
“Of course,” Koyuki said, turning to face Kaguya once more. She put on a brave smile. “There were too many red flags. The Chronoses, the heroes… I knew the Bureau was no normal organization. It’s bizarre, after all, the way they purposely hide themselves from the world… I knew something was wrong. I just didn’t want to think about it too deeply.”
Because if she had let herself think, and had realized the truth, it would have overturned everything she knew and had believed in.
“This organization is a kind of dreamworld of its own. In a way, Kaguya, I think you came here to lead us out of these lies.”
“That’s—”
“I don’t mean anything bad by that. Instead of not knowing, not seeing, not thinking, I would rather see the reality for what it is. Even if that reality is almost entirely painful. What I’m trying to say is I don’t regret learning the truth.”
Koyuki smiled a genuine smile before shifting her face into an expression of concern for Kaguya.
“But what about you, Kaguya? Are you all right? This place was important to you, too, wasn’t it?”
“Well, it would be hard to say that I’m completely fine… My brother, Sakura, the Director. They’re all gone. I don’t want to believe this could have all been some sort of make-believe any more than the rest of you do.” Kaguya wasn’t looking to garner sympathy, though. “However, the truth is the truth.”
And accepting cold, hard truths without letting emotion get in the way was what the Director—what the members of Technical—did best.
“The people of Technical, like Mari and the Director, have a habit of bottling everything up inside. Until it gets to be too much, and we explode.”
But Mari had made the right choice in the end. Even if the Director had not been able to entrust what she was doing to anybody else.
“And what about you?” Koyuki asked, seeming like her normal self once again. “Are you finally starting to rely on the others around you?”
“…Yes.” Kaguya wasn’t putting on a show; she meant it. “Koyuki, I’m not going to take you for granted or make you worry anymore. I’m not going to leave you in this room all on your own again.”
“Good…” Koyuki smiled mischievously, and it didn’t look forced. “And here I thought you were gonna start crying on me.”
“Not a chance. I’ve got appearances to keep up, after all.”
“You mean like when you bawled your eyes out?” Koyuki teased, her own voice still a little weepy.
Kaguya turned beet red. “What? How do you know that?!”
“Azuma told me.”
“What?” Of course—how else would Koyuki have known? But that wasn’t what Kaguya expected to hear. “Is that…is that the sort of thing you usually tell other people about?!” she shouted, her cheeks flushed. “It kind of seems to me like something you should keep to yourself…”
“Well…I guess I kind of dragged it out of him. He did linger in your room for a while, after all. He said something about being forced to serve as a handkerchief, I believe…?”
“What?!” Kaguya said, recoiling in embarrassment. “But he knows I didn’t mean to…” She suddenly turned on her heel as if to escape the conversation. “C-come to think of it, I think I left that menu downstairs in the meeting hall.”
With that, Kaguya raced down the stairs.
Along the way…
Kaguya passed Azuma. She noticed that his eyes were moist.
He must have noticed that she had seen. But he pretended to be oblivious as he continued past her. Neither his bravado nor his true feelings, however, were lost on Kaguya.
“…”
She thought about saying something but chose not to in the end. Azuma wasn’t weak. He didn’t need someone to check on him and hold his hand.
They had just learned a harsh truth, but Azuma would likely come to grips with it in his own way and turn his thoughts to the future once again. He wouldn’t have been cut out to be their captain in the first place if he needed to be coddled instead.
“Now then… Let’s see what’s for dinner.”
In the end, Kaguya said nothing.
She already knew she could trust in him.