Kyouhei reflexively shifted, ready. It was just intuition, in the end. Even disregarding that, though, the man was clearly out of place.
Snow was falling silently around the warehouses. It was a familiar sight to Kyouhei. The only thing out of place was that person, wearing black high-laced boots, a black beret, and an overcoat—black, of course. The overcoat had several metal stars sewn into its collar, and a simple rank insignia on its epaulets. The beret on his head had an embroidered emblem of two intertwined snakes. In other words, it was blatantly a military uniform.
Maybe the person could have been wearing that just because he was a military enthusiast. However, the man’s very bearing wouldn’t permit such a peaceful assumption. Anyone would be able to tell—this man had killed people. Over and over, as a vocation, like cracking an egg, emotionlessly.
“Who are you?” Kyouhei asked, stepping forward and pushing Sanae behind him.
“I am from the 44th Infantry Regiment of the Manninger Commonwealth, Eugen Friedhelm Walser. I hold the rank of Colonel.”
“The Manninger Commonwealth?”
It was a name he’d heard before. But where?
“You wouldn’t have heard of it; it’s a country with a rather meager history, having only been established a little under a year ago. Two years prior it was called the Bergmann Kingdom.”
Kyouhei gasped. Of course he’d heard about it; it had come up in the news about the kingdom’s collapse. The connection between those two things—the Bergmann Kingdom and the Colonel—linked together in Kyouhei’s mind, bringing back a memory.
He’s... from back then!
This was the man that had called Kyouhei when Pamil had been kidnapped.
“Indeed,” Colonel Walser smiled thinly, as if reading Kyouhei’s mind, “we have spoken by phone before.”
His hand still on Sanae, he glanced behind himself. He was clearly a danger. Kyouhei’s instincts told him that.
There were many value systems in the world: those that would mobilize their military to save a single dog, and those that would treat human lives as easily as dead leaves to be swept aside. This man was most definitely in the latter camp. Consequently, running to a more crowded area like the business district would...
“Now,” he spoke, raising a hand as if he could see Kyouhei’s panic. In an instant, they were surrounded by dozens of guns.
Soldiers carrying assault rifles appeared simultaneously all around, wearing urban camouflage. They were at the sides of warehouses, on the roofs, even in the shade of containers.
“S-Senpai...” Sanae whimpered, touching his back. He could spare no attention for conversation, though.
He could tell from their gear. They had laser sights and suppressors. Their guns had foldable stocks like a paratrooper’s, probably for ease of concealment.
They weren’t ordinary soldiers. Nor were they a legitimate platoon. They were probably special forces, or a group specialized in unofficial operations. In that case, they wouldn’t hesitate in the slightest to fire, and the two of them, and any passing witnesses, would be shot.
Illustrating his thoughts, several red spots converged on his and Sanae’s bodies from the laser sights.
“Now that we understand each other’s positions, let’s move to the topic at hand,” said Colonel Walser. “Won’t you hand over the former first-in-line to the Bergmann throne, Pamil Terrill Karl Bergmann?”
● ● ●
“Are you sure?” asked the Corvette’s owner, Kaoruko Houwa, gently. “Do you want to leave the two of them alone?”
Her conversation partner, Pamil, was sipping absently at a cup of Darjeeling. “...Is there a problem with doing that?” she asked with a frown.
“I meeeaaaan,” she trilled, putting her hands on her cheeks, “Sanae-chan just confessed to Kyouhei-kun, didn’t she?”
Pamil blinked several times in puzzlement before answering in a murmur. “She did.”
Kaoruko suddenly cocked her head at Pamil.
Pamil wasn’t acting like she usually did, so Kaoruko was sure she’d realized. Airheaded and easygoing as Kaoruko might have been, she wasn’t at all dense or stupid.
“So... what? A person telling another they love them... cannot be a bad thing,” Pamil expressed.
“Well, that’s true,” Kaoruko admitted, before transitioning to the tone you’d use to explain something to a child, explaining things clearly and even more calmly: “You know that love is part of romance, right?”
“...Something like that.”
“If things go well between them, Kyouhei-kun will become Sanae-chan’s boyfriend... her lover. Are you okay with that?”
Pamil’s eyes widened. Her expression remained that way for several moments before she spoke: “That doesn’t matter. Sanae is my friend, and a good person. If she becomes Kyouhei’s lover, or even his wife, I’ll be happy for them. I’d never—”
Mid-sentence, Pamil reached for the plate of snacks and made a slight error in her movements, which meant she bumped into the plate’s surface rather than picking up a cookie. With a sharp snap, the plate broke right in two.
“Hm...? Sorry, Kaoruko, I misjudged my strength.” Kaoruko just looked at her. “That’s odd; maybe my pressure sensors aren’t working properly,” she said to excuse herself. As if avoiding the slight smile on Kaoruko’s face, she looked behind her and spoke more loudly, as if telling herself: “Well... they should be home by now.”
“Isn’t that even worse? They are a young pair after all.”
They were alone, where no one could see; that was practically an invitation.
“Pair?”
“If they get in the mood, they might even kiss.” Pamil looked silently at her. “They might have gone even further,” Kaoruko added.
Pamil might not have been aware of it herself... but there was a deep line in between her eyebrows.
And it was gradually deepening.
“Girls like Sanae-chan really let go when they get going,” Kaoruko continued, strangely happily. She certainly was like that, hence her sudden confession. “Ah, I’m so worried,” Kaoruko declared as she looked into the sky, her words completely at odds with her tone.
“N-No, they won’t be alone.”
“Eh? They won’t?”
“Indeed, it’s fine. There’s someone else at home now: Shuuhei,” Pamil said.
But in that same moment...
“Hm, I’m what?” asked the man in question, accompanied by the sound of a cowbell as he entered the café, probably having heard the tail end of the sentence.
His current outfit was a judogi, by the way. It wasn’t completely ridiculous for clothing... but they weren’t in a twenty-year-old martial arts manga, and no one just wandered the town in such an outfit. Even worse, his right breast had the word ‘dad’ printed across it on a brushstroke font. On top of all that, his footwear was a pair of sandals on bare feet, completely out of season.
As ever, who knew why he was wearing it.
Well, disregarding that.
“Shuuhei,” Pamil murmured absently.
Conversely, Kaoruko gave him a warm welcome: “Oh, Shuuhei-san, come on in.”
Having fully entered the café, he rubbed his arms. “Hey. It’s so cold...! One Kaoruko-chan blend, please.”
As he spoke, he sat next to Pamil. It was the perfect time to make a quip about how he should have worn warmer clothes, but unfortunately, the common sense committee member, his son, wasn’t there.
“So, what about me?” Shuuhei asked.
“Well now...” Kaoruko started, placing a steaming cup of coffee she’d somehow already brewed in front of him. Then, she began explaining the circumstances.
“Oh oh!” he exclaimed, folding his arms and being overcome with emotion. “Even Kyouhei really is getting to that age! What a day! My boy is finally becoming a man!”
“Hmm? ‘Becoming a man’?” Pamil asked, not catching the subtleties.
“Yup, that’s right. After all, when a man and woman around that age are alone... particularly after a confession, there’s no way they’d do nothing. Kids these days are really open-minded to that stuff.”
“‘That stuff’?”
“They say ‘shameful is the man who eats not the meal set before him.’ They’re probably going full snu-snu...” He let out a perverse giggle.
“‘Snu-snu’?” Pamil asked.
“Yup.”
“What’s snu-snu?”
“Well, putting it in a picture, it’d be like this,” Shuuhei answered, drawing a ♂ and a ♀.
“Hmm? Hm? Hm?” Even with that, she still didn’t get it.
So...
“Umm,” Kaoruko interjected, “if I said ‘copulation,’ then you might get it?”
Pamil flew out of her seat. Actually, it was more like the chair was yanked back like in wire-fu films, crashing into the wall and falling to the floor, leaving a crater behind in the wall.
It was probably for the best that it was such a slow business day. If there had been someone behind her, they’d have been smashed into by the chair, and probably injured.
“...How could you?!” Pamil exclaimed, clenching her first. “How obscene! To think that being alone with a girl who just confessed to you held such a shameful meaning in Japan! I misjudged you, Kyouhei!”
Kyouhei would have quipped about that being a thing only for some people, and that it wasn’t a specifically Japanese practice, but he wasn’t there (and so on).
“Besides,” she continued, “isn’t he being too reserved?!”
“Reserved?” Shuuhei asked, taking on the role of the straight man for once.
“I should come to mind first for particular closeness; I’m his sister! If he wanted snu-snu, he should have come to me first!”
She was far, far off the mark in a few ways, but neither Shuuhei nor Kaoruko had the sense to point that out.
On the contrary, with a sigh for good measure, Kaoruko spoke to her: “But it’s Kyouhei-kun and Sanae-chan who are alone right now.”