86 - Volume 10 - Chapter 1.5

2

“Shit.” She heard someone’s voiced panic through the Para-RAID. And less than a moment later, she saw Shin’s Juggernaut engulfed in a cloud of black sediment. Something had shot down from the sky, piercing the earth with an explosive shock wave and throwing a massive amount of sediment into the air.

The force of that black tidal wave sent the lightweight Juggernaut flying, and Shin was helplessly blown away along with his unit.

Shin’s bloodred eyes opened. He blinked twice, then a third time, and craned his head to look around. It was clear he didn’t grasp the situation he was in. As she sat beside his cramped, simple pipe bed and watched over him, Alice pondered that it only made sense he’d react this way. She snapped the hardcover book in her hands shut and called out to him.

“You awake, Nouzen?”

“…Captain.”

He replied with a raspy voice, but his tone and gaze were thankfully lucid. Apparently, he didn’t take any fatal damage to his brain. He placed a hand on his faded sheets and pushed himself up. Recognizing that he was in his room in the old, prefab barracks, he turned to her with an apprehensive gaze.

“…Why?”

“Yeah, I’d figured you wouldn’t remember. The Legion’s long-distance units… The Skorpion types’ bombardment blew you away, and you fainted. The Legion employ artillery support from their back lines when they retreat. They haven’t been mobilized ever since you joined, but…apparently, they’re active now. So now you know that even if the Legion start falling back, you can’t afford to be careless.”

The Skorpion types were the Legion’s artillery units, armed with 155 mm projectile cannons. They always stayed hidden deep within the Legion’s territories, and Alice had never actually seen one. After all…

“Skorpion types have a range of thirty to forty kilometers. They’re well outside the Juggernaut’s detection range. We don’t know if they’re there until they start shooting.”

Modern weaponry has an astoundingly wide range. Even a short tank turret meant for close-range engagements can fire two kilometers in any direction, and depending on the type of ammunition used, a Howitzer can hit a target as far as forty kilometers away.

An attack that reaches from far outside the range of what one can see on the surface. From a range one inexperienced with combat can’t even begin to imagine.

Alice and the Eighty-Six weren’t given an artillery weapon with an equal range, so if a Skorpion appeared, it was always outside the range of their Juggernauts’ 57 mm cannon, and they were helpless in the face of the enemy’s bombardment.

“And you can’t tell…?” Shin asked.

“Well, based on how many Ameise are around, we can probably hazard a guess.”

The Legion couldn’t see forty kilometers ahead, either. Even the most advanced optical sensor couldn’t detect something hidden far beyond the horizon. Since the long-distance units couldn’t confirm their trajectories or align their sights on their own, they required the aid of Observer Units deployed near the bombardment site.

“…”

But this was a bit too much for a newcomer to the battlefield to understand. Shin fell into a pensive, seemingly confused silence.

“Either way, I’m glad you’re okay… Or that’s what I’d normally say, but…”

Shin looked up into Alice’s eyes, and she examined his features in turn. His cheeks still had the round contours of an infant, and he had white bandages just above his brow and around his slender arms. And there were other bruises and lacerations all over his body, too many to cover.

“You’re being too reckless… How many times do I have to tell you? Stop trying to fight the Legion by yourself.”

All his injuries were fresh from today’s battle. Some of them were from when he was blown back by the Skorpion fire, but he got most of them before that happened.

He’d closed in too much on a Grauwolf and evaded one of its high-frequency blades. And while he did avoid a direct hit, the blade still skimmed against his cockpit block and shattered an optical screen. Its fragments went flying around the cockpit block and rained all over him.

It’d been a month since Shin was stationed in her squadron. And while he single-handedly put in the kind of work one would never expect from a fledgling, he regularly broke formation during battles and challenged the Legion all on his own. His actions were absurdly dangerous.

Alice could only sigh nervously. She had to scold him about that during every single debriefing session, but he never listened.

“We fight the Legion as coordinated units. Here in the Eighty-Sixth Sector, there’s no need for glory. No one cares if you get the first kill or if you beat an enemy one-on-one. Recklessness is tantamount to suicide. Cooperate with your squad mates.”

“…If I disturb the Legion’s lines, it’ll give my squad mates openings to exploit.”

“Maybe it will, but those aren’t stunts you can pull off in that walking coffin.”

The Juggernaut’s aluminum-alloy armor was too thin and flimsy. Even its sturdiest part, the frontal armor, couldn’t withstand machine-gun fire. In the end, all they could do was dodge the Legion’s attacks, but the Juggernaut’s mobility was far inferior to theirs. So while they might have been able to avoid attacks from a safe distance, they wouldn’t be able to dodge any more in melee range if the enemy had them in their sights.

“But—” Shin tried to press the argument with uncharacteristic persistence.

“Nouzen,” Alice cut him off with a low voice.

Apparently, this was one hill he was willing to die on. And he likely did it out of a genuine desire to protect his squad mates. But Alice wasn’t willing to budge on this, either. Not ever.

“That’s enough. I don’t want any of my squad mates to have to live with the guilt of having a friend die so they could survive.”

The shame and cowardice of living on because someone sacrificed themselves for you. And Alice hadn’t lost her pride yet. She wasn’t the kind of shameful person who’d let the youngest fledgling take the fall for her.

“Or are you actually trying to kill yourself? Because let me tell you right now, there’s no place in my unit for—”

“I can’t die.”

This time, it was Shin who cut into her words. His tone was unusually sharp, a contrast to his usual quiet attitude. Alice fell silent and simply watched him for a moment. He turned his crimson gaze downward, refusing to meet hers.

“I can’t afford to die. Not yet. So…I won’t.”

His eyes and tone were terribly stiff. It was like he was talking out of a sense of duty, but there was a dark, tragic tinge to it.

Like he was speaking of his resolve. Of his obsession.

“Does that…”—the question left Alice’s lips before she could stop herself—“…have something to do with that…scar on your neck?”

She could see Shin hold his breath for a moment. He quickly put his hand to his throat, groping it, and when he realized he couldn’t feel the bandages, his crimson eyes widened. Alice pursed her red lips nervously. That gesture alone evoked more than any number of words ever could.

Guren had told her about it before.

I bet there’s a story behind what happened to his neck.

There’s an emotion coiled around his throat…like a collar, or a chain, choking him beneath those bandages.

But it wasn’t something as simple as an emotion. His pale, slender neck had a jagged, twining, blood-colored bruise. The scar made it seem as if his head had been severed and then stitched back into place. Whatever happened to him had clearly been done out of malice. It was a hard scar to look at.

Alice noticed his wide, red eyes looking up at her. Feeling her gaze meet with these frozen eyes, Alice was taken aback. He was terrified. This boy, who didn’t show the slightest bit of fear or dread at the sight of his friend’s death or the intensity of the battlefield, stared at her with more fear than she’d ever seen him display before.

He was afraid of being asked about it. Afraid of remembering it. Afraid…to speak of it.

“Aaah, I’m sorry.” Alice hurriedly backed down. “That was wrong of me. I didn’t mean to look.”

He’d gone unconscious, and after loosening his clothes, she was the one who’d taken off the bandages, since she thought they might be choking him. (The Republic didn’t send doctors, because this was a battlefield of drones, and they were humanoid pigs.)

She didn’t mean to see it, but she did. It was clearly something he didn’t want other people to notice.

“I’m sorry. I figured you could put them on after waking up, but I shouldn’t have asked… Wait, don’t do that!”

Apparently, Shin wasn’t listening to her. He tightened his fingers, which covered his throat. His nails were digging into the scar. Realizing this, Alice took his hand. Gently, so as to not surprise or scare him. And upon confirming he wasn’t resisting her grip, she softly pulled his hand away from his neck.

Though he was no longer trying to harm himself, his breathing remained quick and shallow. It felt like he was still caught in the icy grip of panic. His youthful features were stiff and pale as a sheet, and his pupils were contracted.

His frozen gaze was peering into the past, and he couldn’t see the reality before him.

“…Nouzen.”

He didn’t respond.

“Nouzen. Look at me.”

Still no response… Maybe being called by his last name didn’t quite register for him.

“Shin.”

His eyes, which were fixed on one spot in space, wavered ever so slightly. He’d turned his attention to her, if only slightly. Grasping that chance, Alice continued to speak, taking care to keep her voice as calm and collected as possible.

“Shin. Look at me. You’re safe now. Look at me.”

She repeated those words, gently gripping his hands. After a while…a considerable amount of time, his small, tense body finally relaxed.

He closed his eyes and exhaled, speaking at the same time.

“…I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Alice said, shaking her head vaguely.

Mentioning his scar carelessly had been a mistake on her part. He shouldn’t have to apologize.

“I just…felt a little sick, that’s all. It’s got nothing to do with the scar.”

The way he said it made Alice realize something. The way he was hiding his scar, the way he was afraid others might see it… It wasn’t just that he didn’t want people prying or that he didn’t want to remember it.

He didn’t want the person who’d left the grizzly scar to be blamed for it. Even despite them intentionally doing so.

In which case…

Alice briskly undid the scarf around her neck. Spreading both hands out, she extended them over his shoulders and put the scarf around Shin’s neck. After tying a gentle knot, she let go of his body.

Shin stiffened as she did this. She’d leaned over him, as if in embrace. But upon feeling the soft sensation around his throat, Shin blinked once. He looked down, gently pinching the thin, azure fabric in a youthful gesture.

“This way, you can hide it a bit more casually without people asking questions. The bandages just look too painful.”

It was like a silent way of saying there was some kind of injury under them.

“…It doesn’t hurt, though.”

“Yes. But…,” Alice said, thinking back to what she just saw.

She honestly couldn’t understand the way Shin felt. Someone had hurt him badly enough to leave such a lasting, painful scar on his throat. And his heart was wounded by it, too. Someone just looking at the scar sent him tumbling into a flashback. And still, he insisted on not blaming the person who did this to him. Alice couldn’t imagine feeling the same way.

Nonetheless.

“…you don’t want it to attract attention or for people to see it, right? You don’t want them to blame whoever did this to you, and you don’t want others to blame them, either. You want to protect that person, right?”

This must have been how this boy felt. That was the impression she got.

“…!”

Those words made Shin look up at her again. For a moment… For one single moment, those emotionless bloodred eyes wavered so much that it looked like he might burst into tears. Alice gazed back into them and smiled. As if to say he could cry if he needed to, but at the same time, pretending like she didn’t notice the miserable way his tears refused to run.

“That’s my apology for looking. You can keep it… It’s a really good scarf, you know. Take good care of it.”

“But…doesn’t it mean a lot to you, Captain? You always have it on…”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. Back when I joined my first squadron, my old captain gave it to me. I had this bad habit…”

She twisted her finger like a talon and motioned it over her throat.

“I’d keep scratching my neck like this. So they figured maybe I wouldn’t scratch at myself so much if I had something around my neck.”

It was a habit she developed after her little brother passed away. He had been taken by disease, and his death had been anything but peaceful. She formed the tic of scratching herself raw whenever she thought about it. Her captain couldn’t bear to see it and gave her the scarf that was his trademark. Said captain was a pilot candidate in the Republic Air Force. They’d been left in the battlefield after becoming an Eighty-Six, and that scarf was one of the last personal belongings they had.

It was said that in the past, when all one could rely on to detect the enemy was their own eyes, fighter pilots would wear scarfs. Not on a whim, but because turning one’s head would make one’s neck rub against their uniform’s collar. It was truly a piece of essential equipment for the pilots of the time.

But after radar towers and jet airplanes became the main aerial force—and especially after the Legion stole air superiority away from the human race—it became nothing more than a symbol of longing for the past or a lucky charm at best.

So if nothing else, it could be useful for keeping you safe from your own guilt.

It had been a memento for her ever since. Her old captain finished their term in that unit and moved on to the Spearhead squadron, the first defensive unit of the eastern front’s first ward. A place where the fighting was at its most savage. One of the most lethal wards in the Eighty-Sixth Sector, which consumed millions of lives.

“It’s already helped me long enough. So from now on, it’ll keep you safe.”