86 - Volume 10 - Chapter 4.1

CHAPTER 4

FRAGMENTAL NEOTENY: BRAND

3

“—Good work out there, Vice Captain Nouzen.”

Having stopped his Juggernaut at its designated spot at the hangar, Shin heard a voice call out to him. Turning around, he found himself faced with a blond young man with stiff hair, who greeted him with a smile.

“Captain Nunat.”

“Call me Eijyu… Heh, I keep telling you that, but you never listen. You’re stubborn.”

Laughing loudly, this squad captain, Captain Eijyu Nunat, approached Shin. He stood a head taller than him and had cheerful red eyes.

“You really gave them hell out there today. Thanks to you, both me and the rest of the squad were saved.”

“I just told you how the enemy’s going to move.”

“That’s more than enough. Just the fact that they can’t take us by surprise is a lot.”

With that said, Eijyu’s smile deepened. His crimson eyes—the color of the setting sun—were the shade unique to the Spinel.

“You did good by telling me about it. We’d have figured it out eventually when we Resonated with you, but it still took courage to step up and say it. Thank you.”

He believed him.

“…No.” Shin shook his head.

It really wasn’t anything major. Like Eijyu just said, everyone would have found out when they Resonated with him enough times.

“Just take the compliment,” Eijyu said, cracking an ironic smile. “What, are you the type that gets antsy when someone thanks or praises them?”

“…”

This isn’t about “antsy.”

This wasn’t anything to be thankful about, so it didn’t feel right when people did thank him. Seeing that Shin was adamant about not meeting his gaze, Eijyu deepened his ironic smile as he changed the subject.

“…Speaking of, it’s almost a year since you’ve been sent into the battlefield, right?”

Shin looked at him blankly, unsure as to what he was getting at. This prompted Eijyu to laugh, having apparently achieved his desired result.

“Then it’s about time you think of a Personal Name, isn’t it? And a Personal Mark! You’ve got to come up with those. And you know what? I’ll think of one for you!”

“…Oh…”

Contrary to Eijyu, who was exceedingly excited about this even though this wasn’t about him at all, Shin let out this disinterested utterance.

Processors who survived over a year in the battlefield changed the call signs they used during operations. They went from a call sign consisting of their platoon number and a number to a unique Personal Name. Accordingly, their unit was emblazoned not with their call sign but a Personal Mark.

This was a custom here in the Eighty-Sixth Sector, since most Eighty-Six tended to die within their first year of service. Of course, it wasn’t registered in the Republic’s official documents, but it was tolerated for the most part. Both the Handlers and their superior officers cared little for whatever customs these pigs in human form had.

“Have you thought of something? Like, you know, something that feels right as a name?”

“It’s all just signifiers for the sake of identification. Be it names or call signs or internment numbers,” Shin said, almost huffing the words out in displeasure.

Hearing this, Eijyu narrowed his eyes.

“Do you hate your name, Shin?”

“…”

For a moment, a voice and a pair of eyes surfaced in his mind in vivid clarity.

Shin. Sin. It’s your fault. It’s all your fault.

“…Not really,” he said, his voice cracking a bit.

He could tell that his words didn’t give a very confident impression, so Shin lowered his gaze. He could just barely hear the sound of his fists clenching and his nails digging into his skin. Eijyu seemed to pretend to not have noticed that.

“Well, if you don’t have any preferences, I’ll come up with something. Lemme think…” He paused for thought and then raised his index finger, indicating that he’d struck on an idea. “How about Báleygr? It’s a god’s pseudonym. A god of war who guides an army of dead warriors and has burning eyes. It fits you like a glove. You’re as strong as a god or a monster, and you have that promise you told me about…and you’ve got pretty red eyes, after all.”

As Shin stared at him, Eijyu grinned again boastfully. Like he’d just pulled a successful prank on a younger brother. Shin flusteredly averted his gaze. He couldn’t wish for someone to treat him like this. It always reminded him of a person he mustn’t remember. Even though he couldn’t recall his face, or smile, or really anything about him anymore.

“…It doesn’t suit me.”

“You think? I mean, if you’re gonna have a Personal Name, you might as well have a cool one. After all”—Eijyu shrugged as Shin raised his eyes to look at him again—“it’s as you said. It’s just a signifier for identification. It’s a game of pretend that’s only good for making you feel better.”

Watching his short vice captain leave the hangar, Eijyu turned his eyes to the head of the maintenance team, who stood a short distance away.

“We’ll be giving you more work, though, Head Mechanic Seiya.”

“Maintenance and repair are our responsibilities, so it’s not like I mind… But, Eijyu—”

The two of them were in the same school as kids. Seiya directed his bitter gaze at him from afar. He had gold hair that bordered on silver, and faint-violet eyes, the symbol of the bloodline of an immigrant from their northern neighbor.

“—I’m surprised you care so much for that creepy kid.”

“Did something happen?” Eijyu asked.

“How many died today? Ever since he showed up?”

“Oh…” Eijyu sighed.

That again.

Shin joined this squadron two months ago and immediately became vice captain. The chain of command in the Eighty-Sixth Sector was decided only by one’s martial prowess, and there were already eerie rumors going around about this red-eyed boy.

“It’s probably not his fault.” Eijyu wrote Seiya’s suggestion off.

“I dunno about that. There’s that thing with him…and they say that of all the squadrons he’s been in, he’s always the last one alive.”

Eijyu frowned. He knew this best friend of his wasn’t a bad guy, but there was a pretty big gap between how he treated those he considered friends and how he treated everyone else. He cared for his friends a great deal, which made him adamantly reject anything that might hurt them. Eijyu knew this, but…

“Well, that part’s probably true. That boy, he…”

Eijyu moved his eyes in the direction of the barracks, where Shin’s room was behind the hangar’s wall. Shin spent the majority of his free time alone in that room. Eijyu never saw him chat with other kids his age.

“He doesn’t call people by their names. He has that promise of his, so I don’t think he doesn’t want to remember…but he probably wants to keep some distance from people.”

Between himself and these soldiers who are destined to die. This was an attitude all Name Bearers—Eighty-Six who had lived long enough to earn a Personal Mark—adopted at one point or another. Even Eijyu knew how that felt.

Because the more attached you are to someone, the more it hurts when you lose them.

Name Bearers like Eijyu have lost more people than their heart can possibly take. Every year, new Processors enlist to this battlefield, and only one in a thousand of them survives. But that’s exactly why—

“That’s not his fault.”

The Eighty-Six die. Anyone and everyone can die in the Eighty-Sixth Sector, much too easily and without a hint of fanfare. And no one in particular is to blame for that.

“Eijyu—”

“Cassandra was a prophet of ruin whose prophecies were all true. But that didn’t mean…”

…that one had to see the prophet as the cause for the catastrophe they foresaw. Cataclysms can be inevitable, but human society has a tendency to look for a factor they can blame.

Just like how the Republic pinned the blame for their defeat in the war on the Eighty-Six and cast them out into the battlefield.

“Even though Cassandra never wanted those catastrophes to come, much less beckoned them.”