86 - Volume 5 - Chapter Ep

EPILOGUE 

FLOWERS BLOOM NOT ON SNOWY FIELDS 

“…Your Highness.” 

A more ordinary person would have been traumatized by the sight, but sadly, he felt nothing. As Vika looked down at Lerche, who was lying down powerlessly, he couldn’t help but affirm to himself that he truly was a monster, human in shape and nothing else. 

Lying helplessly near his military boots, atop the flagstones exposed by the melting of the snow, was Lerche. She’d been reduced to only her upper half, and her silvery inner mechanisms were exposed as light-blue circulatory liquid spread beneath her in a puddle. 

Just as she had once been in the past. 

Looking down at her, Vika said, “Stop breaking at every turn, you seven-year-old.” 

“Understood. My shame knows no bounds…” 

Lerche regarded his all-too-unreasonable rebuke by somehow skillfully dropping her shoulders despite being reduced to only her upper half. Sirins felt no pain. Since they were mechanical dolls that could simply have any damaged parts replaced, they didn’t require the alarm system a living, irreplaceable body employed to alert strain. And so the clockwork girl lying amid the snow and wreckage smiled, without regard for her missing legs, the blue lifeblood spreading out around her, or her exposed mechanical viscera. 

Just as she once did. 

“Are you unharmed, Your Highness?” 

“Obviously.” 

Because you told me to protect them. So until I’ve protected the people of this country, until the Legion War ends, I cannot die. And after that…I will live on to the very end… Even with no hopes or dreams to my name. 

Because I believe…that was what Lerche, that girl who went ahead of me despite us being the same age, would have wanted. 

“Let’s go home, Lerche… Carrying you in your current state will actually make things pretty convenient, but just thinking about having to rebuild you from the ground up is giving me a headache.” 

“My shame knows no—” 

“Enough of that.” 

“And, um… If possible, I would appreciate it if you could add a bit more volume to my chest.” 

“What is this, your sexual awakening?” 

Sighing, he reached out and grabbed her by the back of her head, opening the lock fastening her head to her neck. Vika picked up her head. A human head was heavier than, say, a cat, but while he was royalty, he’d spent most of his life on the battlefield. It was still lighter than an anti-materiel rifle. 

Being mechanical dolls, Sirins wouldn’t break even when reduced to only their head. After confirming Lerche had automatically shut down upon losing contact with the cooling system stored in her chest, Vika turned around, the cuffs of his uniform fluttering in the wind. With her head in hand, he strode through the fluttering veil of the snow goddess as it raged well beyond its season. 

It was like a scene cut straight out of Salomé, he noted dully to himself. 

Though, that said… 

“I’ve never once kissed you.” 

Neither the departed girl who served as her basis nor this girl who was as cold as a tombstone. 

No one was there to hear the words of his soliloquy as the wind snatched them away. 

Leaving his Juggernaut, Rito looked down at the Sirins’ siege route again. Several of his comrades also looked down at the grotesque, unnatural path carved by corpses. Surviving until they fell in battle and living to the very end was the pride of the Eighty-Six. That was what they believed as they fought. Embracing that as their identity, they’d fought thus far with that, and nothing else, in mind. 

But… 

Not bothering to hide his fright and the shiver that crept up from within, Rito thought: How was that different from how the Sirins had laughed as they’d rushed to their demise in this death march…? 

Rito had always been afraid of the Sirins. All his comrades were, to some extent. They were creepy. They were indescribably odd, and the Eighty-Six could only watch them from a distance. But now he knew. What frightened him was the idea that those unsettling girls reflected the end of their own road. The vague premonition that at the end of their long battle, they were fated to lie dead atop their own mountain of corpses. 

Maybe we were the same as them all along, ever since the Eighty-Sixth Sector. And we called that our pride the whole time. Rushing to our deaths just like them. Laughing all the while. 

He’d noticed Raiden standing next to him. He’d fought in the underground hangar, so he grimaced as he looked down at the siege route for the first time. He spat out some Federacy slang Rito didn’t know. 

“So this is what got your undies in a bunch.” 

“Vice Cap’n Shuga… I—” 

“…Don’t.” 

He cut him off. The palm of his hand then fell on Rito’s shoulder in a gesture of concern. But by contrast, his words… 

“Everyone else is probably thinking the same thing. But don’t put it into words… You shouldn’t have to second-guess the way of life that got you here.” 

The insulated flight suit didn’t even allow the warmth of his hand to reach Rito. 

Ludmila’s ruined head rolled through the snow beside the siege route. Shin looked down wordlessly at the silent remains of the girl. From between the intermingled remains of crushed Alkonosts, Juggernauts, and Legion leaked a mixture of Liquid Micromachines, subcutaneous circulatory liquid, and several kinds of oil he couldn’t recognize, forming an odd multicolored puddle. 

As her head rolled, both her striking red hair and her artificial skin were torn off, leaving her as no more than metallic-gray remains. When he picked it up, a crack across her skull widened, causing it to fall apart. A transparent liquid that was rainbow colored at its core—her central processor—and blue blood spilled from her cranium in thick rivulets and pooled on the ground. He could no longer hear any wails or lamentations coming from her. 

He was used to seeing human corpses. It was just like they’d told Dustin during their operation in the Republic. And they were just as used to seeing severed heads missing half their faces. It was a common occurrence, a sight he’d witnessed as early as his first squadron in the Eighty-Sixth Sector. 

So seeing Ludmila, a Sirin who hadn’t been alive to begin with, with an entirely different color of blood, break… Seeing countless of their number break shouldn’t have bothered him. 

And yet…it hurt. It hurt so much. 

Yes, the truth was that it was hard. It had been hard from the very beginning. He recalled the captain of his first squadron, who’d often looked out for him and fussed over helping him because he’d been the youngest new member… He recalled picking up his severed, half-collapsed head. 

When had he grown used to this? When had he started treating the fact that others died as a matter of course? As something that wasn’t out of the ordinary? When had he shaved that bit away from himself…without even realizing it? 

The fragment of the dead person that was trapped inside what used to be Ludmila was gone now. It disappeared as it was destroyed, and not a trace of it remained anymore. At least, Shin wished that it was so. Looking back, he’d often ask if they wished to die again. Without ever contemplating the coldness behind that question. 

Words he’d once heard someone say surfaced in his mind. He couldn’t even remember who at this point. But they’d said it to his face. Others said it through the Para-RAID. Sometimes he’d overhear others say it. Mixed into the static of the wireless. Time after time, time after time after time, he’d heard those words. 

You monster. 

“…Yeah.” 

That’s fitting, thought Shin as he looked up at the siege route. The single most grotesque siege route ever made, formed from the wreckage of the Legion, the Alkonosts, and those mechanical dolls made in the shape of girls. He’d had to tread over it and attack, because if he hadn’t, everyone would have died. He’d had to trample over those girls to ensure that no one else would die. 

And the same was true for everyone and everywhere else. The Republic trampled over the Eighty-Six, the United Kingdom over the Sirins, and the Federacy over the child soldiers, Vargus, and Mascots. And even those being trampled went on to step over someone else’s death in turn to survive in this world. 

In which case, if this was what they had to do to survive… 

…humans were all monsters. 

Each and every one of them. 

The faint shimmer of the snow reflected off the 88 mm turret of the Juggernaut sitting atop the siege route, and for the first time, Shin could see that glow only as completely and utterly vile. 

“…Shin!” 

As Shin stood still, a voice reached his ears. He couldn’t hear the sound of any footsteps. Those were swallowed up by the snow that piled over the marks of battle, and only her silver-bell-like voice reached him. 

Tripping over the unfamiliar snowy route, Lena ran up to him, clinging to his body in her rush. His thick flight suit didn’t conduct any heat, so he couldn’t feel her warmth through it. 

“You’ll get yourself dirty touching me.” 

“What are you saying…?!” 

She’d likely rushed out in a panic. Lena’s uniform was disheveled, as if she’d run out halfway through changing clothes, and she wasn’t wearing her jacket over her blouse. Just a coat. She’d likely dropped her military cap somewhere, and amazingly enough, she was running over the snowy ground in her pumps, of all things. 

“What in the world are you thinking, coming out here on your own? There could still be Legion around here…!” 

“There’s nothing here… You already know that.” 

She gave no reply. In place of any words, her fingers gripped him even more tightly. As if to say Shin might disappear the moment she let go. He’d attempted to utter a why, but his voice wouldn’t come out. 

She should have seen how the siege route made up of the Sirins came to be. And she should have realized the Strike Package had to climb over this to attack. So why did she approach them, without any fear? Why stay by the Eighty-Six, who were whittled down by the battlefield to the extent that normal humans could see them only as monsters at this point? 

To begin with, she knew what the battlefield was all about. She’d maintained that defensive line for two long months during the large-scale offensive on the battlefield of the Republic, which had made no preparations to fight out of the belief the war would end soon, with only the faint hope that aid may at some point come. 

She repeated retreat after retreat even as she was gradually backed against the wall. Even Shin, accustomed as he was to war, couldn’t imagine how utterly despairing maintaining that hopeless defensive line must have been, but Lena knew it all too well. 

She knew that Republic Alba citizens were being slaughtered by the tens of millions… Her brethren and compatriots… She knew the battlefield was a place of wanton death, with no room to hope for the dignity or the sanctity of life. She knew the vileness and baseness people were capable of when cornered. 

So why? How? 

How could she not give up on this world? How could she believe in a value that was even emptier than a fairy tale, that the world was a beautiful place…? 

Lena had said the Eighty-Six gave up on the world out of kindness. That loathing it would be easier than giving up on it. That letting go of their pride would have been that much simpler. In which case, how…? How could she carry an ideal so saccharine that no one could even bear to hear it anymore…? 

Why? he wondered. 

Why do you persist? Why do you keep going while clinging to that wish? Letting go of it would make it all so much easier, so how can you keep on wishing for it? 

No answer came to mind. And Shin didn’t know Lena well enough to even come up with any clues to deduce it. Two years ago, he’d bidden her farewell as he’d left for the Special Reconnaissance mission, and he’d met her again only a few months ago. He didn’t know what battles she’d fought through. He didn’t know what she’d felt, what she’d lamented, what she’d valued, what wish she’d fought for. What desire it was that spurred her to keep fighting. 

He’d never even thought to ask. He’d never considered that he wanted to know. He believed he’d achieved something by reuniting with her, but…once he’d met her, he’d made no attempt to understand her. 

For the first time, he realized: 

I know absolutely nothing about her.