Feodor sat down at an empty seat in the mess hall, lunch tray in tow. A girl he might have met before was there already. She raised her head a bit, groaning when she saw him.
"Why are you here?" Tiat asked, annoyance written all over her face.
"Nowhere else is free," Feodor grunted, just as unhappy as she was.
"Isn"t there a table reserved for ranked officers? Go sit there, please."
"Why don"t you use your eyes? The Second Officers are all eating here today for whatever reason, and it"s not a big table in the first place, so there"s no place for an underling like me to sit."
"Hmph, as if-" Tiat glanced towards the corner of the mess hall Feodor had indicated. Her shoulders drooped. "That"s true."
"And so," Feodor said with no small amount of self-satisfaction, "I shall be eating here today."
"I guess it can"t be helped," Tiat grumbled. Having lost the argument, she directed her attention next to the various condiments lined up on their table.
Incidentally, as mess halls like that of the Fifth Division hosted the tongues of many different races, such condiments are always waiting at the ready. As the meals themselves are almost never seasoned beforehand, this is a method for the consumer to introduce whatever flavor their personal taste may find desirable.
Tiat selected a few jars and plunked them down in front of Feodor: finely powdered mustard, pepper, garlic, salt, herbs, and something vaguely resembling kneaded lard.
"From left to right, three, two, four, three, one, two," Tiat said frostily. "To add more and better flavor, sprinkle just one pinch of the rightmost bottle afterwards without mixing it with the rest."
Feodor nodded, doing as she instructed, and they started eating.
"I see," he said after a few minutes. "Despite tricking the tip of the tongue with its bitterness, the way the last condiment combines with the herbs creates a strong enough flavor to disguise the taste and even smell of the underlying food? Not bad, considering it"s not been long since you started eating here."
"Right? Right?" Tiat puffed up pridefully, her reaction wholly unfitting of the matter-of-fact a.s.sessment he"d given. "Heheheh…"
"But it"s too targeted," he continued. "Since you"re always hanging around races similar to mine, don"t you think your thought process is getting too narrow?"
"Huh?" Tiat emitted an irritated hiss not unlike that of a boiling teapot. "Whaaaaat? If you"re gonna go that far, then how about you come up with something better?!"
"Hmph." He hardly had to go to that much effort. "Just add half a spoonful of the substance in that black jar over there."
Tiat grabbed the jar he pointed out, tilting her head at the label to skim it as she opened the lid. She abruptly shrieked and jerked back.
"Yeeeuugh?! W-what"s this stink?! Is it some sort of Beastman-only thing?!"
"How very perceptive of you," Feodor said dryly. "It"s made by fermenting animal innards. As the scent can linger for some time, you"ll need to be careful not to get it on your clothes."
"Y-you"re telling me to eat this?!" By the way tears glittered at the corners of Tiat"s eyes, she"d clearly received a large dose of the scent wafting from the jar"s contents. "Seriously? Are you insane? Without a doubt, this absolutely isn"t something we"re supposed to eat!"
Feodor shrugged. "Run away if you want, or don"t. I don"t especially care."
Tiat"s face twisted as she looked down at the jar, furiously wrestling with the idea of letting Feodor win or taking his bait. She finally unleashed a mighty howl and crammed her spoon into the jar.
Watching them from the table Feodor had so dearly wished to sit at, Portrick shook his head. "What a strange conversation," the lycanthropos mumbled, sinking his fangs into a slab of medium-rare meat. "Looking at them from here, I can"t make heads nor tails of what their relationship is. Do they get along or fight like cats and dogs?"
"Our Tiat is straightforward, but she sure ain"t honest," Panival remarked, biting into her own huge slab of meat right next to him.
"Oh-" Portrick jolted, not having noticed her there. "I see," he nodded quickly, recovering. "Even though a guy like Fourth Officer Jessman is honest enough you could give him an award for it, it"s still possible for something like this to happen if he"s thrown together with a girl he doesn"t know how to act around, huh?"
"…Honest?" Panival laughed slightly, some meat sticking to her cheek.
"Hmm? You don"t think so, purple-haired girlie?"
"Did I say that? If nothing else, I agree that he appears to be a likeable person." Panival took a huge bite into her lump of meat and tore off another piece. "For someone like Tiat who acted all coldly and tried to drive him away," she said while munching, "she sure seems to have moved past that overnight."
Panival swallowed. "It looks like I"ll have to stop seeing him as just an average guy."
Portrick followed the direction her fork was pointing just in time to catch the end of their conversation. "…Blargh! Gross! Wait… what"s this? It"s so disgusting, but for some reason I want to eat more!"
"Some say that the difference between medicine and poison is just dosage. If you know how much to use, the tiniest bits of anything can become an exciting-"
"Errrrggh! Ugh! Seconds, please!"
"Were you even listening?! I just told you to be careful with how much you eat! And don"t let it get on your clothes!"
The way Tiat was acting right now truly suited the phrase, "This is the way things should be."
As Feodor left the mess hall, he was a.s.saulted by good and bad luck at the same time.
The bad luck: it suddenly started raining at the exact moment he stepped outside. Very heavily. The good luck: as he ran through the torrential downpour, he saw a rest stop with a roof attached to it. Feodor rushed for the rest stop and the roof"s salvation.
Panting, he ducked inside it and found himself face to face with another person, similarly dripping wet and out of breath, who had arrived just before him.
After a while Lakish, now with his officer"s jacket draped over her shoulders, cleared her throat nervously. "…Um…"
"What?"
"I-I"m sorry. About your jacket, I mean. And, um, thank you very much."
Feodor shook his head. "Don"t worry about it. I"m also responsible for keeping you all in good health."
He shook water off his clothes and took off his gla.s.ses, quickly wiping raindrops off its lenses before putting them back on. Taking a look outside revealed gray skies that hid the sun, with rain continuing to pour down. Though the cold was tolerable enough, he didn"t feel like running back out and getting himself soaked again just yet.
"U-umm…" She was glancing repeatedly at him for some reason, grumbling and muttering to herself. "Stupid Tiat… going and saying all that nonsense… I"m completely aware of it now…"
"Your face"s a bit red," Feodor offered.
Lakish jumped. "Ahhhh?!"
"You might"ve caught a cold. It could be a good idea to visit the medbay later."
"O-oh! Yes, got it, I"ll d-do that!" she cried in a panic, curling up into a shivering ball and wiggling as far away from Feodor as possible. It reminded him vaguely of a baby rabbit. How cute.
Even Feodor was still a guy. Although there was a great deal of things to keep in mind where these girls were concerned, it didn"t keep his heart from racing just a bit faster in these kinds of situations where he was alone with one of them.
But she"s markless. With just that one fact, he felt that the distance between them might as well be an impa.s.sable canyon. He"d have to put aside any pa.s.sion he might feel.
"Um…"
"Hmm?"
"This might be sudden, but do you… you know… hate markless?"
Wait, did she read my mind?! Instantly, Feodor was on his guard. He didn"t consider it an overreaction to take such an idea seriously. He knew all too well that there were some underhanded races in this world who were more than capable of doing just that.
"I know it"s strange to ask, because you"re also markless, but… if you do, is there any reason why?"
"…Not especially." Feodor took a breath, calming himself. "It seems natural to me. Ever since I was born, there"s never been any decent characters among the markless I"ve known. No matter where I go, I only meet the twisted sorts."
His own family members already fit the definition of strange, but that wasn"t where it ended. Even the markless Feodor formed relationships with as friends or acquaintances due to their similar races tended to be very much abnormal in varied ways. After the number of incidents and breakdowns he"d been through, he wasn"t sure if the markless were cursed or just screwed up to begin with.
"If you"d had as many bad experiences as I did, you"d dislike the markless even if you didn"t want to," Feodor concluded, all too aware that he himself was no exception.
"Then, could it be that…" Her voice shrunk. "Talking to you like this… am I possibly making trouble for you too?"
"Don"t be stupid," he replied bluntly - perhaps too much so. "I mean, you don"t need to worry. I hate markless in general, but I recognize that you and the other girls are decent. I don"t think of any of you badly as individuals."
"I-Is that so?"
Feodor gave Lakish a sidelong glance. She seemed somehow relieved. At any rate, she"d fortunately swallowed his hasty backtrack. It honestly made him worry about what would happen if she ever ran afoul of a scammer or conman.
"So…"
He fought back an annoyed sigh. "What now?"
"I-I"m sorry! But, um, I think Tiat might"ve told you something weird…"
"Weird?" Feodor wasn"t entirely sure how seriously he should react. We haven"t known each other for long, but my memories are already full of countless times she"s acted or spoken oddly.
"Yes." Lakish said nervously. "Something like, "since we"re not alive, we"re not afraid of dying"."
"Oh, that?" It had without a doubt been a strange conversation, perhaps the oddest among all that he"d had with Tiat. But… "It wasn"t all that weird, but it did sound rather ridiculous. Was she telling the truth?"
"Y-y… yes.." Lakish gave him a small, bitter nod.
"If that"s so, then there"s nothing strange to speak of. Honestly, I"m glad you were even able to tell me something like that."
"…Alright." She nodded again, a little happier.
"That aside, while I believe you, it"s still hard to comprehend." Feodor put a hand to his chin. "Might you have anything I can see as proof you"re all ghosts?"
"Um, that"s not easy to… oh!" Lakish perked up. "Now that you mention it, there was this one time with Collon. A while ago, she drank a bottle full of protective holy water and it messed up her stomach really badly!"
No, doing something like that would destroy anybody"s stomach, wouldn"t it?
Lakish swallowed, seeing the skeptical expression on Feodor"s face. "U-um, do you… do you really hate ghosts, after all…?"
No, no, who"s going to answer that with "Of course not"?
"If you"re asking me which side I take, I"m firmly on the side that hates ghosts," Feodor said.
"O-oh…"
"You see," he went on. "My uncle loved scary stories. He always forced me to listen, carrying on with the most frightening tones even though he knew how scared I was. Afterwards, I never could go to the toilet by myself in the middle of the night."
"Huh?" Lakish stared at him, not catching on just yet.
"And so, whenever that happened, I"d wake up my brother-in-law and force him to accompany me. Sometimes he wouldn"t be in the mood, and I ended up not making it in time. It might be because of all that that I don"t particularly appreciate ghost stories."
"U-umm, wait…"
"Oh, keep that a secret from Tiat and the others, though. They"d tease me to bits if they heard."
Lakish burst into a short giggling fit. "F-Feodor, you"re terrible! Now I might really hate you the next time I see you. Couldn"t you see I was really scared?"
"You shouldn"t let your expressions show so much." Feodor smirked. "It makes people want to tease you even more."
"Oh, you-" she punched his elbow lightly.
With Lakish calmed, Feodor looked up at the sky to take a measure of the rain. It unfortunately showed no sign of stopping, and when he dropped his gaze to eye-level, he saw the trees shaking minutely from the rain and wind.
"I had a big sister once." Approaching Feodor to watch out at the same world as him, Lakish spoke again. "She was a Leprechaun like me, of course. She was incredibly strong, kind, and amazing. All of us loved her so very much. Tiat always said I want to be like her. It might be her favorite catchphrase."
It"s in past tense, he noticed. "I"m guessing this big sister of yours is…?"
"Yes. She fought the Beasts and died in battle-" Lakish cut herself off. She took a shaky breath. "She accepted that she would… would die for everybody"s sake, so she was about to head to the battlefield. But before she could, she… fell in love with a wonderful man. She didn"t want to die after that, she wanted to… to live more. Even though she was disposable, like all of us, she tried her hardest to survive and made it back to the side of the man she wanted to be with forever. But then… in her final moments, she went to battle again by herself for the people important to her. She knew she wouldn"t ever come back again, and despite that, she left smiling…!"
"…Hmm." That was all Feodor could offer in response. Yet another dramatic story, I see. He couldn"t help but feel slightly disgusted.
"Oh, wait!" Something seemed to have just occurred to Lakish. "I don"t know if they were l-lovers or not, it might have been a little different from that! How should I put it… we were so little at the time, so it seemed like typical love between adults to us, but when I think about it now, that wasn"t really the case…"
"What"s with that?!" He felt somehow cheated. "So her feelings were one-sided, then?!"
"No, no! I think they were mutual. O-or rather, it was like both of their feelings were one-sided?" Lakish"s face was slowly turning red in an oddly cute way as she talked. "Our big sister, back then, was around as old as we are now. She didn"t entirely hide her feelings about l-love and, and stuff, and she spent as much time as she could by Willem"s side. And Willem… he liked her too, but he kept treating her like his daughter, so it was like he was trying to keep his distance from her? Ah, but, but! No one really knows what was really going on! Even if it looked that way to me, it"s like…"
As Lakish rushed through sentence after sentence, Feodor thought to himself.
"Was he really so great of a person?" he asked at last. "This soldier named Willem?"
"H-huh? Oh, yes! He was incredibly amazing! Um, if I had to say what kind of person he was in the shortest way I could…" She thought a bit. "A doting father, maybe?"
…I don"t get it.
"You see, there"s a fairly large number of us fairies. Around thirty now, and back then too. And Willem - well, he was Willem," Lakish laughed. "He was the sort of guy to say "You"re the cutest girl in the world" to each and every one of us with a completely serious look on his face."
Oh, I get it now. "So he wasn"t actually related to you by blood?"
"Yep. We don"t have parents in the truest sense of the word."
"…Then he was really a very strange person."
She giggled awkwardly, unable to deny it. "But he really did care for us. He showered us with affection and kindness. I thought of him as my real father, the closest thing I had to a true parent."
Lakish"s voice became nostalgic as she gazed up distantly at the sky beyond the rainclouds. "I… I think it"s the same for the others. Because of how we"re born, all of us are starved for love. Some of us might deny it, but there was hardly anybody who didn"t love Willem."
I understand everything now. Feodor nodded to himself as if he"d just solved a great mystery. A man with affection to spare thrown into a place full of young girls who"ve never been loved. And so the picture is painted of the loving father with his thirty daughters, all of them sporting a father-complex.
…Wait. Wouldn"t that make for a considerable quandary?
Mental images rose in his mind to be quickly buried and replaced by others. He wasn"t sure what to feel about the idea.
Okay, moving on… He shook his head violently. In any case, the fairies are existences destined to die on the battlefield. Regardless of how much that man might have loved them, they would inevitably die before him. For that kind of man to act as a parent, even a partner… No matter how much resolve he mustered up, he couldn"t imagine such a thing, nor did he want to.
"Tiat says she wants to be like our big sister," Lakish said. "Even now, she still does. That"s why… um, maybe, just maybe, even if you hate Tiat… could I make a request of you?"
The way she put it sent wariness skittering down Feodor"s spine. "…Depends on what it is."
"For the next three months, until the day of the operation… could you get along with her? T-that is, could you treat Tiat like a woman and spend time with her as a woman? Just until the battle-"
"In other words," Feodor interrupted, "you want me to be a replacement for that man you speak of so fondly. Do you really believe I"m so easily capable of loving other people or treating them like my own daughter?"
"W-well… um…" Lakish stammered weakly. "I"d like… if you could try being like that, I think?"
"That girl has decided she wants to die, and even now throws herself fully into making her fate a reality. You propose that I allow the scenario to form where she gives me a tearful farewell on the day of the operation, and then she explodes most fantastically as I mourn her?"
"T-that"s…" her voice cracked and broke.
Perfunctionarily, he noticed that his gla.s.ses had begun fogging up from the rain. Calm down. At this moment, Feodor Jessman is a honest and exemplary soldier. That"s how you must be.
If Feodor was being honest with himself, he had somehow come to feel affectionate for the four girls. It was fun to be around them, and they were - normally - nice girls. He wasn"t without the usual ulterior motives one might expect of a boy his age regarding girls the same age. While he doubted he would ever need to, he wouldn"t mind telling one of them "You are the cutest in the world" as long as he was permitted to walk a hundred steps away beforehand.
But that was one thing and this was another.
In this world, there are lies you play along with and lies you don"t. This case was the latter.
"I suppose… you have a point." Lakish said, not looking his way. "I"m sorry. I shouldn"t have asked you about… about this. Please forget about that conversation just now."
Seeing how despondent she looked made something twist in Feodor"s heart. He felt as if his tongue was about to move all on its own against his will.
As usual, I said too much.
Feodor was bad at these kinds of conversations; no matter what he did, they always got too emotional. He opened his mouth, about to apologize-
Something in the distance exploded, violently enough that the ground shook a bit.
"Huh?!" The noise drove Feodor right out of his thoughts and back into the real world. The skies remained gray, but now the path could be seen shaking through the rain.
That explosion came from the harbor! Did an accident happen during airship boarding?! Or…
He made his decision. "I"ll go check it out."
Lakish made a startled noise, lifting up her head. "Y-you will? Um, wait, your jacket-"
"Keep it."
Leaving only a few words in his wake, Feodor dashed into the rain.
The explosion was fairly small in scale, and so there wasn"t any major damage to the harbor. However, the picture painted by the scene showed extremely slim chances that it was mere accident, and so the military police ended up deciding it had to have been committed by a criminal.
After examining the scene, the police concluded that whoever had that whoever had detonated the bomb had most likely wanted a diversion. It was entirely plausible the true culprit had been carrying out their malicious goals elsewhere.
"So, in short, we know absolutely squat," the Division Chief finished, looking very unamused.
"It"s only a possibility, but someone may have escaped our search and could be sneaking around behind our backs as we speak," Feodor said. "Still, if this is the only incident that occurred, we don"t have any reference to compare it with."
"You think it was more than one culprit, then?"
"Perhaps." He put a hand to his chin in thought. "Was there anything here? A possible target, some clue hidden somewhere, or evidence that the culprit was hostile towards the Winged Guard…?"
"Who knows." The Division Chief shrugged. "It could be that the military police are keeping something under wraps, but if they let anything slip, it"d just be more hard work for me."
Obviously. Feodor frowned. That said, it"s also possible the group that did this is hidden within the military. "…Could it have been those Heaven"s Arrival fanatics?"
The ideology of Heaven"s Arrival proposed that the Beasts and their attacks were divine revelations pa.s.sed down from the Visitors on high, and therefore the best response was to quietly lie down and allow the Beasts to kill everyone without resistance.
More a cult than a true religion, its terrifying doctrine was naturally forbidden throughout most islands. Heaven"s Arrival consequently didn"t have many followers. Even so, on occasion what few they did have would emerge and pick a fight with the Winged Guard, using their beliefs as the reason.
"Ahh… I don"t like to think so, but I wouldn"t put it past them. That bunch does nothing but cause trouble for us." The Division Chief shook his head tiredly. "At any rate, this mess has nothing to do with us for now. Our enemy is that flying black crystal, not some mysterious person plotting something from somewhere."
Before Feodor could give his skeptical agreement, a sudden chill a.s.sailed him and his mouth erupted into an enormous sneeze.
"…You should get going and take a bath. Just looking at you is making me feel cold."
Feodor hugged himself, just now noticing how completely soaked he was. "I will," he said, shivering and rubbing his shoulders.