How to Get an Honorable Discharge? (5) Conclusion
In the dead of night, inside the cabin of the super-heavy cruiser Valkyrie.
“Those bastards from Londinium, I’ll kill every last one of them!”
Laura remembered the captain’s voice, thick with fury, and had spent another sleepless night.
“Laura, you can’t sleep?”
As she tossed and turned restlessly, the voice drifted down from the upper bunk on the second floor.
Erica’s words reached her.
“…Yes.”
The events of that time still lingered in Laura’s mind. Laura believed that everything would be fine just because she had woken up, and in that delusion she flailed about. She was happy and relieved to have escaped the guilt toward her, but how ugly was that selfishness.
“Why am I so selfish?”
“What are you talking about all of a sudden.”
The captain’s past. She could scarcely imagine it. The captain, who had always seemed like a monster, had she not forgotten the despair and pain of the past and become a monster herself?
Her voice echoed inside Laura’s head.
“Captain Elia, what you are saying right now—”
“—There was a squad fighting outside the building. What happened to them?”
That squad fighting outside the building?
What did that even mean?
“Don’t talk nonsense. If that were true, why am I still alive? I should have died too.”
Even in the place where everyone was rejoicing that the captain had woken up, she herself was tormented by the fact that she was still alive.
“Answer me. Why am I alive? How am I alive?”
The wounds she had never shown anyone had festered until maggots swarmed. Around her soul a high wall of “past hallucinations” had been raised, and she had hidden there, shielding herself from their selfish joy by remaining motionless and silent.
“Captain Elia, right now the captain is on the Valkyrie—”
“It is not too late.”
“…Yes?”
And it didn’t take long for everyone in the room to realize something was wrong. Her soul was still plummeting beneath a cliff, and a thick darkness surged into the room like a tidal wave.
“G-go. Send out the rescue team. The buried soldiers might still be alive.”
“But that would—”
Elia rose from the bed before Laura could stop her and tore off every bio-signal sensor attached to her body at once. Laura rushed forward.
“How long until the rescue team is organized?”
“Captain? Will you recognize me?”
“Ah, Eve. Wait, I’ll ask the instructor right now.”
It was hard to see this as an answer to a question. Laura caught an anxious tremor in Elia’s hollow eyes, as though she were being pursued by something. An ominous feeling swept over them.
“Swallow it. Eve, please, I beg you. Once you swallow this, something—”
A sudden soliloquy. Her eyes now chased phantoms. Among those who had lost their senses to the encroaching darkness, only Karina remained perfectly calm and asked her again.
“Captain Elia. Did you say ‘Eve’? Who is she?”
And that question—
“What are you saying, in my arms… in my arms…?”
She should never have said that.
“In my arms…? Eve…?”
The nightmare began.
“Aaaah, aaaaaah, uwaah, aaaaaah—”
“Captain Elia, huh—?!”
“Captain!”
Like a demon bursting from hell, she suddenly seized Karina’s uniform. Erica rushed toward her, but Karina raised a hand to stop her.
“I’m fine! Everyone, stay back!”
“Those bastards from Londinium, I’ll kill every last one of them!”
The pain and rage that had been hidden behind her mask—
“I killed them all with my own hands! But what more do you want from me?!”
All the fragments of madness rose together above the surface.
“Karen, Luna, Irien, Lael, Leman, Tess, Treval, Yann, Violet, Erkel… and Eve too! I killed every single one of them with my own hands!”
Suddenly she grabbed Karina’s hand and cried out.
“Why are you delaying my execution?! How much more do you intend to take from me before you are satisfied?!”
A wail of despair filled with anguish echoed throughout the room. Thousands of demons danced in circles around her. No one in that place could help her. The grief felt as though it were tearing out her heart. Tears sprang from the depths of Elia’s eyes and streamed down her cheeks.
“Captain Elia, p-please calm down—”
“Kill me! Right now!”
The captain who could not forget the sins of the past chose a cold, eerie death over life. The traitor who had been forced to kill her own comrades with her own hands begged for a lonely death on the gallows, unable to receive even pity.
“I no longer wish to live. At least I—”
Laura’s heart tore.
The one who had let her heart fall apart.
The one who had given up on life.
“When I can still be myself…”
Despair suffocated everyone in the room.
“—Please keep your promise. Please.”
“I understand, I understand, Captain!”
Laura pulled her in with all her strength.
“It’s okay, I promise, I swear— so, h, ugh—”
One single word: that I will promise to die for you. With that cruel word, the captain finally relaxed and collapsed into her arms. That evening Laura wept in the room until her throat was raw. No one had ever seen her cry like that.
She stopped her recollection and murmured from where she lay.
“I don’t know. I thought everything would go back to normal…”
Elia’s life, soaked in fear, regret, self-reproach, and despair. To return it to normal. With the single words “even that is too much.”
“—I thought I could go back.”
“……”
She had wanted a word of apology to reach her while she thrashed in torment and despair. For the past two days Laura had been unable to eat or sleep, wandering the interior of the Valkyrie like a ghost.
“It’s not your fault, Laura. You know that.”
“……”
Was it really true? Had she ever sincerely tried to approach the captain until now? The thought brought a guilt that pressed on her chest, as though someone were watching her from somewhere in the dark room.
“And if you only grieve, you cannot move forward.”
“…Yes.”
Could she heal the captain’s past?
“Riaria is still alive. I can help.”
Erica’s comforting words seemed to read her mind.
“…Special Operations Officer Erica, thank you.”
“It’s nothing.”
The room fell back into silence.
This is how it is.
I recite the words in my heart.
A promise held inside an indelible, eternal memory.
The prayer of that promise negates the reality of existence.
The prayer spreads itself and realizes the will of non-existence.
Existence becomes non-existence, and what was has become what was not.
But do not worry.
Erinyes has already known.
The entire world was shrouded in mist. In a winter courtyard where snow fell thickly, “Elia” and “I” met. Where was this place? I did not know, but I felt no unease. That was what a dream was.
“You… were the soul of a human.”
Her eyes turned immediately toward me. I casually glanced at the blindfold covering her left eye and wondered what it would feel like if both eyes had been intact. A somewhat embarrassing thought crossed my mind.
“Elia, right?”
The surroundings were still as dark as midnight. I was glad my heart felt a little easier because I could not see the expression on the “Elia” standing before me.
“…Yes. And you—”
Elia’s lips moved slightly as though she were about to say something, then closed again. What had she wanted to say? Had she wanted to comment on the snow piled up here? No, if that were the case she would not have hesitated to speak. An apology for trapping me in her body? No. I felt certain she had not deliberately imprisoned me. If not that, then perhaps a rebuke for carelessly bringing out her memories? To put it bluntly, I had never tried to bring them out on purpose. Or should I say, “She showed them to me” was the correct expression?
“—No. Forget it.”
A single word that had not come out of her mouth turned into hundreds of anxieties that swirled in my head. But the words she had tried to say had dispersed like exhaled breath and vanished into the air. My gaze lingered on her small lips that had been unable to speak. At the same time I felt a strange guilt, as though the cause of all this was my fault.
“Am I dead?”
“You are dead. And you will—”
At that moment,
Elia began to fade like a ghost.
“…I’m sorry. We don’t have much time left for us.”
Elia said that and pointed somewhere.
A long path stretching through the mist.
“Wait a moment.”
My two eyes were fixed on Elia’s neckerchief as though pinned by a nail. The pale pink neckerchief that suited her white hair seemed about to come undone.
“It will be warmer if you keep your neckerchief straight.”
As I approached her and adjusted her neckerchief, a strange feeling of unease came over me. I was certain I remembered this pale pink neckerchief. It was “Elia’s” memory. Feeling someone else’s memory as my own. A feeling so complex it was hard to describe. Over my ordinary memories, hers were overwriting them like a shadow.
“…Thank you.”
I hurriedly adjusted the neckerchief and turned my gaze away as if escaping from memory. Looking around, among the many bare trees left standing, I saw a lone pine standing tall. A memory that was not mine but someone else’s clung wetly to my shoulder.
“So… this was the place.”
Under the pine trees that never changed with the seasons, Eve wrapped a neckerchief around Elia’s neck. Eve, who had a hobby of knitting, had personally knitted a cherry-blossom pink neckerchief. She had pouted that she wanted to see the cherry blossoms of the trees that would bloom next year and had begged Elia to become a cherry blossom for her until next spring. My time here was steadily overlapping with “Eve’s” time. When memories overwrote, it felt as though I had been in that place in the past.
Was it a delusion? No.
I was perhaps— I might have really been there.
“Shall we go?”
Elia gave a small nod in response to my forced nonchalance. With every step, footprints were clearly imprinted on the pure white snow. The sound of stepping on snow replaced our conversation. As we walked, we soon reached a fork in the road. The path was still invisible under the snow, but the signpost standing there told us that a fork lay ahead where we were walking. On the signpost was written:
~ Choose. Just do not regret. ~
“I have to take this path.”
Elia said that while looking at me.
“Can we meet again?”
She shook her head.
I did not know where I would have to return to…
We had to part and walk our separate paths.
“I’m sorry for recklessly calling you here. But—”
She took off the captain’s beret she was wearing.
“You must advance forward by borrowing my flesh.”
Elia lifted her hand and placed the beret on my head.
“Even though it is a broken and ruined flesh.”
A flesh possessed by a parasite.
She, who had been slowly losing all memories—
She gathered the remaining mana and performed the forbidden magic.
“This was the best I could think of.”
“What do you mean—”
Elia placed her finger on my lips.
I stopped speaking and looked at her.
“I chose you at the cost of my life.”
Me?
Then you chose wrong.
I am not as strong as you.
“We are similar.”
No.
You have faced enough of your comrades’ deaths.
I am the one who turned away from the deaths of precious people.
“The promise will guide you.”
A promise that was not kept.
On the day it rained.
Elia shot Eve.
On that day, Elia also died.
“So go forward.”
Elia silently dug into the earth where her comrades would be buried. Since that day she had buried the promise with them. I did not know whether that promise was buried in the earth or in the darkness of memory, but that promise had died with her comrades inside her. Yet the promise that should have rotted and decayed in the earth began to rise alone above the ground, leaving their corpses behind.
“Even if you break and fall apart… stand up again.”
Stand up again?
How could I do that?
I cannot.
This is how it is.
Wait, Elia! Elia?! I still—!
She left me behind and disappeared on the far side of the fork.