012. Childhood Friend and Mother (1)
012. Childhood Friend and Mother (1)
"......A defective product?"
That was right.
The biodroid who had been my childhood friend, Sion, was a defective product.
To be more specific.
"She was built for military service, but apparently an initial defect kept her from being delivered."
As a result, she was 'repurposed' and had to work as a maid despite having a military body.
As I said, that wasn't necessarily a bad thing for Sion.
If anything, you could call it a stroke of luck.
The luck of escaping a fate as a combat weapon.
Her personality wasn't unsuited to life as a maid, either.
In fact, I think she was a perfect fit for it.
Sion was the type who loved taking care of others.
......She loved it a bit too much, really.
Because she picked me up off the streets—a war orphan wandering Metropolis—and raised me with affection, as if I were her own child.
"......Uhe."
Laika was flustered by the story I had tossed out as if in passing.
"You were a war orphan, Commander? And she picked you up and raised you......?"
"Just what it sounds like."
Literally, I was a war orphan.
And Sion had literally picked me up—acquired me—while I was drifting through the back alleys of Metropolis as that war orphan.
How?
Like this.
—You look cute, you know. Why don't you come over to my place for some ramyeon?
......If you only looked at it up to this point, you might think I'd run into a dangerous person.
Honestly, I was worried about that at first, too.
'If I follow her, won't I get restrained and subjected to biological experiments?'
'Or won't I get my organs harvested?'
But life on the streets wasn't exactly any better than being a lab rat.
With a 'do your worst' kind of feeling, I followed her to Sion's house,
and from that very day, Sion started raising me.
......Right. Raising me.
Washing me, feeding me, clothing me. Sometimes teaching me things.
She took care of everything else a boy might need in life, too.
......Though she dished out just as much nagging and scolding to go along with it.
Anyway, she became my guardian.
Looking at it from that angle, when I was young, Sion might have been closer to a mother to me than a childhood friend.
Over time, the childhood-friend percentage gradually rose until we'd finally crossed the line where I could call her one.
"......I keep telling you, you're not normal."
I agreed.
Which was probably why I met Sion, who was cut from the same cloth.
Anyway, I felt like this had turned into boasting about my childhood friend somewhere along the line.
Returning to the main point.
Though Sion was naturally a maid-like girl in this way, she herself had hoped to become a military model.
The problem was probably the fact that she'd failed delivery and been repurposed in the first place.
It wasn't so much that she desperately wanted to serve in the military. It felt more like she wanted to stop being a half-finished failure that had never become anything.
She wanted to fulfill the reason she was born.
She wanted to engage in battle, her original intended purpose.
She had that kind of vague yet natural yearning.
But as I mentioned before, she was initially defective. Once her purpose was changed to maid, there was only one way for her to become a military model.
That was to become the 'partner biodroid' of an Academy entrant.
"......Partner biodroid?"
Laika, who had been listening quietly, tilted her head quizzically.
I smoothed down the cowlick that had fallen with the movement and explained.
"A kind of dedicated adjutant biodroid assigned individually to Academy cadets."
"They even give personal adjutants to cadets?"
"Well, strictly speaking, it's closer to a watchdog assigned by the Academy to stop cadets from doing stupid things."
On the other hand, they were also practice partners for learning how to handle a military biodroid.
Military biodroids were complicated to handle in many ways, you see.
The idea was to get the mistakes out of the way during the cadet years, where they could be forgiven, rather than causing trouble once deployed to a field base.
And a cadet could also bring in that partner biodroid themselves, if they wished.
The biodroid brought in as a partner didn't have to be a military model.
In the first place, the partners the Academy handed out were often not proper military models either.
Usually, the Academy bought military units cheaply from manufacturers after they failed delivery for one reason or another, labeled them 'partners,' and assigned them to cadets.
In short, if a cadet claimed a unit could handle adjutant duties, almost anyone was acceptable.
Because of that, I applied to the Academy to fulfill Sion's wish,
and after strenuous effort, I actually got my admission approved.
"......Is it really okay to decide your whole career that casually?"
"Well, I didn't have anything else I wanted to do. And there was no proper way to make a living anyway."
Sion was perfectly willing to let me keep depending on her and living with her even after I became an adult.
But my conscience wouldn't allow that.
More than that, once I'd grown up, I thought I had to repay her to some extent.
As I said before, Sion was my benefactor who took me in as a child and raised me with her own money, and in a way, she was like a mother to me.
If it meant granting Sion that wish, I'd have done anything.
At this point, though, I sometimes thought maybe I shouldn't have done it.
As always, Laika was the one who pulled me back before I could sink too deeply into regret.
"Anyway, if she became that partner biodroid, could she work for the military even after cadet life?"
"......Ah, yes."
More precisely, once the cadet became a commander, the partner would be assigned to the same unit as them.
Her posting would be the same: adjutant.
That was what Sion and I had aimed for.
"Gotcha."
After the simple summary, Laika nodded as if she understood.
But immediately afterward, her shoulders twitched as if she'd noticed something odd.
She couldn't help it.
If the story up to now was true, there was one fact that was truly incomprehensible.
Laika cautiously put that thought into words.
"......Then why isn't Sion with you right now?"
I couldn't answer right away.
After a short pause, I answered.
"She was with me up until the second semester of third year."
After saying that, I corrected myself slightly.
That she was with me partway through the second semester of third year, but not until the very last day of that semester.
For about the last month or so, I spent cadet life without Sion, for the first time in a while.
The starting point of that Sion-less period was the Academy graduation exam.
An exam doubling as live combat, conducted in the graduating semester.
Well, calling it live combat made it sound grand, but content-wise, there wasn't much to it.
It was all just searching and reconnaissance of a Legion hive in an already secured zone.
If you went by the theoretical danger level...... well.
I could say it was safer than last time's Trash Island reconnaissance.
On top of that, grades weren't even properly reflected in the final semester.
So there was no need to push yourself to produce results.
Taken together, it was closer to a courage test before field deployment than a real exam.
So, it really was nothing.
It had been nothing.
Why was that?
Seriously, why?
"......Commander."
Laika, who had listened up to that point, called out to me.
Her voice trembled faintly.
She had probably guessed, at least in part, what answer was coming.
She'd guessed it and was trying to stop me—as if to say I didn't need to bring it up if that was the kind of story it was.
But that was a mistaken notion.
There was no way to stop at this point. Now that I had brought the story this far, I had no choice but to see it through to the end.
Without explaining this, I couldn't answer Laika's original question—why I'd been assigned to Krädel.
Because the incident that had happened to Sion on that exam day was what led me to Krädel.
I said to the girl I'd met there at Krädel.
"That day, I lost Sion."
***
The mission objective was to penetrate deep into the Legion hive 'Nigredo,' install a communication device, and maintain the connection for at least five minutes.
The time limit was three hours.
It was an easy assignment.
So much so that until we set out, Sion and I had been chatting idly.
How nice it would have been if previous semester assignments had been like this too.
More importantly, what should we have for dinner afterward?
......Trivial things like that.
It was not long after the two of us entered the operation zone that it happened.
A massive horde of Legions swept through the area around Nigredo.
We barely managed to find a hiding place and waited there for support.
But even after several hours, the Academy's reinforcements never came.
No longer able to gauge how much longer we could hold out, we were forced to make a decision.
One of us would act as bait and draw the Legions' attention while the other used the confusion to return to headquarters and request support.
At first, I chose to act as the bait.
Around that time, I was an adult, and above all, I was Sion's commander.
I was responsible for protecting Sion, and I thought I should be the one to face the danger.
It wasn't exactly irrational self-sacrifice.
Faced with the Legions' wave assaults, a human like me and a defective model like her were equally powerless anyway.
But in Sion's eyes, I must have still been the child who would always fall asleep in her arms.
She stubbornly insisted on acting as the bait, and in the end, I couldn't talk my childhood friend—who was like a mother to me—out of it.
So I promised I would 'absolutely bring back support troops,' sent her out first,
and returned to headquarters alone.
And there, my request for reinforcements was denied.
Before explaining why, there was one fact I needed to establish first.
In fact, while we'd been waiting for reinforcements in that hiding place, the Academy had already known exactly what situation we were in.
They were simply taking far too long debating whether to rescue us.
It was a matter of cost.
If they deployed forces to rescue two people, losses would surely occur.
So the question of cost was: were those two people worth that much loss?
While they were arguing over it, I made it back alive on my own.
At that point, the instructors who had been fiercely divided suddenly united behind one conclusion.
That if it was a useless biodroid with no value compared to the rescue cost, they could safely abandon her and leave.
So the instructors marked Sion as killed in action and, relieved that equipment had been sacrificed instead of a human, announced that they were returning to campus.
And I lost my shit.
I couldn't remember exactly, but apparently I'd hit one of the instructors too.
Because it was written in the disciplinary report.
Looking back, I shouldn't have done that.
They weren't the kind of people who'd listen just because I punched them.
If beating them up could have earned Sion the right to be rescued, I'd have kept swinging until my own flesh-and-blood fists—unlike Laika's, impossible to repair—shattered. But resorting to meaningless violence was still my mistake.
Not that I thought I could have held back even if I'd been sent back in time to do it again.
Even if I repented, one of those instructors would have spouted the exact same words he did back then.
—If a biodroid dies, can't you just buy a new one?
—Biodroids exist to die in place of humans.
—It's not even a proper unit. Why make such a fuss over a defective one used as a partner?
How could anyone hold back after hearing that? A punch to the face.
Of course, none of that made the instructors cave to my violence and order Sion's rescue.
Instead, immediately after I landed one blow, Academy biodroids restrained me and dragged me back in custody.
If it had ended there, maybe I wouldn't have been assigned to Krädel.
But I caused one incident after another before my disciplinary waiting period was even over.
And not minor ones, either—I deserted and charged into a Legion hive alone.
The reason was very simple. That evening, a signal device I had put in my pocket and forgotten about started blaring an alarm.
It was a rescue request.
Sender: Sion.
Transmission location: the hive 'Nigredo,' which had been occupied by a large force of Legions after the last attack.
I knew the Academy wouldn't act just because I showed them the signal. That was why I'd decided to go after her alone if I had to.
......Though in the end, I was subdued again before I could even reach the signal's location.
I hadn't known it, but apparently, the Academy had been keeping me under intensive surveillance.
Anyway, after that.
I graduated from the Academy and was assigned to a field base.
The posting was Krädel, the garbage forward base where all the washouts were dumped.