The Commander's Business Trip (1)
"Hahh... I'm wiped...."
I'd barely managed to shake off Cardia, who had been pushing sleeping pills on me with a suspiciously eager gleam in her eye.
I mean, I had work in the afternoon. Sleeping pills? Really? And if I took them wrong, I'd wreck the daily rhythm I'd worked so hard to lock in. What was she trying to do to me...?
"You're back? What's my little sister been saying?"
"Don't even ask. I just got chewed out...."
I'd fled back to the office like a woman on the run, and Calia — who'd clocked in ahead of me — was already there to greet me. I gave her curiosity a halfhearted answer and dropped into my chair with a thud.
Under ordinary circumstances, I would have gotten straight to work. But I'd been marched all over the place for a health checkup on an empty stomach, and Cardia had clung to me the entire time until I was running on fumes. Right now, all I wanted was a minute to breathe.
"Heh. That's what you get for never exercising."
"...And when exactly am I supposed to find the time?"
"You still have to do it. What, you just shower and pass out every night after work?"
"Ugh... I don't wanna...."
No one would ever doubt they were sisters. They even nagged in the same key. And the worst part was that she was right, which meant I couldn't even argue.
Beating me over the head with facts? That's cheap. A fair fight is supposed to be propaganda and outright lies.
...I'd still lose, though, wouldn't I? Depressing.
A sigh rose from somewhere deep in my chest, helpless and heavy. Exercise... did I actually have to start?
Health was health, but I hated moving, and I hated sweating even more. This was a world where technology had leaped ahead — surely there was some method that didn't involve working out?
...More to the point, how did Calia know what I did after I clocked out?
...Does it even matter?
She'd probably just taken a guess. It wasn't exactly a puzzle. The daily routine of an out-of-shape office worker who never exercised? Anyone could see I'd drag myself home and collapse, and the only thing you do while collapsing is lie there. It'd be weirder if she didn't know. You could grab a stranger off the street and they'd tell you the same thing.
That aside, there was something I'd been meaning to ask her. Was it all right to bring up? It'd come out of nowhere, sure — but it was a simple enough question. It'd be fine.
"Hey... Calia."
"Mm?"
The moment I opened my mouth, Calia's gaze — which had been processing work in my place this whole time — pinned itself on me. No: her eyes had been locked on me since the second I walked through the door. Her hands had kept moving anyway, but the instant I spoke, she tossed the work aside and turned her whole body toward me, as if to ask what on earth could possibly matter more than this.
...That was suddenly a lot of pressure. Was this normal? It had to be normal, right?
"So, uh. Cardia mentioned something. Did you used to smoke?"
"Huh? Ah... yeah. I did."
I asked with a faint twist of unease, and Calia hesitated in a way that was nothing like her. It was a reaction I'd never seen, and it made me tense up right along with her; our conversation cut out all at once. I had no idea why she was acting like that. On my end, I was just rolling the question around in my head, wondering if I'd put my foot in it.
"..."
"..."
I couldn't say how long we sat like that. The silence, which had felt plenty long from where I was sitting, finally broke, and Calia glanced at my face as if testing the water before she asked again.
"...Are you disappointed?"
"No. Nothing like that."
Disappointed? What a thing to say. I hated the smell of cigarettes, that much was true — but I didn't go around shunning smokers on principle. Don't light up in the street, clean up your own butts, and that's plenty as far as I'm concerned.
"...Then?"
"I was just curious how you quit. It's not the kind of thing people drop easily."
The real reason I'd asked was simple: I wanted to know how she'd actually pulled it off. From what I'd seen, those carcinogen junkies would try everything — nicotine gum, candy, you name it — and the ones who actually clawed free of nicotine's grip you could count on one hand. That was why it always made the list of things you were better off never touching in the first place. In some ways, it wasn't all that different from a hard drug.
So when I'd heard Calia had quit... I'd wanted to know whether it had come easy because her kind was built different, or whether she'd had some special reason. That was all. Pure curiosity.
"...Mm. It's not a fun story."
...And that was all it was supposed to be. Starting off like that already had me nervous.
"So, two years ago... the Commander vanished out of nowhere, right?"
"Uh... yeah. She... did?"
"I quit around then."
Something about the way this was going sat wrong with me. I couldn't put a name to it, but it was something. What was she about to say that she'd open on a subject that poked me straight in the conscience...?
That look in her eyes, darker and deeper than usual — it was the look of someone dragging up a memory, wasn't it? And when people dragged up memories, they usually weren't the good kind....
Should I change the subject, even now? Wouldn't everyone be happier that way?
Unfortunately, while I was sitting there with my mouth shut, Calia's story didn't stop.
"It wasn't some grand reason or anything. I just... tried smoking by myself, and it felt a little lonely, you know?"
"Well. The only person who ever smoked with me was the Commander."
"Maybe that's why... quitting wasn't all that hard."
And at the end of it, I found myself staring at a wall. She was laying it out as if it were nothing — calm, almost offhand. But the feeling in those violet eyes was as far from calm as it was possible to get. Worn down so thoroughly that even the tears had dried up, maybe.
Did I even have the right to comfort her?
I'd made up my mind to become the Commander in the truest sense, but the knot that tied itself in my chest at times like this was something I couldn't do anything about. Of course I hesitated. Whether it had been deliberate or not, I would never know now. But the wound had been dealt by someone who was me, and also wasn't — and was I allowed to go rummaging through it, pretending I could gather it up and hold it?
Who did I think I was?
"..."
While I sat there with nothing to say, Calia slipped a hand inside her coat and drew out a cigarette pack, the cardboard gone a little grimy with age. She'd said she quit — and yet the way she produced that pack was so natural it might have been flowing water, as if today was hardly the first time she'd carried it.
...So for all her talk, some lingering attachment to "the Commander" had been riding around in her pocket this whole time.
My heart gave a small, mean twist. Maybe I shouldn't have dropped the game. Even if I hadn't played hard, if I'd at least logged in every day... would everyone have been happier?
I didn't know. At first I'd thought of "the Commander" and myself as two separate people. Now... I wasn't so sure.
"...Would you look at that. Exactly two left."
"..."
"Wanna... try one?"
"...No. Another time."
I wasn't going to just stand there like an idiot, at least. It wouldn't be easy — but if I could overlay me on top of "the Commander" in everyone's eyes... maybe that would be a way of holding the wound and atoning for it, both at once.
How "the Commander" had lived before this, I had no more interest in knowing, and no need to. I was the Commander now. I was going to change all of it.
"If Cardia catches me, I might actually die."
"...Pfft. What is that."
The answer visibly startled her, but it didn't take long for Calia to settle back into herself. The mouth that had turned down began to lift, and the look in her eyes cleared by a shade. She gave me a pointed, faint little smile, clicked the lid of the pack shut... and tossed it straight into the trash, as if she had no more use for it at all.
"Well. If the Commander isn't gonna smoke... not like I've got a reason to, either."
"It's not that I won't. I can't. Get Cardia's permission and I'll smoke with you."
"Heh. So never, then?"
The air between us was far lighter than it had been a minute ago. We traded jokes with a mountain of work sitting untouched behind us, and at some point Calia started clinging to me — and I didn't push her off. Part of it was the mood, but it was more than that. It wasn't the usual kind of contact, the kind where she'd lock her arms so I couldn't run or bury her face somewhere she shouldn't. It was closer to being spoiled. Acting cute.
It hadn't been part of any calculation, but I was happy anyway. It felt like I'd taken a step closer to what I wanted: a relationship where we could come to each other without the ranks getting in the way, without putting on a show.
...Wasn't this exactly the kind of bond I'd hoped for, between me and the operatives?
That was when it happened.
A chime cut through the air.
"Hm?"
I glanced at the work screen toward the sudden notification, and found an email waiting. I hadn't set alerts for internal reports, which meant this had come from outside Firma. Had there been any reason for outside contact? None had arrived while I was here, at least.
I gave Calia — who had buried her face in my thigh — a rough, absentminded pat, and reached for the mouse, figuring I could at least check the sender.
"...Calia."
"Mm, what is it, Commander?"
...I should have looked at this later.
"If our people start prepping for a business trip tomorrow, how long does that usually take?"
"...A business trip? Two or three days, tops, even if they're slow. Why?"
"Nothing major. That plan I mentioned before."
To cut to the chase: it was, in fact, contact from outside. The problem was that the thing was a banquet of rambling prose from the opening line to the closing one. Fortunately, picking the meat out of it wasn't difficult. The sentences actually worth anything, as far as I could tell, numbered exactly three.
"Looks like we'll have to move it up."
Those three sentences alone were reason enough for me to go.