Commander, and Commander
Just as my brain, having independently diagnosed that I was well and truly fucked, was about to send itself on an unsanctioned tour of the five stages of denial, I gently took Lucy's hand.
"...Hm? Commander?"
It was an impulsive move, made without a second to weigh the circumstances — but it succeeded in pulling Lucy's attention my way. What's more, perhaps thanks to a third party suddenly inserting themselves into the mix, the frosty atmosphere thawed a degree or two. I still had no idea why the two of them had been locking horns... but whatever. Didn't matter.
"I want to get up..."
"...Hah?! Y-you do?"
I made the request as naturally as I could the moment her eyes were on me, and Lucy, surprisingly, helped me up without a fuss. There was a slight delay, and her hands lingered a little too long at my waist... but that much I could live with.
I'd been worried she might press my shoulders back down and tell me not to get up, but that had been a needless fear. If she had, I might not have gotten a chance to talk at all today. Thank god for that...
Misunderstanding or not... I need to clear this up, fast.
The last thing I wanted after possessing this body was to get hauled in under the age-of-consent laws.
You might ask why I needed to resolve something that could perfectly well wait until later. Fair question. But I had my reasons for being this urgent.
I felt bad for Lucy, but if her feelings were genuine, this was a problem that needed solving as quickly as possible either way... and more than that, I couldn't just laugh it off as a joke. Because the look on Rielly's face, which I'd caught out of the corner of my eye, was growing colder by the second.
...Terrifying. Better get this over with.
I cleared my throat once to collect myself, roughly smoothed down the hair that had gotten mussed from lying down, and asked Lucy:
"Lucy, that thing just now... what was that about?"
"The stray cat? Well, 'cause I'm gonna be the Commander's groom, obviously?"
"No, no, not that! Before that!"
I urged her on in a hurry, doing my best to endure Rielly's increasingly glacial stare. Sorry, Rielly. But if I didn't set this straight here and now, I had no idea how it would come back to bite me later.
I'd have loved nothing more than for this to be me overreacting, but looking at that triumphant expression on Lucy's face... well. At the very least, it didn't look like a lie.
...By the way, she was calling herself the groom? Did that make me the bride? Strictly speaking I was the one in charge here, so shouldn't I be the groom? I used to be a guy, too — groom felt a lot more natural than bride.
...No, wait. That was not the issue.
"M-marriage? What's this all of a sudden?"
"...Commander?"
"That's a joke, right? Right?"
Yeah. Of course it was a joke. There was way too much standing in the way for it to be anything else. The age gap between a minor and an adult, different species, the vertical relationship of boss and subordinate at work. And most importantly... for now, we were both women, weren't we?
Then... we couldn't even do it in the first place, right?
The marriage I knew of was, generally speaking, something that happened between a man and a woman. It wasn't that I held any particular prejudice against same-sex relationships. There was just such a thing as the common sense the world ran on. Even if this wasn't reality — even if it was this place — I doubted it was all that different.
So however Lucy had come to harbor that idea... I needed to set her straight, here and now....
"Commander."
"Y-yeah?"
"Don't tell me you forgot?"
...I was saying?
"Don't pretend you don't know. You promised."
"P-promised what?"
Her reaction was... off. The bright, beaming smile had already shifted into something uncomfortably close to Rielly's, and with that same expression she was closing in on me. The tone of her voice hadn't changed... but there was something else in it now, something different from before, and that was more than enough to keep me from relaxing.
A chill ran down my spine.
"Do you have any idea how worried I was for two years? And you just... completely stopped caring?"
"Hngh, Lucy...?!"
"You said you'd think about it... you said you'd seriously consider it...!"
With a cry that was nearly a scream, both my shoulders were seized in an instant. The strength she'd used when she laid me down before had been nothing, I realized. If she put in even a little more force, I was certain my bones would shatter on the spot. If I made even a clumsy attempt to run... today might well be the day I lost both arms.
Ugh...
I was talking about it like it was nothing, but honestly, it hurt. An ominous grinding had started coming from my shoulders, little by little — that should tell you enough. Fortunately she still seemed to be holding back, but whether her emotions were getting the better of her... the grip of her hands was growing stronger, bit by bit.
"Was all of it a lie?"
"Lu-cy..."
"Why aren't you saying anything?"
The words wouldn't come out properly. But in the midst of a pain I had never experienced in my life, what I actually felt wasn't fear or terror.
"Answer me..."
"..."
"Answer me...!"
Bewilderment. The fact that I couldn't answer a question she was asking so desperately — that was what filled me with bewilderment. No — I couldn't even be sure I had the right to give her an answer. Because I wasn't the Commander. Not really.
Lucy, who had kept a bright smile on her face the entire time, even in the face of Rielly's venomous glare. That smile had been wiped away, and now she was pouring her rage onto me, unable to hold it back. Faced with that raging torrent of emotion... I could do nothing. Because I knew nothing.
...Ah.
That was when it truly sank in. Here, I was a complete outsider.
The Commander who had claimed victory on every battlefield through genius tactics and strategy at Firma, who had won everyone's trust with her particular brand of eloquence and generosity of spirit — she was gone. What sat here now was nothing more than an ordinary person who had, through no will of her own, tumbled into this world without the faintest idea what she was doing.
...Possessor, transmigrator, whatever you wanted to call it. What good was any of that. I knew nothing, and I could do nothing.
"Miss Lucy. That's enough."
Just as the sense of powerlessness was beginning to swallow me, Rielly caught Lucy's wrist, and I could breathe again. She had left the situation to my discretion even though she clearly hadn't liked it, but it seemed she had judged that the atmosphere was taking a turn for the worse. Perfect timing.
The arrows that had been flying solely at me were about to turn toward her, when—
Rielly dropped a bombshell, out of nowhere.
"...What?"
"It's the truth. She appears to have our existence itself in her head, but she has no idea what she actually did with us."
With those words, the room went still. I had nothing to say, so that was one thing. Lucy, who had been the driving force of this whole situation, froze on her feet, and Rielly... seemed to be giving her time to come back to reality.
How long did that last.
"...That's a lie."
A single, dying-breath of a sentence from Lucy broke the silence that had settled so thickly over us.
"A lie... then why only now?"
"There was no time to tell you. She was only found late yesterday, after all."
"..."
...She was right. I hadn't gone around announcing that I had amnesia. I'd toured the company with Rielly yesterday, sure, but time had been tight, and... when someone was clinging to me sobbing their heart out, dropping actually, I don't remember anything wasn't something I could follow through on. I'd been planning to put out a notice soon, or gather everyone and tell them myself.
The problem was, that had just become a disaster for Lucy.
"Ah... ugh..."
Lucy, who had in a single stroke committed insubordination against a mentally ill superior, went ashen. The hands that had carefully released me wandered aimlessly; her lips twitched, parting and closing. In the end, not knowing what else to do, the choice she made as she fidgeted was to run.
"Sorry, Commander. I'm gonna go."
"Lu... Lucy?"
"I'm really sorry. I'll just..."
She shot out of the room before I could even catch her, and I couldn't get a word in. Well. I was fine, honestly. A little unsettled, maybe, but I wasn't hurt, and I'd achieved my goal either way.
She wouldn't be bringing up marriage for a while. And even if she tried to help me recover my memories, she would eventually feel like I was a completely different person. Which I was, of course — but saying that would only add to the confusion. I might even end up on the wrong end of a blade.
...More than that, I hoped the droplet that had run down her cheek at the end was just my imagination.
"Hahh..."
"Commander? A-are you all right?!"
"I'm fine. I'm fine, so..."
The tension snapped all at once, and the strength drained from my body as I collapsed onto the sofa. ...I was a little tired, but I wasn't lying — I really was fine. The only part that had come close to not being fine was my shoulders, and Lucy had managed to control her strength to the end, so there was no lingering pain to speak of.
So I stopped Rielly from scooping me up on the spot, and slowly closed my eyes as if drifting off to sleep.
"Just... let me stay like this for a bit."
Leaning into the plush sofa, I quietly sorted through my thoughts. Lucy's behavior had been a bit excessive, sure, but thanks to it, I had gotten a crystal-clear picture of the reality I was in.
No matter that I was a possessor, that I had played Phirma more times than I could count, that I had pushed through the entire story from the other side of a screen that fit in the palm of my hand... none of that was worth a damn right now. Those things were already in the past, and what came next was, for me, quite literally uncharted territory. Of course it was.
Setting aside the incident with Lucy, I had managed to get through today's work thanks to the abilities imprinted in the Commander's body... but whether that would hold for anything beyond paperwork was anyone's guess.
...Yeah. I needed to admit what needed admitting.
Even if I wore the Commander's face, it was nothing more than a shell. I was not Phirma's "player." I had not become the Commander of the military corporation Firma. For now, I was still just an outsider.
...For now.