Rielly and the Commander
The sight that met her when she opened the door was, without question, one she knew by heart.
Of course it was. In all the years since the Commander had first taken her post, Rielly had seen it more times than she could count. And that was precisely why she had pictured it just as often. The woman who had vanished without a word to anyone had not come back for two entire years.
...Yes. Two years.
It had been hell.
Operatives driven half out of their minds had torn Firma apart from the inside and scoured every inch of the Continent, but they hadn't found so much as a single footprint. After more than half a year of that, their hearts had broken one by one. A handful had refused to give up and kept searching, but even that had been compulsion rather than hope. Which meant, in the end, they had broken all the same.
Rielly, like everyone else, had sunk into despair and cried herself exhausted for days on end. Then one day, as if something had taken hold of her, she had started cleaning the office.
What had she been thinking? She couldn't quite remember what had driven her to begin. But the office as she had first found it that day—that, she still couldn't forget.
A room where only the Commander and her Adjutant ever worked. The wide desk was usually buried under hills of paperwork, a coffee cup always sitting beside the monitor. Whoever held the Adjutant post that day would cling to her in their own way, while the Commander, always expressionless, poured herself entirely into the work.
...It had always been the same landscape. And yet, as if all of that had been nothing but a cruel illusion, the office she had entered after so long was desolate in the truest sense of the word.
First and foremost: the Commander was gone. The woman who, barring the occasional trip, had always been at that same desk at the same hour was no longer there. She had vanished without a word to anyone, without a trace.
The Adjutant was gone too. Without a Commander, no one could be appointed to the post. The last time anyone had been able to serve as Acting Commander had been a year and eight months ago, when she had still been setting the schedule herself.
Naturally, no paperwork made it this far either. No matter how much the people below processed, there was no one left to give final approval. And no operatives came by for anything outside of work anymore. There had only ever been one reason any of them visited this place privately.
...With the Commander gone, what reason was there to come?
And so it was desolate. The office that had been quiet yet faintly alive was gone. All that remained was an empty desk, an office chair, and the dust piled thick upon them.
In a way, it was only natural. This was a space overflowing with memories of the Commander—which was exactly why everyone had deliberately stayed away, afraid it would stir up feelings they had barely managed to bury.
...Perhaps that would have been the right choice for her, too. Every early morning she had swept the dust-choked floor and wiped down a desk without a single sheet of paper on it, and she had cried more times than she could count. Even so, her feelings had gone numb, and eventually she came every day out of a sense of duty, just to clean.
...Yes. That was how it had been.
"Ah..."
What on earth was she looking at now?
Paperwork piled past the hills and into a mountain, and nestled in the midst of it, a single person. A face as expressionless as if cold composure itself had been poured into a mold. Beneath fox-sharp eyes, amber irises flicked between documents and monitor. Then, as if pausing to think, she tapped the desk a couple of times. Soon her hands were moving this way and that, and before long she stacked the paper she'd been holding to her right, as if she were done. Then, as naturally as breathing, she reached left and began the whole sequence over again.
Rielly had knocked, but the Commander didn't seem to have heard a thing; she was still absorbed in her work. The atmosphere was entirely different from yesterday. Yesterday she had managed well enough, but a beginner's inexperience had still shown through here and there. Now, this was the Commander she had been in the past. Even the little habits she showed while she worked.
"Comman...der?"
Her voice trembled. The strength went out of her hands. She at least managed not to drop the roster she was holding—but something was slowly blooming in her chest. What if. What if the Commander had gotten her memories back...
"...Hm?"
As that hope took root, her eyes met the Commander's, who had been reaching for the next document. That same blade-sharp gaze from the past made her heart lurch, and her body locked up.
Ordinarily she would have walked right up without a second thought. But it had been so long since she'd faced that look—and the fact that she had been thinking of the old Commander, standing right in front of her, felt somehow like a terrible thing to do.
She was afraid. Had the Commander noticed what was in her heart? This woman without her memories was still her, wasn't she? Wouldn't it look ugly, the way Rielly kept chasing only the past? Would the Commander find her repulsive, for drawing some arbitrary line between who she had been and who she was now?
"...Rielly?"
...But in the next instant, the Commander's face, which had been nothing but cold, flooded with panic.
"W-wait, Rielly? Did something happen?"
"...?"
"Why... are you crying?"
...Crying? Her?
Before she even had time to process that, the Commander shot to her feet. The documents she had so carefully organized went flying in every direction from the force of it. But the Commander didn't care in the slightest. She shoved her chair back, ran to Rielly, and took her hands firmly in her own.
Even as the Commander's lovely hands rose slowly to her eyes, Rielly still couldn't believe she had been crying—until the moisture on those slender fingers proved the Commander hadn't been lying.
"Are you okay? You're not hurt, are you?"
"Ah, I..."
"Wait—did someone in the Information Department say something awful to you? Is that it?"
The Commander fumbled, at a complete loss, and yet she was genuinely worried. The way she was trying so hard to soothe her wasn't exactly familiar. But it wasn't awkward, either.
...So she could make a face like that. So naturally.
...The Commander of the old days would have pulled out a handkerchief with that offhand air of hers and given her a few pats. To think she could change this much from the simple fact of having no memories. Honestly. She looked like a fox, but she acted just like a puppy.
Yes. The Commander in front of her was, without a doubt, a little... different from the woman she used to be. But the warmth she carried looked so much like someone Rielly had known. Before she knew it, she had thrown her arms around her.
"...Rielly?"
"Thank... you..."
The Commander, ambushed without warning, went still—but Rielly only held on tighter. As captain of the internal security unit, she had wanted to say something a little more composed. But the feelings she had dammed up burst like a levee, flooding in all at once, and the words wouldn't form properly.
Still... she didn't stop.
"Thank you... for coming back..."
"..."
"Thank you... truly, thank you..."
It felt like something she had to say, right now. And with those words, as if it were the first day their clocks—theirs, and hers—had started ticking again, she buried her face in the Commander's shoulder and wept without end.
The Commander simply held her in return, saying nothing.
Yes. Getting the Commander's memories back... of course that mattered. It did, but...
...Even so.
For now, maybe this wasn't so bad either.
I was a little startled when Rielly suddenly threw herself at me, but at what she said next I quietly shut my mouth. Whatever I wanted to ask, I could always do it after I'd taken this in. There was no rush.
...Déjà vu?
This felt awfully familiar. Hadn't she done the exact same thing on our first day? I'd been sitting in the office, Rielly had opened the door, and she'd come in crying and just... grabbed me.
...A lot of the middle bits were different, sure, but the result was the same, wasn't it? And what I could actually do about it was the same now as it had been then.
"Hic... hh-hic..."
Good grief...
I gave Rielly, who was clinging to me for dear life, a few quiet pats. Honestly, where had they even rounded up all these crybabies. It felt like just yesterday I'd been walking around with this oversized sniffling maid and watching her dissolve into a sea of tears, and here we were again.
The sight of beauties who could fold a person in half if they felt like it all coming at me and me alone had been pretty novel at first. I knew well enough they weren't cold-blooded types, but they were operatives of a military corporation. I hadn't expected them to be this emotional.
...Wait. It really was just yesterday, wasn't it. I'd gotten possessed the day before yesterday... so yeah. It really was just yesterday. I'd been through so much in two or three days that it felt like a week had passed.
So just how much more was this world planning to put me through... my vision went dark just thinking about it...
Well... still...
Being treated like someone precious... that part felt good. Was this what people's warmth was like? Something warm, something soft... I'd never had anything like this in real life. My heart was actually racing.
Of course, that kindness wasn't entirely directed at me... but so what. Honestly, if it was happiness like this, I was allowed to enjoy it a little, right?
...
...
...Wait.
This is... going on a little too long, isn't it...?
She squeezed.
"Uh, Rielly...?"
"Just a little... longer, please..."
When, exactly, was I supposed to get back to work...?