Disgusting Human (3)
And a few days later.
Sergeant Müller stood before me with a proposal I had never expected.
“Become my adopted daughter.”
“…Ugh?”
I let the water-soaked cloth drop straight from my mouth.
My abdominal injuries still hadn’t healed, so every time I took in moisture I had to hold a cloth between my teeth and chew.
They said a perforation had opened near my stomach… it was a complicated story, so I simply stopped listening.
I hadn’t known it at the time of the avalanche, but apparently a rock had lodged itself in my belly.
No—now is not the time to be thinking about that.
I briefly chewed over the words Sergeant Müller had just spoken.
Adopted daughter?
Had I heard that correctly?
He kindly repeated himself a second time.
“I said become my adopted daughter. Chloe Winterland.”
“…Me, as the Sergeant’s?”
“That’s right.”
“…….”
“What’s the matter?”
“I simply cannot understand why the Sergeant would go so far as to care for me like this.”
Sergeant Müller began to explain.
It was an explanation of the privileges I would receive.
Nowhere in it was there any explanation of why he was looking after an orphan this carefully.
“Children of Imperial nobles are exempt from forced conscription until they reach adulthood.”
“…….”
“If your legal guardian is a noble, you can receive safe protection in the rear. Until you become an adult, that is.”
“A noble… are you?”
“A low-ranking noble with nothing left but the name, but yes.”
I stared blankly up at him.
First principle.
Survive, above all else.
This proposal was… quite sweet.
Safe under a guardian’s protection in the rear, drinking cocoa in a warm bed each morning.
If it meant escaping the war, that alone would have been fine, but…
I’ve already tasted it.
Becoming an adopted daughter meant stepping inside the fence called family.
It meant living under Sergeant Müller’s protection as his child.
I liked living safely. I was human, after all! There wasn’t a single person in the world who truly wanted to die, was there?
But what about yuryeol?
Meeting all kinds of people, collecting all kinds of expressions, all that attention you could harvest on the front lines—
I had already tasted it.
If Müller had made this offer before I ever had that taste, I would have accepted without a second thought.
…I don’t want to give it up.
I wasn’t saying I wanted to die. I wasn’t saying I disliked Müller’s proposal either.
I had simply grown greedy.
If I stayed on the front lines like this, I could meet so many more people…
It still wasn’t enough.
Just Misty, just Müller—the two of you weren’t enough to fill my stomach.
I fell silent for a moment and rewrote the script.
I could not speak the truth.
Sergeant Müller, I want to stay on the battlefield collecting people’s twisted expressions. So becoming your adopted daughter and living in safety is a rather disappointing option.
I could hardly say that, could I?
I needed wrapping paper.
The kind of wrapping paper that would force any adult who heard it to shut their mouth.
“I am truly grateful for the Sergeant’s proposal.”
“Then accept it.”
“But I cannot accept it.”
Sergeant Müller’s brow furrowed.
“Reason?”
“I am a citizen of the Kranz Empire, and a soldier.”
“…And?”
“I was born with magical aptitude.”
A young soldier filled with a sense of duty.
That was the name of the role I would play this time.
Let’s go with this concept.
“The director of the orphanage always said so. Magic is a blessing granted to the chosen, and aptitude is a duty bestowed by God.”
Sergeant Müller’s expression hardened a little more with every word.
A good sign.
“If there is a reason I was born in this body, then it must surely be for the Empire—”
“Enough.”
He cut me off.
He was angry.
“Is that the sort of thing they taught you at the orphanage?”
“…Sergeant.”
“Answer the question I asked.”
“Yes.”
“And you accepted that teaching without a single doubt?”
“I…”
I chose my words carefully.
In truth the director of the Winterland Orphanage did not believe in God. He was closer to an atheist.
Why would orphans believe in God in the first place? Because they needed something to lean on? Hardly. They might pretend for the free bread the church handed out, but they never truly believed.
“I was only trying to do what I had to do.”
“Nonsense.”
Sergeant Müller cut me off and rose from his seat.
He roughly seized my shoulder.
“God? God gave you a duty?”
“…….”
“There is no such thing as God. Not in this war, at least.”
The hand on my shoulder tightened.
A faint pain bloomed.
“Those four apostles the Holy Kingdom keeps prattling about? In the end they’re just strong humans. A little stronger than the rest, a little longer-lived. Their power simply got a fancy name slapped onto it!”
“…….”
“The Goddess has been silent for a long time. Or rather, I wonder if she ever spoke at all.”
His voice rose by degrees.
The mask was about to crack.
“Children are conscripted, sent to the front simply because they have magical aptitude, and the ones raised in orphanages are brainwashed with talk of blessings and duties.”
“…….”
“If God existed, would this damned war have dragged on this long? Chloe Winterland—answer me.”
“I… do not know.”
“Then I’ll answer for you. A god who sends children to the battlefield is better off not existing!”
That might have been a rather dangerous statement.
In the history books the orphanage director had shown us, the Goddess played quite an important role…
In a world where magic and divinity actually existed, was it even possible to deny the Goddess?
An incompetent yet benevolent god—that was usually the compromise people settled on.
“…I’m sorry.”
Sergeant Müller took his hand from my shoulder.
I studied his face.
The mask had broken.
The emotions he had been holding back leaked through the cracks, and the rough words and actions of a moment ago had been the result.
I was clearly eating his expression. Savoring it.
Strange.
Yes. It was strange.
Because looking at his face made me uncomfortable.
At last the right words came to me.
“Why does the Sergeant care for me this much?”
“…What?”
“I thought it strange from the first day we met. At the recruit processing center, at the orphanage…”
“…….”
“Why?”
The question was, to a certain extent, my genuine curiosity as well.
At first it had only been interest. A decent adult and a useful toy—that was the full extent of my evaluation.
Deep expressions, a sense of responsibility, a good soldier who nonetheless could not turn his back on a child.
Anyone could show kindness to a child, but did proposing adoption fall within the bounds of ordinary kindness?
Not even close.
I decided to show Müller the tiniest, the absolute tiniest sliver of my true feelings.
“Is it because you pity me? Because I am a child? Because my biological sex is female?”
“…Don’t talk like that.”
“Is it because I am beautiful?”
“Winterland.”
“Why?”
With every word I threw at him, Müller’s expression crumpled further.
Ah—wait. Could it be?
A sudden hypothesis brushed through my mind. Was that really the reason? Truly?
I decided to throw it.
“Perhaps… have you ever lost a child who resembled me?”
Sergeant Müller’s mouth closed.
His face hardened.
Was that the answer?
Had I hit it?
The hospital room fell quiet.
For a long while he said nothing at all, only stared at me.
Silence is clearer than any answer.
Hah…
I smiled inwardly.
A fully grown adult man was looking at me with an expression that might dissolve into tears if poked—what a peculiar satisfaction that brought.
“There was someone who resembled you. Someone who shone so brilliantly that simply looking at them felt as though you might go blind.”
“…….”
“She had silver hair like yours, and blue eyes.”
“…….”
“If you ask whether I pitied you—yes. I did.”
I kept my mouth shut.
“If you ask whether it was because you were young—that’s true as well.”
“…….”
“If you ask whether it was because you resembled someone—yes. That’s true too. I won’t deny it.”
This man was not looking at me. He was looking through me at someone already dead.
That fact irritated me a little.
I did not enjoy becoming someone’s substitute. Filling the empty place of a dead person in someone else’s memories was a role I declined.
Sergeant Müller continued.
“She was the Empire’s Twelfth Star, and she died on the battlefield.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Chloe, you were buried in the snow until your leg was ruined and your fingernails peeled off. You chewed magic stones just to crawl back alive.”
He looked at my bandaged hands.
“I could not simply stand by and watch the girl who survived that hell walk back onto the battlefield of her own free will.”
“I have a duty—”
“Not duty. Desire, more likely. Am I wrong?”
…Had he seen through me?
“I don’t know what you’re trying to achieve on the battlefield. I don’t want to know. But you are clever.”
“…….”
“The you I have seen is not a girl foolish enough to believe in God. Chloe.”
Not completely, but he had brushed close to the core.
I wanted to laugh.
Personally, I believed the end of my art—of yuryeol—was being found out.
I loved expressions. I loved the instant a person’s face twisted. That was why I played with other people’s emotions.
Ironically, the moment a human face twisted the most was the moment they were betrayed.
When he learned that the girl standing before him was in truth a vile monster—what kind of expression would Müller show me?
No.
Hmm. I almost let desire run away with me for a second.
Showing Müller right now what kind of human I truly was would be like plucking only the strawberry off a strawberry cake and eating it first.
I was the type who always saved the best bite for last.
The kind of person who scraped every last bit of cake away and left only the strawberry, then popped that strawberry into her mouth at the very end. That was me.
Wearing the faintest of smiles, I delivered my final answer to Müller.
“Sergeant Müller.”
“And the proposal?”
“…I must still decline.”
“Why?”
“Because it is my duty.”
Müller turned his back on me.
I was a little disappointed I could no longer see his face, but well—there was a certain atmosphere to it.
His back was enormously broad; it made for quite a fine tableau.
“You… simply don’t want to live that badly, do you.”
“…….”
Hmm. He seemed to have started misunderstanding on his own…?
I didn’t particularly feel like correcting the misunderstanding.
It looked like something I could make use of, after all.
First principle.
Survive, above all else.
Second principle.
Indulge in yuryeol in moderation.
I had just broken a principle I myself had set.
Sergeant Müller walked out of the hospital room without another word.