by SOW
Jacob pointed out the figure of a young girl running across the street. He couldn’t see her face, but there was no doubt it was her. The distinctive way her long hair was tied behind her head was exactly the same as the girl who had showered Lud with abuse the other day.
“She’s done something really nasty now...” Jacob was stunned.
Lud knew that Milly hated him, but he never thought she would go this far, and the realization made him feel more sadness than anger.
“.....................”
“Oh, Sven... You aren’t hurt, are you? Could you please go get the broom and dust pan and—”
Lud had just noticed Sven standing behind him, but his words were cut off.
“Unforgivable!”
It was a tone of voice that made those who heard it tremble, and even a former soldier like Lud, who had survived countless scenes of carnage and bloodshed, unconsciously stiffened up at the sound of it.
“Master... Pardon my request, but would it be alright if I took a break right now?”
“Uh, um, ah... y-yeah. G-Go ahead...”
Sven was an employee, and Lud was her employer. Normally, he would have said no and asked her to stay and clean up, but the frightening power inside her made that impossible.
“In that case, please excuse me.” Sven flashed a sudden, beaming smile and, picking up the rock that lay at her feet, she headed out of the store.
“Lud... Lud?”
Jacob tugged at Lud’s sleeve.
“Who’s gonna serve the customers? If you’re here the customers might run away again.”
“Oh, right!”
Lud looked at Jacob with a pleading expression.
“Please, Jacob!”
“Don’t ask a kid to help!”
Grabbing Jacob’s shoulders, Lud begged him as though he was asking Jacob to participate in a life-or-death battle.
Masking her violent rage, Sven held the forced smile she had shown Lud until she left the bakery.
Unforgivable!!
A dark flame welled up from deep inside Sven. She was now at her limit. Tockerbrot was Lud Langart’s sanctuary, and as his devoted servant, she now needed to defend it as she would a military position. An attack had been mounted. Worse, it had made the bread that Lud had taken great pains to create, unsalable.
Exiting the bakery, Sven immediately went after Milly. The girl running away was already a pinkie-sized speck in the distance.
“Target sighted and locked. Restricting all functionality to thirty percent power. Duration: three hundred seconds.”
Sucking in air lightly, in a small voice, a countdown began.
“Drei... Zwei... Eins... Null!”
In an instant, Sven vanished. Her movements were already faster than the human eye could detect.
She ran, and ran, and ran. After throwing the rock through the window, Milly took off, weaving her way through town. She had been born and raised in Organbaelz. She knew the back streets and secret passages where someone like Lud would get lost. There was no way he would catch up to her.
Serves you right, Wiltian military scum!
As she ran, a smile appeared on her face.
Milly prayed every day. She prayed with all her heart. Every day, without fail, she prayed for Wiltia’s annihilation. Ever since she was taught that God had once destroyed an entire village of evil people in one night, she had prayed to God.
But, no matter how much she prayed, Wiltia wasn’t destroyed. That bakery didn’t go away, either. In fact, customers had started to flock there.
I’ll never forgive them for taking my dad away!
So Milly made a move herself.
“Haa, haa, haaa...”
In a back alley, she stopped running and caught her breath. It was strange but she didn’t feel any better at all. Her actions were just. It was divine punishment. So why did she feel so awful?
“Ug... Ugh.”
She knew the truth. What she did hadn’t changed anything. She knew that it wasn’t the baker’s fault. But, if she didn’t hate someone, she would fall apart.
“... Shoot!” Milly spoke as if she was suffocating.
It was frustrating. The world, fate, and her own powerlessness; all of it was frustrating.
“It looks like you forgot something.”
“Huh?!”
Milly whipped around, and standing in front of her was the waitress from the bakery. She was smiling, but her smile looked like it was painted, as if on some kind of elaborate doll.
“This is yours, is it not, Fräulein?” The waitress raised her right hand, and she was holding the rock Milly had thrown.
How had she followed her? Milly had tried her best to use a path that someone new in town shouldn’t be able to follow.
Pop... grind... snap...
Milly heard a grating sound. It was the rock in the waitress’s hand cracking.
Crack.
It broke apart like a biscuit.
“My, my, my, my, it seems pretty fragile, doesn’t it? I tried to hold it delicately, like an egg.”
Sven played with the pebble fragments in her palm. As she did, the pebbles were quickly reduced to gravel, as though by a drill.
“Oh... Eh?”
The waitress was smiling. A bright smile, like she was enjoying herself, but it wasn’t a smile that came from affection, nor did it express any benevolence. It was the sort of smile a carnivore made after capturing its prey. Perhaps even the smile a carnivore made when it trapped its prey, not to eat, but to torture.
“You need to apologize and pay for the damages. All. Of. Them.”
While she scattered the remains of the rock in her palm, now nothing more than sand, Sven drew her face close to Milly’s.
“Eek!”
Sven looked at her with murderous intent. She looked ready to kill another person. And not just kill. It was a rage that could envelope someone, torture, make the other person struggle, and even make her opponent regret being born.
It wasn’t something that a fourteen-year old girl could endure. Milly was paralyzed with fright, and locking eyes with Sven, unable to even blink, she began to cry. She couldn’t stop her own trembling, shivering, and the chattering of her teeth.
Children are by definition immature, in both body and mind. They lack a sense of judgment and the ability to take responsibility for their actions. But even when a crime is committed by a child, there are damages.
So how should amends be made? Sven decided to demand it from this child’s guardian.
“Excuse me!”
They were at Marlene’s church, outside of town.
“Hello, who is it? Oh, Sven... Huh, Milly?!”
Seeing Sven holding Milly by the collar like a captured cat, Marlene let out a small cry of surprise.
The suspended girl was terrified and didn’t say a word. Sven had inflicted no physical harm on her but Milly was clearly her prisoner. Abusing prisoners was prohibited by international law. Sven had come to hand Milly over and demand an apology from Marlene, Milly’s guardian.
“Please, come inside.”
While Marlene was calming Milly down, Sven waited in the chapel with tea that Marlene had prepared for her. The tea leaves were cheap. They smelled musty. And the way it was prepared was unacceptable. Even dunking the delicious madeleines that Lud had baked in tea like this would not improve the flavor.
Sven took a single sip before returning it to its saucer. Marlene joined her.
“I am extremely sorry for the trouble that girl has caused. I will... I will absolutely compensate you for the window and the bread she destroyed.”
After Sven told her the details of Milly’s behavior, Marlene promised to pay for the damages. Sven knew that the church did not have much money.
“You don’t need to do that. At any rate, I am sure that Master will simply overlook this.”
Sven could easily imagine Lud saying that himself. This was exactly why Sven felt that Milly’s actions were unforgivable. Lud
was always considerate of others, and Milly had trampled all over his kindness.
“How exactly can I make amends for her actions...”
Marlene was thinking that while Milly had cursed at Lud before, this time her actions were malicious.
“In that case...”
Don’t come near Lud ever again.
Catching herself before she said it aloud, Sven stopped.
“Yes?”
“No, it’s nothing.”
Marlene asked her again, and Sven immediately evaded the question. Lud wouldn’t want that, Sven thought. It would probably make him unhappy.
“I understand that this will sound like I’m making excuses for her, but... It’s just, Milly has a complicated story—”
“I know,” Sven replied, bluntly. Lud had told Sven Milly’s story two nights ago.
Milly’s father was a militiaman. Pelfe had been the victim of a long military invasion from the larger August Federation to the north. Several years ago, August was an imperial monarchy but after the working people renounced the monarchy, there was a revolution. It was supposed to become a “Nation of Freedom and Equality,” but instead it turned into a military dictatorship, and under the guise of “liberating” its neighboring countries, it began to invade them.
August’s policy was that even the people were a resource for the country. The adults and children of invaded countries were sent to the frigid edges of the north under the pretext of land reclamation and development.
The people of Pelfe rose up against August, and Milly’s father fought in the militia. In order to make Pelfe a place where his child could live in peace, he went off to battle, and never returned. Then—
“You know the story, don’t you? Pelfe could not maintain its independence and chose to become an autonomous region of Wiltia rather than be occupied by August.”
If they were unable to keep up the appearance of a sovereign nation, at least they would protect their pride as a people. But for the citizens of Pelfe, it was a bitter decision. Because they needed a buffer against the August Federation, Wiltia accepted Pelfe’s proposal, brought them into Wiltia by annexation, and joined them to fight against the Federation.
“Wiltia gave formal recognition to the Pelfe Militia. Since Milly’s father was killed in action, he was mourned as a soldier who fought for Wiltia, and Milly should have been given a bereaved family’s annual pension,” Marlene’s voice was soft and sad.
But, Milly was abandoned by Wiltia. When Sven had heard the reason from Lud, she was stunned. Her father’s remains were never found. They didn’t pay her the pension because he might have fled the frontlines, and was considered nothing more than a missing person. That was what Milly was told.
It was absurd logic. In a lengthy war with artillery fire from tanks and cannons, aerial bombardments from airships, and battles against infantry and Hunter Units, it was rare for there to be remains of all the fallen soldiers. But the truth was that after the war, amid budget cuts, Wiltia had a hard time providing insurance to their own soldiers, so money was too scarce to give to the militia.
“For Milly, it was as though her father had been declared a coward. They stole the money she was owed, and her father’s pride as well.”
So Milly despised Wiltia. It was far too sad for her father to be treated as a deserter while his body lay dead on a battlefield somewhere.
Her father was tricked and killed by Wiltia. If she didn’t blame Wiltia, it was too cruel and heartbreaking for her to bear. Sven understood, but it was still unfair for her to blame Lud. And, Lud put up with this treatment.
On the way back to the bakery after visiting the church that night, Lud told Sven, “If that girl can find the willpower to continue to live by hating me, then that’s fine.”
He said it with a lonesome look on his face.
“Even still... if someday Milly eats my bread and tells me that it tastes good, nothing will make me happier.”
Lud believed that day would come. He believed that with time, even if the scars from the past could never completely heal, they would be able to help each other in some way.
“I understand how much hardship you have endured, however...”
Now, at the church with Marlene, Sven remembered what happened yesterday at the mine—how hard it must have been for Lud to insist to the miners that there was no poison in his bread, and tell them that they could throw out what he had put everything into baking. And then how painful it must have been for Lud to have the child he hoped to help throw a rock at his bakery.
“Does that give her the right to blame someone trying frantically to keep his head above water? He doesn’t ask anyone for help... she is cruel... to him...”
If Lud said the word, she would massacre all of the people that would harm him. But Lud definitely didn’t want that. He wouldn’t even dodge a rock thrown at him. As if that was his atonement for killing other people.
It was war and those were his orders. It was patriotism; killing for the sake of his homeland.
Now Sven laid her head down in sorrow, and made a weeping sound, but tears didn’t fall. Sven couldn’t cry. Even if she could exude water to moisten her eyes, Sven couldn’t secrete excess liquids in response to her emotions. Yet.
Marlene looked at her and asked, “You... You love Lud, don’t you?”
“—What?!” Sven lifted her head up with a look of shock.
“Absolutely not! I could never be so insolent!”
Sven was Lud’s shield, his armor, and his sword. The purpose behind her entire existence was to do what was necessary for him.
“Please don’t say such things! I’m nothing more than the Master’s tool...” As Sven spoke, she realized her voice was shaking.
A tool should not fall in love with its owner. But...
“You feel Lud’s pain stronger than you feel your own because he’s precious to you, isn’t that right?”
Marlene’s eyes seemed to peer into the depths of Sven’s heart. Sven was sure that Marlene had watched her sincerely trying her best to help this awkward man, and believed Sven must have an abnormal amount of affection for him. Her words stirred emotions in Sven that she wasn’t aware she had.
“... I will be taking my leave.”
Sven stood up but stumbled, grabbing the edge of one of the chapel pews.
“Are you okay, Sven?” Marlene reached out to steady her, but Sven straightened quickly and moved away.
If she was touched right now, that alone would be enough to make her collapse. Managing to walk alone, she left the church as quickly as possible.
“You’re wrong... I’m only... For the captain...” Sven muttered to herself in a daze as she walked down the street.
All she wanted was for Lud to be happy. But she hadn’t done a single thing for Lud, and she was seeking her own happiness instead. It was impossible. Her priorities were wrong.
She staggered and finally collapsed, without the energy to stand up. Sven didn’t need sleep. She was unconscious only during her maintenance hibernation and even then, she could control her ‘on’ and ‘off’ states at will. But now Sven lost consciousness, as if she had fallen asleep.
When she awoke, in the middle of pitch-black darkness, her body remained asleep. It’s a strange feeling, Sven thought. This is what dreaming must feel like.
Nonsense...
She couldn’t move her mouth to whisper, so she spoke inside her head. Dreams were something that humans experienced. She wasn’t human. And yet, why was she in this situation? She wondered if her thoughts were abnormal and her brain was malfunctioning. Then unexpectedly a person called out to her.
“Oh, this is a surprise. I thought that girl’s descendants disappeared from here long ago.”
Sven’s sense of sight wasn’t working, nor was her sense of smell, touch, or hearing, but she definitely perceived the voice. It was less like a voice, and more like a wave streaming through her, as if the warm, bright light of the sun’s rays has been converted into
sound.
“Hm... but, it appears that you were created slightly differently. Humans do some outlandish things. Using such a method to give birth to someone with that girl’s blood in her veins.”
Sven had no idea what it was saying, and seemed to laugh as she thought this. There was no blood inside her.
“No, no, that’s not what I mean.”
The voice admonished Sven, as it read her thoughts. There was no malice in the voice. It seemed to be trying to explain the situation.
“Well, that’s alright. You still aren’t aware of it. There’s no need to talk about it now, is there? But, a contract is a contract. You have the right to that.”
Right? Sven had no idea what the voice meant. What exactly was this voice? Sven wondered if she was indeed malfunctioning.
“Sooner or later, you will know everything. No, it doesn’t matter... I will be watching with great interest, who you choose in the end.”
The voice faded away. Sven’s consciousness once again began to sink back into the depths of darkness.
“Let us meet again. Far away, my...”
Before Sven could make out the final words, she again lost consciousness.
Inside Tockerbrot—The bakery had closed for the day and Sven still hadn’t returned. Customers who had come to see Sven left dissatisfied, but thanks to Jacob’s sociability, Lud was able to manage until it was time to close the shop. Jacob had gone home and Lud sat alone, staring at the broken window, now sealed up and covered with a sheet. He felt anxious as he waited for Sven’s return.
Lud knew Sven, and although he didn’t think anything had happened to her, he knew that she had a hard time restraining herself when she set her mind on something.
She looks calm, but has an explosive personality. Kind of like...
He thought back to his favorite unit that he had piloted in the military.
All the Hunter Units in his squad were equipped with an onboard, pilot-support AI, but Lud’s AI, Avei, was quite the worrier. When he suffered an injury, it would loudly request to run vitals checks. When Lud assured Avei that the wounds weren’t serious, it would admonish him, “Human bodies can suffer severe damage without being aware of it,” and list all such incidents in its records.
