by Shouji Gatou
Sousuke looked at his watch, then at the school’s clock. “It seems I was only two hours late,” he remarked. “The rush back proved worthwhile, then.”
“What are you talking about?” Kaname hissed, resisting the urge to lay him out on the spot.
“I came straight from the South China Sea,” he explained. “I only just arrived.”
Kaname didn’t know what to say.
In response to her silence, Sousuke gave her a shameless once-over, seeming only then to notice her gym uniform. “Were you having a match?”
“Yes. But thanks to someone’s bizarre arrival in some weird thing, my home run is ruined!”
“The next time you hear a helicopter, you should be more careful. Well, I should join the boys’ class...” He started to turn toward the gymnasium, then suddenly stopped and looked back. “By the way, Chidori...”
“What?”
“Are you mad about the promise yesterday?”
“Oh, no way! I’m not bothered in the slightest!” Kaname threw her arms open wide and shook her head, sarcasm on full blast. Unfortunately, her intent didn’t get through.
“I’m glad to hear that,” Sousuke said in tones of sincerity. “When I remembered my promise, I felt sure that you would be angry.”
She stared at him. “You forgot?”
“I did,” he replied. “Something very important came up, you see.” Then he turned at last and headed toward the gym, his steps light and backpack swaying. At first, Kaname couldn’t do anything but stand there with trembling, clenched fists. Then at last, she picked up the base at her feet and...
“Why, you...” She cast it at him, frisbee-style. She wasn’t aiming at anywhere in particular, but the base ended up hitting the back of Sousuke’s head—the one part of his body there was no way to train. He made no sound, but dropped his bag and backpack and collapsed onto the ground. “You idiot! I hate you so much!” Kaname yelled at him.
The infielder holding the ball took that same moment to approach and tag her out.
26 June, 1028 Hours (Japan Standard Time)
Sayama Suburbs, Saitama Prefecture
It took six hours by helicopter from the Tuatha de Danaan in the Pacific, during which the regular roar of the engine had become like a lullaby. The windows cut out a lot of light from the sky, and the craft was constantly vibrating—an environment that inclined Teletha Testarossa to doze. She wasn’t even dreaming; deep beyond the depths of consciousness, the usually hurried currents of her mind now sat as still as a lake.
“Colonel.” It took a moment for her to realize that she was being called. “Three minutes, Colonel.” Though she captained the submarine that served as their base, the ground forces of the Tuatha de Danaan called their commander-in-chief ‘Colonel’ rather than ‘Captain.’ It was a custom unique to Mithril, so as not to confuse it with the military rank.
Tessa stirred in her seat, then quickly opened her eyes.
“I’m sorry to interrupt you while you were resting, ma’am. We’ll be arriving in three minutes.” The young man addressing her was one Corporal Yang, dressed in his civilian clothing. Born in Korea, he was a member of their combat team, and used the same “Uruz” call sign as Mao and the others. He was currently serving as Tessa’s bodyguard.
“Where is Sagara-san?” she asked, looking around the cabin.
“The sergeant landed in Tokyo earlier. He asked me to thank you, ma’am.”
“I see...”
Sagara Sousuke... Like Corporal Yang, he was a combatant with the Uruz call sign. He had recently started attending school in Tokyo as part of a certain special mission. She was the captain and he was an NCO, so they didn’t have many chances to talk, and they weren’t particularly close... and yet, she found herself taking interest in him. Like her, he had a reason for being the youngest in his squadron, and she was a little bit curious about the life he’d made for himself at school.
“Now...” Tessa peeked into her hand mirror and straightened up her appearance. She fixed the collar of her blouse and pulled down the hem of her pencil skirt. She looked down from the window at their destination.
It was an open plot of white-walled buildings, nestled in the pine-covered hills. At a glance, it might look like a suburban college campus—though most campuses weren’t surrounded by tall fences, or patrolled by men in camouflage.
It was a technological research facility run by the Japanese Ministry of Defense, Tessa was told. It was generally unknown to the majority of the populace, designed to handle highly classified research, and it was where the boy in question was being held. The circumstances that had led to his capture might have come about by coincidence, but she was glad he was in custody; leaving him at large could have led to disaster.
“Landing now,” came the pilot’s voice through her headset as they descended. The facility’s helipad looked a bit small for their helicopter, but it was still easier for their pilot to handle than an emergency landing under gunfire.
Once they were on the ground, Corporal Yang helped Tessa down the gangway. Major Andrey Kalinin came to greet her, buffeted by the wind of the rotors. He was the commander of the Tuatha de Danaan’s ground forces, and he had arrived at the facility ahead of Tessa. He was a Russian, just past 40, broad-shouldered, and nearly 190 centimeters tall. He had a well-chiseled face, a gray mustache and beard, and gray hair to match, tied back into a tail. Tessa’s own hair being ash blonde, they looked a bit like father and daughter when they stood side-by-side.
“Thank you for coming all this way, Colonel, ma’am,” Kalinin said, his words managing to pierce through the helicopter’s roar.
“Oh, please,” she responded. “You called me because you need me, right?”
“Indeed.” Kalinin seemed unfazed by her slightly snide tone. On the submarine, he typically wore a uniform of a dull olive green, but now he was in a brown suit; plain though it was, it gave him a slight air of refinement.
“And who is this?” Tessa turned her attention to the Japanese man behind Kalinin. This one wore the utterly unremarkable navy suit of a bureaucrat; he appeared to be just past thirty, on the heavy side, and wore black-rimmed glasses.
“Shimamura, from the Ministry of Transport,” the man replied in fluent English. “I’m taking the lead on this incident.”
“A pleasure, Mr. Shimamura,” Tessa said.
“The pleasure is all mine, Dr. Testarossa.” Shimamura greeted her with a geniality that skillfully concealed his deep curiosity about her. Most people tended to be either amused or enraged to discover that a sixteen-year-old girl was such an important figure in Mithril’s clandestine organization; the fact that Shimamura was neither suggested that Kalinin had fed him a cover story in advance. “I am surprised how young and beautiful you are,” he was saying. “For a minute, I thought you were a girl in her mid-teens; I can hardly believe you’re really thirty.”
“What?” Tessa asked, surprised.
“Ah, excuse me. It’s bad manners in any country to speak of a lady’s age...” Shimamura then soberly began to walk, apparently expecting them to follow.
Tessa remained where she was, side-eyeing Kalinin. “Major. What did you tell him?”
“That you were a genius. As for the age issue, I thought it might be a stretch... but he seems to have bought it,” Kalinin responded lightly enough.
“Thirty...” Tessa looked over her petite frame. If there had been a mirror present, she might have started burning holes in her own face. “Do I really look that old?” she anxiously asked Corporal Yang, who stood nearby.
“I don’t know,” he said with a laugh. “Maybe you just work hard to look that way?”
An unpaved road ran through the forest about a kilometer from the facility. Cars rarely traveled that way, but it was currently home to a large black trailer, beside which a small group of men and women stood. All of those present were young—about twenty years old, give or take.
Despite their rather fashionable civilian clothing, a s
trange, silent tension hung over the group. They were watching a large transport helicopter descend toward the facility’s helipad. As it disappeared behind the trees, a man standing on the roof of the trailer lowered his binoculars and said, “The American army?” He glanced down at a woman standing on the road below, as if seeking her opinion on the matter.
“No,” the woman answered. She, too, was young, and dressed in a long red coat, despite the early summer. She had almond-shaped East Asian eyes and chestnut hair, which had been done in a mushroom cut. She possessed what many might describe as the face of classic beauty. “It lacked a national insignia, and the USFJ doesn’t have helicopters like that.”
“Then where are they from?” the man asked again.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?!”
“What does it matter?” she questioned. “We’re here to get Takuma out. If someone gets in our way, we get them out of it—end of story.”
“That’s pretty cold, Seina. They’ve got your dear little brother in there, remember? Aren’t you worried?” one of the men said teasingly.
“Of course I’m worried. We need him for the plan,” the woman called Seina replied dispassionately.
“That’s true...” Another of the men smiled a thin smile. “We can’t move that devil, the Behemoth, without Takuma. And once it’s up and running, even the JSDF will have to flee for the hills.”
“Yeah. No one can stop us,” another of the group said.
“We’ll burn that disgusting city down. I give it two days until the city center is rubble,” added another.
The woman called Seina stood silent at first, then said, “Let’s get ready for the raid.”
It was at that moment that they noticed a car approaching down the forest road. It was black and white—a police car. It was probably doing rounds in the area.
“What should we do?”
“You take the driver,” Seina ordered.
The car stopped next to the trailer. The driver, a young patrolman, looked like he was going to stay inside, while the head officer in the passenger seat stepped out. “What are you people doing here?” the elderly officer demanded. “Don’t you know civilian vehicles aren’t allowed here? Who’s the driver? I want to see your license. And what are you carrying in there?”
“Just rubbish.” Seina’s right hand, previously thrust into her right pocket, now whipped out. It held a pistol with a silencer, which she fired twice into the officer without batting an eye. It made a strange shu-shuw sound, and the officer died on the spot.
The patrolman in the car didn’t even know what had happened until two members of the group fired suppressor-attached submachine guns at him; the breaking of the windshield was louder than the gunshots.
“He’s dead,” one man said, peering at the driver, who now lay in a pool of blood.
Just then, the young patrolman let out a groan. “H... Help...”
With a slightly awkward expression, the man fired a few more times, this time at close range. “Well, these things happen,” he said with embarrassment as the patrolman’s moaning died out.
“Enough,” Seina said. “Clean up the corpses and let’s get moving. I’ll inspect the machinery.” She walked around behind the trailer and opened the double doors. Inside lay an arm slave; a kind of second-generation Soviet AS known as an Rk-92 Savage.
Seina threw off her coat, revealing a skintight orange operator’s uniform that hugged her supple form. It would have resembled a scuba diver’s outfit if not for the clunky G-suit, harness, and lock bolt.
“A prelude to destruction, eh?” she whispered, too softly to be heard.
26 June, 1233 Hours (Japan Standard Time)
South School Building, Jindai High School, Chofu, Tokyo
“C’mon, Sagara-kun. Head trauma can be serious business, you know?” Sousuke’s classmate, Kazama Shinji, said to him as they walked down the fourth floor hallway at lunch.
Shinji was an unassuming type, half a head shorter than Sousuke, with pale skin and wide eyes. He used to wear rather shabby-looking glasses, but he’d recently switched to contact lenses, which increased his fashionability a bit—that was the kind of boy he was.
“I’ll be fine, Kazama,” Sousuke responded glumly. There seemed to be more behind his despondence than the blow to the head he’d taken that morning.
“I hope so... You’ll make Chidori-san sad if you die. She’ll be weeping, ‘I killed him!’ while she slits her wrists in the bath.”
“I find that highly doubtful,” Sousuke replied. The words ‘I hate you!’ kept bouncing around in his mind. Chidori Kaname had had him on full ignore since the incident that morning, and since Sousuke was an inherently reticent person, he couldn’t come up with a pretense to approach her. Instead, he’d ended up agonizing his way through the first half of the day. “Chidori hates me.”
“Ahh, there you go again... You grew up in a war zone, but you can’t even stand up to Chidori-san? It’s pathetic, man, no joke.”
“I’m sorry.”
It was common knowledge around Jindai High that Sousuke had been raised overseas, in dangerous war-torn regions of the world. Yet most took that with a grain of salt and ended up labeling him “the weirdo returnee” or “the pain-in-the-ass transfer student.” Nobody knew that he was a member of super-secret military organization Mithril, and that he was an elite soldier on their special response team to boot. Nobody... except for one person.
The boys came to a stop in front of the student council room.
Sousuke had been granted a dubious title, “Head of School Security and Aide to the Student Council,” which mainly meant that they sent him on various errands during meetings and events.
Shinji had the more proper title of “Culture Festival Committee Vice Chairman.” Culture festival season was still a ways away, but June was around the time he was supposed to begin participating in executive committee meetings about preparation and funding.
“The president sure is hardcore,” Shinji remarked. “He still wants to hold meetings, even with term finals next week...”
“It is important to receive regular updates,” Sousuke observed before opening the door and entering the room.
Only three students were there: two first-years and one second-year, the accountant, all boys. The president was nowhere to be seen, even though it was almost starting time...
“Hey, isn’t there a meeting today?” Shinji asked.
A student in the corner glanced up from watching the room’s LCD TV. “No one told you it was canceled? He decided to call it off this week, since tests are coming up and there’s not a lot on the table...”
“Yeah, we never got the message.”
“You’re in class four, right? The vice president—Chidori-senpai should have known.”
“Sheesh, that’s mean of her... I guess we’ll head back to class, then. Darn it...” As Shinji turned to leave, grumbling, he happened to bump into a girl on her way in.
It was Kaname. She had been in her gym clothes when Sousuke met her that morning, but now she was in her summer uniform: a blue skirt and a white blouse with short sleeves, secured at the neck with a red ribbon. “Oh, Kazama-kun...”
“Chidori-san,” he said resentfully. “We saw you in class before. Why didn’t you tell us?”
Chidori Kaname, the student council vice president, cast a look in Sousuke’s direction before forcing a cheerful, friendly tone: “Hey, I’m sorry, Kazama-kun. It totally slipped my mind. We’ll really want your help next time, though, so I hope you forgive me. I’m really sorry. Please?”
“W-Well, I guess these things happen... T-Take care, okay?”
“No, these things don’t just happen. I promised the president I’d tell you, and forgetting a promise is the worst thing a person can do,” Chidori told him pointedly. “It’s an act of cruelty to the person you let down. If a man broke a promise to me, I’d never, ever forgive him.”
As he listened in, Sousuke fo
und a greasy sweat forming on his temples.
Shinji seemed to notice the tension in the air, and insisted, “No, i-it’s really not that big a deal... A-Anyway, I’m going back to class now...” Then he left.
With Shinji gone, Kaname’s face immediately lost its cheer. She turned a glare toward Sousuke, gave a “hmph,” and then walked toward the back of the student council room. She laid the documents she’d been carrying onto the president’s desk, staked out a place at a corner of the large table, and opened her study materials.
Sousuke turned pale, then slid his backpack from his shoulders and began searching around inside it... but Kaname showed no interest. At last, apparently finding what he was looking for, Sousuke pulled it out and approached Kaname.
“Don’t hover over me. It’s creepy,” Kaname said in stinging tones, eyes locked on the blank page in front of her.
Then, as if screwing up his courage, Sousuke offered her a bouquet of white flowers.
“What...” she breathed. The blooms were about the size of a fist; four petals gently wreathing a round ovary. There were six of them, and Kaname found herself taken aback by their beauty.
“I just picked them last night,” Sousuke told her. “Please accept them.”
“Th-Thanks...” She fought hard to keep a smile off her lips. Maybe I’ve been immature. Maybe it’s time to forgive him, she found herself thinking. “What kind of flowers are these? They’re beautiful...” she asked in a slightly more mellifluous voice.
“Well, the flowers themselves aren’t important. I’d rather they wilt sooner than later.”
“Huh?”
“Those are opium poppies,” Sousuke explained. “After the petals fall, you can score the seed pod so that it secretes opium. It’s the main ingredient in heroin, so they should fetch a high price in Japan.”
