Rapi and Anis could only find it strange.
The reason was simple.
They had both seen the transport ship explode with their own eyes.
Normally, there was at least a chance of surviving a plane crash.
Snow piled thick enough to slow the fall was one such example.
But that only applied to a simple crash.
They had seen the transport ship explode from the inside and come down in two burning chunks.
The supplies were ruined, and there was no need to check whether the person inside had survived.
Not that they wanted to.
What they had been waiting for was nothing but futile hope.
Something to cling to just to stay alive a little longer.
That should have been all it was.
So how was that man standing there, facing them?
He had jumped before the explosion.
No.
They hadn’t seen anything detach from the transport ship.
He had endured the blast.
No, that wasn’t it either.
A blast that big would tear even a Nikke apart, or leave her to be caught by a Rapture.
Either way, it was impossible.
Yet the Commander’s attitude was so absurdly forceful that it wiped all of that from their minds.
“I’m glad you’re alive and all... but this is the surface, you know? Could you save the flirting for when you get back down?”
His half-burned uniform was proof that he was the Commander who had survived the transport.
And the woman with the gun beside him was, needless to say, a Nikke.
The two of them were walking so close they looked like lovers, and it made her feel stupid for having been so focused on survival just moments ago.
“And now she’s even linked arms with him... Is he just running wild because he’s the superior officer? We’re out here fighting with guns, and he’s making that face like he hates it... huh?”
Normally, Nikkes and Commanders rarely saw each other again after a mission, so there was no way the two of them knew each other.
In that strangely intimate posture, she had assumed the Commander was the one in control and the Nikke was being dragged along unwillingly.
But now it was a little... no, a lot different.
The one looking uncomfortable was him.
“Wait... did I see that wrong?”
“No, this time you’re the one who got it wrong. The Nikke is actually...”
She was smiling.
“What is it? What happened that has her making that kind of face?”
Before they knew it, the topic of conversation had completely changed.
The thought of how he had survived had already vanished from their heads.
By her common sense, there was no reason for a Nikke to target a Commander.
“Anis, this isn’t the time for that kind of conversation.”
Rapi quickly shut down the mood.
It was certainly shocking, but what mattered now was survival, not romance.
“I’m not doubting you, but... just to confirm, are you the new Commander?”
Bill wordlessly held out his identification code, and Rapi scanned it.
In the meantime, they didn’t forget to exchange names.
Immediately after, a message appeared along with his information, stating that command authority had been transferred.
“Squad 04-F command transfer complete. As of this moment, you are our commanding officer. The previous Commander...”
“That’s enough, that’s enough. It’s better to hear boring stories while we’re moving.”
Bill started walking before even listening to the rest.
But soon they could also see Marian grabbing his arm and telling him they were going the wrong way.
Watching that, Rapi felt a strange sense of disconnect.
Something’s off...
They said they had only just met today.
That much could be inferred from the awkward glances and the hesitant gestures.
But Rapi saw something else in the two of them.
One side’s affection was unnaturally high, while the other seemed to take it for granted.
Marian took care of the Commander more than was necessary, and the Commander looked uncomfortable but still bit his lip and kept his expression in place.
An attitude that could only be explained by the people involved.
There was something between those two, or perhaps only between them.
It couldn’t be dismissed as simple goodwill.
Still, that was a private matter.
Unless they said something themselves, she had no intention of prying.
Rapi buried the thought in the back of her mind.
“Rapi, look at this.”
Just as she had finished sorting out her thoughts, Anis tapped her shoulder.
When Rapi checked the screen Anis held out, it showed the Commander’s information from earlier.
“Aren’t we... in trouble?”
The part Anis pointed at with her finger.
It said that he had only been commissioned yesterday.
“Yesterday...?”
“I’m telling you. Isn’t this a little too much?”
A Commander was a hero who fought through the battlefield alongside Nikkes, while also being someone who died like disposable equipment.
Inside the Ark, they were heavily promoted as glamorous figures, so there were plenty of people who wanted to become Commanders, but it was understandable that manpower was short when so many died.
Still, they weren’t carrying out some ordinary mission like resource gathering.
This was an important operation to locate a squad that had lost contact and recover their combat strength.
And they’d sent a rookie.
The complete mess that military academy training must have been was proven by the previous Commander who had just died.
A fool who had charged at a Rapture with a pistol and died pointlessly.
Back when he was a cadet, he had kept shouting that he was an elite.
“Haah... Sending a rookie on such an important mission... do they even want this operation to succeed...”
Rapi muttered under her breath.
Those words were not aimed at the rookie Commander.
There was someone else to blame.
What fault could he possibly have?
He had been told to go, so he came.
That was all.
“What do you mean by that?”
Marian, who had been listening from the front, suddenly raised her voice.
She immediately let go of his arm, stepped forward, and shouted for an apology.
“Apologize to the Commander.”
“Why should I apologize?”
Rapi couldn’t understand it.
He shouldn’t have heard the words she had spoken out loud.
And she had clearly drawn the line by saying the Ark was the one at fault for sending a rookie.
“What’s wrong with the Commander being a rookie? The Commander is a wonderful person who came up to the surface with us for the sake of our mission. To look down on him just because he’s a rookie... do Nikkes really have no human feelings at all?”
“No, I didn’t mean...”
Rapi saw Bill lightly waving his hand behind Marian.
That gesture was a signal to hurry up.
Was he trying to stop Marian from defending him?
But Marian had her back turned to him.
Even though the Commander could have spoken for himself, he was deliberately keeping quiet.
He was smarter than she had expected.
He was avoiding responsibility and trying to wrap this up quickly.
So that was not the wrong choice.
All she had to do was swallow her pride and apologize.
“I’m sorry. I sincerely apologize for speaking out of turn just now. I’ll be more careful so this doesn’t happen again.”
Rapi bowed her head and apologized.
As he had said, this was no time to waste on petty matters.
But rather than the apology itself, something else caught her attention.
Something’s strange... why is he so calm?
The dead Commander had not merely charged at Raptures.
Once he came up to the surface, he had been restless, and whenever he saw a Nikke’s corpse, he would look away.
None of that suited the job of a Commander.
But the new Commander seemed oddly familiar with the surface.
Right now, several Nikke corpses were strewn all around them.
Even the death-soaked atmosphere surrounding them did not change his expression.
Good human nature and instinct were two different things.
Maybe he was used to hiding his true feelings, or maybe he was simply used to battlefields like this.
He had been the same from the beginning.
The one who fell from the broken transport.
His clothes had burned, but there wasn’t even a trace of soot on his body.
The sense of disconnect was overwhelming.
“If that’s over, let’s go.”
He said it flatly.
Marian linked arms with him again, but he neither pulled away nor drew her closer.
Rather than treating her as a woman, it felt like he was deliberately keeping his distance.
“Rapi, what are you doing? Let’s go. He may be a rookie, but he still looks a few times better than the dead Commander.”
“Right.”
Rapi started walking.
But it wasn’t.
Neither heavy nor light.
----------
“We’re almost there. We just need to walk about five more minutes.”
Marian was still walking right beside him.
The weight was on him, while the center of gravity that should have been hers had shifted the other way.
It’s about time, huh.
Five minutes meant that “it” would appear soon.
Black Smith.
The machine that signaled the beginning of the story.
And at the same time, the stage where someone would meet their death.
“Marian, wait a second.”
He pushed her away, took out the notebook and pen he had barely managed to keep, and wrote something down.
Marian tried to look, but Bill blocked her movement.
“Rapi, look at this. Just you.”
Then he tossed the notebook backward.
He didn’t even check where Rapi was, but the notebook landed in her arms.
“Just me? What about me?”
Anis protested, asking why only Rapi was allowed to see it.
But Bill only shrugged.
“Rapi, can’t you show me too?”
“No. The Commander said only you should see it.”
“You really only do this at times like—no, that’s not right. You’ve always been like this. Tch.”
Rapi slowly opened the notebook and checked the contents.
The first thing that caught her eye was a single word written in small letters.
— Corruption...
She raised her head and looked at the Nikke clinging to Bill.
Something felt wrong.
There shouldn’t have been any major threat in between, and yet they had lost contact with the Ark.
If it was corruption, then everything made sense.
That Nikke...
The Commander was driving them into a dead end.
Why... again?
But at the same time, the notebook served one purpose.
It meant that he knew and was still accompanying them.
He didn’t look like someone meeting death.
But they didn’t have enough strength to escape the trap right now.
If worst came to worst...
No, he couldn’t use this...
Rapi suddenly noticed that he had folded the edge of the notebook.
It was a very subtle mark, one that would be hard to notice if you weren’t meticulous.
“Don’t worry...?”
It was a gamble.
There was no basis for the words.
All she had in front of her now was the attitude shown on the surface.
But...
There was an inexplicable confidence in those words.
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