The girl watched the receding figure without end. It was the Major.
He never once looked back. He was coldly indifferent.
"Major."
The Major who always sheltered her and looked after her.
Whenever she called to him, he would gently stroke her hair with a warm hand.
But now, she could no longer feel the Major’s touch.
She missed the softness of his hand.
She wanted to see his face.
She wanted to hear his voice.
She wanted to feel his presence.
The girl wavered between her own will and his orders.
She wanted to follow him. But there had been an order.
-Live here.
For the girl, the Major’s orders were everything. If he told her to live here, then she had to live here.
If he told her to die, then she would die.
And yet the reason she hesitated was because she wanted to see the Major.
The girl was the Major’s weapon. A weapon could not be alone.
A weapon needed a master.
"Oh dear, you’ve already gone. Come now, I’ve prepared a room for you."
The village chief patted the girl’s shoulder. At that instant, her fist rose.
She hated it when anyone other than the Major touched her body.
She froze.
-Do not commit violence.
The girl remembered the Major’s order and lowered her fist.
The village chief looked flustered.
Tap tap!
The girl ran.
She could hear the village chief calling after her, but she ignored him.
The girl’s face twisted.
It was the first order she had broken, and her heart pounded hard.
She had disobeyed an order. Not just any order, but the Major’s.
The Major’s orders were truth and guideposts to the girl.
An order was the road itself.
And today, for the first time, she had strayed from that road.
She thought.
What if the Major hated this?
A soldier who disobeyed orders was not a fine soldier.
Her worth as a soldier would fall.
Countless worries churned through the girl’s mind.
"Hah, hah."
She crossed the mountain. Her foot caught in a pit and she fell.
She rolled down the slope, striking rocks and trees.
Her uniform tore, and her flesh swelled beneath it.
The girl did not stop.
She crossed a river, one that rose as high as her abdomen.
Her uniform soaked through.
It grew heavy with water.
It did not matter.
The girl did not stop.
"What!? The weapon is dead?!"
The colonel, having received the report, barked out a shout.
"Yes. In the last battle at Mehvacha, the girl was hit by enemy shelling. The body vanished on the spot, and only the dog tag remained."
I held out the girl’s deliberately damaged dog tag to the colonel.
The girl was dead—
That was the report I gave.
Leaving the girl behind in Tineberg had been my own unilateral decision. It was a clear violation of military law.
The Battle of Mehvacha was a battle to seize an enemy height. It was essential for securing a safe supply route. The enemy knew that too, so they concentrated their forces there.
The height was extremely treacherous. It was a battle where you had to climb up by attaching ropes to the cliff. The enemy had laid trenches and tunnels all over the place.
A terrain blessed by nature.
Five divisions climbed up and were annihilated. Even after shelling the place so heavily it changed the shape of the land, the height still would not fall.
The Mehvacha height was called the Death Height by the Southern Allied forces.
My unit had captured that height through desperate effort. Many of my men had died.
"If the girl died, it wouldn’t be strange."
The colonel knew the height’s infamous reputation.
He believed my report.
"Tsk. Useless thing. You were almost at promotion, and you couldn’t even hold out until then."
The colonel puffed on his cigarette.
I clenched my fist. My nails dug into my palm.
"What a pathetic bastard."
I swallowed the curse down inside me. What did a man smoking in a safe bunker know?
The colonel waved a hand.
"Get out."
I saluted and turned to leave.
That was when it happened.
Bang!
The door to the colonel’s office was flung open roughly.
Luxuriant platinum-blond hair flew in the air.
It was the girl. She was breathing hard.
"Hah, hah."
With a face twisted by tears, the girl looked around the office.
Then her eyes met mine.
Deep relief rose in her blue eyes.
"Major..."
The girl staggered and clutched my collar. I could feel the desperate grip of her hand.
"I don’t want that. I’ll follow the Major’s orders. Please don’t abandon me. I’m useful. Please don’t abandon me."
The girl desperately tried to prove her worth.
Tears spilled from her blue eyes.
The girl collapsed as if fainting. I caught her in my arms.
"...How did you get here?"
It was a distance that would take an hour on a sturdy military horse.
My horse was a fine steed specially maintained by the family.
That was why I had been able to come to the city so quickly.
"Did she really just run that distance?"
I could not hide my shock.
It was a distance that would easily take three hours on foot.
No matter how capable the girl was, it was impossible.
But the state of her clothes told the truth.
Then what on earth had driven her?
She had asked that question with her eyes before collapsing.
That she had come to see me.
"...Why?"
Why me of all people?
I wanted the girl to be happy.
I wanted her to live on her own terms.
I wanted her to live her own life, without being tossed about by others.
That was why I had never given her a name.
I had taught her only what she needed to know, then sent her away.
So that neither of us would be bound to the other.
"And yet I did that, so why..."
Leaves and clumps of dirt were stuck to her face. Carefully, I brushed her hair back and stroked her cheek.
"W-what? How is that dead girl alive again!?"
The colonel shot to his feet.
In the end, I was disciplined.
The girl was military property. To the high command, she was a weapon.
I had smuggled out an army weapon. An asymmetric asset, no less.
My punishment was to remain at the rank of Major.
Originally, I had been due to be promoted to Lieutenant Colonel on the strength of my achievements.
Time passed. A year and six months went by since I met the girl.
From the moment she disobeyed my order, I had worried over many things.
At last, I reached a decision.
"Violet."
"...Violet?"
On a bright morning, I stood before the girl, who had just finished writing her report, and said,
"Violet. That’s your name."
It was foolish.
If I had told her she was not a tool, I should never have given her a name at all.
A name is a person’s identity. A person without a name is merely a person, but a person with a name becomes something special.
For example, before, the girl had been just a girl. Unidentified. As common as any ordinary tool—
Now it was different. With the name Violet, the girl gained a clear identity.
A life as Violet, not as a tool.
"There’s no better name than this."
I had searched through several name books to give her one, but Violet was still the most harmonious choice.
A small violet blooming beneath the carriage swayed gently.
"Violet...."
Perhaps the pronunciation was difficult, because she worked her mouth around it several times.
"Violet. Violet..."
"Yes, Violet. That’s your name. You are not a tool, but a person. This name is proof that you are not a tool."
The girl—no, Violet—looked dazed.
Smiling, I stroked Violet’s hair.
"Don’t become a tool. Become someone worthy of your name."
A white butterfly rose softly into the air.
As time passed, Violet began to carry herself more and more like a woman.
She grew taller, and her chest and hips developed.
Of course, she was still a girl. I had to protect her as an adult should.
But to the soldiers, she seemed to be a woman.
A body with a certain feminine allure, and beauty beyond the heavens.
One day, three soldiers who could not overcome their lust broke into Violet’s barracks.
The reason was filthy and vile beyond words.
For a soldier to rape another soldier carried a sentence of ten years in prison.
But there were three of them. That was not rape, but gang rape.
Gang rape carried not prison, but death.
But I could not punish them.
"......."
Three corpses, cold and still.
That was right. They were already dead. At Violet’s hands.
Violet stood beside me with a calm expression.
"I used lethal techniques because it was an emergency."
If Violet called it an emergency, then it must have truly been one. Our unit really was full of elites.
"...Good work."
I did not scold Violet.
It was clear self-defense. Three men had tried to violate a girl.
No matter how close I was to the soldiers under my command, if they committed something as vile as gang rape, any affection I had for them would vanish.
"If anything like this happens again, I’ll execute them on the spot under my authority."
Military discipline was paramount in war. I laid down the law to the soldiers.
Ten days later.
I held my head.
"...Haa."
"Just in case, I kept a dagger under my pillow."
Five corpses, cold and still. Their arteries had been pierced full of holes.
What the hell had these lunatics heard in my order?
Violet was a peerless beauty, the kind you would only ever see in a painting.
It was no wonder the soldiers in their prime lost their heads over her.
My unit was strictly forbidden from looting or rape.
The soldiers could only satisfy their desires with prostitutes.
They probably had a lot built up from not stopping in a city lately.
But even so, commit a crime? Against a child?
I took drastic measures.
"Violet will sleep in my quarters with me."
No one crazy enough to storm the Major’s tent in pursuit of lust would exist. If there was, I would have to kill him.
The Major’s quarters were large enough that two people could sleep there without any trouble.
Violet was not the only one being targeted sexually by my soldiers.
It happened when we were sent to the western front.
The general in charge of the western front called Violet to him at night. His intentions were impure.
"Don’t go."
"Understood."
The next day, the general got angry with me. He asked why I had stopped Violet.
"Hey, Major. Is she really that precious?"
"What do you mean?"
"You sleep in the same bed, don’t you? Then it’s obvious. Stop pretending to be kind and righteous. That girl is military property anyway, isn’t she? Shared property. Let us all make use of her."
That day, I had to summon superhuman patience.
"That girl is not a tool. She is a person. Are you trying to engage in child prostitution right now, General?"
"Now, now, that’s not what I meant... Hey! Don’t say things like that."
"The girl is a child. If you were to extend your disgraceful hands toward her..."
I glanced meaningfully at the newspaper.
It meant that if necessary, I would take this to the press.
"Ahem! No, no, that’s not it... Fine! Get out."
The general was politically astute. He understood my warning.
If I used the power of my family to stir up public opinion, his political life would be over.
He knew that, so he never tried to lay a hand on Violet again.
Aside from incidents like that, there was not much else.
"When you swing the sword, pull back at the end to create friction. That way, the friction increases the killing power."
I taught Violet swordsmanship.
It was a sword style meant to kill with as little pain as possible. It was the style I used myself.
In the original story, Violet used a giant axe called a watchcraft, but now she used a sword.
The girl absorbed my swordsmanship like a sponge.
While I was at it, I also taught her various martial arts. Judo, Muay Thai, jiu-jitsu.
Violet’s close-quarters combat ability was not yet refined like a beast’s.
I polished that part efficiently.
"It’s a technique that uses the opponent’s weight. Lower your body, then flip them over in an instant."
When training ended, we had time to rest.
Recently, I had developed a new hobby: tying Violet’s hair for her.
"Like this, and then like this...?"
I followed along with a book on women’s hairstyles that I had bought in the city.
With a black ribbon, I moved her platinum hair this way and that.
Flinch!
Violet’s shoulders twitched.
"Sorry! Did that hurt?"
"No. It does not hurt, only stings."
"That means it hurts."
I finished tying her hair with great care.
It was a half-up style.
"Hold still for a moment."
I moved in front of Violet.
"Wow, when someone is this beautiful, even a rough tie looks lovely."
My first attempt at hairstyling was a disaster, but Violet’s beauty made even that look intentional.
"If you don’t like it, should I stop?"
"No. The Major’s touch feels pleasant."
"So you want me to keep doing it?"
"Yes."
Whenever I could, I styled Violet’s hair.
And I made sure to tell her these things.
"Violet. You are a person, not a tool."
"Violet. I want you to be free."
"Violet. My orders are not absolute."
I said many things to Violet.
So that, somehow, Violet might become a person.
But—
"I am the Major’s tool."
"A tool does not need freedom."
"The Major’s orders are absolute."
Violet cut my words down with blade-like precision.
"I suppose there’s no helping it..."
Violet’s values were dangerous.
The girl would die if I told her to die. Without any sense of self, she would simply live as others ordered her to.
I did not want that kind of life for her.
But Violet did not understand what I was saying.
I needed an extreme measure.
"There’s no choice but to use that method."
For Violet’s freedom and happiness, I made a major decision.
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