Chapter 186 - Say You Want to Live - 2

As the captain said, the situation was far from over.

“The resistance in various locations has kept this unrest adequately contained... But the Shadows’ objective is not for the unrest to succeed. It is to cause unrest in the first place.”

I knew that too.

Ultimately, the Shadow’s goal was to clean out the backstreets. They had split their people up and sent them in every direction to spread these sparks and smoke even farther.

Though their moves had been anticipated and they had been defeated one by one, they had already achieved their actual objective.

“By now, they will have scattered the Military State’s taboo far and wide. Should the military authorities obtain any clues to that taboo, they will not overlook this incident, however minor the disturbance. It is too late. I should have stopped them before they caused it...”

The trouble with war and conflict was that, although they involved two sides, either side could start one unilaterally.

Whatever your response, you could not deny that a fight had occurred. If the Military State obtained information about Hamelin in the process, it would move to erase everything connected to it.

“The Shadow... has succeeded. I failed to stop them. If only I had acted a little sooner...”

I sensed something like despair and dejection from the captain. Perhaps there was even a little resentment toward me for taking matters into my own hands.

But she could not put all the blame on me. From her perspective, the person she resented most was herself.

'I delayed too long. I could not even put my own life to use in time...'

The Shadow’s operation: cause a disturbance to draw the Military State’s attention, then spread the taboo to make it carry out the cleanup.

To counter that, the captain had intended to stop them at the cost of her life. She would visit a nearby government office to send a warning to communications headquarters, then use herself as bait and get herself murdered to bring in the military police.

If a communications officer suffered a mysterious accident, communications headquarters would always dispatch an investigation team.

It might have been a reasonably good plan. Had she pulled it off, the Military State would at least have kept the Shadow in check, even if it did not wipe them out.

But my plan was a little different.

“It’s all right! That’s what communications officers are for!”

The captain blinked in bewilderment. I gave her the sunniest smile imaginable and spoke.

Pretending to be pure and innocent.

“I kept quiet because you asked me to keep it secret, but you’re a communications officer, Captain! You can deliver your opinion directly to the Military State’s higher-ups!”

“... Negative. I—”

At her denial, I widened my eyes like a child whose present had been snatched away and asked again.

“What? You can’t even contact your superiors? A communications officer? The very same communications officers who use golems to contact people all over the place?”

I spoke with a pretense of utter innocence, as though I knew nothing of the circumstances behind it. Flustered though she was, the captain carefully stated only the truth.

“If we are speaking strictly of the facts, affirmative. I can contact my superiors. However—”

“Then we’re all set!”

I beamed.

They said you could not spit in a smiling face. My innocent smile left the captain speechless.

“Captain AB, you’ve spent days with me in the backstreets. You know how this happened, who we’re up against and what they want, and who the Shadows who know the taboo really are! If you just put in a little more effort, the Military State won’t strike the wrong people over some unnecessary ‘misunderstanding’!”

My expectant words left the captain flustered and fidgeting.

Of course they did. Now that I had discovered her identity, she could not return to her duties as a communications officer. She had no intention of returning to headquarters alive, nor could she.

“Please wait. That is—”

But that was classified. Pretending not to know, I pressed her.

“What? Surely you’re not saying you can’t do it? The lives of the people in the backstreets are at stake here!”

I questioned her again, wearing a look of utter incomprehension.

“Three hundred thousand. Three hundred thousand lives in the backstreets are at stake. Three hundred thousand people are connected to today’s incident in one way or another! If the Family falls, most beastkin will live in fear. If the Market is raided, the backstreets’ economy will grind to a halt. And that goes without saying for the Shelter. Someone’s family, friend, or lover could disappear overnight. If you don’t help, Captain!”

A shadow passed over the captain’s face. What had just surfaced in her mind was a bleak, tightly shut door in a certain alley.

There was more than comedy in this world. For the captain, who loved the lives people led, the lonely death seeping out from behind that closed door was difficult to ignore.

A door that had not opened, however much they pounded and shouted.

A cold death that had gone unnoticed even in these harsh, difficult backstreets, barely remembered by two friends and a single captain who had happened upon it.

After leaving the Windowless Room, the captain had learned joy and sorrow. She had come to desire joy and avoid sorrow.

That was why she had tried to act for the people of the backstreets.

“The Military State might abandon them easily enough. But Captain AB, the captain I’ve spent time with isn’t that heartless, is she? You enjoyed Anna’s cooking. You liked the citizens you shared quiet conversations with. You savored work and its rewards. You’re a kind person who embraces life itself, hard but fulfilling as it is, aren’t you?”

A binding curse she had to suffer precisely because she was kind.

An excess of empathy, suppressed beneath the shackles of rules and principles.

The virtue of saints, male and female: wearing oneself away to give to others.

The reason the Military State had no choice but to confine its communications officers in Windowless Rooms was manifesting in the captain now.

“Even if the Military State abandons them, you won’t, will you? Anna, Smen, Manager Krin, or Neru the paparazzo. Or the retired soldiers at the Shelter and the orphans they care for. You’ll do your best for all of them, won’t you?”

“... I... I...”

“Well? Won’t you help?”

If she tried hard enough, perhaps she could save them. Communications officers had the power to control information. Their rank might not be high, but they could certainly move the Military State.

There was just one problem.

“... I... must not.”

A communications officer had to remain objective.

If subjectivity mingled with the information, if intent seeped into it, that poison would circulate throughout the Military State and eat away at the nation. It would flow along its nerves, causing its body of iron and blood to malfunction.

Communications officers were themselves a taboo of the Military State. One of the most important secrets it had tried to conceal.

“I must not do that.”

That was why communications officers had to imprison themselves in solitude despite their nature. Their empathy could find expression only through Unique magic, and only within restricted bounds.

“Why? Why on earth can’t you?”

“... That is classified.”

'Because I am... a communications officer, whose identity must never be revealed. Because I must die rather than survive with my identity exposed. Because that is the rule.'

Good. It was about time.

Time to shatter the rules the Military State had created.

“Captain AB. Do I look like an idiot to you?”

'Partially... affirmative.'

Now, that was a bit much. I did not want to shoot the messenger over the message, but you were the last person I wanted to hear that from.

“Captain AB, when we first met in that metal box, you bit down on a suicide pill, didn’t you?”

“...”

“Then you told me you’d marry me so I could collect your death benefit, and kept wandering the streets alone when you could barely fight. Put enough strange behavior together, and the conclusion becomes inevitable. Do I look like an idiot? Or do you know better and just expect me to indulge you?”

No answer. Because both were partially affirmative. She really thought I was an idiot who was nothing more than a petty criminal... or hoped I was.

If I were clever and intelligent enough to use a communications officer to extract classified information, then I had become a threat to the Military State the moment her identity was exposed.

“Well, let’s say you’re the world’s most gifted suicide aspirant. Is your urge to destroy yourself more important than the lives of the people in the backstreets? If dying alone makes you happy, does that mean you can stand by and watch so many others suffer?”

“Why would that make me happy?”

Stung by my baseless slander, the captain retorted.

“I do not want to die either! Who in this world wants to die? If I, too, could go on living...!”

“Then live. Stay alive as a communications officer and give the people here in the backstreets a little help.”

“But it is a rule that must be upheld no matter what! That is why I am doing this!”

“And what about the people you leave behind? The Market, the Family, the Shelter. All the people connected to those different groups. Are you just going to abandon them? They’re part of the Military State too, aren’t they?”

The captain now understood the true nature of the dilemma facing her.

To uphold the rule, she had to die. Since she was going to die anyway, she had tried to expose the conspiracy surrounding these backstreets. By spending her own life.

But now...

“Unless you break that rule, everyone you’ve come to know will be in trouble.”

For herself.

For others.

For an ideal.

The communications officer had followed her ideal. For the sake of a rule, she had readily cast aside her own life. In the process, she had even decided that, if she had to spend it, she would spend it for others.

I had confirmed that much of her heart.

“Communications officer. You’re allowed to live. No, you have to live. Otherwise, everyone you met today will be in danger.”

All right, that was settled. Now for the next step.

The captain could give up her own life for a rule. Could she give up a rule for others?

“Well, Captain AB? Can you do it? Can you leave all these people behind and go alone?”

I asked, and the captain did not answer. No, she could not.

The most useful tool the Military State had created had a prescribed answer for moments like this. But that tool was inherently imperfect, and it kept producing errors.

The emotion that finally emerged was anxiety.

“... There is no guarantee, is there?”

“What guarantee?”

Good. Was the mask finally beginning to slip?

There was no guarantee the Military State would not find out.

Instead of a clean death, a more horrific one might await her after torture and interrogation.

Just as I was preparing a rebuttal to that, the captain lowered her head and spoke anxiously.

“There is no guarantee that failing to follow my duty would be better... That what I do will be worth breaking the rule... There is no such guarantee, is there?”

Tears were dripping from the captain’s eyes. Yet her face was more expressionless than I had ever seen it. It was like watching a golem cry.

It was the moment the highest-performing machine the Military State had created regained a human heart.

“I was taught that this was an ironclad rule for communications officers, and I followed it. That communications officers bore that much duty, that so much responsibility was required of us... So, if my deviation leads to a greater tragedy. If breaking the rule brings about an even more terrible outcome...? What am I to do?”

Her anxiety was not about what would happen to her, but whether what she was doing was right. She feared she might ruin everything through her own selfish desires.

It resembled the heart of a believer seeking God in a yearning for faith.

Perhaps, to a communications officer, that little box had been a temple, and the Military State her faith.

Then was I, who sought to free her, a devil?

Smiling anew, I spoke to the captain with certainty.