After Clemens gave us the room, I somehow found Ian and Ran and called them over.
Fortunately, Ian was in the hangar, just as expected, and Ran was nearby as well.
After the two of them checked on Ailee, they talked about this and that in front of her.
Ian barely said a word, while Ran kept talking about all sorts of things.
Even after the talking was over, Ian still said little, and Ran held it in until she was in front of Ailee, then went outside the infirmary and cried.
Ailee was not precious only to me.
To Ian, she was a Titan he had maintained countless times while exchanging opinions with her; to Ran, she was a comrade she had planned operations with and consulted countless times.
There was no way she was not precious to them.
She was someone who shone, someone loved by everyone.
If one person had to be chosen between Ailee and me, then it should have been me lying in that bed right now, not Ailee.
No.
That conclusion was wrong.
It was not Ailee’s fault, and it was not mine.
The ones at fault were the House of Count Luna.
The one lying in that bed should have been Manny Luna.
Ran, whose crying had calmed, took a deep breath.
“So, there is a way to fix this, right?”
“There is.”
The handover regarding the Titan continued.
First, Simon’s Titan and mine were switched back to their original states.
As expected, even with the risks, a Titan with more generators was more comfortable.
It was not just the mobility while hovering; movements closer to flight were far better.
Above all, Ailee’s generator was on that one.
I needed it.
I could not give it to anyone else.
Even while facing Revan, I had kept wanting to pilot Ailee.
It only had one small generator mounted, and it was far too light.
I had beaten Revan, but if my mobility had been higher and my frame class larger, I could have won far more easily.
That did not mean Revan was weak.
Unlike Revan, I had simply fought people stronger than me over and over again.
I had constantly fought enemies superior to me in both equipment and skill.
There was no way I was weaker than Revan, who had only picked out weak, easy opponents to fight.
Revan’s floor had simply been absurdly high; he had never polished his own ceiling.
He had made contact with the Luna family to obtain superior equipment and parts, but he had not refined his own ability.
I was different.
If I had to compare myself to anyone now, it would probably be Professor Sieg, Fafnir, and Simon.
Thinking of it that way, there was no major problem with crossing the border.
I just had to sweep through and go.
After putting together a rough plan, we moved quickly.
Starting with Clemens, we got Simon’s permission for them to accompany us.
We planned the route, repaired the Titan’s damage, filled its fuel, and packed food.
Aside from me, the pilot, everyone would ride in the vehicle loaded with medical equipment.
It was rational, so I felt relieved.
“If we move covertly from here to the western front, about how long will it take?”
“About a week.”
A week.
There was no knowing what kind of problem might arise.
With Ailee’s life at stake, I had no intention of overlooking even the smallest issue.
My life had been one long string of unfair bullshit.
I had to be able to deal with whatever problem came up.
***
Why is nothing happening?
We smashed the garrison at the northern border and escaped immediately.
Fortunately, the pursuers did not catch our tail, either.
Two days, three days, four days.
Now it was the fifth day, and still nothing had happened.
Had I gotten too used to being screwed over?
My head hurt.
“I should stop smoking now.”
I opened the hatch just a little.
The cigarette smoke filling the core flowed outside.
I had smoked the cigarettes I got from Simon, if only to stay awake.
Of course, it was also while swallowing stimulants so I could operate the Titan alone.
It was the fifth day.
It had also been five days since I last got proper sleep.
I could not sleep.
Even if I tried, sleep would not come in the first place, and if I, the only Titan pilot, fell asleep, there was no knowing what might happen.
Whenever I tried to sleep, all kinds of thoughts swelled up in my head like a flood.
It was not that my body was not tired. I was so tired that I could not sleep.
That did not mean I wanted to get restless, or be ambushed.
It would be nice if we could just go comfortably like this.
It would be nice, yes, but the more comfortable things were, the more anxious it made me.
There was no way my life would not screw me over.
At the very least, I had expected to run into some detached unit of the Imperial Army somewhere.
In the worst case, I had considered sending only the vehicle ahead to the western front and joining up later.
And in an even worse case than that, I had even considered dying so Ailee could live.
But nothing was happening.
Beep-beep.
“Come down soon. Time to eat.”
That was how little anything was happening.
I had thoroughly checked everything within five hundred meters through long-range scanning, and there was nothing.
“I’ll come down.”
Even if I did not sleep, I had to eat.
At least one of the two had to be properly satisfied for me to ignore the other to some extent.
I had the Titan kneel, then climbed down.
As I approached the vehicle, I heard blues playing.
As I got closer, Ran waved her hand.
“Still, it’s been really easy getting all the way—”
Ian covered Ran’s mouth.
Ran’s eyes widened, then she hurriedly nodded.
Last time, Lucia had said something unnecessary, and the White Reaper’s attack began.
Coincidence or whatever, I did not care about that sort of thing.
Once was more than enough for setting up a flag and having an incident break out.
“How did you make this soup?”
“I took out only the ingredients from the combat rations that looked like they’d make broth, then boiled them with a heating pack.”
“Wow, you must have eaten a lot of this kind of thing?”
“I’m a doctor. Why would I eat combat rations? I thought it up because eating this crap after eating good food pissed me off.”
Clemens grew used to the group faster than I had expected.
He did not use Ian’s clipped deadpan style, but his way of speaking was similar to Ian’s, so it felt oddly familiar.
The one who found Clemens most uncomfortable was, in fact, Ian.
According to Ian, he already knew of the House of Count Luna’s atrocities through the Southern Liberation Army.
I think I understood why Ian had been reluctant to receive even sponsorship from the House of Count Luna.
Perhaps because of that, he did not openly avoid Clemens, but he did not lead conversations with him, either.
Even when Clemens brought up Titans, he only said a few words.
That Ian was restraining himself from talking about Titans.
I could understand.
I was also trying to treat Clemens comfortably, but in the end, that uncomfortable feeling remained.
Every time Clemens approached Ailee, lying inside the vehicle, and reached out his hand, I wanted to slap it away.
And then I remembered the way he had seen me in the hangar and let me pass.
I did not know.
I had thought people did not change, but I could not be sure.
It seemed there was no one who never changed.
Even in my case, the facts that I was an otaku, that I had low self-esteem, and that I was born a commoner had not changed, but at the very least, my suicidal impulses and stutter were gone.
Fundamentally, unless someone was evil from birth, they could change.
If they had the intention to change.
“It really is warm now that we’re in the west.”
“Agreed.”
Ian nodded at Ran’s words.
It was the fifth day now, so four days had passed since we crossed the northern border.
There was nothing special about how we felt the temperature.
“Having to adjust the generator load is not easy.”
“Aren’t there lots of ways to feel it, like your clothes getting lighter?”
“Not easy.”
Every day as we moved south, Ian had been continuously adjusting the generator’s cooling level.
He had kept changing the thrusters’ fuel consumption.
Only today did he keep yesterday’s adjustments as they were.
Only now had we reached a place where the temperature no longer changed much and had stabilized.
“There probably won’t be much need for adjustment until the day after tomorrow.”
“How are the communications?”
“Still not getting through.”
We had been continuously sending communications toward the western front, but they were not getting through properly.
Everyone in the inland region might be affected.
If we kept approaching like this, there could be trouble.
While I was worrying over it, Ran flinched and rose from her seat.
“Didn’t you hear something just now?”
“A sound?”
“Shh.”
At Ian’s words, everyone shut their mouths and looked around.
Rustle, rustle.
At the sound of something passing by, Clemens reached behind his back.
“No guns.”
“If they shoot first without asking questions—”
“There’s no way the Imperial Army would do that.”
“They did in the north.”
That was persuasive.
It was, but that was only by northern standards.
Rustle, rustle.
Something popped out through the bushes.
It was not a person.
Ran sighed in relief.
“Ah, I thought it was a person. It was just a stray—”
Bang!
Clemens raised his gun and immediately shot the dog.
“Clemens!”
“Get in the Titan, Deep.”
No blood flowed from the dog.
“There are no stray dogs in western forests like this.”
Electricity crackled and sparked a few times, then it collapsed to the ground.
Instead of a wet splat, there was a hollow metallic clang.
“It’s a drone.”
No, fuck.
“If you knew it was a drone, couldn’t you have resolved this more amicably?”
“The drone might have weapons mounted on it.”
“If a Titan comes, it’ll have even bigger weapons mounted on it!”
“Well, we should think about surviving right now.”
I take it back.
I take back everything I said earlier.
This man was also just a member of the House of Count Luna.
It would be one thing if he simply acted recklessly like Karina, but he was a genuine madman who suspected everything by the standards of the House of Count Luna.
“Put the gun away! Absolutely do not shoot! Ian! Take those two and hide in the vehicle!”
“This is why the House of Count Luna, fuck.”
Ian clicked his tongue and grabbed Clemens and Ran.
I also ran at once and climbed into the Titan.
Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep.
Only after the main image sensor turned on did I realize it.
From below, the trees had blocked it completely from view.
“Since when were there drones…?”
Normally, I would have noticed long ago.
Not sleeping had actually backfired.
My senses were dulled, and I felt dizzy.
The moment I put a cigarette in my mouth and tried to light it, a drone flew into my field of vision.
It was a deep navy blue.
A drone equipped not with attack or self-destruction gear, but only delaying equipment.
As I shut off the main camera, the drone blasted light toward it.
Because of the sub-sensors, too, it was a white light bright enough to make my eyes sting.
“No, fuck. We could have talked, but Clemens had to ruin it!”
I knew who it was.
In the distance, I saw a navy-blue Titan slowly moving away from me while hovering.
It even had the horn that symbolized a commander’s unit.
Undine.
Charlotte Keria.
While adjusting the light level of the main camera, I began to pull the stick.