NOVEL NEXT Chapter 32
“Kenya-kun? Kenya-kun?”
I hear a voice, who is it?
What was I doing?
Was I able to protect them?
Kenya slowly opens his eyes.
A familiar view, inside the cockpit.
The blurred vision slowly becomes clearer and the white light becomes dazzling.
“Huh? Me.”
“Kenya-kun, thank goodness …… are you alright? Are you hurt? Kenya-kun?”
The sound of communication echoes in the cockpit.
Is this voice Tanaka-san? Ah, that’s right. I fell asleep.
“I’m sorry, Tanaka-san. It’s okay, I fell asleep.”
“Thank God! I was worried when you didn’t wake up at all. You can come here and rest. It will be somewhat easier to sleep in the transport.”
Kenya did as he was told, opened the cockpit, and slowly disembarked from the Takemikazuchi.
He looks at his partner again.
Although scratched in places, it stands dignified and is as white as ever.
“Thank you, I survived Thanks to you.”
Kenya gently pats it.
Then Tanaka-san gets out of the transport.
“Good morning and thank you. And thank you, Kenya. For protecting everyone.”
“Tanaka-san …… No, I’m the one who should thank you. If it wasn’t for Tanaka-san, I would have died.”
“Yes, …I know, I’m also a reckless person who came here, but Really ..”
Tanaka-san slowly walks over and pats Kenya on the head, saying good grief with his dingy white coat and tired bearded face.
“You’ re still just a child…”
“Isshin-san told me too, so may I ask you a few things, Tanaka-san? What about the Empire solders? What about Kaguya?”
“Well, calm down, let’s talk slowly.”
Then they opened the back of the transport so that I could lie down.
Kenya sits there with Tanaka.
It was already nearly midnight, a beautiful night with stars and moon.
“As you might have guessed, I’m a member of the Resistance.”
“So you are, after all.”
“Yeah, I’ ve been cooperating with them, well, technically, to be able to use the KOG that we took from them in an operation a while ago.”
Was it Tanaka-san who Isshin said at that time that he had a collaborator on the inside?
Kenya is convinced.
Tanaka was conducting cutting-edge research as a researcher at KOG. Then he must know how to break through security easily.
“Isshin-san and the others are probably on their way to the Asian Union. Although it is unknown as there is no way to contact them.”
There is no way to contact them once they leave the capital,, as all infrastructure is controlled by the Asgar’s empire military.
Conversely, being unable to contact them means that they are far away.
This led Tanaka to predict, as he had heard beforehand, that they must have crossed the sea using a pipeline to the Asian Union.
Tanaka himself is not involved in such diplomacy at all and does not know all the details, he said.
“I see. …… I’m glad everyone is safe, I’ll have to go and see them sometime.”
“Yes, that’s right isn’t that the meaning of your life? Kaguya?.”
?
“Haha, you didn’t turn off the communication. Throughout the battle, you were shouting many times. I’m going to protect Kaguya.”
“Well, that’s …….”
“You want to make out, don’t you?”
“Ugh.”
Thinking back on it again, what embarrassing lines I was spouting.
I think I was calling out some toothless lines. My face is turning red.
“That was cool. Kenya-kun.”
—- Stop it already, my life is long gone, zero!
Tanaka praises Kenya with a grin.
“No, I really …… respect you. You… I really respect you for being able to protect someone you love with your life. Moreover, you have the strength to do it.”
Tanaka looks sad, as if remembering something.
He looks at the wreckage of the KOGs still smoldering on the battlefield.
All the KOGs made by Empire that Kenya destroyed, along with over 100 corpses.
“I, too, lost them, you know. Well, it was a very common occurrence in those days. Frequent stories everywhere. Still, it was an event I couldn’t bear.”
Kenya heard Tanaka-san’s story and imagined.
I understand that Tanaka-san probably also lost someone important to him to the Asgar Empire army.
Now I can understand that feeling painfully.
If Kaguya had been humiliated in this battle.
If there was even a chance that she was killed.
I can’t forgive that country.
The world is full of such commonplace hatred.
And an empire that suppresses it with overwhelming power.
“So much for dark stories, but how did it go? Takemikazuchi…”
“Yes, it was great! The best of the best. I can fight with this thing no matter how many times I have to fight with it!”
“Well, while I was developing it, I was wondering who could ride such a beast, but …… I never thought someone would be able to master it …….”
“I’m good at it. Proximity. The other thing is… it’s romantic, isn’t it? After all, fighting with only a sword.”
“Oh! You know your stuff. I made this model in the image of a Japanese Samurai. If you give it your all, it should be so powerful that nobody will be able to beat you.”
The two men are excited by this conversation.
Kenya, and Tanaka, who had passed through the line of death together as two men, originally got on well with each other, but now they get on even better.
“So, Kenya-kun. What on earth are you going to do now?”
“From now on. … I haven’t thought about anything”
He pauses for a moment and then lies down on the transporter as it is.
The temperature is just right and it feels good.
It would be a great night if it didn’t smell of gunpowder.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do now either. .. If I go back to the army, I’ll probably get killed. I don’t even have anywhere to go, maybe to Asia.”
“Same! I’m probably exposed too, Sieg-san was there, and I’m the only one who can fly this aircraft at the moment… If I go back, I might labeled as traitor and executed.”
Tanaka’s identity is also known to Sieg, and Sieg is probably aware of Kenya’s identity.
“What kind of place is the Asian Federation?”
“Well, I’ve never been there myself, but it’s a group of Asian countries…. Democracy on a country-by-country basis, do you understand?”
“Democracy? What form is that?”
Kenya is not a very good student.
He knew that Japan was a democracy, but he did not clearly understand everything Tanaka said.
“Haha, not good at studying? No, sorry. At that age, you couldn’t even learn in school…”
Tanaka looks sad, wondering if Kenya’s mere ignorance of the subject was not learned because of the war.
No, that’s not the case. I’m just an idiot.
“Simply put, it’s a coalition of Asian countries united against the threat of the Asgar Empire. Each country has a different political form and a different economy, but they have the right to vote according to their population.”
“So, when you decide on something, you mean that the countries of the Asian Union vote on it?”
“Yes, well, to be precise, the representatives of the countries have the right to make decisions, and these representatives can be elected, or they can be the king, and so on.”
“I see…”
Kenya did not understand much about this world.
The Asian Union, a huge collection of nations, and the EU, another collection of the same nations.
And the Asgar Empire, an empire where everything is controlled by a single person, the greatest, and most powerful of all.
Even in the previous world, I wasn’t really interested in politics, but in this world I have to be interested because it concerns my very life.
“Well, what are we going to do? I don’t have a clue, but shall we go?”
“Well… what shall we do?”
Then Kenya’s KOG device rings.
— Only two people know this number.
There are currently two people who know Kenya’s contact details.
One is Kaguya, who cannot be contacted as she is currently heading overseas.
Then the other is.
“Hello…”
Kenya answers the phone fearfully.
“Is this Kenya-kun?”
“Yes… what… what’s wrong?”
“I’m on my way to you. To the location of that white KOG.”
“—”
The meaning of those words is very clear.
In other words, the other heroine that Kenya, who crossed swords with earlier, and should protect.
“Let’s talk.”
An ace-class pilot of the Asgar Empire, nicknamed the White Silver Ice Princess.
Reina Sylphid was on her way.