“Mizusaki, I demand an explanation!” ordered M4, quickly adjusting his glasses as he looked down to the soldier fiddling with a square electronic object while sitting down on the dining table. “I feel like you’re highly downgrading my intellectual capabilities by not providing me with an explanation of that which I do not know. If a human can understand it, it goes without saying that I, a being much superior, will master that understanding much quicker than you did.”

“Like I said,” sighed Mizusaki, rolling his eyes around as he lowered his tablet down to the dining table. “The problem is not your brain or intellectual capabilities. It’s the fact that you’re neither human nor have the correct understanding of what humans are in general. If you want me to explain it to you, I would have to explain to you a buttload of other human-related things. That would take a while, you know? You would have to make me, a human, your teacher~”

“That’s a frightening thought and we, super soldiers, do not know what fear is,” grumbled M4, crossing his arms over his chest as he averted looking to Mizusaki, a half-disgusted expression on his features. He softly cleared his throat. “If it’s going to take that long, then shouldn’t you be hurrying up already? I hate unnecessary losses of time.”

“Pfffft!” started laughing Mizusaki, covering his mouth with one of his hands as he amusingly kept the sulking male under his gaze. “Okay, I get it already. I guess I should start from the beginning, then. You know at least what books are, right? You were saying how M1 had memorized the Divine Comedy in several different languages and whatnot. So, at the very least, you’re aware that humans possess this source of entertainment known as literature.”

“’Source of entertainment’?” repeated M4, an eyebrow slightly arched as he sideways glanced at Mizusaki from the same sulking stance he had previously put himself in. “As far as I know, books are nothing more than a source of knowledge, not something as futile as entertainment.”

“Well, if you’re forced to read them, I agree with you,” acknowledged Mizusaki, picking up the tablet from the table and starting to fiddle with it once again. “I guess it’s that thing, you know? When you’re in school… or whatever is equivalent to you guys, the teachers tell you to read this or that book. Most of the time, you end up not enjoying the book all that much, since you’re being forced to read them. You don’t have any option other than reading that book. Maybe it’s something in our DNA makeup that makes us dislike being ordered around or something like that… Aaaaand I’m getting off-topic here. I think M1 understands this concept since, from what I understand, he chose to read The Divine Comedy on his own, right?”

“Well, I guess you could call it that,” acknowledged M4 with a small nod of his head.

“There are dozens of different types of books,” continued Mizusaki, a knowing smirk slowly morphing on his lips. “Some are aimed towards knowledge, like you said. For example, books about history, sociology, medicine, politics, so on and so forth. There are even books that teach things regarding cooking, gardening, music, and other things that you would probably call a waste of time. Then there are books aimed towards entertainment, which are mainly labelled as ‘fiction’.”

“’Fiction’?” repeated M4, his eyebrow arching even more on his features as he finally fully switched his gaze towards the soldier. “Do you perhaps mean the imaginable?”

“That’s a weird way of putting it,” snorted Mizusaki. “But yeah, I guess you got the gist of it. People that have the job of ‘writers’ create different types of stories to entertain their readers. The Divine Comedy is an example of that. Inside of the large label of ‘fiction’, there’s a lot more small categories. Much like with educative books, some have historical settings, crime and investigations, medical situations. They can also expand towards ‘normal human things’, like comedy, romance, simply the daily life of the characters. In a roundabout way, ‘fiction’ is whatever the writer wants to write about, whether it exists in this world or if it’s something created in their imagination. There are absolutely no boundaries in the literature world~”

“Again, why do humans waste their time with those types of frivolous things?” sighed M4. “Where’s the purpose of reading about those things? You won’t get anything out of reading about the fake.”

“That’s why it’s called entertainment,” pointed out Mizusaki with a sing-song voice. “Entertainment doesn’t have any purpose other than to bring happiness to our otherwise boring lives. If you had things to do while inside of your cell, maybe it would have been more enjoyable to stay in the lab, right? Boredom is a hateful thing and humans have fully mastered the art of nullifying that hateful thing by creating several types of strategies to fight it off. Books are one of those strategies.”

“So even out of the battlefield, you humans continue to needlessly fight,” sighed M4 once again. “You truly are the most belligerent species in the world.”

“I think fighting off boredom is more of an internal struggle than actually going to war,” said Mizusaki, slightly surprised at the way M4 had put that. “But well, that was Literature 101. That’s not even what you want me to explain to you, right? You want to know what those words that I used to describe you six back in the airport were.”

“It was about time for you to get to that,” scoffed M4, rolling his eyes around.

“Now I feel like taking longer to get there~” teasingly announced Mizusaki, leaning his back on the backrest of the chair and leisurely stretching his arms over his head. “What I should do, hehehe~”

“Mizusaki!” admonished M4, his frown intensifying once again as he closely observed the soldier.

“Okay, I get it, I get it,” acknowledged Mizusaki, waving his hand around to try to soothe down the annoyed M4. “Within Japan, there’s a type of literature known as ‘manga’. Opposite to The Divine Comedy, it’s not just words with a couple of drawings now and then, but it features mainly drawings with just dialogues between the characters and very little narration. It’s quite similar, we can call it, to American and European comic books but, at the same time, it’s a whole different thing. It would be hard to explain since you don’t have experience with either of them so I guess I’ll leave it at that. Japanese people have quite the imagination so you can find anything within the manga verse. And when I say anything, I mean anything. It’s a very broad literary field, with lots and lots of specific terms and words. What I called you six came from there.”

“You used words of ‘fiction’ and the ‘imaginary’ to describe real living creatures?” inquired M4, suspiciously eyeing the soldier. “I think that’s described as ‘delusions’.”

“That one would have scarred me for life a couple of years ago...” mumbled Mizusaki, twisting his nose just the slightest at that accusation. “And I mean, until I was selected to participate in this mission, super soldiers belonged to the world of the imaginary, as far as it concerned me. I now know that you’re painfully real but it doesn’t change the fact that it was still fiction to me a couple of days ago. You can’t blame me for comparing you guys to manga characters when your personalities are a complete train wreck!”

“We’re much perfect than any of you lowly humans, thank you very much,” said M4, once again frowning at Mizusaki. “A ‘train wreck’ certainly is not the correct way to describe us.”

“If we forget your ‘superpowers’, personality and psychologically-wise, you’re a complete failure,” announced Mizusaki, not mincing his words in the slightest. “No offence here, but if you were simply a normal human being and not a super soldier, you would be readily classified as a ‘weirdo’ by everyone around you and some of you would have been closed inside of the psychiatry ward of a high-security mental hospital by now. Especially M5 and M1. And perhaps M0 too, since he’s quite the danger to himself, the way he’s completely ignorant of everything.”

“…”

“I’m not downgrading or making fun of you, I’m simply saying things as they are from a human’s point of view,” said Mizusaki in his defence, feeling that he might have somewhat crossed the line just now. “You might as well have been characters inside of a manga. Life would be much easier for you if you had been born inside of a world accepting of your… species?”

“We don’t want acceptance, we simply want to keep on living,” announced M4 out of the blue. “Whether in this world or as characters of a book, I don’t think any of that would change. The struggles would be the same, whatever the circumstances or settings. Thinking about things like that is a waste of time. How does it help you fantasising about how things could be if you were in a different place? You might as well walk forward and reach that place. Now stop wasting my time and get to the point. You’re being a terrible teacher, Mizusaki.”

“………………Ah. Sorry, I got off topic once again, didn’t I?” said Mizusaki, awkwardly clearing his throat to snap out of his completely flabbergasted self. That had been… strangely coherent and logical, coming from the mouth of someone who didn’t even know how to hold chopsticks until that evening. “I’ll start explaining the easiest ones first and then go for the more complicated terms. I called M5 ‘flashy blondie’. It’s pretty much saying that he’s one of those types of sparkling characters that like to boast about what he can do. Another way I could describe him is an oversized puppy since he gets easily attached to others. Like it’s happening between him and Miue-san and, from what I understood, him and M0 too?”

“I can fully agree with the fact that M5 has some of the annoying characteristics of those furry creatures, yes,” snorted M4. “I think that what your dog did to M0 is what M5 wished he could do to him too.”

“Now you put a weird image in my head…” groaned Mizusaki, feeling like facepalming himself. “Anyway… I said that M2 is a cookie monster, which is a term used to describe someone who likes to eat loads and loads of food, especially sweets and snacks. Now to the manga-only terms~ To M3 was ‘ore-sama’. It’s used by characters that say ‘I’ in an overly self-confident and quite narcissistic way. But it can also be used to describe someone who is overly self-confident and narcissistic. It can go both ways.”

“M3 has his reasons for being so self-confident, for as annoying as it may be for everyone else around him,” pointed out M4, giving a quick shrug with his shoulders.

“For the couple of the year, I used ‘kuudere’ for M0 and ‘yandere’ for M1,” proceeded Mizusaki, a sly smirk once again popping up on his features. “Kuudere is a character archetype that is used to describe a character which is usually aloof, cold and blunt but deep down is extremely caring. M0’s perpetually expressionless demeanour is one of the best ways to explain why I described him as a kuudere, especially because he only smiles for short periods of time and it mainly revolves around M1. As for ‘yandere’… I’m already inwardly praying that M1 won’t try to kill me in my sleep because of what I’m going to say but a yandere is usually someone who is psychotically and violently in love with someone. They act caring and nice to their beloved but treat the rest of the human population as if a threat to their romantic relationship, sometimes going as far as literally wiping out everyone around them just so they can have their love interest only to themselves. They usually start as very loving and gentle characters, sometimes even innocent, but their love and devotion towards their love interest at some point becomes destructive and completely psychotic.”

“I don’t see why M1 would try to kill you because of what you just said since he knows all of that better than anyone else,” pointed out M4, an eyebrow slightly arched as he looked over at Mizusaki with a certain curiosity. “The scientists he killed before was because of things they did to M0. We’re all aware that he might even kill us if we get too close to M0. But it’s a good thing if it remains like that.”

“It is? How so?” asked Mizusaki, completely shocked over how accepting M4 was of the fact that one of his comrades could kill him without a second thought in the matter.

“M1 is M0’s safety pin,” shortly said M4 with a quick shrug of his shoulders.

“You mean M0 is M1’s safety pin, right?” corrected Mizusaki, a frown on his brows as he closely listened to what M4 was saying.

“No, I meant exactly what I said,” repeated M4, releasing a soft sigh. “M1 could easily kill us if he wanted… Tsk! What a thing to say as a super soldier… But M0 could just as easily kill M1. You understand where I want to get at, right?”

“So… If M1 keeps on being murderously possessive of M0 and won’t let anyone get too close to him… no one gets to die by M0’s hands?” hesitantly asked Mizusaki, a shudder crawling up his spine and making the pads of his fingers sweaty and slippery against the electronic device.

“No, but at least neither us, super soldiers, nor you, humans, get to go extinct,” explained M4, a completely passive demeanour on his features as he once again shrugged his shoulders. “M0 will obviously kill someone at some point. He’s a mass murder machine, it’s within him to kill just like it’s within M1 or me. He’s just— …So, what’s the last name?”

“Eh?” interjected Mizusaki, slightly lost in the sudden question that didn’t seem to match with what he was previously saying. “Um… Ah… The one missing was about you. ‘Tsundere’. A tsundere is someone who’s cold and considerable hostile to others but turns out to be an extremely gentle person on the inside when acting towards those he cares about.”

“W-W-What…!?” stutteringly yelped M4, his mouth left wide open as he looked at the soldier with eyes wide open in shock. “How exactly am I gentle to other people!? Y-You saw me killing those scientists with the rest of them! How is that being gentle!? And you also know that, as a mass murder machine, I have killed a lot more than that! There’s no way I’m gentle and, in the eventuality that I would ever be, it surely wouldn’t be with any of you lowly humans!”

“Awww~ The way you blush is so cute~,” said Mizusaki with a teasing sing-song voice, a mischievous smirk on his lips as he saw the pinkish shade blossoming in M4’s cheeks. “And the way you try to make yourself sound like a merciless human weapon is even more endearing~ Soooooo tsundere-ish, ahahahahahahahaha!”

“Mizusaki, don’t call me that!!” roared M4, slamming his hands on the table. “I’m not a tsundere!”

“Ahahahahahahahahaha!”

“Mizusakiiiiiiiiiiiiii!”