Lena remained quiet for another long moment, before gingerly speaking up.

“Erm… What’s ‘patching’…?”

Silence hung over them, and then, they all sighed. Hard.

“I knew you were a rich princess, but holy hell…”

“Whoa… I mean, there’s no way you’re that oblivious, right?”

“Major, you’re one of those people, aren’t you? The kind who can’t even sew a button.”

Another pause.

“…Sewing…buttons? Aren’t you supposed to close buttons?”

Apparently, she never saw a button come off before. She must have had very capable maids working at her mansion or something.

“Don’t tell me you’ve never had to thread a needle?”

“…Thread, a needle…?”

The very basics of sewing were lost on her, it seemed. Shin sighed again, taken aback, and Lena very clearly became flustered. Kurena, on the other hand, huffed out proudly.

“Even I can manage that much, Major,” she said.

“Huuuh?! Is not knowing that something people should be ashamed of?! Is it, Major Nouzen?!”

Shin said nothing, likely because he and Raiden had the same exasperated thought cross their minds.

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

Shin + Lena

“…Mm.”

Feeling a light weight lean against his arm, he looked down. Kurena, who he remembered was busy playing with the cat earlier, was now leaning against him, asleep. Shin nimbly opened his bookmarked book with one hand and remained silent for a moment. Kurena was sleeping contently, her breathing serene. Looking at her now, he truly felt like she hadn’t matured much, if at all. Or rather, she might have grown on the outside, but not at all on the inside.

Shrugging that thought off, Shin left the girl beside him to her nap and returned to reading. Given the uncomfortable position, she’d probably wake up soon anyway, and if she didn’t, he could call Anju over to pick her up.

But as he reached that conclusion, his Para-RAID activated. Lena’s voice, ever a pleasant chime, greeted him as it always did.

“…Good evening, Captain Nouzen.”

Oh, this is bad.

That thought reflexively shot through his mind, but then he frowned, realizing this was a weird thing to think.

…Wait, why do I think it’s bad?

Apparently, the other usual members were out cleaning or something, because Shin was all alone in that room. Or so Lena thought, but as she heard a faint breathing sound that clearly didn’t belong to Shin, she cocked her head curiously. It was faint… Like someone sleeping.

“…Is someone else there?”

“Well, sort of… Kurena’s sleeping here.”

Apparently, she was leaning on him, and he couldn’t move. Imagining it made Lena giggle.

“Second Lieutenant Kukumila sounds like a cute little sister, doesn’t she?”

“An oddly clingy one, at that.”

His voice and tone sounded like someone stumped about how to deal with a kitten that ran into their house from the rain and refused to leave. Lena laughed out loud, imagining the sour look on his face.

But, at the same time, something deep inside her chest prickled with…irritation.

…Eh?

Once she became aware of it, the irritation instantly ballooned. Why? Why does this make her feel so irate? And it seemed Lena’s wavering emotions were strong enough to be picked up by Shin on the other side of the Para-RAID.

“…Major?”

“What?”

Her voice came out so stinging and harsh that even she was taken aback by it.

“It’s just… Did I upset you?”

“No.”

There it is again.

“…You’re upset.”

“I’m not!”

Shin fell silent. Contrary to her words, Lena grabbed a nearby cushion and squished it in her arms.

Heavenly Blue in the Everlasting Dark

Despite being divested of their human rights and reduced to drone parts forced to fight the Legion on the front lines, even the Eighty-Six weren’t fighting at all hours of the day.

“…Isn’t that dangerous? I mean, you’re walking through the contested areas all on your own…”

Lena was in her room on her family estate in the peaceful capital, far from the front lines. As she was flipping through a fireworks catalog she brought from a merchant who made fireworks to order, she spoke through the Para-RAID.

Shin, who was scouring for usable supplies in an abandoned city ruin on one corner of the battlefield, shrugged at her question.

“It’s fine, there aren’t any Legion in the area. You know what I mean, right?”

“Well, yes, but what about wolves, or bears, or tigers?”

“They get targeted by the Legion, too, if they run into any combat, so they avoid the contested areas where there’s a lot of fighting. And they avoid humans, since they can’t tell them apart from self-propelled mines.”

“Besides, there aren’t any tigers in this region,” Shin remarked indifferently. Lena’s lips perked up and into a smile. Shin seemed to notice this. Compared to when they first started talking, they now naturally discussed trifling topics like this.

“You seem like you’re enjoying yourself… What are you doing right now?”

“Huh? Oh… Erm.”

Coming up with an answer, she chuckled. This was still gunpowder to be fired from a tube, albeit for a different purpose.

“I’m just comparing artillery shells so I can pick out the right one.”

“…And that’s fun?”

“Oh, yes. I imagine you’ll love it… And besides, you’re not one to talk.”

The Para-RAID employed the collective subconscious to transmit their voices, allowing them to subtly feel each other’s emotions like they would in a face-to-face conversation. Right now, she could tell that Shin—in a departure from his usual taciturn, detached self—was clearly enjoying himself.

Apparently, he had found the entrance to some underground structure and was about to embark on a bit of an exploration mission, chemical glow stick in hand. Perhaps it was precisely because they spent their childhood in an internment camp, without any way to play and constantly dreading an uncertain tomorrow, that the Eighty-Six were so active in seeking out joy in the most trivial parts of daily life. Boys often relished exploring or finding secret bases.

And surely she wasn’t imagining the way his nearly inaudible footsteps felt incredibly light, or that he was looking around actively. He was expecting to make some kind of discovery, and Lena chuckled at that thought.

“I hope you find something. Like an ancient ruin or a buried pirate treasure.”

“Given we’re inland, these are probably old subway ruins. I doubt I’ll find anything like that.”

Shin cracked a warm smile at Lena’s enthusiasm, but then she felt him stop. His military boots, usually silent, let out a screech that echoed hard and far. Wherever he was now, it was very spacious.

Hundreds of kilometers away, past the Gran Mur, she heard this boy whose face she had never seen silently hold his breath.

“…It’d be nice if we could Resonate my sense of sight… If you could see what I’m seeing.”

He didn’t know what this place was originally for. It sank into darkness just ahead, and he couldn’t tell how big it was, but it was all coated in azure dark. Part of the ceiling was a hole that seemed to extend to the surface, with the pale summer sun casting its thin beams inside.

Before him stretched a seemingly boundless underground lake of limpid water—likely from accumulated rainwater—its surface wavering ever so slightly. A marble statue of the Holy Mother, originally having decorated some other place, smiled serenely at him from within the cerulean dark.

Like a grim reaper that left no footsteps, Shin approached the edge of the quivering water’s surface.

“…A far east religion says that blue is the color of the world of the dead, and all cultures see butterflies as symbols of the spirits of the dead.”

The source of the blue light was the wreckage of countless Edelfalter sunken into the water, their blue butterfly wings refracting the light. Maybe they were shot down by artillery once… Or perhaps this was just where they chose to die.