When they were back inside the safety of the city walls, Eiji, Yuuhei, and the tower captains were called to the city office of the Bureau of Information to give debriefs on the battle. There had little to say other than that the defense force had been overwhelmingly victorious. They estimated the initial size of the Kolsivite attack force, handed off the captured soldiers, and were thereon relieved of duty for the rest of the evening.
As they left the Bureau office, Yuuhei lit a cigarette.
“So, Eiji,” he said, taking a drag. “Tell me, really, you with a civilian woman?”
“I met her in Hansilla,” said Eiji, with a yawn. “She works at a café.”
Yuuhei broke into laughter, laughing so hard that he stopped in his tracks. He stopped and shook his head, red faced. “No,” he said, “seriously.”
Eiji shrugged. “That’s it. I had watched her every day for a week at her job, and one day I worked up the courage to approach her and asked what time they were open until. Two days later I managed to be off duty at that time, and I tried to come just as they were closing to see if she would let me take her out. When I came in, she didn’t recognize me, and told me that they had already stopped serving drinks for the evening. So I asked her if I could buy her one, somewhere else.”
Yuuhei remained still where he was. His eyes widened.
“You are being serious. You with a civilian woman?”
“Should I put in writing, affix my seal to it, or what?”
Yuuhei broke into laughter again. He stopped and shook his head. “Strange thing, love, isn’t it?”
“Indeed,” Eiji nodded earnestly.
“So it was that easy? You only had to drop that line on her and then what, you took her back to the barracks and lived happily ever after?”
“No… she asked me who I was, and I said I was just a soldier stationed in the city who had seen her in the café. When I convinced her to come out with me, I asked her if there was a particular place she wanted to go. She said a friend told her about a new bar that had just opened, so we went to look for it. We never found it though, just walked for hours.”
“Hmm.”
“Finally she just took me to her apartment—”
“Hah!” Yuuhei laughed scandalously, clapping Eiji’s shoulder. “So it was that easy after all!”
“No. We had tea and we talked a little more, then I left.”
“And then what?”
“That’s it. You and I were both sent to Ajanum the next day.”
“Have you written?”
“Haven’t.”
“Why not? Hasn’t she?”
“No.”
Yuuhei flicked ash free of the tip of his cigarette, waiting for Eiji to go on. Eiji said nothing, his gaze fixed on some vague point on the western horizon. Yuuhei, familiar with his friend’s patterns of conversation and silence, took a long pull from his cigarette, tilted his head back to puff a cloud of smoke into the air. He knew Eiji would go on if he didn’t.
“What would be the purpose?” Said Eiji at last. “To briefly alleviate and thus draw out the longing? Or is it just to renew the memory, to reinforce my knowledge that she exists, and to reinforce hers that I do too? Why? To what end?”
“This war can’t go on forever,” said Yuuhei. “Especially not now that we are on the ground fighting it.”
Eiji laughed. “When the war ends,” he said, “I will still remember how to find the café.”
“But she might not be there. What if she’s gone on to do something else, or moved to another city?”
“Yuuhei,” Eiji said, “you are an able strategist and a top-tier swordsman. There is a particular point in taking an enemy on the field that I am sure you are as familiar with as I am.”
“Eh?” Yuuhei raised an eyebrow, dragging on his cigarette. “Are you trying to change the subject?”
“I am talking about the point at which you have committed yourself to a certain tactic. A certain course of action. Prior to that point, you can consider all the various things your enemy might do when your charge meets theirs. You will also be able to take into account every other potential factor – the weather, the terrain, your own strength compared with that of your enemy, your respective armor, your different weapons. Indeed you should. However, when the time comes you must adopt a degree of fatalism. It will no long be suitable to pay heed to any of these factors of possibility. You must throw yourself headlong into your chosen attack.”
Yuuhei nodded. He blew streams of smoke from his nostrils and nodded again. “So,” he said, “you approach even the woman you love as an enemy to be taken by strategy?”
“Not her,” said Eiji. “The enemy is the same one we face on the field. It is not the Kolsivite soldiers whom we meet barrel to barrel or blade to blade. That soldier is the same as I am, and faces the same enemy I do. That foe is ill fate. What we struggle against on the field is injury, death, and the failure of our mission. On the field, inevitably one side will prevail and one side will suffer defeat. In love, the two prevail together or suffer defeat together. But in neither case does one defeat a human adversary. What they defeat is simply doom.”
“You have an interesting way of thinking, Daitokai,” said Yuuhei. He grinned, shook his head. “There is just one thing. To mistake when you have truly reached the point of total commitment to your course of action is disastrous. Resolve is key, but premature tactical commitment is folly.”
“True,” Eiji said.
“The war won’t be over for quite some time, to be sure, but you never know when the next time we’ll be granted leave will be.”
And for a time, that was the last they spoke of it. But leave came earlier than either of them expected.
