Years later, after Eiji had already risen to some prominence as a hero in the Imperial Expeditionary Forces without any of his admirers knowing him by his real name, the only person from the academy with whom he still had any contact was Yuuhei Kurotou. When both, by coincidence, were deployed along the front lines in defense of the province of Hansilla during a high point in the Kolsivite advance and thus one of the worst parts of the recent war, their childhood friendship from training grew to be a deep bond of brotherhood-in-arms.
The two were present in the Southern Front all throughout the defenses of Hansilla and even into the start of the counter-offensive on the province of Ajanum. Together their bravery and skills played a vital role in turning the tide of that part of the fighting, and they rose parallel through the ranks at a steady pace of field commendations and promotions.
The morning after the first Meihonese siege on Kolsigrad, a midnight assault which, despite inflicting heavy casualties on the Kolsivite forces, failed to breach the city walls and would later turn out to have been many years premature, Eiji found Yuuhei in the barracks head at Ajanum making a poor attempt to hide the fact that he had just before been crying. Eiji cleared his throat to make his presence among the hollow stalls known, and Yuuhei turned his head to see him.
Thinking that Yuuhei must have been troubled by seeing some terrible thing during the previous day’s battle, or by the death of a close comrade, Eiji said, “We all, Meihonese and Kolsivite alike, suffer from the horrors of this glorious war. There is no reason to view such suffering as shameful, or to hide it among the toilets.”
Yuuhei did not respond, only stared blankly into space. Eiji relieved himself in a stall and took his leave of the head.
That afternoon, the Kolsivite forces from Kolsigrad mounted an impetuous and poorly-planned counterattack on Ajanum. Both Yuuhei and Eiji were dispatched to the mobile defense detachment outside of the city walls.
The detachment split into two groups, one headed by Eiji and the other by Yuuhei, and exited the city by its north and west gates, moving to flank the Kolsivite attackers at their position just outside of the east gate.
This pincer defense, combined with the support of the mounted guns on the gate’s towers, devastated the Kolsivite assault force. But spirited and desperate, motivated by fury and vengeance, the attackers would not scatter or retreat.
Eiji drove his detachment straight into the middle of the Kolsivite ranks. With couched sword he cut down one soldier after another. Bullets blazed past him, over and under him as he dodged, leapt, and cut his way through the fray. In his wake was carved a swath of fallen Kolsivites. Just as he found himself in the middle of a clearing in the Kolsivite forces, a strange sensation made him turn in place and catch sight of a Kolsivite rifleman not ten meters away preparing an incendiary grenade. Eiji’s submachine pistol was drawn and in his hand before the Kolsivite could lob the bomb free. He sprayed a salvo of bullets into the soldier’s arm, ripping it in two at the elbow. The grenade, still clutched in the hand of the severed forearm, exploded in midair, gushing a ring of fluid chemical fire in all directions. The fire consumed the soldier and three of his comrades and set the grass and shrubbery around their writhing bodies ablaze.
Eiji stepped toward the flames, keeping his submachine gun in one hand and his drawn sword in the other. Outside of the clearing he had hewn, the battle continued to rage: the don-don-don-don of the assault rifles, the ringing of steel blades, and the wet ripping sounds and screams produced whenever these weapons found their targets. It was a terrible cacophony on all sides.
Through the flames and smoke before him, the dark silhouette of a soldier loomed tall into view. Eiji leveled his gun on it. He crouched and prepared to fire when the soldier’s uniform became visible, but before he could do so another silhouette appeared carrying a spear and charged at the first. The first silhouette turned and with one solid blow from a clearly Meihonese sword, decapitated its assailant.
Yuuhei Kurotou stepped gingerly over a burning branch in his path, his face and black uniform coming into view as the ashen smoke parted around him. Eiji lowered his weapon and stood, lifting his sword in acknowledgement to Yuuhei.
“Ho, Eiji!” Yuuhei exclaimed. “The defense fares well.”
“Indeed,” Eiji nodded. “How went your push?”
“Smoothly! They’ll be scattered within the hour, easily.”
“I think so too.” Eiji drew a cloth from within his breastplate and used it to wipe the blade of his sword clean. “Maybe much sooner than that.”
Eiji and Yuuhei surveyed the battle as it shifted and flowed on all sides of them, watching as more and more Kolsivite soldiers broke rank and went into full retreat, as the overwhelming Meihonese defense turned into offense. Further up the highway, however, Eiji noticed a group of Kolsivite soldiers forming attack ranks on the approach to the city. Because of the smoke in the air and the great distance, it was impossible to make out whether these were new reinforcements, or if retreating soldiers had reassembled for another attack.
“Here they come again,” Eiji said. He loosed the half-spent clip from his submachine pistol and slotted a fresh one in. He tucked the old one into its pocket on his armor.
Yuuhei followed Eiji’s gaze with his own. “And with good timing,” he said. “We’re just about finished cleaning up here.”
Eiji saw that Yuuhei was right. The vast majority of the initial assault force still around them was now dead or had surrendered. Group after group of Kolsivite riflemen and spearmen were on their knees being stripped of their weapons by the victorious Meihonese forces.
Eiji turned to wave for the attention of the towers, drawing his steel war fan from his armor. He flicked it open and made two broad waves at the tower keeps, signaling that there was another enemy force on the approach. The tower fans waved in response that they were ready to open fire when the attackers came within range. Eiji responded with another signal – Prisoners – the cue for the forces within the city to retrieve the captured while it was still safe to do so. The gate popped partially open with a hydraulic hiss, and the prisoner retrieval teams emerged at a controlled dash.
“Eiji,” Yuuhei said, now cleaning his own sword. “I have been pondering your words.”
“Hm?” Eiji waved his fan for the Meihonese soldiers to reform defensive ranks.
“‘The war brings suffering to us all.’ Well said, indeed.”
“Thank you.”
“Do you suppose that there might not be two kinds of suffering, though? One glorious and valiant, and one vain and self-absorbed?”
“’Glorious’! Suffering?” Eiji broke into a deep laugh. “How is that?”
“I mean that you can suffer as a soldier, but suffer also—”
They were interrupted by a high-pitch mechanical whine coming from behind them. The main guns on each tower had ranged the approaching mass of Kolsivite soldiers and were spooling their motors in preparation for the first volley. All at once they both opened fire, and the high-pitched whine was accompanied by the sound of hundreds of small thunderclaps repeated in such rapid succession that they bled together into a deafening drone. The stream of bullets was only visible by the chemical heat trails of their tracer rounds, every fifth shell drawing an unbroken line of red, orange, or white instantly through the air straight from the guard towers to the approaching soldiers, a molten whip sailing over the highway and striking its target dead center.
The first soldier hit burst instantly, ripped into tiny fragments by the combined force of the gunfire itself and every gun clip and grenade he carried exploding in unison from the heat.
The spray of bullets tore through the Kolsivite ranks, shredding and disintegrating every body they touched. Many others went down from the shrapnel burst of their comrades’ munitions and the shattered fragments of burning armor kicked in every direction.
And in less than five seconds, it was over. The tower guns quieted for their cooling sequence, which would put them out of commission for five minutes. With their fans, both towers relayed the same signal to Eiji:
Direct Hit.
Eiji waved his acknowledgement, digging his pinky into his ear. “You were saying, Yuuhei?”
“…That one can suffer as a soldier, but also as a man.”
“Is that how you’re suffering now?”
“I’m in love with Eiko Takahashi,” Yuuhei said, grinning ironically as he sheathed his sword. “Even now it’s embarrassing to admit.”
Eiji signaled to the Meihonese troops to prepare for their charge. “Takahashi… The one from our class at the academy?”
“The same.”
“Quite a woman, if I remember. You’re still in touch with her, then? How is she?”
“Same as us,” Yuuhei said, and popped the clip free from his gun to check its remaining contents. “She’s on the Sekaigiwa Front, extreme north.” He replaced the clip and shifted the gun into his left hand, unclipping a grenade from his armor with his right. “We write when we can.”
“Hmm,” Eiji nodded, and waved at the body of Meihonese soldiers behind them to begin their charge, when the second wave of Kolsivite attackers, thinned from the tower fire, crested the nearest rise. “Send her my regards.”
They rushed forward, the assembled Meihonese forces behind them bursting into a charge down the slope of the highway approach. The Kolsivite attackers began theirs.
With a tremendous battle cry, Yuuhei let his grenade fly. Its slow rotations through the air seemed to stop time, and for the space of a single breath, a great silence fell over the field, broken finally by the grenade’s explosion against the first row of Kolsivites. It was followed immediately by shouts and gunfire on both sides.
When he had come close enough to the line, Eiji emptied his clip into the first four Kolsivite soldiers and dove without delay into the line with his sword. Close to him, ever in his peripheral vision, was Yuuhei Kurotou, the two of them carving trails of dead into the Kolsivite ranks. The other Meihonese soldiers fought furiously to keep pace with them.
When there were no more Kolsivite soldiers within immediate range of his sword, Eiji flicked a grenade free of his breastplate and lobbed it into the back of the Kolsivite ranks. Yuuhei changed the clip in his submachine gun.
“Why does your love trouble you, Kurotou?”
“Well,” Yuuhei drew his sword to deflect a spear thrust at him by a lone Kolsivite who had broken rank, and squeezed the trigger of his gun into the soldier’s face, caving it into his helmet like a rotten fruit. “That is complicated, Daitokai.”
“Obviously,” Eiji said. Looking up, he saw a grenade sailing toward them, and slipped his sword’s sheath free of his belt. With the sheath, Eiji struck the grenade out of the air, knocking it back toward the Kolsivite soldier who had thrown it.
“It’s the distance,” Yuuhei said as the grenade exploded in the midst of the Kolsivite ranks. “The utter impossibility of seeing her.”
Eiji hooked the sheath back into his belt, changed the clip in his gun, and took a carefully aimed shot at a nearby Kolsivite spearman locked in combat with a Meihonese swordsman, catching the Kolsivite in the side and dropping him. The Meihonese swordsman stuck the fallen spearman in the neck for good measure, and advanced.
“And more troublesome is the difficulty of fighting with true abandon, because I have her in my mind. I fear constantly for her safety, and in the name of a future where I can be with her, I think constantly of my own survival.”
“And these concerns seem shameful to you?”
“Are they not improper thoughts for a soldier?”
A group of six Kolsivite attackers had broken free of the fray and now rushed Eiji and Yuuhei. Yuuhei dove at them, killing three with the same number of rapid blows, and Eiji felled the other three with but two strokes of his blade.
“To tell you the truth,” Eiji drew his war fan and signaled at the towers for precision support, “I think plenty of us have similar concerns. And even those without love are often still concerned with their own lives, for much less noble reasons.”
Yuuhei hesitated. “Am I hearing something else behind your words? Could it be that even you have found your match in a woman?”
The guard towers began to rain sniper fire down into the crowd, downing any Kolsivite soldier they could find who was clear of nearby friendlies.
“Perhaps.”
“Who?”
“You don’t know her. A civilian.”
“A civilian?” Yuuhei laughed. “What could you possibly have in common with a civilian?”
“As of now,” said Eiji, half-grunting, half-laughing, “I couldn’t tell you.” Around him the Kolsivite forces were moving again into retreat. He raised his war fan and signaled for the Meihonese forces to pursue. “But I am hoping to find out.”
Eiji and Yuuhei led the charge after the fleeing Kolsivite soldiers. As the Meihonese pursuers neared the rear ranks of the retreat, a number of Kolsivites stopped and dropped to their knees, calling out their surrenders. Eiji raised his fan and signaled to end the pursuit. Yuuhei, meanwhile, gave two broad waves of his own fan to the guard towers, and no sooner had he done it than the whine and thunder of the gate guns sent another burning volley out, this one into the backs of the retreating soldiers. What had been left of the Kolsivite force was instantly and irrevocably ground to bits.
Yuuhei and Eiji took to assisting their forces with tending to the prisoners, leading the group back to the gates. “Well fought, defenders!” He called out, and the Meihonese soldiers in unison let loose a victorious war cry.
