WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 155: Ta-da, I'm Back

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Every road has an end.

Even a meta-conveyor belt that endlessly circles the military state must eventually reach the point where you get off. Aimless wandering has no destination. Perhaps a road is something you walk in order to reach the moment when you can go no farther.

This was Amitenggrad Station. The most populous city in the military state, and an affront to the capital of the old kingdom.

When I looked up, the city resembled a giant bomb frozen at the instant it exploded. Gray and black concrete sprawled outward in chaotic masses, spreading in every direction just to fill empty space. Concrete clung to concrete, gradually swelling ever larger.

Anything that could not keep up with the military state sank and was pushed aside. Buildings, people, equipment, trash, all of it piled up along the outskirts like the wreckage of an explosion.

It was wreckage, in fact. Parts shattered and flung away by the explosion called the military state.

Ah, military state. This damned country.

The magician has returned.

I was getting sentimental again.

After finishing her procedures, the captain followed me. Drivers emerged from the rows of automated carriages and eyed us as we stepped off at the station. A few of the more eager ones even came right up to us.

"Captain, welcome. It's quite a distance from here to Amitenggrad. Would you happen to need a carriage?"

Before the captain could answer, I held up four fingers.

"Four people. Can you take us?"

"Of course! Shall I get one ready?"

"Quickly."

The driver happily led us to his automated carriage. The other drivers looked disappointed and either waited for other passengers or headed off to haul cargo instead.

The captain looked at the mother and son who had gotten off with us.

"Four people? Are you taking them as well?"

"Yes. We've crossed paths, so why don't we ride together?"

I made the offer to the mother and son. The mother was a little wary at first, but after seeing how exhausted her child was from the long journey, she gratefully accepted.

We got into the automated carriage the excited driver brought over. Through the window, I saw huge cranes and laborers being led about, all moving busily. Some had been captured by the military state and forced to work, while the rest had joined the labor force just to earn enough to eat that day. Stations always lacked workers.

The moment we entered the smooth, quiet carriage, the son collapsed into sleep. His mother placed his head on her lap and brushed his hair back. A gentle smile appeared on her lips, as if she had set aside every worry and concern for the moment.

Since the child had fallen asleep, the captain and I ended up sitting beside each other.

The carriage swayed softly as it moved down a neatly paved road. Once the cityscape that had only been visible in the distance came close enough to take in at a glance, the captain gave me a sidelong look.

Then, when the carriage reached its destination.

"Ah! Let me off here!"

I raised my hand to call the driver. The carriage stopped, and the driver, annoyed that I was getting off so soon, merely stuck his head out from the driver's seat.

"Are you sure? This is District 15, quite far from the center."

"It's fine. I have business here."

"Then the fare..."

"Ah, the others will keep going. Captain Bbi, I'm counting on you!"

The last person to get out was supposed to pay the fare. That meant you needed the good sense to read the room and get off early.

I was about to cheerfully leave the payment to the people behind me when...

"Wait!"

As I raised a hand to wave goodbye, the captain suddenly grabbed my sleeve. I pretended not to know why.

"What is it, Captain Bbi?"

The captain hesitated for a moment.

"...Well. You are still under suspicion."

"That doesn't mean I can march into the military police headquarters on my own. Were you expecting me to do that?"

"Ugh."

"We only agreed to travel together as far as Amitenggrad, didn't we? You and the military state might not acknowledge it, but I faithfully completed my labor obligation. If you want to lock me up longer, bring a warrant."

"B-But!"

"Why? Is there another reason?"

'I must deal with you. Or be dealt with by you. I cannot allow someone who knows my identity to walk around freely. But...'

"...It's confidential."

"Huh? What is this? Do you want to stay with me?"

"...! Denied! Why would I? As I have said repeatedly, if I could, I would erase every memory of ever meeting you!"

"Then isn't it better for us to part here?"

"Ugh...!"

'But I do not want to die. I do not want to kill you. I just want to live normally and pretend not to know. If only we had remained as we were in that prison... A relationship where we only occasionally encountered each other through golems. That would have been nice.'

"...It's confidential!"

What was I supposed to do with this diligent model student?

Hmm. It couldn't be helped.

There was an old saying.

A man is colored by the company he keeps. Hang around bad friends, and you get stained by them. That was why you needed good friends.

So blame yourself for making a bad friend like me, Captain. I'll corrupt you.

For both of us to live, you had no choice but to become delinquent enough to lie without batting an eye.

"It can't be helped. I'm a man easily led astray, so I can't just let this sort of temptation pass."

"When did I ever tempt you?!"

"If not wanting to part isn't temptation, what is it? We have a week of grace anyway, right? Enjoy a short vacation until then. Come on."

I grabbed the captain's arm and pulled her toward the exit. Only the child and mother remained inside.

I was frugal, but I couldn't make someone without money pay for me too. That would be a scam.

I took an alchemical coin from my pocket and held it out to the driver.

"Mister! I'll pay in advance, so take these two wherever they want to go!"

"Oh, understood. Leave it to me."

The driver beamed at the extra payment. As I led the captain out of the carriage, the mother left inside with her son merely bowed from the waist to thank us.

"Thank you. I don't know how I can repay this kindness..."

"Oh, don't thank me. It's fine."

I waved to the mother, smiling gently at her good fortune.

"Think of it as the remaining payment you were supposed to receive. Your plans fell through because they didn't pay you all the money, didn't they?"

For a moment, the mother failed to understand and blankly asked back.

"...What?"

"Oops. Look at me, I was blocking the way! We'll get off now! Take care!"

I shut the carriage door. The mother, who had realized too late that the secret she needed to take to her grave had been exposed, immediately tried to get out after me.

But the heaviest paperweight in the world was sleeping soundly on her lap. To her, that weight was probably heavier than Jizan.

Unable to do anything, the mother stuck her face out the window and shouted.

"Wait...! Please, I'm sorry! Forgive me...!"

Either way, the automated carriage moved away mercilessly. The mother's desperate cries faded into the distance.

The captain, who had not grasped the situation, was full of questions.

"Question. What does remaining payment mean?"

"It's nothing much. That woman was a Resistance collaborator."

I calmly told her the truth. The captain flinched and stared at the departing carriage.

"Question. How can you prove that is true?"

I couldn't. I had only read her mind.

Still, I could put the pieces together. Walking leisurely as though I were a great detective of the century, I explained.

"The containers carried on the meta-conveyor belt come in three sizes, but they all have the same design. They have to, so cranes can lift them."

"Affirmative. I am familiar with that information."

"But how did the Resistance identify the cargo they planned to rob and leap down from the cliff while hanging from ropes? What if they landed on the wrong one?"

The problem with climbing onto the belt from a cliff while suspended by ropes was simple. If they got onto the wrong one, everything was ruined.

It wasn't as though the Resistance could invent some new exercise where they sprinted against the flow of the meta-conveyor belt, so they needed a way to identify the target cargo precisely.

That raised a question. How had they identified it? Had they used a communications officer? Or had they run here faster than the meta-conveyor belt?

Of course not.

The captain caught on and opened her mouth wide.

"...A collaborator. That mother and son sent them a signal beside the cargo?"

"More precisely, only the mother. The signal was probably a lamp."

If you made a lamp overload in a certain way, it produced a red glow visible from far away. The Resistance had probably taught the mother how to do it so they could use that light as their signal to launch the attack.

After learning the truth, the captain said in disbelief,

"But they said they had lost the lamp..."

"They didn't lose it. She placed the lamp on the target cargo. She probably intended to stay beside it, but her child was having too hard a time, so she fled to the windbreak."

She could get warmth from a lamp elsewhere, but she couldn't get a windbreak beside the cargo.

A communications officer was still a communications officer, even if she had gone rotten. Connections between pieces of information formed one after another in the captain's mind. After silently sorting through them, she suddenly found a missing piece and asked,

"...That makes no sense. Then why did the Resistance attack the side where we were?"

Ahaha, about that.

After reading her mind, I made my own lamp overload. Then I put it a little distance away from the windbreak.

So the Resistance waiting somewhere could see it clearly.

I never expected them to come down from the mountain!

Still, explaining that sounded tiresome, so I gave her a kind smile.

"It's a secret."

"Tell me!"

"I don't want to. I don't want to gild my own face."

Ah, Mother. Thinking of your son was admirable.

But a lamp you had simply placed there couldn't possibly stay upright in that wind and vibration.

If things had gone on like this, the Resistance would surely have retaliated against her. Running off with their money was one thing, but there was a high chance the mother had reported them to the military state.

When you looked at it that way, I had helped her.

Ten Resistance members had died as a result, but that was how things turned out. Well, try to understand. That was really just your bad luck. If Absolute Spear hadn't been there, maybe you would have succeeded?

The captain realized she had been sitting beside a Resistance collaborator until just moments ago. She clenched her fists and glared at me.

"You just referred to it as remaining payment. Does that mean you provided financial support to a Resistance collaborator?"

"What will you do, then? You could get in an automated carriage and chase them down now. You could catch one Resistance collaborator. Are you going to do that?"

"That is the law and the rules. Rules must be followed. If one breaks the law, one is punished. If one breaks the rules, one is sanctioned. That is the promise by which a nation stands upright."

The captain spoke as stiffly as the military state-style lettering in a manual.

"The same applies to you. Financial support for a collaborator. The moment it is established that you knowingly accepted that risk, you too will be punished!"

"What about the child?"

The captain faltered for only a moment. The face of the child sleeping without a care in the world flashed through her mind. Pain and guilt crossed her face.

That was why they needed rooms without windows. If they met people face-to-face... a communications officer who was nearly pure white could become contaminated.

Still, the captain was accustomed to enduring pain. Enduring even the pain she felt in her own heart, she said coldly,

"There is no problem. The military state operates orphanages for children without guardians."

The kind of orphanages that made children work from the age of six under the name of vocational training. I knew them well.

Captain AB knew that too. That was why she could say nothing more and kept her mouth shut.

Back in my hometown, I made my way through familiar streets. The captain, lost in thought, followed me silently.

Footnotes:

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