WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 186

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Say You Want to Live - 2

As the Captain said, this wasn't over yet.

“This disturbance is being met with proper responses to the resistance breaking out across different areas... but the Shadow’s goal is not to make this disturbance succeed. Their goal is to cause this disturbance itself.”

I knew that too.

In the end, the Shadow’s objective was to clean out the back alley. They split up their people and sent them everywhere to spread these sparks and smoke as far as possible.

Even though their moves were read in advance and they were picked off one by one, their objective had already been achieved.

“By now, the military state taboo they carried has likely been scattered everywhere. If the military authorities obtain even a clue about that taboo, they will not overlook this incident, even if the uproar itself is small. We are too late. We should have stopped this before it began...”

The worst part about war and unrest is this: it takes two sides to fight, but one side alone can start it.

No matter how you respond, you can't deny that a fight happened. And if, in that process, the military state gets information on Hameln, they'll move to erase everything connected to it.

“The Shadow... succeeded. This officer could not stop them. If only this officer had moved a little earlier...”

I could feel something like despair and dejection from the Captain. Maybe there was even a little resentment toward me for taking action on my own.

Still, she couldn't just blame me. From her position, the person she resented most was herself.

‘I dragged things out too long. This officer could not even use her own life in time...’

The Shadow’s operation was simple: stir up unrest, draw the military state’s attention, then spread the taboo so the military state would carry out the purge.

The Captain tried to stop that by spending her own life. She planned to stop by a nearby office, send a warning to communications headquarters, then get herself killed as bait to bring in the military police.

If a communications officer suffered a suspicious accident, headquarters would dispatch an investigation team no matter what.

It might have been a decent plan in its own way. If she had succeeded, then even if she couldn't wipe out the Shadow, the military state would at least have kept them in check.

My plan was a little different.

“It’s okay! This is exactly why communications officers exist!”

The Captain blinked in confusion.

I turned to her and smiled as brightly as I could.

Pure, pretending to be innocent.

“You told me to keep it secret, so I stayed quiet, but you're a communications officer, right? Someone who can deliver opinions directly to the military state’s top brass!”

“...Correction, this officer...”

As soon as she started to deny it, I widened my eyes like a child whose present had just been snatched away and asked again.

“Huh? You can't even contact upper command? Even though you're a communications officer? The communications officer who sends messages everywhere through golems?”

I spoke as if I knew nothing about her circumstances, playing the naive fool to the end. Flustered, she still answered with facts alone.

“If stating only simple facts, affirmative. This officer can contact superiors. However.”

“Then that settles it!”

I grinned.

They say you can't spit at a smiling face. My innocent smile left her speechless.

“If you're Captain AB, who spent days with me in the back alley, then you know everything, how this happened, who the enemy is, what they’re after, and who this Shadow is that knows the taboo. If Captain AB just tries a little harder, the military state won't strike the wrong target because of some unnecessary ‘misunderstanding’!”

At my hopeful words, the Captain fidgeted in confusion.

Of course she did. After I learned her identity, she couldn't go back as a communications officer. She never intended to return to headquarters alive, and she couldn't have done it anyway.

“Please wait. That is...”

But that was classified, and I pressed her while pretending not to know.

“Huh? You're not saying you can't do it, right? The back alley people's lives are on the line here.”

I asked again with a face that said I truly didn't understand.

“Three hundred thousand. Three hundred thousand lives in the back alley are at stake. Three hundred thousand people are tied to this incident, directly or indirectly, big or small. If Family collapses, most beastkin will shrink back. If Market gets raided, the back alley economy will freeze. Shelter goes without saying. Someone’s family, friend, or lover could disappear overnight. If you don't help, Captain!”

A shadow passed across her face. In that instant, what surfaced in her mind was that gloomy door, tightly shut in one alley.

The world isn't all comedy. To the Captain, who loved people's lives, the lonely death seeping from behind a closed door was not something she could easily turn away from.

A door that never opened, no matter how much they pounded and shouted.

A cold death almost no one remembered, unseen even in this rough, exhausting back alley, remembered only by two friends and one Captain who happened to witness it.

After leaving the windowless room, the Captain learned joy and sorrow. She came to seek joy and avoid sorrow.

So she tried to step forward for the people of the back alley.

“The military state might discard them easily. But Captain AB, the Captain I lived with wasn't that cold-hearted, right? You liked Anna’s food, you liked the citizens chatting together, and you enjoyed labor and its rewards. You're a kind person who affirms that hard but worthwhile life itself, right?”

A shackle she could only bear because she was kind.

Overwhelming empathy suppressed beneath chains called rules and principles.

The virtue of saints and holy maidens, carving herself down to give to others.

The reason the military state had no choice but to lock communications officers in windowless rooms was showing itself in the Captain now.

“Even if the military state abandons them, you won't, right? Anna, Smen, maybe Manager Krin, or paparazzi Neru. Or the veterans at Shelter and the orphans they care for. For all of them, you'll find the strength, right?”

“...This, officer...”

“Huh? You're not going to help?”

If she tried hard enough, maybe she could save them. A communications officer had the power to control information. Their rank wasn't high, but they could definitely move the military state.

There was just one problem.

“...must not. do that.”

A communications officer had to be objective.

If subjectivity mixed into information, if intent soaked into it, that poison would circulate through the whole military state and eat away at the country. It would run through the nerves and cause dysfunction in a body made of iron blood.

Communications officers, they too were a military state taboo. One of the gravest secrets the military state had tried to hide.

“This officer must not act in that way.”

That was why communications officers, even with that kind of nature, had to imprison themselves in loneliness. Their empathy could only be expressed through their innate arcane, and only in limited spaces.

“Why? Why exactly can't you?”

“...It is classified.”

‘Because this officer is a communications officer who must never reveal her identity. Because rather than survive after revealing it, she must die. Because that is the principle.’

Good. It was about time.

Time to shatter the principles the military state created.

“Captain AB. Do I look like an idiot?”

‘Partially... affirmative.’

That stung. I didn't want to blame the messenger for the message, but I really didn't want to hear that from you.

“Captain AB, when we first met in that metal box, you bit a suicide poison pill, right?”

“...”

“After that, you told me to marry you so I could collect death compensation, and you kept wandering the streets alone with no real combat power. Strange actions may look separate, but stack them together and it's obvious. Do I look like an idiot? Or did you know and just play dumb?”

She gave no answer. Because both were partially affirmative. She saw me as just a dumb petty criminal... or hoped I was.

If I had been sharp enough to use a communications officer to pull classified information, then the moment I learned her identity, she'd have become a threat to the military state.

“Fine, let's say you're the best suicide hopeful in the world. But is your self-destructive urge more precious than the lives of the people in the back alley? If your one death makes you happy, can we just ignore that huge number of people becoming miserable?”

“Why would this officer be happy!”

The Captain flared up at my baseless slander and snapped back.

“This officer does not want to die either! Who in this world wants to die! If this officer could keep living...!”

“Then live. Live as a communications officer and help the people here in the back alley a little.”

“But! This officer acts because this principle must be upheld, no matter what happens!”

“And what about everyone left behind if you do that? Market, Family, Shelter. And all the people tied to those different groups. Will you just abandon them? They're members of the military state too.”

Now she finally understood the core of the dilemma in front of her.

To keep the principle, she had to die. Since she was going to die anyway, she tried to use that life to dig up the conspiracy surrounding this back alley.

But now the situation was this:

“If you don't break the principle, everyone you knew will end up in danger.”

For herself.

For others.

For ideals.

A communications officer followed ideals. For principle, she could cast aside her own life without hesitation. And even in that, she had decided that if she had to spend it, she'd spend it for others.

I had confirmed that much.

“Communications officer, you're allowed to live. No, you have to live. Otherwise everyone you met today will be put in danger.”

All right, enough of that. Next step.

Could a Captain who could abandon herself for principle abandon principle for others?

“What do you think, Captain AB? Can you do it? Can you leave all these people behind and walk away alone?”

I asked, and the Captain did not answer. No, she couldn't answer.

The most useful tool the military state ever made already had a fixed answer for moments like this. But that tool had been flawed from birth, and it kept producing errors.

What came out in the end was anxiety.

“...There is no guarantee, is there.”

“What guarantee?”

Good. Was the mask finally starting to come off?

No guarantee she wouldn't be discovered by the military state.

No guarantee that instead of a clean death, a more horrible one after torture and interrogation wasn't waiting for her.

I was preparing a rebuttal to that, but she lowered her head and said uneasily,

“There is no guarantee... that failing to follow duty is better. No guarantee... that what I am doing is worth breaking principle for... there is no such guarantee, is there.”

Tears spilled from her eyes in heavy drops. In contrast, her face was flatter than I'd ever seen it, like watching a golem cry.

It was the moment the highest-performance machine the military state had made regained a human heart.

“This officer was taught it was the iron rule of communications officers, and she carried it out. That communications officers bear that level of duty, that that level of responsibility is demanded of them... so if this officer’s deviation leads to a greater tragedy. If breaking principle leads to even more terrible results... then what should this officer do?”

More than fear of what might happen to her, she was anxious about whether what she was doing was right. She was afraid she might ruin everything out of her own desire.

It felt like the heart of a believer, seeking a god because she longed for faith.

Maybe, to a communications officer, that little box was a temple, and the military state was faith.

Then was I the devil, trying to free a communications officer?

Smiling to myself, I spoke to the Captain in a firm voice.

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