WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 186: Say You Want to Live - 2

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As the captain said, the situation was not over yet.

"Resistance in various places is helping contain this unrest, but... Shadow's goal is not for this unrest to succeed. Their goal is simply to cause it."

I knew that too.

In the end, Shadow's goal was to purge the back alleys. They had split their forces and sent them in every direction to spread the sparks and smoke farther.

They had been picked off one by one because I saw through their plan in advance, but their objective had already been achieved.

"The military state's taboos in their possession have likely already been scattered everywhere. Should the authorities obtain even a clue concerning those taboos, they will not overlook this incident, no matter how small the disturbance may be. It is too late. This officer should have stopped them before they could cause this unrest..."

The worst thing about war and conflict was that they required two sides, yet either side could start them unilaterally.

No matter how we responded, we could not deny that a fight had taken place. If the military state obtained information about Hamelin in the process, it would move to erase everything connected to it.

"Shadow... has succeeded. This officer failed to stop them. If this officer had acted a little sooner..."

I sensed something close to despair and dejection from the captain. Perhaps there was even a little resentment toward me for acting on my own.

Still, she could not blame only me. From the captain's perspective, the person she resented most was herself.

'I wasted too much time. This officer could not even use her own life at the right moment...'

Shadow's operation was simple. Cause unrest to draw the military state's attention, then scatter taboos and make the military state conduct the purge.

The captain had planned to stop them by using her own life. She would visit a nearby government office, send a warning to communications headquarters, then let herself be killed as bait to bring in the military police.

If a communications officer suffered a suspicious accident, communications headquarters would always dispatch an investigation team.

It might have been a decent plan. Had it succeeded, the military state might not have wiped out Shadow, but it would at least have kept them in check.

My plan was a little different.

"It's fine! That's why we have communications officers!"

The captain blinked in confusion. I smiled at her as brightly as I could.

Pretending to be pure and innocent.

"The captain told me to keep it secret, so I kept quiet, but you're a communications officer! You can convey your opinion directly to the military state's higher-ups!"

"...Negative. This officer..."

When she answered in the negative, I opened my eyes wide like a child whose present had been taken away.

"What? You can't even contact the upper ranks? Even though you're a communications officer? One of those communications officers who use golems to contact people everywhere?"

As though I knew nothing of the circumstances behind it, I spoke with feigned innocence. Though flustered, the captain gave me only the truth.

"If this officer speaks only of the facts, affirmative. This officer can contact the upper ranks. However."

"Then that's settled!"

I beamed.

People could not spit on a smiling face. The captain was left speechless by my innocent smile.

"Captain AB, you've spent several days with me in the back alleys. You know how this happened, who our opponents are and what they want, and who the Shadow members with knowledge of the taboo really are! If you work a little harder, the military state won't strike the wrong target because of an unnecessary 'misunderstanding,' right?"

At my expectant words, the captain fidgeted in confusion.

Of course she did. The captain whose identity I had uncovered could not return to being a communications officer. She had never intended to return to headquarters alive, nor could she.

"Please wait. That is..."

But that was confidential, so I pressed her while pretending not to know.

"What? Don't tell me you can't do it? The lives of people in the back alleys are at stake here."

I asked again with an expression of complete incomprehension.

"Three hundred thousand. The lives of three hundred thousand people in the back alleys are on the line. Three hundred thousand people have been involved in this incident, directly or indirectly! If the Family falls, most beastfolk will have to keep their heads down. If the Market is raided, the back-alley economy will be paralyzed. And the shelter goes without saying. Someone's family, friend, or lover could vanish overnight. Unless you help, Captain!"

A shadow crossed the captain's face. What came to mind was a bleak, tightly shut door in a particular alley.

The world did not contain only comedies. For the captain, who loved people's lives, the lonely death that seeped from behind a closed door was not something she could easily turn away from.

A door that had not opened no matter how hard they knocked or shouted.

A cold death that had gone unnoticed even in these rough, difficult back alleys, remembered only by the two friends and the captain who had happened upon it.

After leaving the windowless room, the captain had learned joy and sorrow. She began to seek joy and avoid sorrow.

That was why she had tried to step forward for the people of the back alleys.

"The military state may abandon them easily. But Captain AB, the captain I've spent time with isn't that heartless, is she? You're a kind person who enjoyed Anna's cooking, liked chatting with the citizens, and embraced the hard but rewarding life of labor and its rewards, aren't you?"

A shackle she could not escape because she was kind.

Excessive empathy, suppressed beneath the chains of doctrine and principle.

The virtue of saints and Holy Maidens, who wore themselves away to give to others.

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

"Even if the military state abandons them, you won't abandon them, will you? Anna, Smen, Manager Crin, Paparazzi Neru. Or the veterans at the shelter and the orphans they care for. You'll do your best for all of them, won't you?"

"...This officer..."

"What? You're not going to help?"

If she worked hard enough, she might be able to save them. Communications officers had the power to control information. Their rank was not especially high, but they could certainly move the military state.

There was only one problem.

"...This officer must not do so."

Communications officers had to be objective.

If subjectivity mixed with information, if intent seeped into it, that poison would circulate through the entire military state and eat away at the nation. It would travel through its nerves and cause dysfunction in the body of iron blood.

Communications officers were also a taboo of the military state. One of the greatest secrets it had tried to hide.

"This officer must not do that."

That was why, despite possessing such a nature, communications officers had to imprison themselves in solitude. They could express their empathy only in limited places through their innate arcane.

"Why? Why can't you do it?"

"...It is confidential."

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

Good. It was about time.

Time to break the principle the military state had created.

"Captain AB. Do I look like an idiot to you?"

'Partially... affirmative.'

That's a little much. I didn't want to shoot the messenger over a message, but I really didn't want to hear that from her.

"Captain AB, when we first met in that metal box, you bit down on a suicide poison pill, right?"

"..."

"Then you told me we should get married so I could receive your death benefits. You wandered the streets alone despite having no particular combat ability. Each strange action might seem separate, but put them together and they become inevitable. Do I look like an idiot? Or do you know and just want to be coddled?"

There was no answer. Both were partially affirmative. She really thought I was merely an idiot and a petty criminal... or at least hoped I was.

If I were clever enough to extract confidential information from a communications officer, then the military state had been threatened from the moment I discovered her identity.

"Fine, let's say you're the world's greatest aspiring suicide. But is your urge to destroy yourself more precious than the lives of people in the back alleys? If you can be happy by dying alone, does that mean you can overlook the unhappiness of so many others?"

"Why would this officer be happy!"

The captain snapped at my baseless slander.

"This officer does not want to die either! Who in this world wants to die? If this officer could continue living as well...!"

"Then live. Live as a communications officer, and help the people here in the back alleys a little."

"But! This officer acts because these are principles that must be upheld no matter what!"

"What about the people left behind if you do that? The Market, the Family, the shelter. The people connected to all those different groups. Are you just going to abandon them? They're members of the military state too."

The captain finally understood the true nature of the dilemma before her.

To uphold the principle, she had to die. Since she would die anyway, she had intended to uncover the conspiracy surrounding these back alleys. To use her life for it.

But the situation now was different.

"If you don't break the principle, everyone you know will be put in danger."

For herself.

For others.

For the ideal.

The communications officer followed the ideal. She easily cast aside her own life for the sake of principle. She had even decided that if she was going to use her life, she would use it for others.

I had confirmed that resolve.

"Communications officer. You can live. No, you have to live. Otherwise, everyone you met today will be in danger."

All right, I understood. Now came the next part.

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 go alone?"

I asked, but the captain did not answer. No, she could not answer.

The most useful tool the military state had created had been given an answer for situations like this. Yet the tool was imperfect by nature, so it kept malfunctioning.

What emerged at the end was anxiety.

"...There is no guarantee, is there?"

"What guarantee?"

Good. Was the mask finally coming off a little?

There was no guarantee the military state would not discover her.

There might be a more horrifying death waiting for her after torture and interrogation instead of a clean death.

As I prepared to refute that, the captain lowered her head and spoke uneasily.

"There is no guarantee that not following duty will be better... No guarantee that what this officer does will be worth breaking the principle for."

Tears streamed down the captain's face. In contrast, her expression was more blank than I had ever seen it, like a golem shedding tears.

The military state's finest machine was reclaiming a human heart.

"This officer learned that this was the iron rule of communications officers, and this officer followed it. Communications officers bear that degree of duty, communications officers are expected to bear that degree of responsibility... So if this officer's deviation leads to a greater tragedy, if breaking the principle brings about an even more terrible result... What should this officer do?"

She was more anxious about whether what she did was right than about what would happen to herself. She was afraid that she might ruin everything because of her own desire.

It resembled the heart of a believer seeking a god because they craved faith.

Perhaps that little box had been a temple to the communications officer, and the military state her faith.

Then was I, who sought to free her, a devil?

Smiling to myself, I declared to the captain.

Footnotes:

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