Chapter 18
Rubedo had no memory at all of what had happened on Bahati.
Why she had woken up in a hospital room.
Why Yangyang had no lower body and was lying in a medical capsule.
Ever since she’d boarded the spaceship bound for Bahati,
her memories had felt unnatural, as if someone had edited the data.
"What? The spaceship crashed?"
Even the shuttle crashing at an altitude of 63,000 meters above Fettuccine.
"I saved dozens of lives by landing a crashing spaceship on the Furnace with Mijeong’s power? Wow, Mijeong really is amazing."
Even how she’d forgotten parts of human history and safely landed the crashing spaceship in an uninhabited area of Bahati.
"……What? The Furnace’s planetary marshal joined forces with the elves?"
The Capitano-class Nkhilakarn attacking the Razangriff, and Ramirez defeating it.
Even how they’d set out to arrest the planetary marshals of Fettuccine and Bahati after capturing a Nkhilakarn earned them the Security Bureau’s more active protection.
"You know, jokes stop being funny if you take them this far. An Elder-class Nkhilakarn showed up? The Federal troops stationed there and four members of Task Force 42 were wiped out? And Big Sis ended up like this?"
"……."
"It’s a joke…… right?"
"……I’m sorry to say, it’s true."
"……Ha, haha."
Even the fact that, while Ramirez was away in Fettuccine, an Elder-class Nkhilakarn had appeared, massacred people, and left Yangyang in critical condition.
She remembered nothing.
All she remembered was a strange dream.
A gray river.
A spaceship.
A mouth.
And the corpse of a Mijeong in her hand.
"Ha, seriously. Fuck. Then who killed that Elder-class? You said you recovered the body."
"That…… I don’t know either. By the time the captain arrived at the scene, everything was already over."
Prasada Palace had been completely destroyed.
Nearby civilians who might have been witnesses had been caught in the aftermath and killed.
A satellite passing overhead at the time had malfunctioned, as if someone had tampered with it.
"Phew……"
She felt disgusted with herself.
She’d lost her memories as the price for using Mijeong’s power? What a convenient excuse.
Thanks to it, she could sleep peacefully even though someone close to her had nearly ended up a corpse.
Just before she plunged into the bottomless pit of self-loathing,
"……Wait a minute."
One question stopped her.
"You said I was found unconscious at the same scene as Big Sis, right? That means I must have encountered the Elder-class."
That was certainly strange.
If the Earth Empire’s records were accurate,
an Elder-class Nkhilakarn was on par with the terrifying Earth warrior who could destroy an aircraft carrier single-handedly.
She’d faced something like that and survived?
She, with Mijeong asleep and no different from an ordinary person?
Impossible…… No.
No.
Now wasn’t the time to arbitrarily decide what she could or couldn’t do. She had to follow the clues she’d been given and consider every possibility.
Just like Mijeong.
She thought it through.
'I’d already used Mijeong’s power. The Brigadier General testified that I’d forgotten some of human history as the price. But…….'
What was this absurdly extensive memory loss?
She’d already paid the price for saving the spaceship.
But……
Why had all my memories been wiped out?
'……I have no memories from after I boarded the spaceship bound for the Furnace.'
A memory loss on this scale could only mean……
'My memories of Mijeong, and of who I was before I became a girl.'
She’d revived Mijeong.
She couldn’t remember how.
She’d changed her sex with Mijeong’s power.
She couldn’t remember why.
When her head had been tampered with in the hibernation room on Mars and aboard the Gladiator, Mijeong had gone berserk.
'The back-and-forth in the dream, and the corpse of Mijeong in my hand.'
What did all these events have in common?
"……Mijeong."
Mijeong, too.
A bell rang in her head.
A bell tolling to bring an end to the tangled skein of the unknown.
'It seems like the berserk Mijeong killed the Elder-class elf who massacred the stationed Federal troops and four Task Force 42 members, and left Big Sis like this. That’s why the gap in my memories was so huge.'
After thinking it over and arriving at the right answer, she came up with another question.
'There won’t be a second time. Don’t ever do that again.'
'That was…… a warning to me, wasn’t it?'
Who had said it?
And where had the corpse of Mijeong come from?
She couldn’t figure that out.
Dreams were always jumbled.
No one in the world could perfectly understand a dream.
As far as she knew, the involuntary back-and-forth with herself was Mijeong’s doing, but
her intuition, sharpened since Mijeong had parasitized her, insisted that it wasn’t Mijeong.
……In the end, nothing was certain.
Still.
"You okay, Rubedo? Hey? Rookie?"
"……I think I understand!"
For now, that was enough.
"Understand what?"
"Who killed the Elder-class elf, and what I need to do now."
She pointed at her own eye.
"Open the capsule. I’m going to save Big Sis."
Her voice was brimming with confidence.
So much so that it was hard to believe she’d been cursing in despair moments earlier.
"If we open it, Yang won’t last long. Do you know what you’re saying?"
"Brigadier General, as you can see, I just took in a second Mijeong."
She didn’t know, but
Mijeong had been revived through the expression of her will to bring it back to life.
The bug of possibility, resurrected after more than a century, had immediately burrowed into the eye of the most suitable host and settled in her brain.
Mijeong was a creature that resonated with its kin.
The second Mijeong resonated with the first one, which had been parasitizing her before, and
"Thanks to that……"
"What have you done, human? It’s cramped in here now."
"Did we pick the wrong host? Her brain is too small."
"……? What was that?"
"?"
Three selves, talking to themselves.
With the new Mijeong’s parasitism, the first, inactive Mijeong had awakened.
"Wow, I’ve never heard three voices come out of one mouth before."
"……That’s not what’s important right now, okay? It’s embarrassing, so can we not talk about it?"
Talking to yourself was something most people grew out of in their mid-to-late teens.
And now she was sharing a mouth with another self.
Being called out on it was mortifying, but
she remembered the tragedy on Fettuccine and nearly kicked Ramirez in the shin before stopping herself.
"Ahem, ahem. The important thing is that Mijeong alone saved dozens of people who would have died. If what you said is true."
"I have no reason to lie."
"Right. So fixing a living person’s body should be easy enough. Isn’t that right, you two?"
"……."
"……."
……
The Mijeong fell silent.
Rubedo was a little annoyed.
"Hey. Answer me. If you’re going to take up residence in someone else’s brain without permission, then do your job."
"It would be easy enough, but……"
"I’m really not in the mood."
"What? You’re not in the mood even though using your power sucks away my memories, and when someone messes with my head, you go berserk and I lose even more? I’ll kill myself, then. I’ll just die!"
Two panicked voices burst out of her mouth.
"A-all right."
"Let’s talk this out. Talk."
"Good. Then, Brigadier General, please open the capsule."
"……All right."
Ramirez found it hard to accept the sight of a girl talking to herself and threatening an unknown creature with her own life.
No, going back even further,
where and how had she gotten Mijeong’s corpse?
How could telling a corpse to come back to life actually bring it back?
And it was strange that the resurrected Mijeong had immediately parasitized Rubedo.
Still, there didn’t seem to be any holes in what Rubedo was saying, so
'A full recovery is practically impossible. Her lower body melted and fused with her armor. Once it’s amputated, she’ll never be as she was before.'
he recalled the doctor’s firm declaration and decided to trust Mijeong’s power once more.
He’d already entrusted it with his life once. What was stopping him from doing so a second time?
He used his authority to force the capsule open and met Rubedo’s eyes.
"Then, I’m counting on you. You’re like a daughter to me."
"She’s my older sister, too."
Phew.
Rubedo sighed and placed a hand on Yangyang’s exposed upper body.
"……You can do this. Believe in yourself."
"Fweh, y-you c-can d-do it. B-believe in y-yourself."
"Oh, just shut up already."
Ramirez couldn’t resist giving in to his mischievous impulse.
And then.
"……What are you two doing?"
Kang Chanwoo had returned after throwing Jorge into the detention cell.
Click.
He immediately drew a pistol from inside his jacket and aimed it at Ramirez.
"We’re treating Big Sis Yangyang. Hey, put the gun down, Sergeant."
"You’d better have a good explanation for forcibly opening a medical capsule, Brigadier General."
"Don’t worry, Chanwoo. We’re going to use Mijeong’s power to treat Yang."
"Is that…… possible?"
Rubedo gave him a thumbs-up as if to say not to worry.
"They saved dozens of people who were going to die. Surely they can save one living person, right?"
She looked at Yangyang again,
took a deep breath,
and
"Mijeong."
called to the bugs in her brain.
"I’m listening."
"I’m listening."
"Can you return Big Sis Yangyang, whose lower body was amputated…… to how she was before we went to the Furnace?"
"The Furnace?"
"Where is that?"
……
"……Bahati."
Only then did the bugs agree.
"That’s an easier request than changing the sex of a living organism."
"Compared to the requests from 170 years ago, this is a trivial wish."
A strange sensation, as if her head were shrinking.
At the same time, she felt déjà vu.
It didn’t matter when or where she’d felt it before.
Pop.
The severed end burst open, and blood poured out.
"……? No."
Her confusion lasted only a moment.
The amputated lower half sprouted back, along with the tangled armor,
the fragments of armor that had fused with her body separated,
and her melted bones and muscles were restored as if time had been turned back.
In the empty space inside the capsule, the lower body of a strong Federal soldier returned.
……Naked.
"Eek! Close your eyes! Brigadier General, Sergeant!"
Flustered, Rubedo hurried to cover Ramirez and Kang Chanwoo’s eyes, but
"Ah, damn it."
"Ugh."
The two of them only gagged and looked away.
Ramirez, Yangyang, Kang Chanwoo.
They were members of Task Force 42, as close as family.
That’s right.
They really were like family.
……
……
……
"Hahahaha, so that’s why you tried to cover their eyes?"
"……Y-yes……."
"Oh, don’t worry. You have no idea how many embarrassing things we’ve seen each other do."
Yangyang laughed heartily, radiating so much energy it was hard to believe she’d just been in a coma, and vigorously tousled Rubedo’s hair.
"That was…… a sight I never want to see again."
"Hey, Kang Chanwoo. What do you mean by that?"
"It was almost like looking at a naked monkey."
Thwack.
Yangyang’s kick landed squarely on Kang Chanwoo’s jaw.
Yangyang, who’d been about to follow up with another attack, paused.
"Ah. Aaaah, ah."
The brief memory loss that came the moment one woke up.
The sweetness had been short-lived, and now she had to face her painful memories.
"……Rubedo, are you okay?"
She should have had to face her painful memories,
but she was a somewhat altruistic person, very kind to the people she loved,
so she worried about a little girl’s well-being more than the pain she herself had suffered.
"That elf bastard killed us all, and then you came……"
"I’m okay, Big Sis. It’s all in the past."
"You said you’d wait quietly aboard the Razangriff. Why did you put yourself in danger……?"
"Don’t worry, Big Sis."
……Could this have been the déjà vu she’d been feeling?
Rubedo embraced Yangyang in a gesture that no longer felt awkward, and gently patted her waist.
The warmth she felt was familiar, as if her body remembered it.
"I killed that Elder-class."
"……?"
"?"
"……What?"
It happened in an instant.
The hospital room, which had been filling with warmth, turned cold.
"Ah. This feels familiar, too."
Their expressions said they’d heard something they shouldn’t have.
They looked at her with pity, as if she were a madwoman.
"Did she hurt her head?"
"Looks like it, Lieutenant."
"Should I call a doctor?"
Goddammit, I’m telling the truth!