was about eight hours until Squad 1830’s meeting. That’s when they’d probably figure out I’d gone AWOL. I didn’t know if they’d send cars or choppers after me, but by dusk, I planned to be just another face in the crowd. I remembered the training we’d done at the foot of Mount Fuji. Sixty-kilometer marches in full gear. Crossing the Boso Peninsula in half a day wouldn’t be a problem. By the time tomorrow’s battle started, I’d be far away from days that repeat themselves and the brutal deaths they ended in.
The sun hung high in the sky, washing me in blinding light. Fifty-seven millimeter automatic guns sat covered in white tarps at hundred-meter intervals along the seawall. Red-brown streaks of rust marred the antique steel plates at their base. The guns had been installed along the entire coastline when the Mimics reached the mainland.
As a kid, when I’d first laid eyes on those guns, I thought they were the coolest things I’d ever seen. The black lacquer finish of their steel instilled an unreasonable sense of confidence in me. Now that I’d seen real battle, I knew with cool certainty that weapons like these could never repel a Mimic attack. These guns moved like the dinosaurs they were. They couldn’t hope to land a hit on a Mimic. What a joke.
They still had service crews assigned to these that came out and inspected them once a week. Bureaucracy loves waste.
Maybe humanity would lose.
The thought came to me out of the blue, but I couldn’t shake it.
When I told my parents I’d enlisted, they’d wanted me to join the Coast Guard. They said I’d still get a chance to fight without going into battle. That’d I’d be performing the vital task of defending the cities where people worked and lived.
But I didn’t want to fight the Mimics to save humanity. I’d seen my fill of that in the movies. I could search my soul till my body fell to dust around it and I’d never find the desire to do great things like saving the human race. What I found instead was a wire puzzle you couldn’t solve no matter how many times you tried. Something buried under a pile of puzzle pieces that didn’t fit. It pissed me off.
I was weak. I couldn’t even get the woman I loved—the librarian—to look me in the eye. I thought the irresistible tide of war would change me, forge me into something that worked. I may have fooled myself into believing I’d find the last piece of the puzzle I needed to complete Keiji Kiriya on the battlefield. But I never wanted to be a hero, loved by millions. Not for a minute. If I could convince the few friends I had that I was someone who could do something in this world, who could leave a mark, no matter how small, that would be enough.
And look where that got me.
What had half a year of training done for me? I now possessed a handful of skills that weren’t good for shit in a real battle and six-pack abs. I was still weak, and the world was still fucked. Mom, Dad, I’m sorry. It took me this long to realize the obvious. Ironic that I had to run away from the army before I figured it out.
The beach was deserted. The Coast Guard must have been busy evacuating this place over the past six months.
After a little less than an hour of running, I planted myself on the edge of the seawall. I’d covered about eight kilometers, putting me about halfway to Tateyama. My sand-colored shirt was dark with sweat. The gauze wrapped around my head was coming loose. A gentle sea breeze—refreshing after that hot wind that had swept across the base—caressed the back of my neck. If it weren’t for the machine guns, props stolen from some long forgotten anime, intruding on the real world, it would have been the very picture of a tropical resort.
The beach was littered with the husks of spent firework rockets— the crude kind you put together and launch with a plastic tube. No one would be crazy enough to come this close to a military base to set off fireworks. They must have
The sun hung high in the sky, washing me in blinding light. Fifty-seven millimeter automatic guns sat covered in white tarps at hundred-meter intervals along the seawall. Red-brown streaks of rust marred the antique steel plates at their base. The guns had been installed along the entire coastline when the Mimics reached the mainland.
As a kid, when I’d first laid eyes on those guns, I thought they were the coolest things I’d ever seen. The black lacquer finish of their steel instilled an unreasonable sense of confidence in me. Now that I’d seen real battle, I knew with cool certainty that weapons like these could never repel a Mimic attack. These guns moved like the dinosaurs they were. They couldn’t hope to land a hit on a Mimic. What a joke.
They still had service crews assigned to these that came out and inspected them once a week. Bureaucracy loves waste.
Maybe humanity would lose.
The thought came to me out of the blue, but I couldn’t shake it.
When I told my parents I’d enlisted, they’d wanted me to join the Coast Guard. They said I’d still get a chance to fight without going into battle. That’d I’d be performing the vital task of defending the cities where people worked and lived.
But I didn’t want to fight the Mimics to save humanity. I’d seen my fill of that in the movies. I could search my soul till my body fell to dust around it and I’d never find the desire to do great things like saving the human race. What I found instead was a wire puzzle you couldn’t solve no matter how many times you tried. Something buried under a pile of puzzle pieces that didn’t fit. It pissed me off.
I was weak. I couldn’t even get the woman I loved—the librarian—to look me in the eye. I thought the irresistible tide of war would change me, forge me into something that worked. I may have fooled myself into believing I’d find the last piece of the puzzle I needed to complete Keiji Kiriya on the battlefield. But I never wanted to be a hero, loved by millions. Not for a minute. If I could convince the few friends I had that I was someone who could do something in this world, who could leave a mark, no matter how small, that would be enough.
And look where that got me.
What had half a year of training done for me? I now possessed a handful of skills that weren’t good for shit in a real battle and six-pack abs. I was still weak, and the world was still fucked. Mom, Dad, I’m sorry. It took me this long to realize the obvious. Ironic that I had to run away from the army before I figured it out.
The beach was deserted. The Coast Guard must have been busy evacuating this place over the past six months.
After a little less than an hour of running, I planted myself on the edge of the seawall. I’d covered about eight kilometers, putting me about halfway to Tateyama. My sand-colored shirt was dark with sweat. The gauze wrapped around my head was coming loose. A gentle sea breeze—refreshing after that hot wind that had swept across the base—caressed the back of my neck. If it weren’t for the machine guns, props stolen from some long forgotten anime, intruding on the real world, it would have been the very picture of a tropical resort.
The beach was littered with the husks of spent firework rockets— the crude kind you put together and launch with a plastic tube. No one would be crazy enough to come this close to a military base to set off fireworks. They must have
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