"He/She is not human."
- Confidential Document -
- Equilibrium Sect -
- Barrier Master -
...White Torch indifferently closed the files that had just been sent.
The hospital was very quiet; in the environment where everything in sight was white, the occasional light footsteps of a Nurse could be heard.
White Torch sat outside the ward, holding a thin stack of documents in his hand—this was the general information on the "Barrier Master" and the "Spider" currently provided by Kojimagawa.
Information tested out with human lives.
Of the five teams of Contactees, only three returned. Out of ten Origin Points in their prime, only four survived, one of whom had his spine broken and would likely spend the rest of his life in a hospital bed.
Kojimagawa.
What on earth are you thinking?!
Squeak—
The ward door was gently pushed open, and the scent of women's perfume was the first thing to enter White Torch's nose. Usami Reiko pushed open the door with a worried look: "Kojimagawa's situation isn't good."
White Torch said with a wooden face: "He brought it on himself."
Their 'Combat Group' had always walked the line between life and death on the front lines. As a Captain, one must not only control the overall situation but also be responsible for the children under them. Blindly following the orders of those pigs... will they accompany us to the battlefield?
Kojimagawa is not a qualified Captain.
Usami Reiko sighed.
"You'd better not go in," she advised White Torch. "His nerves are too tense, as if he's been traumatized by something."
"I warned him," White Torch said coldly, rubbing the tip of a cigarette and pinching the filter flat.
He had no sympathy for this young Captain.
"I must deliver the orders from the superiors."
"Tomorrow," Usami Reiko suggested.
White Torch shook his head; as he stood up, the silver iron tags around his neck clattered.
"He brought it on himself," he repeated the same words. Pushing open the door, his military boots stepped firmly into the ward.
In the room, the window was opened a crack, and fresh flowers Reiko had just placed were in a vase on the windowsill. Kojimagawa lay on the hospital bed, wrapped in bandages, staring blankly at the ceiling, not caring who had entered.
White Torch walked to the bedside, looking down from above.
"Kojimagawa."
Kojimagawa moved his eyes very slowly and moved his lips.
"Are you here to mock me?" His voice sounded like a broken bellows, and his throat, which hadn't had water for a long time after surgery, even carried a hint of a bloody smell.
"You know what I'm here for."
"Heh."
Kojimagawa curled his lips mockingly, coughed twice, and his eyes were full of disdain.
"I guess it's a dismissal, right?"
"I'm no longer qualified to be a Captain, am I?"
White Torch pulled over a chair beside him and sat down in front of Kojimagawa's bed, his hands crossed supporting his chin.
"Do you think you are still qualified?"
White Torch's words seemed to infuriate Kojimagawa; he struggled to half-sit up, baring his teeth and widening his eyes, his tone angry: "Accept the loss, White Torch."
"But you can't win forever."
"I can accept the consequences of losing!"
Kojimagawa's movement to prop up his upper body was very strained. White Torch pressed the button by the bed, and the electric hospital bed slowly rose at an angle, allowing him to half-sit up and lean against the pillow behind him.
This did not stop the weak man from spewing venom.
"How much better are you than me?"
"The 'No. 1' Ritualist senior?"
Kojimagawa panted heavily; speaking continuously made his already fragile body even more uncomfortable. The massive blood loss after fighting the Barrier Master, the huge puncture wound on his leg, and the parched state of overdrawing mystery—it was already a miracle that he could survive.
White Torch watched him silently, one finger clattering against the iron tags on his neck. During the sliding, he gently pressed down on one.
"Okada."
"Twenty-four years old, had just gotten a girlfriend."
"When I arrived, his limbs had already been eaten clean by a Chaos Multi-headed Hound."
Clatter, clatter. His rough index finger pressed down on another.
"Horii Kento."
"Thirty years old."
"An accident occurred during his promotion to an Origin Point."
"You should still be able to find him in the sanatorium."
"His esophagus is filled with unknown green plants."
Clatter, clatter.
"Yamazaki Yu."
"Twenty-seven years old."
"Blinded during a battle with a Chaos Ritualist."
"Now he runs a cold drink shop with his wife to get by."
White Torch's fingers moved among the iron tags engraved with codenames, as he recited the names behind each one. They were once vibrant lives; now, most had faded into silence or were struggling in the mire of life.
"The survivors are monitored and confined to places they cannot leave. Because we have contacted chaos and contacted mystery, infection and mutation will find us first."
"Sakai once asked me where all the large bonuses were spent."
"I only hope that those who survived can live a little better."
White Torch murmured to himself; in the quiet ward, his voice was clearly audible, and speaking of these past memories... it was like a nightmare.
He knew it was a dream, yet he still couldn't escape it, so he could only traverse the dim yellow border of chaos on his own.
Heaven and earth merged into one.
The helpless man walked in the darkness, struggling desperately, yet he could never return to the main road.
He led the crowd behind him, crashing into snowdrifts one moment and falling into traps the next. They had lost their way and would never walk out of this narrow forest.
When he stopped to look back, there were only pairs of trusting, resolute eyes behind him, encouraging him to continue leading everyone forward.
"Go on, White Torch My Lord!"
"We will follow you forever."
"Until death."
Then, his vision blurred, and the World became inverted and chaotic.
The sky was black, and the ground was pure white.
A black veil softly obscured the Sun; there was no church, no shrine, no salvation... it didn't matter.
Only boundless darkness.
When he stopped again, there were perhaps a few fewer people behind him.
What could be done? He could only continue on his way.
In the stagnant hospital room, the clock ticked away. White Torch stared at Kojimagawa.
He could not find a trace of guilt on the other's face.
Only soaring rage and defiance.
"You don't deserve to be their Captain, Kojimagawa." His lips seemed stuck together, and it took White Torch a great effort to open them; there was no emotion in his low voice.
"I don't deserve it?"
"What kind of game are you playing? You're quite emotional, aren't you, White Torch 'My Lord'? Did you really graduate from school?"
"Does hanging a few worthless iron plates and saying a few words of mourning for your teammates prove how much you love them? Oh, by contrast, that makes me look cold, doesn't it?"
Kojimagawa's sarcastic words were interspersed with weak gasps; he really could not stand a hypocritical person like White Torch any longer.
"Why don't you let someone else sit as the Captain of the First Division?"
Bang!
White Torch's thick arm firmly gripped the iron rail beside the bed, veins bulging, his face contorted!
He leaned down and stared deathly into Kojimagawa's eyes!
"You don't deserve it!"
"Kojimagawa, you led them into hell."
"Do you not feel a single shred of shame?!"
"They are all dead, why are you still alive!"
The long-accumulated rage made White Torch even more cold. He could have understood Kojimagawa's behavior before this operation. One must know that among those who went on the mission, many had just had drinks with him last weekend.
"You have no more chances."
White Torch stood up straight, took the document out of his bag, and threw it casually onto the hospital bed.
"From today on, you are no longer the Captain of the Second Division, Kojimagawa."
The man on the bed didn't catch the document; Kojimagawa, who seemed to have long expected such an end, chuckled lowly: "White Torch, you have no right to say that to me. How did Nagayama Keiichiro and Yoshino Kenichi die?"
"You couldn't possibly not know, right?"
"Because of whose mistake did they die?"
White Torch's departing footsteps paused.
"If you lose, you should be discarded, I don't care..." Kojimagawa continued to mutter behind him: "The fuel in the car actually developed the delusion that it too was a passenger, hahahahahaha..."
White Torch said nothing more and walked out without looking back.
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