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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: Xrecker
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The unexpected news of her birthday made me urgently wonder if there was anything I could do for her, but it was difficult to do anything on the spot. If I had had a little more time to prepare, I could have given her at least a small gift.
Thinking about it, Green wasn’t the type to go around announcing her birthday. Even if it was her birthday, she would probably just have a small gathering with a few acquaintances.
But my assumption was completely wrong. The only acquaintances of Green that I knew of were the Hunter Killer members, and Green hadn’t even told them it was her birthday. Far from having a small gathering with a few acquaintances, she hadn’t even considered that she would be congratulated on her birthday.
I didn’t know the reason, but Green wanted something a little different from the usual today because it was her birthday. It wasn’t just a figure of speech; for her, her birthday was truly just a reason to create a little bit of specialness.
The proof was the surprised expression she made when I reflexively congratulated her. It was the face of someone who had never expected to be congratulated on her birthday.
And it was no wonder. Green’s family environment wasn’t just bad; it was the worst you could find anywhere. It was impossible for Green, who grew up in such an environment, to be congratulated on her birthday by her family, by that father.
On top of that, her introverted personality meant she had never celebrated her birthday with anyone else. It wasn’t just that she didn’t know that being congratulated on her birthday was a good thing; the very concept of being congratulated on her birthday didn’t exist in her.
Furthermore, the “little bit of specialness” she desired was truly minimal.
Even though it was Green’s birthday, I couldn’t suddenly change my schedule and go somewhere with her. As much as I wanted to do something for her right away, I had recently become aware of my circumstances and had grown a bit more sensitive, so I thought I shouldn’t recklessly alter my schedule.
One wrong move, one mistake, could raise suspicion and reveal my identity. I was in a precarious situation where my identity could be revealed even without any mistakes on my part. So, to avoid being found out by Green, who knew me as a regular office worker, I had to stick to a clear schedule.
For that reason, it was difficult to go anywhere with Green. I asked if there was anything she wanted, and her answer was a request to hold hands.
Holding hands wasn’t difficult, but from my perspective, I couldn’t help but wonder why she had asked to hold hands. The answer came quickly. Green thought that this was the limit of the special things she could enjoy on her birthday. It might have just been my guess, but seeing her genuinely happy smile the moment we held hands, I couldn’t help but be certain.
To be honest, it was just holding hands. It was an act that could be done normally, even if you weren’t in a dating, special, or close relationship. There were many things I could have done for her on her birthday, and even if she didn’t immediately say what she wanted, I was willing to do it if she asked.
Green’s mood was gradually improving, and seeing her slowly change made me want to support her even more.
What she wanted was to hold hands. It was something I could do right then and there, but on the one hand, I was disappointed that the only thing she wanted on her special day of birth was to hold hands.
But just because I felt disappointed didn’t mean I could act rashly. I had to be more careful than anyone because I was in an unusual situation, and since I had realized that rather late, I had to be more sensitive than anyone.
“Hey.”
“…….”
“A!”
I was sitting blankly, thinking about what else I could do for Green, when a voice hit my ears, and I turned my head in surprise. Kruger was looking at me from the side with a deep frown, and I stared back at him, wondering what was wrong.
“What?”
“What do you mean, ‘what’? You didn’t answer when I called, so I had to shout.”
“So why did you call?”
“I called you to fill this out.”
The tablet screen he handed me listed various survey items. It was a survey evaluating the recent training from the soldiers’ perspective. That was why Kruger, who, unlike me, rarely came to the headquarters on weekdays, was at work.
“Did you finish?”
“Yeah. It was quick.”
“Really?”
We exchanged light conversation as I started the survey, clicking on the tablet screen he had given me with a stylus. Kruger sat quietly at his desk without saying anything, and after a short conversation, there was silence.
I wasn’t a very talkative person, but I wasn’t quiet either, and Kruger was also on the not-so-quiet side. Moreover, since he was usually the one who set the mood in the team, his silence felt even more awkward.
The reason for our awkwardness was the team dinner we had just a short while ago.
“You’re not hurt anywhere?”
I asked, my gaze fixed on the screen. Kruger, who had been looking at his computer, stopped his hands and looked at me.
“I’m fine, what about you?”
“You know I’m tough.”
“It’s good that you’re not hurt. It’s a relief that no one was seriously injured.”
“Yeah. I never dreamed that would happen at a team dinner.”
Although that had happened, it was just a little difficult to bring it up at first. There was no awkwardness or discomfort in our conversation. We hadn’t done anything wrong to each other; we had just experienced a difficult situation that was hard to talk about.
I had been in the same unit with Kruger for quite a long time, so we had fought a lot, and now we didn’t fight over trivial things. He was the person I talked to the most in the team. To add, a few months ago, when I was bickering with Ruche in the car as usual, this was the guy who had chimed in, taking Ruche’s side.
“Let’s just forget about it. Thinking about it won’t change anything.”
“I’m not saying it will, but are you sure we don’t have to report it?”
At Kruger’s words, my hand stopped this time. This was something I had been worrying about a lot. Looking at the situation alone, it happened during a team dinner, i.e., outside of work hours, and what we experienced was purely our own business, so there was no need to report it to Ruche.
The problem, and the reason we were hesitant to report it, was that the people we had trouble with were superhumans. Although we were invaders, our actions weren’t heavily controlled, so we didn’t necessarily have to report fights with Earthlings outside of work hours. But in principle, fighting with superhumans outside of the scheduled duels was forbidden.
The same rule applied to the Earth Defense Alliance, but they probably had no idea we were Spacetroe, so bringing it up would only complicate things.
Anyway, conscious of that rule, we didn’t lay a hand on the superhumans. A moment of anger could quickly escalate a situation, and the one who would have to deal with the consequences wouldn’t be us, but our direct superior, Ruche.
“It won’t do any good to tell Ruche.”
In fact, there would be no problem if we just thought of it as a fight with Earthlings and moved on. Honestly, the various reasons I mentioned earlier were just excuses. The biggest reason our team wasn’t reporting it was because we thought Ruche would be shocked to hear that we got beaten up when she wasn’t there.
Spacetroe had lived in space for a long time, and due to the relativity of time, the hierarchy within Spacetroe was not based on age. It was solely based on rank, and while one’s enlistment period was respected to some extent, it was meaningless among our team members, who were all seasoned veterans from various Spacetroe units.
Ruche was our direct superior, but even though we didn’t care about age, we couldn’t help but be conscious of the fact that she was the youngest in the team. Moreover, we could sometimes feel her youthfulness in her actions. Nevertheless, because she was a mature Ruche, we didn’t want to create a situation that would shock her.
We had our own reasons to be sorry to Ruche, but Ruche, in her own way, was sorry to us, thinking that she was the cause of every defeat.
“If you have no intention of telling her, I’ll keep my mouth shut for now. The other guys seem to want to leave it to us for now.”
Even though we were all soldiers, it was inevitable that we had our own positions. Kruger was the leader among the soldiers, and he respected my opinion as a fellow enlistee. And I, who valued the chain of command, always followed Ruche’s orders.
I had been in the military longer, but it was a fact that Ruche’s tactical abilities were far superior to mine, and I had no intention of refuting or rejecting that. In the end, she was younger than me, but her abilities and rank were higher. There was no reason for me, who had only my experience to show for, not to follow her.
“What do you mean, leave it to us? It’s a relief that we’ve all agreed not to report it, though.”
No matter how we came to an agreement, it was a relief that we were all on the same page.
“……You’ve softened up a lot.”
“Me?”
I couldn’t help but react to Kruger’s words, which he said with a smirk. It sounded like he was saying I had changed after going through the hardships of time. I had been getting less angry than before for a few years before coming to Earth, but it was only recently that I had been told I had changed.
“If it were the old you, you would have made a fuss about the soldiers making decisions among themselves.”
“I’m not entirely without complaints now either.”
Spacetroe had a strict hierarchical structure. It wasn’t an ordinary company, and since we accompanied fights whenever we went to other planets, and sometimes even put our lives on the line, the superior-subordinate relationship was that much more important.
When many people gathered, it was inevitable that order would be established among them. I thought that roles could be divided among the soldiers, but I didn’t like the idea of priorities being divided. As Kruger said, if it were the old me, I probably would have started with, “What the hell,” and said all sorts of strange things.
“I’m just saying because your way of expressing yourself has changed in many ways, not just this, you bastard.”
At Kruger’s words, I wondered if there was anything I had done recently that was unrecognizably different from before.
“To be precise, wasn’t the old me the abnormal one?”
“So you do know?”
The moment I heard his laughing reply, I extended my leg and kicked the chair he was sitting on.
“I’m just kidding. Are you really trying to make me abnormal?”
“Hey, fuck. You’re going to kick the chair I’m sitting on?”
“Why is it so noisy?”
Just as our usual lighthearted banter was about to escalate, Ruche opened the office door and poked her head out.
“It’s nothing.”
The others in the office were already looking at Kruger and me, and since they knew we were the source of the noise, I spoke up first, implying that it was nothing to worry about, before Ruche could get annoyed.
I thought Ruche would just give a perfunctory response and go back in, but contrary to my expectation, she opened the office door and came out.
“Are you two fighting again?”
“Again?”
“That’s right. Compared to when A and you fight, Ruche, we’re not even fighting.”
“When did I ever fight?!”
Ruche, who didn’t think our usual bickering was fighting at all, said in a truly aggrieved tone. Of course, Kruger didn’t seriously think that Ruche and I were fighting either. Just as we all shared the thought that we shouldn’t burden Ruche, we also shared the habit of teasing her.
“You fight every time. You fight in the parking lot before we leave, you fight in the car, you fight when we get back.”
As I listened to Kruger’s words, I realized we fought a lot more than I had thought. The mention of fighting suddenly reminded me of something from the past, and I let out a laugh. Seeing me suddenly burst out laughing, Kruger looked at me as if I were a madman.
“Why are you laughing all of a sudden?”
“No, I just remembered something from the past.”
“What past event?”
Ruche, whom I had first met on Earth, was interested in my past. But it was a story that only those who were there at the time would know.
“It’s nothing.”
“What is it?”
“Why? When we were on the fleet. When the new bio-roids came.”
At the mention of a story she knew nothing about, Ruche clamped her mouth shut, and Kruger also burst out laughing, as if he had remembered something.
“That was fun. I think the time you were the most of a handful was back then.”
“It wasn’t just once or twice that I acted up because of you back then, you bastard.”
Just as I was starting to get into the old story, Ruche suddenly kicked the chair I was sitting on.
“!!!”
I couldn’t react to her sudden action and fell to the floor. Kruger dodged me as I fell.
“Serves you right.”
Kruger’s reaction, looking down at me and laughing, was annoying, but what bothered me the most was Ruche kicking my chair.
“Why?!”
“Just hurry up and finish the survey and submit it!”
I was at a loss for words at her sudden command to hurry up with a task that only needed to be finished by the end of the day.
“What!”
I couldn’t even think of how to complain. As I stared at Ruche with a blank expression, she shouted back, and having missed my chance, I set the chair upright and sat down.
“If you’re told to do something, you should do it quickly. Just chatting.”
“You know that’s a completely ridiculous complaint, right?”
Perhaps realizing her complaint was too ridiculous even for herself, Ruche shut her mouth. But seeing her stand next to me as I finished the survey, it seemed she wasn’t upset.
“Did you do the survey, Ruche?”
“No. I was just working, so I have to do it now.”
“Then go get your tablet. We’ll do it together.”
“……Okay.”
Ruche, who had been standing there, ran back to her office to get her tablet.
It wasn’t something we could do together since it was a survey, but it could still be a topic of conversation.
Thinking so, I waited for Ruche to come out. Kruger was glaring at me.
“What are you staring at?”
It was a gaze that clearly didn’t have good intentions, so I spoke to him in the way I usually did, and Kruger sighed and shook his head.
“This bastard hasn’t changed a bit, then or now.”
“You just said I had changed?!”
I couldn’t tell if I had changed or not.
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