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248 pages, Paperback
First published December 9, 2017
Major. Could you please…never forget us?
If we die. Even for just a short while, could you…?
But it seemed Shin ended up being the one to remember. He couldn’t help but think that he was always the one left behind. By his comrades who died in the Eighty-Sixth Sector’s battlefield. Everyone he spoke to. Everyone he was ever involved with. Sooner or later, he and everyone he ever got close to would be parted by death.
The Reaper who buried their names, their memories, in aluminum grave markers. He’d never once thought that way of life was a bitter one, but…
Don’t leave me behind…
She was the one who’d said that… So why?
Why did even she leave him behind?
What are you fighting for? What do you have to defend?
That question was asked under the assumption that people needed a reason to fight, and the Eighty-Six, who stood on the battlefield with no such reason to their name, were abnormal in the eyes of the Federacy.
They had no homes to return to or families to defend, and if their final destination wasn’t a place where they could be true to themselves, the battlefield was all they had left. If no one wished for them to be there, either, they had no reason to be kept around like pets out of pity.
Monsters.
Yes, that was probably true. They would live on the battlefield, fight until their luck ran out, and die there. It wasn’t the kind of life any person should have had to live. And yet…
Shin clenched his fists.
Pride is all we have.
He thought he could hear someone cry out, asking to not be left behind. And if he could only say those words himself… would someone, anyone, stay by his side?
Does being reduced to a killing machine consumed by bloodlust and madness mean you don’t have to think about anything else? Does it help distract you from the fact that you no longer have anything to live for…?