“So, those two investigating marines from earlier suddenly showed up in the apartment I live in,” Caenya continued. Nick and I were sitting next to her, silently listening to her story. “Turned out I was right, and that suspicious neighbor of mine was behind the thefts after all! I feel so bad!”
She looked at the ground, causing her silky black hair to cover her face. I put a hand on her head and leaned forward, trying to make eye contact.
“So tell me, dearest Caenya, what exactly is there to feel bad for?”
Her gaze shifted upwards to meet mine. Her open eyes always shifted emotions so quickly, sometimes radiating pure innocence, sometimes sad over the tiniest things.
“I-I could’ve stopped the entire thing from happening if I just acted!”
“In the end, the perpetrator was caught. It’s the responsibility of the local TSFF security forces. You’re not at fault in the slightest.”
She looked unconvinced, but I could see the cogwheels of thought turning within her brain. I unleashed a powerful insult upon her.
“Dummy.”
“B-But, you know! I-I knew! I was involved! Witnesses have a responsibility in crime cases too, right?”
“An interesting comparison,” Nick started. “But in the end, witnesses are not obliged to act in any way. I think that your greatest enemy, in this case, is yourself. Only your principles that dictate you should’ve acted are keeping you down.”
“Just look at it this way,” I followed up. “Nick and I learn a ton of things, but we do nothing but observe. We are not obliged to act in any way, but we learn, and when things do start to matter we-”
“Yeah, cut your silly lessons, I get it!”
Caenya suddenly stood up, making it awkward for me to keep sitting. Thus, I did likewise.
But it was a trap!
When we got too philosophical and deep, Caenya could only cope with it by turning everything into a game. A dangerously realistic game! With me completely off-guard, she grabbed me by my neck.
“Haha!” She said, in a mean accent. “You knew I would do this, but you didn’t act at all!”
“No!” Went my reply. “We have been foiled! Agent Dorger, I require assis-”
Caenya tugged me around, all while maniacally laughing. I turned my head sideways, twisted my leg around hers and slipped from her grasp.
Nick, reliable teammate that he was, stormed Caenya when the opening formed, and they flew to the ground. He had a sly grin on his face, a steady grin that held even as a flustered Caenya protested with all her might. I, too, joined in the two.
“We have her cornered! Now, villain, tell us. Where did the crime happen?”
“I won’t say a thing, scrub!”
Though she didn’t go to the academy, her independence in a large urban environment taught her as much as we were taught. Nick was the strongest and heaviest of us, but with her skill she managed to slip from his grasp. I tried to pin her down, but she used her secret weapon- an addition she learned to use only very recently.
Her feminine charm!
Indeed, we were at the age for factors like these to start taking a role. And Caenya was an intelligent combatant- one that used all resources provided to her.
I grabbed her by her arms to subdue her, but she calmly smiled and launched her head forward, having our noses touch and our eyes inevitably meet. The pressure I had on her arms promptly started to waver.
“Oh ho ho, aren’t you cute, Vincey?”
“N-Nick! Help me out here!”
“Acknowledged, Vincent dude.”
But in a two versus one, in a battle where Nick was completely unfazed by her secret weapon, the fight was in our favor. He grabbed Caenya from behind and pushed her to the Academy’s wall.
“Alright, you guys win!”
“I never doubted the outcome,” I answered, making a good point of looking innocently at the dark skies above. I winked at her, and when she burst out laughing it turned out to be infectious. Even Nick was widely grinning.
“Anyways, back to the point. Don’t worry all too much, Caenya. Weekend is in a few days.”
Days were twenty-nine hours long, close to the universal TSFF standard, thirty hours. Phargos-II operated on twelve-day workweeks, separated from each other by two-day weekends that gave students free time and allowed them to leave the school. We usually spent it helping Caenya out in the city.
“It’s late and we should be going. Goodbye!”
“Toodles, you two~”
Caenya made a cute little wave as we entered the facility. I sighed deeply. Of course, my detective friend instantly took note of it.
“Why are you sighing, Vincent dude? Isn’t sighing something you would do if you were tired from conversation with her?”
“In a positive way,” I answered. “You know, I don’t mind her getting all close to me like that…”
I could feel my face warm up a bit.
“I wouldn’t mind as well. After all, her warmth is pleasant.”
“Not like that! U-Uuuhm… I’ll explain later.”
The time on my neural hud ticked away all too slowly. Sometimes, I wondered how it was possible for the class not to be finished with the assignment yet.
We still had a good thirty minutes left to finish the small list of tactic puzzles we were supposed to solve. You were given a top-down simulated view of TSFF marines in trouble, and you were supposed to give each marine a single order to make it out alive. They were rather easy, and Nick and I were casually scanning the classroom instead of making extra assignments.
“It seems our new allies are still busy,” Nick observed. Indeed, Lenn “Torch” and Bardo Etcken seemed heavily concentrated on their work. Bardo sneaked a few glances our way, appearing discontented with our early success.
My eyes further checked every detail of the classroom out. A total of eighteen other students shared theory classes with us, a few of which we knew from last year. One person in particular, a guy named “Wojen”, easily stood out. He still fidgeted with the back of his uniform’s shirt as if it didn’t fit him well. But people like Wojen were already identified as “uninteresting.” In the few classes we’ve had, there were two people that kept standing out. Nick nudged me and whispered in my ear, since neural messaging was disabled during class. The only reason the sarge ignored us was probably because she knew we were done with the assignment.
“Dude Hitorin is being overdramatic again, and the Ice gal is reacting all the same. He seems completely oblivious to the fact that his nonsensical tactic to garner attention isn’t functioning as intended.”
Tophro Hitorin was a rather eccentric figure. He had green eyes and short, blond hair. He stood out because his actions were rather attention-grabbing. His companion, the girl sitting next to him, was known as Aeyn “Ice” Chrysante. As her nickname implied, her personality seemed as cold as ice to others, and the only words we’ve ever heard her speak were about her not caring at all about her surroundings.
But that was an obvious lie.
She reveled in the nickname that the others gave her. She complimented her long, flowing brown hair with streaks of white dye. She had her bangs carefully removed from her eyes, so that everyone who noticed her could feel the power of her ice-blue eyes. Even her uniform was colored in a fitting color scheme.
And then there was foolish Tophro, wanting to get her attention, probably having working together with her as a motive. Instead of directly asking someone who was obviously not going to freely give attention to others, he tried to have her make the first move by whining about how hard the assignment was in a rather expressive way, shooting un-subtle glances in her direction.
All these thoughts and observations also ran through Nick’s mind. We didn’t even have to exchange explanations to know that we saw this situation for what it was. But there was a difference between the two of us.
“Why,” Nick started, “would Hitorin dude go to such great lengths to acquire her attention?”
“I think he wants to work together with her. They sit together often since they’re both outsiders with no close friends to sit next to- and he is desperate for contact. He just doesn’t understand what to do. Probably too shy to take an actual initiative.”
“What should he do then, in this situation?”
Our eyes met, and I held up a finger while answering his question.
“Literally just ask her. Or, no, better answer; he should take a moment to think about his tactics.”
“Should we assist him?”
“Why would-”
I narrowed my eyes and gave it some thought before answering. Like I told Caenya, Nick and I were observers who learned by seeing things around us and asking questions about everything. That was what I called our way of life. The way I desired my life to be after the death of my parents, an event I blamed on my own ignorance of things around me. Living carefree was living blind.
But using just your eyes and your brains was not enough. This situation, a lone boy with a problem noticed only by us two, could make for a fine lesson for Nick.
After all, Nick’s reason for following our way of life was because he wished to undo the shambles that were his infinitely analytic brain, almost devoid of emotion. It happened very rarely, but sometimes, genetic engineering didn’t go perfectly and caused some errors in a child.
I fidgeted a bit in my seat and gave him his answer.
“Yes, we should. I’m interested to see what he would do.”
“With friendship with Hitorin dude as a goal?”
I looked over at Torch and Bardo, and smiled.
“I think we have good friends as is. Friendship is about quality over quantity. Let’s be better friends with them before being so direct again. Also…”
Now, our gazes fell upon the blond-haired idiot again, who was now appearing to be deeply depressed for no reason.
“…I think we should set some standards. And our being helpful shouldn’t always have an ulterior motive.”
“Agreed.”
Then there was no doubt.
“Let’s follow the poor guy and ask him what all this is about,” I concluded. Nick nodded in response, and it seemed perfect timing indeed that the class ended that very second. Sergeant Jeddle slammed the table in front of her.
“Alright, that does it! Results are in within the hour! You’ve got a thirty minute break before shooting practice!”
Her penetrating gaze shifted over the class, and stopped for an instant to long over Hitorin’s form. She walked up to him, her footsteps thundering explosions that shook the foundations of this planet.
“Are you whining out loud yet? You think you’re funny?”
“O-Oh! Well, uuhm, you see, it was really hard ma’am, and-”
“Get to work, maggot! This academy gives you all the freedom you need and you’re just fucking sitting there.”
“Y-Yes, Jeddle, ma’am!”
“Sorry?”
“S-Sergeant!”
“Great~”
The sergeant smiled and skipped out of the room, leaving a particular boy in this room in a state of shock. Our other classmates made a point of quietly leaving the class.
“What exactly led to her behavior being as eccentric as is, Vincent dude?”
“I can’t know everything, Nick. Sorry.”
“I thought you two did know everything! I’m disappointed. What reason is there to be friends now?”
It was Torch, our new friend, walking up to us. Bardo reluctantly trailed behind her.
“Yeah, good question,” I answered. ”Farewell.”
“Vincent dude, I thought you said they were good friends to-”
“Nick!”
It was futile. Torch was already laughing.
“Yes, you two are real awkward. What you two gonna do over the break?”
“Dude,” Bardo interrupted, speaking to Torch and putting a hand on her shoulder. “Get to the point.”
“Oh, yeah! Bardo-”
“It was your idea! Not mine!”
“Uuuhm… We wanted to enter the simulator and spar around a bit. You joining us?”
I smiled. It felt great to have others in the classroom interested in interacting with us, and for that reason it felt a bit bad to turn them down.
“Sounds real fun, but actually, I was more interested in social business. You ever noticed Tophro Hitorin and Aeyn Chrysante?”
“Yeah. Tophro’s crazy and Ice is just… Ice. Won’t let anyone talk to her, boy or girl or adult.”
“Why don’t you join us then in our quest to…” I raised an eyebrow and faked a huge grin. ”Break the ice.”
“Don’t ever make a pun again, Vincent Harrower.”
Torch could appear surprisingly serious, and she was truly unmistakable from a boy when she spoke with that voice.
“Perhaps,” I answered.
