Kanata seems to be taking Lilith to introduce her to the members of the No. 1 Unit.
After finishing breakfast, we decided to go and greet everyone.
First, we’ll go see our comrade Axel and Tatiana. Let’s head to the hangar.
“Ugh, what if the smell of maintenance oil gets on my clothes? You have no tact, Sergeant.”
“It’s rich coming from you, Lilith, the queen of lewd jokes, to talk about tact. And are you going to stop calling me by my rank already?”
This guy has been calling me by my rank since the first time we met, with his contrary spirit.
“I won’t! If you really want me to call you by your name, you’ll have to accept my love. Then I’ll call you by your name.”
“Look, it’s not like I dislike Lilith. Putting aside your sharp tongue and vulgarity, we do get along. But I’m twenty years old, and you’re ten, do you understand?”
“Then I’ll ask you, what do you think of a couple where the man is twenty and the girl is ten?”
“Frankly, it’s a crime.”
“Then what about a couple where the man is thirty and the woman is twenty?”
“I’d say the man really pulled something off.”
“What about an old couple, a forty-year-old guy and a thirty-year-old woman? Let’s put aside the debate about whether a thirty-year-old woman is an old hag.”
“I’d think the old man should cherish his young wife.”
“Then let’s skip ahead a bit, what about an eighty-year-old grandpa and a seventy-year-old grandma?”
“There’s no longer any awkwardness. I’d wish them a lifetime of happiness.”
“Eventually, you and I will be like that too. So, it means there’s no problem.”
“I see. You’re right, it doesn’t seem like there’s a problem… Except there bloody well is! I almost convinced myself!”
“Tch, you figured it out, did you? You’re a bit smarter than a maggot. I’ll give you that.”
“My comparison is a maggot?! Since this morning, it’s been about amoebas and paramecia, those are plankton and ciliates, aren’t they! Am I such a pathetic existence that I can’t even be compared to a primate? At least compare me to a hominid! Like a monkey or a chimpanzee!”
“I could never say something that cruel. Even monkeys and chimpanzees have their pride, you know?”
“This is the worst thing anyone has ever said to me in my twenty years of life!!”
“But don’t worry, even if you were a lesser being than a bacterium, I alone in this world will love you.”
“You broke my record for the most hurtful thing said in mere ten seconds!! You’re lower than insects and plankton! Clostridium is a bacterium and also the cause of STDs!!!”
“Technically, it’s an even lower existence.”
“How far down the biological hierarchy do I stand? And what kind of being are you to love someone like me?!”
“The love of a goddess showers all beings equally, like a benevolent light.”
“If you’re a god, you’re a god of plague!”
“Then you should appease me properly. Otherwise… I’ll curse you.”
This girl… could she be a contender for the world champion of verbal abuse?
“Yes, yes, Lilith is my saving goddess, even though I’m such a failure.”
“That’s about right. It’s a common story in the world for a talented woman to be infatuated with a good-for-nothing man.”
“…Just go with that.”
She spews a torrent of insults that would kill a normal person, but I strangely don’t feel any discomfort.
…Could it be that I’m starting to enjoy this?
We’ve arrived at Hangar No. 1. Comrade Axel and Tatiana, who spotted me and Lilith, are walking towards us.
“Yo, comrade. Looks like you succeeded in rescuing the princess again.”
“Kanata, what do you plan to do by bringing a child like this into the unit? The No. 1 Unit isn’t an elementary school.”
“You’ll be in for a nasty surprise if you think Lilith is just a child. Lilith, these are Lieutenant Alexei Lucanov. He’s the leader of the No. 1 Unit’s Rigger Team. And this is Second Lieutenant Tatiana Kazinsky. She’s the leader of the Mechanic Team. We all owe them a lot.”
“Yeah, nice to meet you. Alexei Lucanov is a mouthful, so everyone calls me Axel.”
“I’m Lilith Lohengrin. They call me Lilith because it’s shorter.”
“Oh, you’re quite a pair. May I call you Lilith too?”
“You may. I’ll call you Axel too. It’s too much to call you by your first name when it sounds like ‘smells like it’. Does that smell like it? Have you been washing properly? You’ll get sick if you’re not clean!”
“Nnnngh!!!”
“Wait, hold on! Kanata, what kind of kid is this?!”
“You are… ‘I can feel it in my asshole~♡’, wasn’t it? Is that your preference?”
“It’s Tatiana Kazinsky!!! What do you mean by ‘that preference’?!”
“Isn’t it fine? There seem to be quite a few women who feel it more in their butts.”
This brat, she just did it!
I quickly covered Lilith’s mouth, then scooped her slender body under my arm and spun around 180 degrees. I dashed off at full speed!
Spanners and wrenches rained down from behind me.
“I’m sorry! I’m truly, truly sorry for dragging this here!”
What else could I do but run while shouting!
Thanks to Lilith’s viciously vulgar talk, we ended up fleeing to a small hill outside the base.
Even though I carried Lilith under my arm and ran at full speed, she was laughing the whole time.
No matter how much you inconvenience me, this is too much.
She pulled off a truly outrageous prank right from the start!
I set Lilith down and took a breath.
“Hey, hey, Sergeant. Did you see their faces? It was priceless, wasn’t it?”
“You pulled an outrageous prank right from the start! This isn’t funny at all!”
“It’s just a child talking. You shouldn’t take it seriously.”
“You get angry when I treat you like a child!”
“That’s right, don’t treat me like a child. But when I claim to be a child, it’s fine to treat me like one.”
“You keep switching between being an adult and a child depending on the situation! That’s called being selfish!”
My throat is about to go hoarse from shouting so much since this morning.
I was prepared to be tossed around, but I thought it would be like a merry-go-round.
Turns out, it’s a roller coaster. My foresight was too optimistic.
We decided to sit side-by-side in a squatting position on top of the small hill.
I didn’t want to because I was embarrassed, but Lilith insisted on sitting in a squatting position.
And in the end, I was the one who gave in.
Good grief, isn’t it supposed to be an equal exchange of favors?
Not that I’m the commander, but I think my balance sheet is in a huge deficit.
Lilith sweeps her long, beautiful silver hair and says,
“Those two won’t get truly angry. They say things while looking at the other person.”
“I hope so. It’s going to be a hassle later.”
“So, Yukimura Natsume, was it? What kind of person is she? She seemed like a no-good type.”
“You haven’t met Natsume yet, have you?”
“I read through all the profiles of the No. 1 Unit members yesterday while watching you sleep, Sergeant. I don’t even need to use my internal camera; I can remember things just by looking once.”
As expected of a genius with an IQ of over 180. Does she possess Eidetic Memory (Camera Eye) from birth?
And then Lilith, using her Psychokinesis, starts floating small stones and building a pyramid.
A genius with an IQ of over 180, the daughter of a Count, whose grandfather was a world-renowned mathematician, is part of the Mechanist Army’s latest Bio-Metal.
On top of that, she has Camera Eye and Psychokinesis, as if that weren’t enough.
She might also have skills like speed reading and lip-reading.
I can see why the Commander said she was too much.
“So, what kind of a person is Natsume?”
“It’s not a very pleasant story, and it’s not something to tell a child.”
“Sergeant, I told you earlier. Don’t treat me like a child…”
“I know. That’s why I’ll tell you.”
I recounted the old story of Natsume that Rasen-san told me.
Given Lilith’s personality, she would undoubtedly cause trouble if I didn’t tell her, and I wanted to hear her reaction.
Lilith glared at the stacked pyramids and said with boredom,
“Hmph, what a foolish woman.”
“Hey, that’s not a nice thing to say.”
“If she wants to portray herself as a tragic heroine, let her. It’s pathetic. A waste of my time listening.”
She cut right to the chase. I had expected her to say something like that.
“She’s hopeless in two ways. Misfortune? Yes, misfortune beyond reproach. But so what? It means nothing.”
“Two ways?”
“First, her parents. Natsume’s parents hid her under the bed, trying to protect her at all costs, right? That means Natsume’s parents truly loved her. You can probably understand that feeling, Sergeant.”
I failed to get into a prestigious high school and was disowned by my father. I don’t resent him, as he paid for me to attend a private university, allowing me to live without hardship… but I wasn’t truly loved.
Lilith’s mother was jealous of her talent and took out her complexes on her, while her father sent his own daughter to a laboratory for his career advancement. Love was out of the question, a non-issue.
That’s right, Natsume’s parents were pitiful, but they truly loved Natsume.
…Unlike us.
“Secondly, the thugs in the No. 1 Unit all care about Natsume, don’t they? I don’t know if she’s aware of it or pretending not to be, but she’s letting the feelings of the No. 1 Unit members slip through her fingers like sand. What else can you call such a woman but an idiot? …Ridiculous. She can just wallow in her misery until she dies.”
“…But Lilith, you’re overlooking one thing.”
“What is it? Go ahead and say it.”
“Natsume’s parents didn’t just love Natsume unilaterally. Natsume loved her parents just as much. Unlike us. The pain and suffering of seeing her beloved parents killed by the neighbors who were kind to her until yesterday… We can’t understand that.”
Lilith pouted and fell silent.
“Lilith, you shouldn’t get involved with Natsume. It probably won’t end well for either of you.”
“What?! Are you planning to get involved? You should only pay attention to me! Don’t bother with that woman who boasts about her misfortune!”
“Tell me, Lilith, in my twenty years, I’ve never had a single friend.”
“I don’t have any either! But now I have you, so I don’t need any!”
“Thank you. I’m also glad Lilith stayed in the Garden. We’re alike and get along. It’s a strange relationship, I know, but I feel like Lilith is another version of myself.”
“…Continue.”
“Recently, I made a friend. That friend is Shuri.”
“That overly serious glasses-wearer? That’s a strange combination.”
“I never imagined Shuri would consider me a friend. See? I’m also the type to let sand slip through my fingers. My twenty years were probably just days of letting sand slip through my hands. Shuri saved me. Therefore, I want to be like Shuri. I want to be worthy of the friend I respect. It’s not that I don’t want to save Natsume. But it’s still for my own selfish reasons. Just my own selfishness.”
“…That’s a very Kanata-like way of thinking. …But I want you to always pay attention only to me. As long as you understand that, it’s fine.”
“I understand that. Honestly, I don’t know why someone with your talent like Lilith is so fixated on me.”
“It’s just that Kanata doesn’t realize his own worth. Anyway, it’s something to relieve my boredom, which I’ve finally found. Don’t bore me, okay?”
“I will endeavor to do so, Fräulein.”
Lilith tilted her head towards me while staying in her squatting position.
Lilith is a perfectly beautiful girl in terms of her appearance.
If only we were closer in age, it would be a dream scenario.
What came out of Lilith’s perfectly sculpted lips was, as usual, a selfish demand.
“Sergeant, if you die and leave me behind, I won’t forgive you, you know?”
“I’m doing my best not to die. But if the time comes, I might.”
“No, I won’t forgive you. If you die and leave me behind, I’ll kill you!”
“Even if Lilith is a genius, she can’t kill a dead person.”
“If I say I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you even if you’re dead! And then I’ll spit on your gravestone!”
Prosciutto-niisama said that the line “I’ll kill you” is used after the act of killing, but…
And she’ll even spit on my gravestone. Lilith might actually do it.
This means I absolutely cannot die.
“Understood. I won’t die. I won’t die even if I’m killed.”
After all, I’m the grandson of Amakake Shohei, a miracle of life.
My grandpa apparently got into a car accident when he was young and became a vegetable.
When even the doctors had given up, he revived two years later and made it into the newspapers. My grandma told me.
She herself was a newspaper reporter at the time, and she was the one who wrote the article.
That was how they met and got married, a story like something out of a novel.
Lilith showed a satisfied smile at my response and gave a rare, non-toxic line.
“Very well. I will follow you, Sergeant, no matter what hell you go through. I never thought life could be this enjoyable. I have no home to return to, but even if I did, I would never go back.”
No, this should be called sweet poison. It really hit me right in the heart.
You’re trying to lead me down the path to becoming a lolicon… But… Wait?
“I would never go back.” Lilith’s words somehow pierced my heart.
Axel and Tatiana’s names were given for the sake of the lewd jokes this time (lol).
Yes, the lewd jokes came first. Axel and Tatiana are unfortunate.
