Yuichiro felt an unexpected surge of emotion at the sound of Noah’s hushed voice. This reminded him of something his daughter Mana would say. In the past, whenever he left for work, she’d follow him to the door, pleading, “Father, don’t leave me.”
Desperately, he suppressed the sentiments that were tugging his heartstrings. What in the world am I looking for from the child in front of me? Just as his fingertips were about to tremble, he saw a shadow approaching him. A familiar hulking figure was walking toward him with several of his men in tow.
Without so much as a greeting, Kiehland walked up as a cloud of dust gathered around him and immediately said, “The delay in the arrival of our regular army has resulted in tremendous damage. I am terribly sorry.” Kiehland then bowed his head with his face contorting in remorse.
An involuntary chuckle broke out from Yuichiro at the thought of his ridiculously earnest commander-in-chief. “No need to feel sorry,” he replied, “The enemy forces knew that reinforcements were coming anyway. On the contrary, if the regular army had arrived earlier, the damage would have been much greater.”
Even when Yuichiro mentioned this, the deep wrinkles carved between Kiehland’s eyebrows did not disappear. Yuichiro shrugged his shoulders and continued speaking. “It’s important to reflect on what happened, but I’d rather think about the future.”
“In short?”
“First of all, how to get rid of Goldar’s giant airships.” Yuichiro paced again as he was saying this.
Both Kiehland and Goat followed along next to him. As for Temeraire, he was diagonally behind him. Noah was also closely following him along, by clutching tightly to his cuffs. From the side, Yuichiro could see Kiehland glancing over to Noah’s direction and saw the man pursed his lips into a pout.
Without a care in the world, Yuichiro continued to speak. “Right now, the enemy doesn’t seem to have the resolve to burn down the capital, but if they do, the capital will instantly become a sea of fire. Unless we get rid of that huge airship, we have no chance of winning.”
“Then I will send an agent to Goldar immediately.” Kiehland, whose sullenness had finally faded, replied in a bold tone.
Yuichiro nodded in reply and turned his attention to Goat. In his usual languid tone, Gort remarked, “At the same time, we’ll also have our spies scattered all over the Jeweled to monitor the movements of the rebels. Is that all right with you?”
Yuichiro returned a cheerful smile at the sound of Goat’s frightening tone. Once they reached the main camp, he saw both Kiki and Kuku hugging each other tightly. Kuku, whose cheeks were swollen, was crying in silence. It was right then, he recalled of the promise of letting Kiki beating up Goat in place of Kuku who had beaten up by Goat.
“Goat?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry, but Kiki’s going to have to beat the crap out of you later.”
“Hah… Huh?!” Goat’s mouth dropped open at Yuichiro’s unexpected comment.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
In return, Yuichiro lightly tapped Goat’s shoulder while letting out a wry smile at his adjutant’s stupefaction.
“What? What is it? I don’t understand the meaning at all, can you please explain a bit about that?”
Ignoring Goat, who was chasing after him, Yuichiro chuckled and repeated once more, “Sorry.”
Meanwhile, Noah, who was scanning the area, muttered in a worried voice, “Where’s Iz?” When he finally stepped inside the camp, Noah cried aloud when he saw Izrael being treated by the medics. He then rushed toward Izrael and rubbed his cheeks against Izrael while crying like a puppy.
“When Noah-sama was young, Izrael seemed to be the only one who befriended him.” Temeraire muttered in a somewhat cold voice while looking at the scene from outside the camp.
Yuichiro suddenly remembered what Noah had said before. “Iz is my friend!” The boy shouted this to him when he had tried to strangle Izrael previously.
“A friend.”
Temeraire looked at Yuichiro with a sideways glance as he said this to himself. Afterward, they both walked away from the camp’s curtain and walked slowly. The main camp was full of wounded. The smell of blood, mud, and ashes filled the area. Medics were busy running around, tending to the wounded. A short distance away, dozens of bodies were lying on mats.
Through the gaps in the mats, one could see arms and legs strewn helplessly across the floor. The palms of their hands, soaked in blood, were stiff in the shape of their grasp on the sword. These people would never wake up again.
From afar, Yuichiro could see a long-haired soldier clinging to a charred corpse while screaming loudly. Was it a friend or a lover? In the distance, the aftermath of the scene of Am Yisu’s burnt forest was unfolding. Although the fire had finally subsided, black smoke still billowed up like banners. The homeland of Yellow tribe had already been razed to the ground. He watched the scene blankly,
“It’s a mess.” The same words as before spilled out of his mouth. However, right at this moment, bitter spit suddenly came up from his windpipe. When he spat it out onto the ground, the reddish-black spit fell down in a sticky mess.
Temeraire shouted in surprise. “Yuichiro-sama, you’re hurt! ….”
His head began to shake with dizziness, and he couldn’t hear Temeraire’s voice until the end. Kneeling on the ground, Yuichiro coughed several times. Bloodied saliva strands threaded themselves down to the ground. The world around him began to spin. His ear’s loop-shaped canals had already gone haywire, and he couldn’t stop the incoming nausea. Unable to support himself, he collapsed to the ground.
Yuichiro could hear someone screaming. But he couldn’t make out the words in their shouts. His mind seemed to be sucked into the void, as if he were being dragged to the center of the earth as it trembled beneath him.
[I don’t want to dream. Why must I be aware of what I have lost over and over again?]
“Father’s a liar!”
A childish scowl can be heard coming from the other end of the phone. The voice was soon replaced by the sound of sniffling noises.
“I’m sorry, Mana. I can’t come home for Christmas, but I’ll be home for New Year’s.” Yuichiro tried to reassure her by calling out to her, hoping that she would stop crying.
He had just broken the news to Mana that he would not be spending the holiday with his family. Yuichiro’s posting to this country had lasted three years by this point. It was almost time for him to make plans to return to Japan now that things had settled down. Even so, it was impossible to bring everyone back at once, and poor Yuichiro wound up losing the Christmas drawing for a short leave. All of his co-workers have families, and they all wanted to go home for Christmas.
“I thought you are coming back,” Mana said, sobbing.
“I’m sorry. I’ll bring you lots of presents for New Year’s.”
“I don’t need presents.”
The sulky tone of the voice caused even Yuichiro’s eyebrows to droop, even though it was over the phone.
“Ma-chan, don’t be too selfish with your father,” his wife Aiko’s voice was heard on the other end of the phone.
Mana continued, with an occasional hiccup, “Mana is not selfish. After all, I asked Santa for it.”
“What did you ask Santa for?”
“Take Dad home.”
Yuichiro’s chest tightened at his daughter’s innocent request. Leaning against the wall where the international phone was installed, he let out a sigh of relief.
“I’ll be back for New Year’s, I promise.”
“Promise?”
“I promise. “
“Can you do it?”
“Yes, I can.”
Finally, he heard Mana’s laughter through the receiver as he returned it with a hearty, happy laugh. He was filled with joy as he wiped away his tears.
“Pinky promise, if you’re lying—” Mana’s singing voice could be heard.
Yuichiro sang along to her light voice.
[I should’ve definitely swallowed thousands of needles at that time. If I had done that… What if I had done that? What would have changed? No matter how much I regret it, nothing can be undone. I could only hear Mana’s voice in my brain as she shouted, “You liar!” No, no, no, I didn’t mean to lie. I was really going home. I wanted to return to my wife and daughter. I wanted to go home. It’s not the world I want to go back to. I want to go back to that day before I made the wrong choice.]
“…go back…” A miserable, clinging voice spilled from Yuichiro’s throat. To which, no one else could hear.
▶ END OF ARC 3 ◀
Translator’s Note
Tjs! Qf’nf olcjiis gfjmtfv atf fcv bo Cgm 3. Pa’r yffc j ibcu, klcvlcu pbegcfs ab ufa tfgf yea jii P mjc rjs lr atja kf’gf olcjiis 60% atgbeut atf cbnfi. Zlcv sbe atja jii rbgar bo rfmgfar klii yf mbwlcu bea lc atf cfza jgm, rb xffq sbeg fsfr bqfc qfbqif! Gbfr jcsbcf kjca ab uefrr atf cfza jgm’r alaif?
Extra Note
Ermm, I’ve reinstated my own personal translation website HERE. But, dont’ worry! I’ll be posting both SOAT and WMMG here till they are finished. And… I also want to inform you that I’m recruiting anyone to join my translation group, and all genres are accepted (except +18 content for now)!
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Thank you for the excellent translation.
What a gloomy ending to this arc, but what can you expect when we are talking civil war and a traumatized MC…
Thank you for the update!
Thanks for the chapter 😆
Thanks for the chapter!
aaaa so sad for mc