Infiltrating the Superhuman Training Girls’ School of the Republic of China!

“No, well, it hasn’t gone that far yet…”

“You mean, it hasn’t gone that far, yet?”

“To begin with, Briar sniffing my neck after exercise is just her unique habit. Just because we’re roommates doesn’t mean we roll around together in the dormitory or anything…”

“I see. For now, you’re still putting up walls and making the other person yearn…”

“No, really, truly! We’re talking about women living together, why does the conversation keep going in that direction? Aren’t you saying this because you’ve gone all the way with the colonel you’re living with?”

“Barbie and me?”

Duey laughed loudly. For a moment, I felt my face flush, thinking I had said something too inappropriate out loud, but in some sense, the attitude of this French woman, whose true thoughts were as hard to read as Churchill’s, was excessively relaxed.

Are French people usually this open about sexual matters? Churchill might casually engage in lewd talk because she’s a maverick in her noble family, but this woman is a soldier in the French Army. Isn’t she a bit dangerous for someone who should be accustomed to communal living?

“Barbie doesn’t give that much leeway. Have you ever had sex?”

“Ah, yes… well…”

Not in this female body, though.

“There are two main moments when human relationships become deepest. The light one and the heavy one.”

“Hmm…”

“The light one is eating a meal together, facing each other. Eating something in front of the other person. It has the effect of definitely lowering the psychological distance with the other person, and in some sense, it shows the most intimate aspect of being human. That is, by showing the act of ingesting nutrients for survival, it reveals human nature as it is.”

“Then the heavy one is…”

“Of course, it’s sexual intercourse. First of all, as you probably know, Barbie doesn’t try to eat much in front of me. No, probably not in front of most people? It’s rare for Barbara Tikhonov to allow someone to sit with her in the cafeteria. To leave no room, she just disappears somewhere with her food.”

Indeed, that Soviet colonel did act that way.

In fact, her presence always stiffened the atmosphere. Not just when she was wearing the Soviet uniform, but even when she was wearing civilian clothes no different from others, the Russian winter evoked by her long silver hair made everyone’s skin crawl.

It was that kind of era. An era where communists and people from the anti-communist camp found it difficult to share a table. That’s why, even when she suddenly disappeared from the cafeteria, we didn’t particularly try to find her or sit with her. Although I had some duty to manage the students as the platoon leader, that wasn’t something I could do anything about.

“Then does that mean she’s consciously trying not to show any vulnerabilities in front of you, Lieutenant?”

“Or she might have been trained that way. Speaking from my personal preference, Tikhonov’s appearance itself isn’t something to hide to that extent.”

“Is it okay to be so friendly with her?”

“What? Oh, because Barbie is Russian?”

The lieutenant shrugged.

“You’ve heard what she says, right, Platoon Leader?”

“I’m not sure exactly what you’re referring to…”

“Barbara Tikhonov is negative about Marxism surviving in the age of superhumans. At least, that’s what she says herself.”

“Perhaps it’s an intention to create the perception that she’s not a communist fanatic and lower other students’ guard against her?”

“Of course, that might be the case. But think about the times. Don’t you find it interesting?”

“…”

“These days, everyone is talking about the end. The end of European colonial empires. The end of the Republic of China’s hegemonic order. The end of the Soviet Union’s communist ideology. The end of the American capitalist system.”

“Those are all chilling stories.”

“Humanity is feeling it. In some way or another, this world is bound to end soon.”

A small flame appeared at the tip of Duey’s finger with a whoosh. The fire mage asked me:

“What do you think? When everything in this world burns away, what will be left?”

“Are you talking about the world after a nuclear war?”

“Nuclear is just a symbol. No. We don’t know. If the world we live in were to perish in an instant, we have no idea what would be left afterward. But I think Tikhonov seems to know it. That’s why she doesn’t want to show it to us.”

“But how could there be a person who knows such a thing…”

“Knowing, guessing, believing, feeling. Aren’t they all the same? From what I see, your roommate seems to prefer ‘hearing’ and ‘smelling’, but I think they’re all the same in the end.”

She’s a perceptive woman. She noticed that I wasn’t ordinary when she first met me, and she was grasping the strange triangle relationship between me, Zhou, and Churchill, which most students still don’t seem to have noticed.

Her words sound like a delusion full of simple intuition and puzzling prophecies, but there’s something strangely undeniable about them.

“Anyway, there’s one thing I know for sure today.”

“Hm? What did you figure out?”

“That you’re a lesbian. Anyway, you knew you liked embracing women but still entered a girls’ school, right? If it’s just a superhuman school, there’s one closest in Kaesong, and if you want more advanced education, there’s one in New York, and there’s even one right in Normandy. Among them, only Huangpu is a girls’ school.”

“The school in London is divided into boys’ and girls’ schools.”

“British affairs are none of my business. I just want to say that you’re a person full of desire.”

“My roommate said something similar. That it’s creepy to come to a boarding girls’ school knowing you’re a lesbian.”

“Creepy? No. It’s burning. And very hotly at that.”

This time, flames didn’t rise from her hands, but rather, there was an illusion that her two eyes were blazing. Her eyes were so large that even a slight glint in them made it seem like they could spew flames like Archimedes’ secret weapon reflecting sunlight.

“Fire is the most greedy beast in the world. If there’s something it wants to devour, it never gives up. It eats everything until just before it dies itself. That’s why I like it. People who throw themselves into the midst of desire, even prepared to hurt themselves.”

“Wouldn’t such people usually become villains or criminals?”

“That’s right. But what can we do? It’s something they do prepared to hurt themselves.”

…She’s definitely not a person with a normal way of thinking.

“Ah, I’m not telling you to think like me. Honestly, if you live like me, you might end up admiring mass murderers or feeling attracted to rapists. There are many situations where it’s hard to maintain sanity in various ways, right? It’s tough to live like that, isn’t it? The world is already harsh enough without having to live that way.”

“Suddenly, I’m curious about something, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, yes, ask me anything.”

“If you, Lieutenant, were sent not here to China, but to Algeria.”

Duey momentarily paused her steps at my words. I continued my question without paying attention to her reaction.

“If you were sent to Algeria, where riots are currently raging, and ordered to carry out indiscriminate suppression, do you think you would have done it?”

“As soon as I was commissioned as a lieutenant, I had an opportunity to request my assignment location.”

Duey answered my question without hesitation.

“I said I wanted to go to Algeria. The Minister of War was shocked. He said, ‘Are you trying to make France an outcast in the League of Nations?'”

The moment I heard those words, I felt chills all over my body. I didn’t even want to hear what she was thinking when she tried to go to Algeria.

“Instead, I was ordered to go to China. In this form. I didn’t feel bad about it. Even Robert Nivelle, who played an active role during the Great War, was sent to China in his youth. To set China on fire.”

“Wasn’t Nivelle the one who led the grand offensive to a disastrous failure and plunged France into crisis?”

“That’s right.”

Duey nodded.

“But it was an offensive very faithful to his desire. I’ve already told you what I like, haven’t I?”

The conversation was so unappetizing that I didn’t want to talk to her anymore. Suddenly, that scene flashed through my mind again. My family lost their lives in the flames.

…Because of someone’s desire.

I had to hide everything to avoid revealing too much personal emotion. But… somehow, in front of this lieutenant, it feels like even if I try to hide something, it can’t be hidden. It feels like… everything is being revealed.

“What’s wrong, Platoon Leader? I sense a desire as if you want to hit me.”

“That must be your imagination, Lieutenant Duey. I think it’s creepy, but hitting you?”

“No, it’s a personal matter. I feel like I can sense your personal emotions.”

“There are no personal emotions.”

At that moment, when it seemed like a fight might really break out if I was pressured a little more.

Only when I saw two people talking in the distance did I barely manage to suppress my hostility towards this French woman.

Duey, noticing that the signs of anger had disappeared from me, also turned her head to look back.

We could see Instructor Zhou Lizhi and the hypnotist Hoang Thi Linh meeting alone and talking about something from early in the morning.