Guarding the Guard

Zhou Lizhi seemed to be seriously considering my proposal.

“Even if there’s someone trying to harm you, with Maestro and me by your side, they wouldn’t dare touch you. Not even Chiang Kai-shek’s grandfather could handle it.”

“Indeed, you two can form the most… powerful combination among the awakened in this class. There’s no one in this class with tougher defense than you, and no one with as explosive firepower as Maestro. There’s enough justification to bring you along.”

“It’s unclear what reason they would have to refuse. Try notifying them that Briar and I will be coming together. Was there a clause in the order stating that you must come alone?”

“There was a mention not to bring military forces.”

“Then it’s even better to bring us two. However…”

But the fact that there was a clause in the order not to bring the military also means that they are keeping in check the possibility of Zhou Lizhi attempting a coup to some extent. It might be better to change our thinking a bit.

“…It would be better to exploit the loophole here.”

“You mean not to notify them about bringing you two, but to surprise them by putting you on the train on the day of departure?”

Zhou seemed to be thinking similarly to me. I nodded.

“If there was no content in the order forbidding bringing us, that’s safer. We’re not only not your private soldiers, but we’re not even Chinese to begin with. They won’t be able to find fault with it.”

“If they set their mind to finding fault, couldn’t they find fault with anything…”

The Major seemed to have made up her mind. She lightly tapped my forearm and asked:

“I’ll look into ways to bring you two. You go to Churchill and convey your proposal. Whether she agrees is the biggest issue.”

“Leave the Briar problem to me.”

And so our conversation concluded. After leaving Zhou’s office, the first place I went to was not my dormitory room, but the room in the dormitory where Rebecca Katerfeld was staying.

Knock knock, I tapped on the door, and Anya Crystal, the chalk magician from Argentina, opened the door.

“Oh, Platoon Leader? What’s the matter? Are you here to see Rebecca?”

“Yes, could you call her out for a moment?”

“Well, she happens to be inside. Please wait a moment.”

Three minutes later, Rebecca Katerfeld came out into the hallway. She looked around and said:

“You wouldn’t have come without any reason. Since we agreed not to contact each other unless it’s absolutely necessary… I guess something important has happened.”

“I’ve bought you some time,” I said. Katerfeld’s eyebrows twitched.

“You bought time?”

“At the end of October. Major Zhou and I are going to Beiping together. It’s a mission to guard Chiang Kai-shek.”

“Did you guide it that way because of my request?”

“Let’s say your guess was spot on. I didn’t see the exact order, but judging by how tense Zhou Lizhi has become, it’s clear that the Nanjing Presidential Office is keeping her in check tremendously. She’s become irritable because she feels the central government is checking her.”

“If Nanjing really had any sense, they’d know that now is not the time to frighten or pressure Zhou Lizhi, but to appease her… I expected it to some extent, but they’re really acting foolishly. There’s no guarantee that Zhou Lizhi would succeed in overthrowing China if she set her mind to it. But why don’t they understand that she has enough power to cause at least as much chaos as the Taiping Rebellion?”

“I think so too. I was a bit surprised. If they were politicians with some brains, in such chaotic times, they’d often try to reassure a local strongman by giving rewards rather than intimidating them with force. This is too amateurish a response. Asking her to come to Beiping to guard the Generalissimo because the situation is urgent…”

“Either the Chinese government is too naive and really wants a bodyguard, or they’re too stupid and mistakenly think Zhou Lizhi will back down if they intimidate her.”

“It’s not like Chiang Kai-shek. Has he really gone senile?”

“…At the very least, there’s a possibility that he’s failing to control his close aides in the Chinese government. All the more reason we need to investigate the Chen Yayuan incident. There’s some political significance to Chen Yayuan’s death.”

“That’s why I bought you time, isn’t it? Zhou Lizhi will be away from the school for a day or two at the end of October. With me. During that time, you can investigate Chen Yayuan’s quarters, or search Zhou Lizhi’s office for investigation materials, whatever you need to do.”

“That’s my job after all. I understand. Once Zhou is gone, the rest of the faculty are just pushovers. Thanks for giving me the opportunity.”

After saying that, Rebecca went back into her dormitory room. I let out a deep sigh on the corridor floor and then returned to my dormitory room. Churchill, noticing my complex expression, frowned and spoke as soon as she saw me.

“Did you have a relative among the dead in Beiping?”

“No, not at all. I don’t know any Chinese people.”

“Then why do you look like death?”

“It would be strange to go around smiling during China’s national mourning period, wouldn’t it? You can hear wailing like a round song outside, so you should be careful too, Bri. Don’t go around laughing and get into trouble with the Chinese.”

“Well, I’m not such a crazy psychopath as to go around grinning at a time like this, you know?”

Indeed, Briar Churchill seemed to be more careful in her behavior than usual since the Beiping atomic bomb incident.

“Apart from the incident itself, I’ve been feeling a bit down especially after hearing the reason why a Chinese girl was crying so much.”

“What story did you hear?”

“Apparently she had a childhood friend at that school from the same neighborhood. It’s not very common for a boy and a girl of the same age to awaken together in the same neighborhood, so both the local school and the community treated them as treasures and cherished them greatly. You can guess what happened.”

It’s not hard to imagine. They would have naturally had many occasions to be close, and with the atmosphere around them, they probably developed feelings for each other.

When it was time to go to college, the boy naturally went to Beiping and the girl to Guangzhou, but out of nowhere, an atomic bomb exploded in Beiping, wiping out the entire school. Well… it finally seemed to explain the reason for the crying that had seemed ‘a bit excessive’ yesterday and today.

“It’s not that common for superhumans to have such deep personal connections with each other… I was just letting it be, but when you hear a story like that, even I feel a bit sorry, you know?”

“Haah…”

“But you could understand that, couldn’t you? Why don’t you go and comfort her?”

Look at her, sympathizing with the sadness of a Chinese senior student while casually poking at my wounds. That’s what I like about her, though. Even if her eccentricity was partly created by rebelliousness against her family, that unique insensitive and tactless way of speaking must be innate.

“A Chinese person I don’t know at all? I’d say let her overcome it on her own. It’s a bit awkward to suddenly approach her and say something like ‘I know how you feel because I have experience of my girlfriend being thrown into the sea in a drum…'”

“Mayumi died like that?”

“Who knows? If she was thrown in a drum, that would have been a relatively comfortable death. It’s assumed she was kidnapped and killed by Japanese intelligence after fleeing to Japan as an anti-communist refugee, but how could I know the method of killing…”

In reality, she died with her neck tied by a rope on the gallows, then the platform suddenly dropped, breaking her neck. To put it more simply, she was publicly executed by hanging.

“Um, sorry.”

“You’re even apologizing when you never do, did you eat something wrong?”

I instinctively responded sharply. Briar Churchill scratched her head with a slightly flustered face and leaned against the bed.

“No, I just felt like I should. I felt like I’d be beaten to death if I didn’t.”

“If I had the strength to beat you to death, I would have done it about 50 times already. Well, don’t worry about it, Bri. I’m already used to what you say, so it doesn’t bother me. More importantly, want to go on a trip?”

“A trip? Suddenly?”

“To Beiping. At the end of this month.”

“…Just the two of us? That’s a bit strange.”

“It would be fun to go quietly just the two of us, but the situation isn’t like that. It seems we’ll have to go to Beiping as three, kind of like being attached as guards to Zhou Lizhi. You’ve heard about the Generalissimo’s birthday party being changed to a memorial service, right? We’re going there. Zhou Lizhi has been ordered to guard Chiang Kai-shek. So we’ll be following as guards of the guard, so to speak. I think it would be okay to leave the school and get some fresh air for a while…”

“Wait, I won’t do it.”

“What?”

I was a bit surprised by the immediate refusal. Briar Churchill, with her face turning pale, waved her hand and said:

“I don’t like threesomes. Even if I’ve mixed bodies with you, don’t think about dragging us both in at once under the pretext of a trip. Just imagining myself naked and rubbing against that woman…”

“Ah, no. Of course that won’t happen. What are you imagining?”

“Then you’re saying we’re just going for fun?”

“I’m saying it’s for fun, but the mission is important. You know what it means for Zhou Lizhi to be called to Beiping in this situation, right? The central government might be targeting her.”

“Hmm…”

Churchill pondered with a serious expression. But the question that came out of her mouth was not serious at all.

“So we’ll have sex separately, and the only thing we’ll do together as three is attend the memorial service and provide security during travel?”

“Why is having sex a given? Can’t you hold back for two or three days?”

“I could hold back, but I don’t think a horny monkey like you could.”

“What did you say?”

“Sorry, I’ll correct myself. A horny yellow monkey, right?”

“Don’t even start, seriously.”