86—EIGHTY-SIX, Vol. 05: Death, Be Not Proud by Asato Asato and Shirabii

Author:Asato Asato and Shirabii [Asato Asato and Shirabii]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yen On
Published: 2020-08-19T00:00:00+00:00

He should have gotten used to it by now, but for some reason he had to gather much more courage than usual. Both to connect the Para-RAID and to say this one sentence.

“Lena, could you come out with me for a bit?”

Somehow, he’d silenced the bashful anxiety from his voice and feigned his usual tone, but he didn’t realize that he’d unconsciously done it, much less why he’d done it.

The Revich Citadel Base’s observation tower was built over the remains of a castle tower dug into the mountain supporting the canopy covering the base. An overly steep, clockwise spiral staircase made up the long trip to the canopy, where there was an observatory for tracking the enemy’s movements. Standing at the top of the highest base in the region gave one the impression they were sitting on a swan’s back.

At the circumference of the wings, antiair autocannons and antiground, antiair sensors were set up, cutting off the view of the night sky. Even this spot, elevated as it was with a distance of several hundred meters to the surface, didn’t allow one to see the ground unless they stood at the very edge of the canopy.

Standing there as if floating in the night sky was Shin—who had called her here—clad in the Federacy’s standard-issue trench coat, waiting for her to arrive. It may have been late spring, but it was a snowy battlefield. Such a windy spot must have been very cold indeed.

“And up… Oof…”

Shin could hear the sound of the blast hatch leading to the inside of the observation tower opening with a small heave-ho, and the scent of violet flowers, which could never bloom in the snow, served as a precursor to her arrival. It was a scent he’d grown used to over the last two months… The scent of Lena’s perfume.

“—Shin? Why did you call me all the way out here? Is anything wro—?”

Lena’s question broke off, and Shin could hear her gasp even from a distance. A “Wow…” of amazement escaped her pink lips. She lifted her gaze up naturally, following that sight; countless stars filled the night sky, illuminating it with brilliant light. The sun that usually obfuscated them had sunk, and the night sky was clear of the Eintagsfliege’s silvery clouds.

It was a dazzlingly beautiful starry night.

Countless stars she didn’t know the names of were scattered about the velvety-black heavenly sphere like sparkling lights. A white galaxy and swirling nebulae filled the sky from one edge to the other in a slant.

It was a night on a battlefield removed from human cities, thus lacking artificial light. The night sky was dark and black, which made the starlight and the luminescence of the snow stand out that much more.

The light spilled faintly over the canopy, which retained its whiteness even after years of being scraped and eroded. A thin crescent moon lorded over the scene from near the sky’s zenith, looking down at them like a frigid queen.

Bending her neck back as far as it

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.