The Line We Do Not Cross
At the same moment Ashlyn asked her question, the sergeant’s knife stopped. Keeping his eyes on the steak, he answered.
“Yes. Go ahead and ask.”
“Why did the Fenrir Detachment come to the trenches at Kran?”
“…….”
“Kran may be the front line, but it’s not exactly a critical stronghold, is it?”
The knife went still again. The sergeant looked across at Ashlyn in silence for a moment. His thick brows lifted slightly, as if to say, Why are you suddenly asking something like that?
Ashlyn gave a light shrug of her shoulders.
“Right. There’s probably a security reason you can’t talk about. I won’t insist on an answer.”
“Yes.”
The knife resumed its work. Ashlyn threw out a second topic.
“Once the Fenrir Detachment leaves the trenches at Kran—”
“…….”
“We probably won’t meet again after that.”
“…….”
The man stayed silent.
“If I go back to Istar and tell my military-school friends I ran into the Fenrir Detachment, none of them will believe me. And if I add that I went on leave with a werewolf noncom and had dinner with him… they might decide I’m just spinning tall tales.”
“…….”
Ashlyn poured wine and smiled.
“They might even think I took part in some major operation. When all I really did was help raid a single trench.”
The knife stopped once more.
“…Probably so.”
“Hmm?”
“You won’t be seeing me again, Second Lieutenant.”
“……?”
“Unless your luck turns extraordinarily bad. The men don’t dislike us for no reason, or just because we’re unlucky.”
People usually had a certain phrase for Wildman special units.
The butcher’s knife. The last resort that solved problems ordinary armies could not touch. Encountering a Wildman special unit on the battlefield was therefore an omen that something filthy and terrible was about to happen. The soldiers had not trembled with unease at the sight of the Fenrir Detachment without cause.
The sergeant finished slicing his meat and spoke without particular feeling.
Ashlyn forced down her disquiet and tried to laugh it off.
“What do you mean, the men dislike you? Even in our platoon they were all clamoring for you to teach them close-quarters combat.”
“I doubt they asked because they particularly like me. If it helps them survive, they’d learn it from the Imperial army itself.”
“…Aren’t you putting yourself down a little too hard? Plenty of the soldiers like you as a person.”
At that, the sergeant’s already sharp eyes grew sharper still.
“You didn’t look at my personnel record card, did you.”
This time Ashlyn’s own knife and fork stopped. She studied the man seated across from her carefully. He was smiling with only the corners of his mouth, the way someone might when telling a joke. More precisely, he was performing a smile. Without understanding why it felt that way, Ashlyn listened with a blank face to the words that left his mouth.
“Operation Frozen Fortress.”
The operation in which they had supposedly held out in a frozen fortress by eating enemy prisoners. Ashlyn set her knife and fork down completely. The taste of the meat she had just eaten suddenly turned nauseating.
“Aren’t you curious what really happened in that operation, Second Lieutenant?”
“…Why bring that up all of a sudden.”
Sergeant Vilef wiped his mouth with his napkin. He spoke without the slightest varnish.
“We’re not going to meet again anyway, so ask freely. I’ll answer.”
It was disconcerting. She wondered if it was a joke, but the subject was far too ugly for that. Ashlyn answered defensively.
“Forget it. I’m not curious.”
“Is that so. Strange.”
Sergeant Vilef tilted his head a fraction.
“Every human officer I’ve met until now, without exception, was curious.”
Ashlyn spoke with her molars clenched.
“So? I don’t see why I should be curious about a story that does me no good to know.”
The conversation was growing as abrasive as swallowing grit. The sergeant must have seen her discomfort clearly, yet he remained perfectly composed. The more Ashlyn stiffened, the more at ease he seemed to become.
“Why wouldn’t it do you any good?”
“…What?”
“Knowing is always good. It helps you survive. For example…”
Sergeant Vilef gazed quietly at the wine in his glass. Then he continued in the same unhurried voice.
“For example, if you know what happened in Operation Frozen Fortress, it would help if you ever found yourself under a long siege.”
Ha! Ashlyn laughed sharply.
“What kind of help? The wisdom that if things get hard enough you should just eat people? How generous of you.”
“I never said we ate people.”
Ashlyn’s words caught in her throat.
“So you already knew.”
Knew what? she asked herself.
What was it I already knew?
The rumor—or the truth?
Sergeant Vilef turned his eyes toward her, and their gazes tangled in the air between them. Ashlyn felt as if she had been thrown back to the first moment she ever saw him. In other words, she felt lost. Yet in the werewolf’s eyes there was neither anger nor malice. He simply watched her with calm attention.
And that, more than anything, made her endlessly uneasy.
“…I honestly don’t know what you’re trying to say.”
Hadn’t the atmosphere been fine until a moment ago? She was only baffled. Sergeant Vilef tipped his head slightly to the left.
“What I’m trying to say is that you and I are not the same.”
As he finished speaking he drew a knife from inside his coat—the curved blade he always carried. Ashlyn started in surprise, but he simply laid the sheathed weapon on the table beside the silver dinner knife.
“Here. Just as these two knives are different.”
Like a butcher’s knife and a restaurant knife.
“We are different.”
Different in purpose, in shape, in edge, in value—different in every way.
“…….”
“So we probably won’t meet again. Not unless your luck turns truly filthy.”
As if nothing at all had happened, the man calmly slipped the curved blade back into his coat. He went on eating his meat; Ashlyn simply stared at him, dazed.
It felt as though she had been doused with ice water out of nowhere. All the one-sided intimacy she had been building crumbled like a sandcastle hit by a wave.
She still could not grasp the man’s intent in bringing up Operation Frozen Fortress. Whether it was a power play, a rebuke aimed at an unlucky mage-army officer, or even pure, well-meant advice—she could not tell.
But one message the sergeant meant to deliver, Ashlyn understood with perfect clarity.
Do not cross the line. You and I belong to different worlds.
Her mouth itched with the urge to fire back something sharp. She wanted, right then, to crush the werewolf in front of her with one clever, persuasive line. Or it didn’t even have to be clever.
You and I are both soldiers.
Before they left for the city of Parieri, Ashlyn had said as much to the coachman.
“Wildmen are people too, and they belong to the Morning Star Allied Forces. They’re my subordinates as well.”
So all she had to do was give the man a similar answer.
You and I are both soldiers of Istar.
That was all she needed to say. Simple. Easy. Words, after all, cost nothing.
Yet the only thing that slipped through her parted teeth was a sigh; nothing formed itself into proper language. Worst of all, Ashlyn herself knew exactly why she hesitated so long to answer.
Because she could not bring herself to ask him the questions that truly mattered.
Did you really… eat people at Frozen Fortress?
What do those blacked-out operations underneath contain?
How much Imperial loot did you sell off?
Does killing people over and over eventually start to feel normal?
How do you keep from going mad in a place like this?
Questions like those.
She truly could not ask them.
Because she did not want to know.
After that unsettled dinner, Ashlyn washed and climbed into bed. Her mind was a tangle.
She kept turning over the meal that had ended in such awkward silence.
The sergeant’s calm face as he spoke words that might have been insult or advice—she could not decide which. Fragments of images scattered through her thoughts.
Should I have gotten angry?