Chapter 63 – I Am… a Hero…?

The residential sector of Seldia.

Today's environmental setting: clear skies. The soft light of the artificial sun projected across the dome ceiling fell warmly on the cold iron of the city.

Through those streets, Letaria walked with something light in her step.

Today she wasn't in a pilot suit - she had dressed in a favorite wide-brimmed white sun hat, a breezy translucent blouse, and a knee-length flare skirt. Exactly the kind of casual elegance that befitted a young lady of good breeding.

"I was a little bit serious about the deputy captain thing, you know."

Steshia walked beside her, lower lip pushed out in protest.

"Hehe. Even I can say that you as deputy captain would be rather more than a jest, Steshia."

Letaria hid a smile behind her hand.

Steshia blinked at the unfamiliar phrasing for a moment before parsing the intent - and immediately puffed up.

"That's so mean! Retta-san and the others teased me about it endlessly after that meeting! And now you're joining in - !"

She turned her nose up in theatrical offense - then immediately lost the battle against herself and dissolved into laughter.

It was a pleasant, aimless sort of holiday. And yet Letaria's feet, naturally, had begun drifting toward the mission board near the dock. She could read most of the writing on it herself now - not perfectly, but enough to follow without running everything through the MTI's voice guide every time.

"The work requests have settled down considerably."

"The Restful recovery operation finally wrapped up! The corps are starting to get back to normal patrol rotations. Merry-san and Ethan-san looked absolutely buried in paperwork though!"

This from a person who had cheerfully volunteered herself for deputy captain and felt no particular sympathy for the two people who had been handed the position instead. Letaria smiled in spite of herself.

They found a bench and sat down with cold juice, and it was then that a familiar voice reached them.

"Hey there - ladies."

Letaria turned. Zein, in a casual jacket suited for a day off. Fal standing beside him.

Fal's hair was up today - the braids she usually wore had given way to a simple, clean ponytail of brown hair at the back, and she was in an easy pair of shorts.

"Good afternoon, Zein, Fal. A fine day off, isn't it."

"Hello!"

Both Letaria and Steshia greeted them, and Fal gave a small bow and came closer.

"Word's spreading through the city, you know. What happened out in the debris field. Sounded rough."

Zein said it in his easy way. Steshia, who had genuinely walked the edge of death, answered with quiet feeling.

"It really was. I genuinely thought I was going to die. My Flode melted."

"We were on Seldia defense while all that was happening - a few opportunist raiders came our way too. We dealt with them easily enough!"

Fal made a small fist and straightened her shoulders.

"Mostly me."

Zein cut in immediately with a grin. The easy back-and-forth of their shared cockpit, still exactly the same.

"B-but - !"

Fal's face went slightly red, and she remembered something that made her voice go bright.

"My new machine is arriving soon!"

"Oh! That is wonderful news!"

"What kind of machine?!"

Steshia - who loved Makinas - leaned forward. Fal rubbed the back of her head, a little shy.

"Honestly, I'd have liked a 'Rude' like the corps people use, but... I was a bit short on the budget..."

"I offered to cover the difference. She turned me down flat."

"Because - I wanted to buy my machine with money I'd earned myself! I wanted to stand on my own two feet!"

She said it, then turned with obvious pride and announced the name.

"I went with the 'Marchant'!"

"The Marchant?! That's Ledetel's current production model!"

Steshia reacted instantly.

"Yes! There was a near-new display unit from Station Cranea that went up for sale at an amazing price! Performance-wise it holds its own against the Rude. And the boss's machine and my old one were both Ledetel-made, so I already know the controls."

Fal's eyes lit up as she talked about it - genuinely delighted. Then Steshia put on a slightly impish grin and cut in.

"Ledetel is Syn-Fibra's rival, isn't it... I suppose they can't exactly take service requests in Seldia, which is Syn-Fibra's home base~?"

"That's not true at all! The boss's machine gets serviced at Syn-Fibra's dock right now!"

At Fal's indignant rebuttal, Zein and Letaria burst out laughing at the same moment - which set Steshia and Fal off as well.

"Once it arrives, I'm going to work my hardest and earn everything!"

Fal said it with all the conviction in the world. Bright-eyed, forward-facing, and impossible not to look at.

◆◆◆

That night. Her room in the corps headquarters.

The holiday well spent, Letaria had showered and lay on her bed in soft, comfortable clothes.

The small room that had felt cramped when she first arrived here now felt, entirely and naturally, like home.

Looking up at the ceiling, beneath the noise of the pleasant daytime memories, the conversation she had had with Milea in the lab drifted back to her quietly.

After she had told Milea everything. After that long silence.

Milea had looked at her in the light of the holographic display and said it gently.

"-- If you hadn't been here, I don't know what would have become of Seldia by now. ...It's not a word to use lightly - but Letaria. You are, beyond any question, this city's 'hero.'"

"I am... a hero...?"

The voice she heard herself speaking in had sounded uncertain. Unsteady.

She knew it, on some level - the magic that had been called useless, good only for sensing, had produced extraordinary results when channeled through the iron giant that was Arden. That much she understood. But "hero." Grain had called her something like it once, in passing, almost as a joke. Hearing it from Milea in earnest was an entirely different weight.

The heroes of legend she had read about as a small child. And now she, having drifted lost into a world of stars - was she truly meant to be counted among them?

"Your belongings - those preserved foods, those flower seeds. This explains all of it. It isn't only the fighting. In every dimension of your existence, you have helped us."

Milea's eyes, steady and direct.

"I - no, I couldn't possibly - I have done nothing so remarkable..."

"And as for Restful - if I had not been here--"

Milea interrupted her before she could finish.

"No. Something like Blang made contact with it - and it could just as easily have woken for someone else. The threat was already approaching, one way or another. Thank you, Letaria."

Even Letaria, faced with that, could not find a reply.

A long silence stretched between them. Then Milea asked the question she had probably been waiting to ask from the start.

"Letaria. ...How do you want to live - in 'this world,' going forward?"

The memory broke off there.

Letaria rolled over on the bed and turned the question over in her mind, again and again.

How to live, in this world.

And as the question moved through her, the memories she kept in the deep of her chest - the memories of the world she had come from - stirred awake, bringing with them a mixture of vivid ache and tenderness.

Her parents' faces, before the exile - strict, but warm. The way they had looked when they still held kindness in them.

Her little sister's face, small and bright, toddling along behind her as a child, laughing without a care in the world.

And --

Letaria reached into the small bag of personal belongings beside her pillow and gently drew out a single folded piece of paper.

It was a letter. Written and pressed into her hands at the very last moment by the one lady's maid who had believed in her until the end - Chiara.

In the silence of the sea of stars, Letaria opened it.