Chapter 1721 - 239 - Give Up (3)

Leon's POV

After allowing Hasegawa-sensei to enter the medbay, I stayed outside for a while and took a look around the camp, mostly because I needed something to occupy my mind after everything that had happened. The camp was still busy, with people moving around, soldiers checking their equipment, and others tending to whatever responsibilities had been left behind after the battle. From the outside, things almost looked normal, but I knew better than to believe that everything was actually fine.

"Beelze," I called out after a while.

"Yes?" she answered almost immediately.

Beelze herself didn't appear in front of me, but I could still hear her voice as clearly as if she were standing beside me. She had turned herself into a small blob of slime and settled herself right on my shoulder, and honestly, I could barely feel her weight at all. If I hadn't known she was there, I probably wouldn't have even noticed her presence.

For some reason, seeing her like this made her feel more like some kind of pet than one of the most dangerous beings in the world.

"What do you think about the current situation?" I asked while continuing to look around the camp.

"What do you mean?" she asked, apparently unsure about which part of the situation I was talking about.

"Well, about the war," I explained. "Do you think we'd actually be able to win if things continue at the rate we're going right now?"

"Why are you asking such an ominous question?" she replied. "Thinking about the result of the war before there is even a clear conclusion to it isn't exactly a bearer of good news, you know?"

"I know," I said. "I'm not saying that we're going to lose, either. I just think it's worth considering, because knowing what you might be dealing with is better than blindly assuming everything will work out."

I paused briefly before continuing my thought.

"Besides, I think your opinion would matter quite a bit considering the fact that you're one of the Sins."

"Well, being a Sin doesn't matter as much as you might think right now," Beelze answered. "Even though I've been through battles before, I can't exactly guarantee the outcome of this one just by looking at the preliminary situation. The battles I fought in were also nothing like the kind of warfare you're dealing with now. The scale is different, the weapons are different, the strategies are different, and there are plenty of terms that exist now that simply didn't exist during the era when I was fighting."

She sounded genuinely bothered by that last part.

"Honestly, there are times when I listen to you people talking about modern warfare and feel like I've somehow walked into the wrong classroom."

I couldn't help but imagine her sitting there with a textbook in front of her, staring at it like it had personally offended her.

"Still," she continued, "if we're talking about nothing more than a preliminary judgment based on what I've seen so far, then I think you'd take the cake here."

"That's supposed to make me feel better, right?"

"Of course it is."

"You're surprisingly confident about that."

Well, she certainly had a way of saying things that made them sound much more reassuring than they probably should have been.

Even so, I couldn't completely shake the feeling that something was going to happen eventually, something that would suddenly change the balance of the entire conflict and make everything much more favorable for the other side.

I didn't want to believe that, obviously.

I had confidence that we would win this war, and I wasn't going to throw that confidence away simply because I could imagine a few bad possibilities. There was still plenty of room for things to go our way, and as far as I was concerned, giving up before the battle was even finished would have been ridiculous.

Still, confidence didn't mean I could completely ignore reality.

There was always a possibility that something could go wrong.

"You don't have to worry, Leon," Beelze said after noticing that I had gone quiet. "Even if you lose your battles here, I'm going to do everything I can to keep you alive."

I stopped for a moment after hearing that.

That was honestly quite... sweet of her to say.

"That's surprisingly reassuring," I eventually said.

"Then you should stop worrying so much."

While I was still thinking about what she had said, I noticed someone standing inside one of the nearby tents.

It was Kaori.

She was looking directly at me from inside her tent, although she wasn't making any effort to come outside. She seemed almost afraid of stepping beyond the entrance, and the longer I looked at her, the more obvious it became that something was seriously wrong.

She didn't look like herself.

More importantly, she didn't look like someone who had been taking care of herself properly.

Her appearance alone was enough to make me concerned.

I wondered why she had gotten like this, but I already had a pretty good idea about the answer.

"What do you want to do about that girl, Leon?" Beelzebub asked quietly.

I looked toward Kaori again.

"I'm pretty sure you already know this," Beelze continued, "but that girl right now is in an incredibly, incredibly delicate situation."

I knew exactly what she was trying to say, even though she deliberately avoided saying it directly.

Kaori might have been contemplating suicide.

I didn't want to jump to that conclusion without knowing what was actually going through her head, because assuming something that serious without asking her would be irresponsible. Still, I would have had to be blind not to notice the state she was in.

Her eyes said enough.

She looked exhausted.

She looked empty.

More than anything else, she looked like someone who was dangerously close to giving up.

That was what worried me the most.

I had seen plenty of people become exhausted after battle, and I had seen people struggle with fear, grief, and despair. Those things were understandable after everything we had been through.

Kaori's condition felt different, though.

She looked like she had stopped caring about what happened to her.

I couldn't just ignore that.

"I should go talk to her," I said quietly.

"That's probably a good idea," Beelze replied.

I started walking toward Kaori's tent.

The moment she noticed me approaching, her eyes suddenly widened, and I could immediately tell that my presence had made her nervous.

She quickly moved farther into the tent, almost as if she wanted to put as much distance between us as possible.

For a second, I thought she might have gone back toward her bed or tried to hide somewhere behind it.

Apparently, she really didn't want to talk to anyone.

Especially me.

Still, I wasn't going to leave her alone like that.

I walked inside her tent.

Kaori was hunched up in one corner, pulling herself inward as much as possible as though she were trying to become smaller and somehow disappear from my sight. The way she was sitting made it painfully obvious that she didn't want to be noticed, spoken to, or even approached.

Unfortunately for her, that wasn't going to work.

I mean, she had dyed blonde hair.

Trying to hide with hair that noticeable was already fighting an uphill battle.

Even if I somehow couldn't see her, I could still feel her presence clearly enough to know exactly where she was.

I stopped a short distance away from her and looked at her quietly.

For some reason, I suddenly found myself struggling to figure out what I was supposed to say.