North x Northwest

As Ed turned slightly and rested his cheek on his popped-up fist, Lil frowned to express her burden. She had no choice but to do so as Ed wasn’t sitting at a safe distance on the other side of the table, but right next to her.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“Why, how am I looking at you?”

“Like that…”

“…”

‘It’s the kind of look that will be the death of me.’

“Enough!”

“…”

‘Once I start talking to him about nothing, I’ll get entangled with him again.’ 

In an attempt to regain her composure, Lil returned to their previous topic.

“If they go to trial, I’m sure everyone will die. The whole situation is already suspicious enough, so which judge will go the extra mile of taking any of it into consideration? I don’t think they’ll tell the rebels apart from the hostages. The crew will face judgement based on their identities alone as the viscount will have cut off his tail long before that. In the end, they’ll all be executed without a single one spared. And from the moment Julio is executed as a member of the League, a war begins.”

“You want to save Julio too?”

“In the eyes of the Empire, they’re a group of aliens, so why would anyone try to understand that each one could come from different circumstances? Do they even look like humans through the lens of an imperial judge? They’re all just a filthy island race with tanned skin. Dirty, savage, low-level, and violent. Will the Empire tolerate any of those made up characteristics? Will they understand that each ideology is different? If they did, then they wouldn’t be able to justify their aggression. It’s not for nothing that ‘foreign people are savage, so we need to enlighten them’ is the proud motto of our Empire.”

Lil brought a piece of meat, that she had mashed up with her fork in the meantime, to her mouth. Had she not preoccupied her mouth with eating, there was probably no stop to the fountain of words rolling over her tongue. The ‘meat’, which had been delicious until now, was chewed with a sense of foreignness, because for Lil, her situation was the same as the Southerners. They couldn’t be perceived as ‘humans’ or ‘individuals’. They were only regarded as the kind of beings who were cut out of a mould someone else had set, and therefore their individuality, symbols, and uniqueness were taken away from them.

“It would be a precedent.”

Lil felt an unfamiliar sense of stability from Ed, who answered with his chin still resting on his palm. It hasn’t been long since she experienced it, but Lil was adapting to his attention. 

‘Understanding without fighting is so fascinating. To the point where I don’t want to let go of it…’

To savour such emotional comfort, it was only natural for Lil to want to hold onto Ed. And when he appeared as cute as he did now, Lil’s innocent greed for wanting to pinch him grew into a desire to hug him. 

‘How comfortable would that be? I might even fall asleep without noticing.’

The feeling of their embrace in the music room kept coming back to her. 

‘If only I can hug and kiss Ed again… I know it sounds a bit crazy, but if I’m being honest with myself, that’s the only truth.’ 

Due to the sudden burn in her throat, Lil quickly emptied her glass of water, however the lukewarm liquid couldn’t wash away her feelings at all. The remaining impulse was persistently climbing up her throat and further up her tongue. 

Lil thought to herself.

‘I want you to hug me… Or, I want to hug you… this is crazy.’

Lil gulped down the meat. She didn’t want to tell Ed any of this. For Lil, it was most important they focused on the immediate goal. Until the sailors left the Imperial lands, everything else would be put on a side track.

Ed waited quietly for Lil to speak again. However, instead of opening her mouth, Lil held out her empty glass of water. After Ed picked up the water bottle, their silence was broken by the water gushing out. The moonlight shone on the neck of the narrow glass bottle. The light, which was spreading in the shape of a wave, illuminated his face.

The reason why Lil kept wanting to share her thoughts with Ed was because she had grown tired. 

‘I still remember being tormented by the pressure of managing over a hundred sailors, the mental exhaustion and conflict with Cesar, and the guilt about it.’

Two months might have passed, but she hadn’t felt the passage of time at all, so to Lil, everything seemed to have happened just yesterday. And now, she’s finally bearing the frustration of being defeated and deprived of her ship and her crew. All of this was added on top of her frail body and the perspective of an unknown recovery period. Her anxiety was being exacerbated by factors she couldn’t have predicted.

Unable to overcome her nervousness, her fingers gripped the fork tightly. Sweat flowing from the palm of her hand slowly seeped onto the silver tableware. 

Ed tilted his head curiously, but Lil averted her eyes and played with the remaining beans on her plate.

“Those who advocate against the execution of the Bell Rock’s must be thinking that they truly are the crew of some of the Empire’s nobles. But, if their real identities are revealed, it will be as clear as day that the southern pirates had hit the Navy. Whoever fired the first shot will become irrelevant. In fact, the mere truth that Julio is a Southern pirate gives us no excuse, so there’s nothing else I can say here. I totally lost control of it…”

“The captain was Julio.”

“It was me.”

“You’re wrong. Julio is the official captain who was elected by vote. The sailors themselves put him at the helm of the ship. From what I heard, he was voted as the captain on the condition that he would bring back the navigator who was in captivity. I’m sorry, but even if you regret it, the responsibility lies with the crew. If they put him in the captain’s position to escape the Navy, then they should’ve expected what would happen if their escape failed. If you’re still considering yourself the captain, you’re ignoring their judgement entirely. Or are you going to deny the code you wrote yourself?”

“The crew was threatened. It wasn’t a normal process.”

“In order to prevent unusual outcomes, wasn’t it necessary to get the agreement of at least 1/2 of the officers as well as half of the crew? To think that more than a hundred people were all frightened by one threat, that’s crazy. It’s clearly the system’s blind spot.”

“No. I made the wrong choice to begin with. What you said was true. There were definitely clear signs that the Bell Rock was about to collapse, but… I didn’t notice it. I should have since I was in the position of captain… Now, I can’t help thinking that that mistake resulted in all of this… Of course, my crew is probably reflecting on themselves by now. Being imprisoned like that, what else can they do but reflect, right? And it’s not that I can’t see my own blind spots, I actually blame myself for my blind spots and need to reflect on them too. Being outvoted is proof enough that I had been an incompetent captain… I admit that…”

Whenever Lil thought about why this had happened, she only heard a strong self-loathing voice inside her head, telling her about everything that she was lacking till the very end. There was nothing to blame or accuse others of. But admitting a mistake in front of someone was difficult. To Lil, it felt bittersweet to hear herself say it in her own voice. 

‘All my fault…’ 

Lil relentlessly chased the bean that kept dodging her fork.

“Well even so… It’s still my captain and I admire her greatly.”

“Hah… Who’s your captain?”

“…”

Lil lowered her eyes and made a modest face. They were sitting so close together, that if she only raised her eyes a little, his face was right in front of her nose.

“Anyway, there can’t be a trial, and we can’t allow them to set a precedent by even executing one single person. There’s only one answer to this, and that’s jailbreak.”

“Count me in.”

“…What?”

“In two weeks, when a large caravan from the Western Continent arrives at the Devito Harbour.”

This time, Lil looked at Ed. As if his bright green eyes were waiting for hers, they made eye contact with each other eagerly. Looking at that clear face, Lil seemed to have heard it right. 

‘So, what he just said truly meant that an incumbent admiral like him will break out about 200 people suspected of piracy.’

Lil muttered in disbelief.

“…You’re an admiral. You haven’t forgotten that, have you?..”

Ed answered, raising one of his eyebrows as if he was disappointed.

“We agreed on a long-term deal. You haven’t forgotten that, have you?”

***

Ed barely managed to open his stiff eyes. When he did, a chill immediately ran over his body that for some reason wasn’t covered by a blanket. 

‘It seems to be morning, but where the heck is my blanket…’ 

As he groped around without feeling anything at first, his fingertips eventually reached the thick autumn blanket. He pulled it straight and slid himself into its warm temperature. Since his return to Mondovi, he hadn’t been able to sleep properly, so his days were filled with fatigue. He did his best not to show any of it to Lil, but he could count the days, on which he slept as deeply as he did now, on one hand.

“…Uhm…”

“..?”

Even though it was true that he hadn’t fallen back asleep yet, Ed was sure that he wasn’t the source of the sound. He closed his eyes again, assuming it was merely the beginning of a dream.

“…Hmmm… Mmm…”

However, Ed kept hearing strange noises… and it came from a strangely familiar voice…