a simple question; (cw: death/dying discussion)

[icanhearscreams]

[An unsigned note appears on the bulletin board, written in extremely neat handwriting. There's a few smudges on it from erased lines, as if the author wrote it over and over again.]

Is anyone else here dead?

[Just five words. No signature. He'll see how this turns out.]

Comments

[ohaiyo_isekai]

His eyes narrow.

"You were forced to be made complicit in -"

He takes a deep breath.

"There's a saying on my earth, an acknowledgement of the pain someone's been through: you've been to the wars. You have my condolences, however inadequate they are, for the literal truth of that."

He's not pitying. He's angry. At those and that which forced Jun into this.

cw: child death

[icanhearscreams]

"Mm." It's not the same as a war. A war at least you know who you're fighting. You're also trained. "We didn't know all of this going in. The guy who handed the robot off to us didn't explain everything to us. I guess he thought we might back out."

He's not surprised, just... frustrated. "I also wasn't bound in the contract initially. But after my sister - adopted sister... after she fought and died, what was I supposed to do? Let a ten year old die for a world without putting myself up to help?" His hands drop to clench at his knees, trying to keep himself steady. "If Kana died for the world... even if I didn't believe in it, I owed it to her to at least do the same."

The fact that this has left his adopted father with no children isn't lost on him. ... But he was a terrible son anyway. Maybe it'll be better that he died as some form of a hero than lived as a reminder of everything that had gone wrong between them. "Though I'm not sure there was a group of students that the previous pilot could have picked that had more wrong with them and their lives."

He chuckles weakly, because... what else can he do?