My Desertion Would Be Faster Than Heros’ Obsession

Ah, I realized what she was trying to say.

This unit doesn’t separate male and female soldiers properly—we only sleep in different quarters but train and live our daily lives together.

‘Come to think of it, why hasn’t anyone paid attention to this face?’

Back when I possessed this body and lived in the orphanage, I used to admire myself in the mirror every day. Salvia was ridiculously beautiful, like a fairy straight out of a storybook.

But ever since I joined the Border Defense Army, no one showed even the slightest reaction to my face. If anything, my fellow recruits seemed to struggle to get used to it, while the seniors treated me like nothing more than a pebble on the side of the road.

“Is there a reason for that?”

When I asked, Yuri nodded with a strangely serious expression.

“April deserves about two hundred percent of the credit for that.”

“E-Excuse me? April?”

April—wasn’t she the most notorious lunatic in our unit?

Despite her angelic appearance, April was a master at tormenting junior soldiers.

She excelled at tearing into subordinates, nitpicking, and berating them based on her mood…

In short, I couldn’t imagine her ever doing anything to benefit others.

With her personality, I’d expect her to care less whether other girls suffered or not.

“Yeah… thanks to April, everyone here has developed a phobia of women.”

“Ah…”

I couldn’t help but nod in understanding. That made sense…

It wasn’t that April had helped other women; her insane behavior had left everyone with PTSD whenever they saw a female face.

“Especially women with small frames and gentle features, like April—they terrify people even more…”

“Aha, so that’s why…”

I recalled the seniors who would gasp and freak out whenever they spotted me in a dark hallway. They would only relax after confirming it wasn’t April once I got closer.

‘April actually turned out to be useful for my life in the weirdest way…’

At that moment, the barracks door slammed open, making Yuri and me flinch and look over.

“Hey, come look at this!”

“Yes, ma’am!”

Yuri and I approached her cautiously as she smiled brightly and pointed at the barracks door handle.

“What does this look like to you?”

“Uh… the door handle, ma’am?”

“There are fingerprints on it! Fingerprints!”

“Oh…”

“Sigh, you two. I told you to keep the barracks clean, but you didn’t listen, did you?”

‘What the hell? You’re the one who touched the handle, so of course there are fingerprints! What are we supposed to do about that?’

April is a real lunatic.

Of course, despite our inner thoughts, our mouths moved obediently.

“We’re sorry!”

“You shouldn’t do anything to be sorry for in the first place, got it? Now, heads down.”

‘Damn it.’

With hollow eyes, Yuri and I pressed our foreheads to the ground and thought.

‘Seriously, is she a villain or a hero? I can’t tell anymore…’

***

Discharge Countdown: D-2830.

At long last, three months had passed since my enlistment, and the day had come for a new recruit to join our unit!

“I hope it’s someone nice,” Ishina murmured beside me, her voice tinged with hope.

I turned to look at Aquila, silently asking for his opinion. Finally breaking his usual silence, he spoke.

“…I just hope they’re someone who knows how to handle their own duties.”

As we moved to the entrance of the base, I spotted the very same wagon that had brought us here.

‘Ugh, PTSD….’

The trauma and terror of that day were still fresh in my mind. Damn it….

Meanwhile, the platoon leader, who had brought the new recruit to the base, had a somewhat ambiguous expression on his face.

Ishina, Aquila, and I pretended to trim the grass on the training field while sneaking glances at the wagon that would soon unload our new recruit.

“Platoon Leader, I’ll handle the introduction from here,” Plato said, approaching the platoon leader.

The platoon leader, however, added in a somewhat flustered tone, “Ah, before that, there’s something you should know. First of all, this intake only has one recruit…”

“Yes, we heard that from headquarters,” Plato replied.

“Right, but the recruit will need some time to adjust. You’ll need to offer plenty of support.”

“What do you mean? May I check for myself?”

Elliot gestured for the recruit in the wagon to step down.

‘The sole recruit this time must be Karon,’ I thought, my heart pounding in anticipation. Finally, I’d get to see all the original male leads in person.

But then, I noticed something strange.

‘Wait, why was Karon so excessively docile in the original story again?’

In the novel, Karon was always described with a sunny, carefree smile. And the reason for that was…

‘He lost his memory in an accident before enlisting.’

That’s why Karon, unlike his peers, often struggled with basic things, and Salvia helped him. This led to Karon viewing Salvia as an older sister in the original story.

Soon, a boy with curly brown hair and brown eyes stepped down from the wagon, wearing a wide, cheerful grin.

‘W-What the…?’

Once again, let me emphasize: he was grinning cheerfully.

What’s the problem, you ask?

Think about it. Who grins cheerfully while being forcibly conscripted into the military?

My face went pale, and a shiver ran down my spine.

Plato, who saw Karon’s expression, turned as white as I did and asked the platoon leader, “Uh… is this kid… insane?”

“There was an accident noted in his file recently. It seems to have left him… unable to distinguish certain things properly….”

In other words, Karon had lost his memories and ended up joining the military in an overly innocent state.

Beside me, both Ishina and Aquila’s faces turned equally pale. Meanwhile, I wanted to lodge another formal complaint against this world.

Is it even legal to send someone like that to the military? This is a human rights violation, damn it….

***

The atmosphere in the unit was at its worst.@@novelbin@@

The fact that this intake only had one recruit wasn’t a significant issue.

My intake, which included Aquila and me, had been unusually large. Even though only the two of us had survived, it wasn’t considered a small number given the Border Defense Army’s abysmal survival rate. Consequently, our unit wasn’t suffering from a manpower shortage.

But if the lone recruit this time around couldn’t distinguish right from wrong, then we were going to have problems….

“So, he lost his memory in a fire accident before enlisting?”

Chris, the commanding officer, frowned as he asked. We had all just been briefed on the new recruit’s background by the platoon leader.

According to his explanation, the recruit had woken up one day to find his house burned to the ground, and the accident had killed his entire family.

As a result of the trauma, the recruit’s memory was incomplete, and it seemed he’d even forgotten some basic common sense.

“Yes, he volunteered for enlistment, and they just let him in,” Elliot replied in a calm voice.

Chris and Elliot were the only two commanding officers in the platoon. They usually didn’t participate in training but would step in for major events or critical missions.

Chris seemed surprised at Elliot’s mention of “volunteered enlistment.”

“Volunteered?”

“Yes, he said he had no family and nowhere to go, so he applied himself. Even though the contract magic hasn’t manifested yet, the Border Defense Army accepted him due to the circumstances.”

“Good grief….”

Chris let out a long sigh, seemingly trying to come to terms with how someone like Karon had ended up here. I could understand his frustration, but frankly…

‘Damn it… I really need to pee….’

While the commanding officers complained about the situation and the senior soldiers anxiously tiptoed around them, us juniors—powerless as we were—could do nothing but sit silently and endure.

After sitting in the same position for hours, my legs had gone numb, and I couldn’t even muster the courage to ask for a bathroom break.

‘Ah, what a perfect day to desert….’

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the commanding officers gave their orders to the senior soldiers.

“Proceed with the original training plan.”

“Yes, sir.”

April’s eyes gleamed with determination, but the seniors behind her exchanged hesitant glances.

“What? Do you have any complaints?”

“N-No, sir….”

They looked at each other like they were passing around a ticking time bomb, and eventually, Louise spoke up.

“Um, Chris, sir. Are we sure it’s okay to train him as originally planned? Shouldn’t we give him some time to recover his memory first?”

“Oh? And what if he never recovers his memory? You can just let the recruit die to the monsters if that’s what you want.”

Chris’s response was delivered in a casual tone, as if this were a trivial matter.

“Not that it matters to me—I’ll be heading home soon anyway. But judging by his current state, I doubt that recruit will last more than a year before getting killed by a monster.”

At those words, an odd feeling welled up inside me.

Yuri had once told me the same thing: most girls who ended up here didn’t last a year, so it was better not to get attached.

‘I was treated the same way as Karon.’

On the surface, they had pushed me hard, but behind my back, they’d probably all thought the same thing: that I wouldn’t survive for long.

As I looked at Karon, I couldn’t help but see a reflection of myself from three months ago. I started to feel a strange sense of kinship with him.

‘Besides, losing his memory is kind of like me too.’

After all, I’d also lost almost all memories of my original world. At least Karon hadn’t forgotten his name—small mercies.

…Come to think of it, how had Karon survived in the original story?

Looking at him now, I couldn’t fathom how someone so lacking in basic common sense and seemingly oblivious to danger had managed to avoid being killed by monsters.

It wasn’t as if brute strength could get him through either. Karon was relatively young—while most recruits were conscripted between the ages of seventeen and nineteen, Karon had volunteered at sixteen. Even that one-year difference was noticeable, as Karon was smaller than Aquila.

In short, Karon didn’t look strong, nor did he seem particularly smart.

A line from the original story suddenly flashed through my mind.

“Lady Salvia was my everything. She was the only family I had in my life.”

Unlike the other three male leads, Karon’s feelings toward Salvia in the original novel were more akin to those of a younger brother toward an older sister than a first love.

…Now I understood why the original Salvia had taken such good care of Karon.

‘Leaving him like that wouldn’t even be human, damn it.’

How could anyone just stand by and watch a fellow soldier with memory issues suffer through the hell of military life?

That’s when I made up my mind: I would help my junior, Karon, survive.

“I believe I can help the recruit adjust sufficiently,” I said.

“Oh? April, why’s that?” Chris asked.

“I enlisted at a relatively young age, but I’ve adapted and survived just fine. Helping a recruit with memory issues adjust should be manageable for us. Besides, the platoon leader ordered us to assist him. Disobeying orders isn’t an option.”

“Hmm…. April, how old were you when you enlisted?”

“I enlisted as soon as I turned sixteen.”

“So you think the recruit will adapt and survive?”

“It’ll depend on his efforts, but we’ll do our best to help him survive.”

At least, that’s what I’d been determined to do—until I overheard Chris and April’s conversation.

April, who had been wearing a solemn expression all this time, seemed to be empathizing with Karon, likely seeing her younger self in him.

Still, the fact that she had managed to enlist at sixteen and adapt to this place meant April was undeniably extraordinary….

‘Sorry, Karon….’

If April had decided to push him hard, I couldn’t even imagine the intensity of what lay ahead for him.

What had I been thinking, acting all bold just now?

Karon, the seniors will make sure you survive, so I’ll just focus on comforting you, okay….