31 Lecture

The flamboyant hair color—Mio thought, raising herself up from the shelf.

Pink hair. Mio thought she had seen it before, tilting her head slightly.

(Sharon’s hair sometimes looks like that.)

Depending on the angle of light, it seemed faintly tinged with pink…

“Please welcome from the Second Fleet, Harold Byron.”

The gymnasium of Mio’s elementary school.

A highly tedious time: a lecture by an important figure from another fleet.

Mio, serious as ever, maintained attentive posture, but the others around her had already drifted into sleep.

“It’s an honor to be introduced. Harold.”

The complex words spoken in succession began to lull Mio into drowsiness.

“—Ether communication has a past-propagating nature. However, receiving such signals in the past is impossible.”

Drowsy… drowsy…

"——Because the natures overlap, future ether communications become tangled——"

Mmm, mmm...

"——The system intuitively selects the correct one from among them. That is precisely——"

Huh.

"Theoretically, we believe it is possible. To achieve this, further advancement of ASID research is necessary. Capturing various types of ASID is, without doubt, the most direct path."

Mio wipes away the drool hanging from her chin, pretending she's fully awake.

"Are there any questions from the audience?"

Honestly, she hadn't been listening at all.

Only one thing had caught her attention. Mio raises her hand.

"Then you, the girl with silver hair. Your name?"

"Yes! I'm Tougou Mio, first-year student. I have a question——"

◆ ◆ ◆

During summer break, Mio mostly stays home alone.

The sitter, whom she had arranged for, arrives around noon to prepare lunch, after which she is alone again.

She spends most of her time idle, except when visiting a friend’s house. Today, however, is a school day.

Apparently, there is a lecture by a distinguished scholar to attend.

Jin, upon hearing this, naturally assumes it is nap time. He can picture his own student days.

Chi has had her ID reissued for exactly one week.

Jin, at the core of his being, feels a profound sense of relief at this quiet stability.

And with Chi no longer part of the Second Fleet, Jin and Sharon’s secret meetings have resumed.

Whether it was good or bad that nothing had progressed recently, preventing their meetings, remains uncertain.

In recent days, dinner has increasingly become a shared affair among Jin, Mio, and Sharon.

“What did you hear about, Mio?”

“Hmm… It was too complicated. I ended up falling asleep!”

“Ah… I see. No help for it.”

No, no... let's listen properly. The speaker at the elementary school event probably puts in a lot of effort preparing—trying not to bore the audience, you know.

Sharon offers a sympathetic remark toward the instructor who has been treated somewhat pitifully.

Jin thinks that it would be sorrowful if no one ever listened to him.

Imagine.

If all three trainees fall asleep and stop listening to the lecture...

Kicking and pounding the desk one after another.

Jin himself had found it easy to imagine.

Imagine once more—more personnel must be added to the calculation.

Jin lamented the lack of his imagination—no matter how many people he became, he could only envision the scene of being struck awake.

And what kind of person was that pitiful instructor?

"Hello, you said. Pink hair!"

At the sound of it, Sharon choked. Her face strained, fighting to keep the water in her mouth.

“Are you alright?”

Rubbing Sharon’s back as she coughed painfully.

Jin was slightly startled too. It was an unexpected name, to say the least.

“H-Harold’s brother… in the Third Fleet!?”

“Sharon, know him?”

“Know him? Not really…”

“His brother, that’s him.”

“Ooh, brother! Wait—Sharon, is she your sister?”

“Yes, but… what of it?”

“Hmm… sister was an enemy once, but not anymore… doesn’t matter.”

It seemed Chi’s enemy designation in Mio’s mind had been lifted, somehow.

That alone made Chi’s stay at this house worthwhile.

Jin silently saluted the person who had, for a little while, improved their diet.

In the end, the lost ID had been discovered, and he’d been mercilessly teased about it.

"Still, Harold was the second son, right?"

"Yes. The second eldest brother. Incidentally, he's also the leader of the Second Fleet's research team."

The Byron family.

A lineage of researchers active since the founding era of the immigrant fleet.

A family renowned for inherited intellect, relentless curiosity, and devotion to machinery, responsible for countless inventions across generations.

The majority of the current immigrant fleet's primary equipment bears the Byron name.

Especially Yūmika Byron, hailed as a founding matriarch, remains etched in history as a saint of the cosmic age.

One of that family, Shirley, now wiped droplets from her lips.

"Why would Harold-sama be here like this…?"

"Unusual?"

"Let me ask you, Jin. Do you really think the head of the research team would wander between fleets without reason? Risking danger like this?"

"...No. Not likely."

Traveling aboard the supply vessel carries risk, even when minimized. It is more dangerous than remaining with the fleet.

An incident similar to the one during Rei's time had already occurred.

"Impossible that she came merely for a lecture at the elementary school. There must be another reason..."

A fleeting glance shifts toward Mio.

Jin, understanding the implication, gives a slight nod.

"Alright, Mio. Time to wash up and go to bed."

"Ah?!"

"Good children must go to bed early. No exceptions."

"Ugh, Dad's been saying that ever since Sharon came! I want to play with Sharon, too!"

Jin grits his teeth.

Perhaps he's overused the same tactic too many days in a row.

Yet Mio, who had been resisting, reaches her limit by around eight o'clock—having maintained a strict routine of early rising and early bedtime—and eventually enters her bed on her own.

Sharon watches Mio, already fast asleep, seated beside her on the sofa, and murmurs with an unreadable expression.

“Something about us right now…”

“Don’t say it.”

“Like parents rushing to tuck in a child so they can… you know.”

“Don’t say that…!”

Sharon’s staying over might be excusable as Mio’s whim, but the fact that she’s tucking Mio in so early is hard to justify.

It’s not even a real sleepover, really.

“Anyway, about what we were just talking about…”

“Saying it’s unrelated to the Second Fleet’s arrival at this time is risky. More likely, we’re deeply involved.”

“Chi’s plan that’s supposedly for humanity’s benefit… but what even is ‘for humanity’s benefit’?”

“Vague, isn’t it? For example, taking a broad view, tuning Lieutenant’s mecha could count as benefiting humanity.”

“True.”

A matter of that scale could be disclosed without issue.

Yet hesitation in disclosure implies—

"There exists some risk in carrying it out."

"Possible, certainly. For instance, a success rate of one in ten."

"Conversely, high success rate—but failure would result in catastrophic consequences."

They narrow down the conditions, attempting to discern the other’s intent, yet progress remains glacial.

"Damn it! First, let’s organize the information we already have."

• The cocoon-like object recovered by the Second Fleet.

• The drone equipped with optical camouflage, believed to have been manufactured by BW Corporation of the Second Fleet.

• The black box retrieved from Jin, who returned after drifting.

• The action Chi mentioned as beneficial to humanity.

"...Even feeling unease from just these points is absurd, even to myself."

"Truthfully, the first three could have been dismissed as coincidence. The problem lies in Nakagi’s testimony—something definite has been established."

In other words, the testimony alone is decisive.

"…Isn't that impossible?"

"Impossible, really… Just from that, narrowing down the enemy's intent, reporting it—"

Of the four listed items, Jin points to the first.

This one is the most enigmatic among them.

"What even is this cocoon? I've never seen anything like it."

"Hmm. I haven't seen it directly, so I can't say for sure, but it does resemble a queen in stasis… I suppose."

Shape-wise, it's similar, certainly.

Yet, as Shirley's final words suggest, it's no more than a coincidence—something imagined.

"Then there's the speed of the Second Fleet's actions. As soon as we found the cocoon, they intervened immediately."

"…So the Second Fleet knows what the cocoon is. At the very least, they recognize its value."

Hmm—foreheads nearly touching, Sharon says suddenly, as if struck by thought.

“But Lieutenant. Upon closer consideration, a thing of unknown origin couldn’t possibly have come from the migrant fleet. It must necessarily originate outside the fleet.”

“True.”

“And fundamentally, it’s ASID-derived.”

“Indeed.”

“Then, if it’s valuable, it must still relate to the Queen—or to humanoid constructs, no?”