Extra Training, Okay?

Milla's actual height was one meter seventy-seven. She had a flat stomach that had already been on display, and long legs that showed just as plainly even in military trousers. This mattered. The curves and arcs drawn out by her figure kept the full, pert parts of her from looking the least bit swollen or crowded. Twenty-seven. To the boys of Dormitory 11, a woman of that age was an entirely different kind of attraction from girls their own age—more direct, and full of a sense of the forbidden and of conquest. All the more so with that short golden-brown hair she always wore tied up in a mess, those eyes with their exotic air, that snow-white skin and delicate face. Even the sunburn on her face from long years of fighting and training in the blaze of the sun, the touch of roughness, and the traces of sweat that were so often there, seemed only to add to her charm. A wild charm. The only regrettable thing, perhaps, was the level of her thinking and her logic. Because the Azure Alliance was international in nature, foreign faces were not uncommon within the Huaxia Front. Milla came from some small country in Eastern Europe. Both her parents had been attendants to a liaison officer the Alliance had posted to the Huaxia side. So she could speak fluent Mandarin. She had enlisted in Huaxia... nine years now, rotating through four squads in turn, and had served four years as a deputy squad leader. "I'm going to be the first foreign woman in the history of the Huaxia Front to become a squad leader." That had been little Milla's dream nine years ago, when she enlisted at eighteen. She had been working toward it all along, and meeting setbacks all along... until this year, when those above seemed at last unable to harden their hearts. Yet the way the Azure Coalition formed its regional squads was brutal. Its highest priority was this: a person you trusted, whom you were willing to follow, and beside whom you would shed blood. For a team that always walked the line between life and death, nothing mattered more, and so the principles of volunteering and mutual choice had always been kept. So, aside from the most common case—a member of the original squad being promoted straight up to take the leader's place—when someone was newly raised to squad leader and had to build an entirely new squad alone, things were often difficult. The higher-ups would put the new leader in touch with a few suggested deputies and leave you to talk it through yourself. They would allow you to reach out to former comrades and choose no more than ten experienced fighters... Nearly everyone beyond that was a recruit, or one of those old hands nobody wanted. Under those conditions, unless the new leader already had enough seniority, strength, and reputation, or a crew with a name of its own, everything was always hard. Recruits leaving camp were not limited to newly formed squads. They could also choose to join an old squad as replacements... When the choice concerned life and death, most people were plainly happier to pick those old squads rich in history and combat experience. Some of the most renowned regional squads turned a great many people away almost every year, and then took only the best. In short, the problem was greater for Milla than for others. She was a foreigner, and a woman, and for the time being she herself had no illustrious name for strength or for a battle record... Distrust seemed to come naturally. "There's only a rack in there for clean clothes. So where do you put the ones you take off?" Milla went into the bathroom, came back out, and leaned in to ask. Before her eyes was Dormitory 11, silent as death, yet stubbornly declaring through violent heartbeats that we were all living fierce and hard. "We... throw them on the floor." "Sometimes, after a shower, we give them a scrub or two while we're at it." "Most of the time we strip and go in." Every voice that answered her was calm, even flat. If they were not, they were afraid their own speech would slip off-key. "All right. That won't do." Milla muttered, backed away, and shut the door. "Click." The seam of the door closed. "Hoo." Keep breathing. A little later, no sound of water came. The wooden bathroom door stirred again, but this time Milla did not come out. Only her fingertips and wrist appeared for an instant. "Swish... pat." Opposite the bathroom doorway stood the washbasin rack. Milla had thrown out the clothes she had taken off, onto the rack. One sound. Then two. Her underwear must all have been bundled inside the shirt and trousers. In that moment she herself was actually quite nervous too. Milla, flushed red to the ears, listened to the deathly silence outside and suddenly found it immensely amusing. At last the water started. The iron showerhead in the recruit dormitory's bathroom was rough, like the work of a shoddy blacksmith at the village gate, with no polishing on it at all. The moment it was turned on, the flow was always huge, full of force. So if it were simply running in empty air, the water ought to sound like a hard rush. Only when someone stood beneath the showerhead did it sound as it did now—a patter, a splash, a drip... That softness, that sense of flowing, that sense of drops falling, came only when water passed over skin. Imagination was involuntary. Blurred, and for that very reason all the harder to resist. For Han Qingyu, he was no different from anyone else in this... He was only a boy of nineteen who had never seen the world, and he came from a closed-off little place. "Hoo... hoo..." Keep breathing. A good while passed before Wen Jifei asked, in a voice caught in his throat, "You guys all right?" "Don't make noise." Liu Shiheng said, eyes closed. "I'm imagining I'm water." Everyone pressed their laughter down of their own accord. "What about you, Qingzi?" "I... I'm thinking about eating." Han Qingyu lay there, the corner of his mouth tipping up, half mocking himself and yet honest. "Plain rice is fine. With this sound of water to eat it with, I could do three bowls." "Eight," Tomb-Robber Bro said. Then it went silent again, except for the rush of the water. No one knew how much time had passed. At last the water stopped... A moment later, the wooden door stirred again. Milla came out in slippers, head lowered, wiping her short hair with a towel. She had on a white short-sleeved T-shirt that ran a bit long, so that her athletic red shorts with white trim showed only a sliver of their lower edge. Just like that she walked toward the balcony, muttering, "Who knows when the faucet in my room will be fixed. I'll probably have to wash here a few more days..." No one answered. "What's wrong? You all okay?" Milla turned about as she asked. She was pleased with herself, thinking her gift for mischief was outstanding. "Fine, fine." Everyone took the chance to sit up and cast glances her way, pretending it was casual. A pair of snow-white legs, long enough to dazzle a man to death. After staring blankly for a while, Wen Jifei said quietly to Han Qingyu in dialect, "My eyes have gone deaf, Qingzi." Then—what was that? Something in color. On the outside of Milla's left thigh was a tattoo. The tattoo was made of an image and of writing. Above was a cross, but not the abstract, smooth, ornament-like kind believers wore. It had the roughness of wood. Nails were set into it, but no one was nailed upon it. Or perhaps it meant that the one willing to bear the burden and suffer for the world was Milla herself. Because these nails were, in fact, driven into her. The writing was not English. No one could read it. Milla seemed to notice their gazes as well. She looked down, lifted her left leg a little, studied it herself, then raised her head and said with a smile, "None of you recognize this line, do you? ...Translated—let me think... Jewels glittering in heaven, buried in the sand of stars." Everyone silently savored the words. "Ha. From now on, this is our squad's slogan." Milla said it all at once, bright, her short hair swinging. A group of people who clearly still had no idea what the line meant said woodenly, "Okay." "Then—extra training, okay?" A crafty light flickered in Milla's blue-gray eyes, and the corner of her mouth hooked up of its own accord. "Tomorrow you'll still be live targets, and you'll be sent up for the instructor to demonstrate on... Understand? So I figure I ought to teach you a few more things first." "...Okay."