The morning sun streaming through the official residence window stretched long and thin across the tatami mats. The air was still cold, and my breath came out faintly white. Shinjou Kamiki sat on the floor, staring at the blueprints inside a clear file. The three-view drawings of the Zero fighter he'd shown during yesterday's negotiations with Colonel Arisaka. Beside him, Kaga Hiroto was scribbling something in a notebook. "[excited]Souta, check this out." Kaga thrust his notebook toward me. Behind his black-rimmed round glasses, his eyes were gleaming unusually bright for so early in the morning. "[excited]I recalculated the compounding ratio for smokeless powder. Just increasing the diphenylamine content by 0.7 percent above the current Imperial Army standard dramatically stabilizes the burn rate. Logically speaking, this should significantly reduce the breech failures in the Type 30 infantry rifle." The notebook was densely packed with minute numbers and chemical formulas. Kaga was always like this. Once he got going, he lost sight of everything around him. "[sarcastic]Show this to someone from the Meiji era and they'd probably think it's a magic spell." The moment I said that, Kaga looked up and laughed. "[laughing]True. The word diphenylamine alone sounds like an incantation." "[serious]But today's the day we can really win the Colonel over, right? From how things went yesterday, he was definitely interested in the technical talk." "[serious]Yeah. I think so too. We solidify his trust today, and then somehow deal with Bandou-sensei—" —That was when it happened. The area outside the residence suddenly grew noisy. Angry shouts. The sound of many footsteps. The crunch, crunch, crunch of boots on gravel, drawing closer. "What's going on?" I stood up and opened the window. Cold wind hit my face. I narrowed my eyes and looked outside, and a chill ran down my spine. The northern part of the arsenal—the section with the powder magazine. Four military police officers were dragging someone this way. Arms seized, feet dragging. His graying slicked-back hair was disheveled, his face bright red with veins bulging. Bandou-sensei. "[angry]Wha—you've gotta be kidding me..." Before I could even get the words out, Kaga grabbed my shoulder. "[scared]Souta, that's... from the direction of the powder magazine." "[serious]...I know." I felt Kaga's fingers trembling. Bandou-sensei was dragged out into the courtyard. When the military police released his arms, Bandou-sensei dropped to his knees on the ground. The knees of his military uniform were scraped raw, blood seeping through. His palms were covered in abrasions too. He'd probably tried to scale the outer wall of the powder magazine and lost his footing. Kaga and I watched the scene from the entrance of the residence. Kaneda-sensei had rushed over too, standing frozen, her face deathly pale. The other students were also gathering, murmuring uneasily. "[angry]This was the correct decision!" Bandou-sensei shouted. His voice was hoarse, yet it echoed unnervingly loud. "[angry]If we burn that bus—that relic of the modern era—the military loses all grounds to treat us as people from the future! Then everyone will be released and we can return to our own time! Why can't you understand that!" My head started to ache. (Is this guy serious?) If we erase modern relics, history will go back to normal? There's no way that works. If he'd set fire to the powder magazine and it had exploded, we'd all be dead. Does he genuinely believe he was trying to save everyone? "[cold]You. What were you attempting to do at the powder magazine?" The security officer in charge, First Lieutenant Watanabe, asked in a low voice. He was a soldier around thirty, with an air of strict discipline. "[angry]I was going to set a fire, obviously! I was merely attempting to borrow gunpowder to burn that accursed bus!" Bandou-sensei said this and puffed out his chest. The military police officers' expressions changed. Unauthorized entry into a powder magazine was a grave crime on its own, but what he'd just said amounted to attempted arson and a terrorist threat. "[cold]Restrain that man and conduct an interrogation." The military police hauled Bandou-sensei to his feet. "[angry]Let go of me! Who do you think I am! At this rate, all of you will become sinners against history! That bus is a relic of the future—its very existence is a temporal contradiction!" Bandou-sensei struggled to shake off their grip, his voice growing louder and louder as he ranted. "[angry]And anyway, aren't you soldiers nothing more than an outdated apparatus of violence, clinging to the fictitious authority of His Majesty the Emperor and the like! The Emperor system is nothing but an anachronistic dictatorship! The military should be dismantled!" At those words, the air in the courtyard froze. All expression vanished from the faces of the military police. One went pale; another bit his lip in fury. The hands gripping their bayoneted rifles tightened with force. (This is bad.) I felt the blood drain from my face. "[angry]Bandou-sensei, please stop!" Kaneda-sensei shouted desperately. The ponytail at the nape of her neck swayed wildly. Tears were welling in her eyes. But Bandou-sensei wouldn't stop. "[angry]Look at them! These militarists! This is Japan's dark side! All of you are simply being brainwashed under the name of education!" I could hear sobbing among the students. Some of the girls fled back into the residence in fear. The boys, too, stood rooted in stunned silence. I clenched my fists. (Bandou-sensei, right now, you're putting everyone's lives in danger.) I could tell that the military police's furious glares were starting to turn not just toward Bandou-sensei, but toward all of us students as well. That afternoon, a messenger came. "[cold]Shinjou. Colonel Arisaka summons you. Come to the hallway of the main administration building. Alone." Kaga looked at me with worry. "[serious]I'm going." I left the residence alone. I walked through the arsenal. Wind blew through the gaps between the brick walls. Smoke rose from the chimneys, and the distant sound of hammers striking metal echoed. It was the same arsenal scenery as always, but today the air felt different. When I reached the hallway of the main administration building, Colonel Arisaka was standing there. His black hair was cropped short. His eyes were sharp as a hawk's. Arms folded, his entire body radiated an intimidating pressure. His expression was completely different from anything I'd seen before. More terrifying than he'd ever been. "[cold]Your comrade infiltrated the powder magazine." His voice was low and restrained. But I could tell that fury was churning beneath it. "[cold]And he spewed words insulting His Majesty. Were you aware of this?" "[serious]I was not." I looked straight back into the Colonel's eyes. The furrow between the Colonel's brows deepened further. "[cold]If you did not know, then your group lacks discipline. If you did know, then you were deceiving me. Either way—you are not worthy of trust." The words pressed down on me, heavy. "[serious]Please wait! I want you to consider Bandou-sensei separately from the rest of us. We don't agree with that teacher's ideas. In fact, we want to stop him." I pressed the point. But the Colonel shook his head. "[cold]In the military, if there is even one rotten individual, the entire unit is deemed untrustworthy. That is common sense in the Empire. You are a single group. If the head rots, the body rots as well." I searched for a rebuttal. But nothing came. In this era, that was simply how things worked. It wasn't about the individual. Responsibility was borne by the group. What Bandou-sensei had done became something all of us had done. I could see Kaneda-sensei further down the hallway, watching us anxiously. Her hands were clenched tight, and she was biting her lip. She took a step forward, as if wanting to say something. But she stopped, unable to call out. (Sensei...) Kaneda-sensei was new, timid, and couldn't stand up to a forceful superior like Bandou-sensei. Right now, she didn't have the strength to intervene in this situation. But her eyes were screaming that she wanted to help. A warmth spread slowly deep in my chest. The Colonel looked away from me and gazed out the hallway window. In the courtyard, Bandou-sensei was still shouting. "[cold]Tomorrow morning, I will report to the Arsenal Director. The content will be: disarming everyone, complete confinement to the residence, and the military holding sole authority over the investigation of the bus—I will be considering measures along those lines." "[scared]Then... what will happen to us?" "[cold]You will be put in a cell, or perhaps face even harsher measures. That is for the Arsenal Director to decide." With that, the Colonel turned his back and walked away. I stood there, rooted to the spot. When I returned to the residence, Kaga was sitting in the corner of the room, hugging his knees. "[serious]Souta... how did it go?" I shook my head. "[serious]No good. Tomorrow morning, he reports to the Arsenal Director. We'll probably all be thrown in a cell." Kaga was silent for a while. Behind his glasses, his eyes stared fixedly at the floor. "[sad]...We might be checkmated." For the first time, Kaga voiced weakness. Kaga, who was always calm, always composed, always thinking about things scientifically—his voice was trembling. "[sad]The only card we had left was the Colonel's trust. And as of today, that's basically at zero." I leaned my back against the wall and looked up at the ceiling. I couldn't say anything. Even as night fell, Bandou-sensei's shouts continued to echo from the separate room. "[angry]You have to understand! I was trying to save everyone! This was the correct course of action!" His voice was completely hoarse now, almost like a scream. Kaga covered his ears with both hands. "[whispers]...I need time to think." I closed my eyes. Before tomorrow morning, I had to find a way to pull Colonel Arisaka back to the negotiating table. But how? (Our value is our knowledge of the future.) (But now that we've lost his trust, we can't even get him to listen to that knowledge.) Various thoughts swirled through my head. Was there some clue in the blueprints? Was there a way to reignite the Colonel's curiosity as an engineer? Was there some logic that could make him see Bandou-sensei's madness as separate from the rest of us? The arsenal night was quiet. Only the footsteps of the sentries passed back and forth outside the residence in steady rhythm. I kept my eyes closed and kept thinking.