r18novel 018 The Deserter on the Bench
018 The Deserter on the Bench
Chicago train station, waiting hall.
Sunlight streamed through the stained glass windows of the dome, casting long, dappled patterns of light. A lazy, English announcement played over the loudspeaker, reporting on the delays of train after train.
Lu Mingfei leaned back on the bench, chewing on a cold Subway sandwich. Nuonuo sat next to him, wearing Bose noise-canceling headphones, her long legs draped over her suitcase, occasionally glancing at him out of the corner of her eye.
Lu Mingfei suddenly stopped chewing, his gaze sweeping over the rows of empty chairs and fixed on the corner.
There lay a homeless man, his face covered with the Chicago Tribune and his body wrapped in a tattered military overcoat.
Lu Mingfei opened his backpack, took out a piece of military rations, and walked straight over.
When he was a few steps away, he stopped, raised his hand, and slammed the hard biscuit into the other person's chest.
"Snapped!"
The newspaper was instantly blown away.
A rough, large hand suddenly reached out from inside the coat and firmly caught the cookie in mid-air.
"Holy crap! Who fired that hidden weapon?!"
A young white man sat up, his hair disheveled, and looked around in fear.
"Eat it," Lu Mingfei said. "It's high in calories; it'll keep you going all day."
The young man swallowed hard, hurriedly tore open the foil, and wolfed down his food, muttering between chews, "Brother! You're an angel! My name is Fingel, a senior student in Kassel who hasn't graduated from eighth grade yet! It's fate that we met, how about lending me ten dollars to buy a Coke and smooth things over?"
With a light tap of her high heels, Nuonuo strolled over and unceremoniously blocked Lu Mingfei's path.
"Fingal, if you dare to cheat the new students out of their money, I'll post a picture of you running naked at this train station on the Night Watchers forum."
"When have I ever run naked?" Fingel froze in his biscuit-eating motion. He looked up and saw the dazzling red hair, and shuddered, instinctively pulling his overcoat tighter.
"Red...Red-haired witch? What are you doing here?!" Fingel wailed, then looked at Lu Mingfei with heartache, "Brother, what sins have you committed to deserve this? Why would you need her to personally escort you?"
"His name is Lu Mingfei, and he's an S-level student personally selected by the principal," Nuonuo said coldly.
"Pfft—cough cough cough!" Fingel spat out a mouthful of cookie crumbs, pounding his chest and coughing uncontrollably. He looked at Lu Mingfei as if he were a monster. "S-rank?! A living S-rank?! You're the Chinese freshman who made Professor Guderian run around the world like a bull in heat?"
Lu Mingfei ignored the cookie crumbs Fingel had scattered all over the floor and sized up the tall man.
"Eight years without graduating?" Lu Mingfei asked softly. "What did you do to get demoted? Desertion in the face of battle, or disobeying military orders?"
"What do you mean deserting at the last minute? I failed too many courses..."
"It's good that you're alive." Lu Mingfei patted Fingel's broad shoulder.
Fingel stared at him as if he'd seen a ghost, then, clutching his biscuits, slunk to the other end of the bench. The two sat side by side, three empty seats between them. Nono stood to the side, looking at one and then the other, feeling that the two had an oddly compatible aura.
Lu Mingfei withdrew his gaze, looking past the crowd and fixed on the empty railway tracks.
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After Unit-03 disintegrated, he thought he would be disposed of as scrap or that old madman Gendo Ikari would just smash his collar.
Because Shinji escaped, Asuka was seriously injured and admitted to the intensive care unit, while Ayanami's mecha needed major repairs. So, this potential threat, carrying explosives, was forcibly inserted into the insertion plug and spent every day soaking in LCL solution to measure synchronization.
It's a cruel joke, really. The reason why qualified pilots can pilot EVAs is because the souls of their closest relatives first merge into the operating system, and that's how the synchronization rate is achieved.
Alone and isolated, he only learned after entering Unit 3 that a soul claiming to be his "younger brother" had been living inside him all along.
So every time the neural connection is established, he can see Lu Mingze.
Wearing a black suit, Lu Mingze sat on the cross, swinging his short legs, his face etched with misanthropy and rage. "The bottom-level settings of this crappy place are utterly insane! No elemental resonance is one thing, but a bunch of ants in white coats dare to put a bomb around your neck?"
"They just want to live too." Lu Mingfei sighed. "Mingze, if the collar really explodes one day, run if you can, don't worry about me."
"Running away my ass, this is a closed deal." Lu Mingze sneered. "Brother, you know what? I've been thinking about something these past few days—this is fucking ironic."
What's so sarcastic?
"They're mocking us because we're from our hometown; they're actually powerful figures we can't afford to offend."
That day, in the neural connection, Lu Mingze poured everything out.
Regarding Nidhogg the Black King, the White King's rebellion, and the four monarchs—saying they should have been on the throne, saying the whole world belonged to them—Tyrion, in a defiant and reckless tone, revealed all his cards.
"Absolutely not? Back home, we were the supreme rulers! And here we are, used as guinea pigs by a bunch of bald, bespectacled guys, and forced to fight those bizarre aliens!"
"It's okay, it's all the same."
Dragon or apostle, what difference does it make whether you sit on the throne or are crammed into the cockpit?
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"Ugh—!"
A muffled whistle sounded from inside the tunnel, and a train emerged and stopped in front of the platform. The side of the train was painted with the silver lettering "CC1000".
"The school bus is here! God, finally I don't have to sleep on the bench!" Fingel jumped three feet high, showing no trace of his near-starvation weakness.
"Let's go, the special train has arrived." Nono pulled her suitcase and gave Lu Mingfei a look, signaling him to follow.
Lu Mingfei got up, dusted himself off, and silently followed.
The carriage was decorated in an extravagant Victorian style. There were mahogany paneling, dark gold wall lamps, and carpets so thick they could drown your ankles.
"Mingfei! My Mingfei!"
A roar of ecstatic joy came from afar in the carriage. An old man with gray hair ran over, grabbed Lu Mingfei's hand tightly, and tears welled up in his eyes.
"I am Guderian! Your mentor! I knew you would not fail this great mission!" The old man was so excited that he almost had a stroke.
After everyone was seated, Fingel slipped away to a corner and secretly opened a bottle of champagne.
"Mingfei, let's go through the formalities." Guderian took a deep breath, his face turning like a priest preparing to read a royal decree. "Once the agreement is signed, the world you see will be completely turned upside down. You will touch the most real, the bloodiest parts of history..."
"Swish."
Lu Mingfei didn't even glance at the densely packed, unfair terms and conditions; he flipped to the last page and signed.
"Uh... alright then." Guderian wiped his sweat. "Lu Mingfei, what I'm about to show you might make you extremely uncomfortable, terrified, or even hallucinate. This is what we commonly call bloodline awakening!"
"Get ready!" The old man suddenly ripped off the black cloth on the wall, revealing a painting.
Guderian held his breath, staring intently at Lu Mingfei's face, eagerly awaiting the earth-shattering power of his S-rank spiritual vision. Nono leaned forward slightly, ready to hold down his limbs, which might twitch. Fingel, in the corner, even raised his phone, ready to record this moment of witnessing a miracle.
Lu Mingfei examined the painting closely.
The canvas was old, the paint cracked layer by layer, the patterns of scales faintly visible through the cracks. The black dragon coiled among the roots of the giant tree, its eyes, painted with some kind of mineral pigment, gleaming with a dark red undertone under the warm light.
He recognized the dragon; Lu Mingze had described it to him countless times through their neural connections.
"Nidhogg," he nodded, "the black dragon that gnaws on the World Tree."
"Thud." Fingel's phone fell to the ground.
Guderian's solemn expression froze instantly, and the old man's jaw trembled like a weathervane in the wind: "You...how did you know? Wait, didn't you feel anything? No ancient call? No sorrow or anger? No...spiritual visions or hallucinations?!"
Lu Mingfei looked at Guderian, who was covered in sweat, and sighed inwardly.
Vision? Hallucination? Psychic resonance?
He couldn't very well explain to the professor that he had once formed a deep mental connection with an EVA dozens of stories high and had worn a bomb collar around his neck, implying that his mental threshold was no longer normal.
"Alright, Professor." Lu Mingfei tapped the admission agreement on the table. "Dragons exist, and you are there to slay them. I understand that. I need you to answer a few questions for me."
"First, how frequently do the dragons awaken? Are crisis events occurring on a yearly or monthly basis?"
"Second, where is the main battlefield? Is it far from civilian areas, or has it already spread to densely populated urban centers?"
"Third, what is the situation on the front lines? What was the casualty rate at Kassel College last quarter?"
"This...this is classified." Guderian loosened his tie, sweat beading on his forehead guiltily. "But it's not that bad right now. The Dragon King is still dormant, and the conflicts are all small-scale. The battlefields are all deep in the ruins mountains; they definitely haven't entered the cities. As for the casualty rate...our medical care is excellent. There have been losses, but we're certainly not being mowed down unilaterally..."
"I understand. So the war hasn't started yet, and people can still go shopping and eat hot pot as usual outside." Lu Mingfei interrupted him, drawing a direct conclusion.
"Welcome to the team, junior brother." Nono poured a glass of champagne and pushed it over.
Lu Mingfei picked up his wine glass, took a sip, and felt the bubbles hit his nose.
He hadn't had anything carbonated in a long time.
"It's better than my last job," he said.