We were assaulting a pillbox erected on a street of a shithole somewhere. It was quite a shitty day for me since a few hours earlier, I had been pumped full of Bluesky and ploughed by three of the old perverted C.Os. During the walk to the mission site, I was quite depressed, I couldn’t even think of Kei at this point. I was more or less a dead man walking, ready to die as soon as the first gunshot or to an explosion of hand grenades. However, at this time, my partner who had been comforting me till now suddenly started a conversation.

“My father was a barman ya know?” My companion started.

“Hmm?”(Rynosuke)

“Yeah, I used to live on a street like this, people would pay a shit ton of money to go to maid cafés and Idol shows.”

“What are those?” (Rynosuke)

“What is what?”

“Maid cafés and Idol shows, what are those?”(Rynosuke) I asked him, raising an eyebrow.

“Eh…for Idol places, I don’t really know, those are really adult places that I wasn't allowed to go, but the onee-sans at the maid cafés were really nice, they gave me napkins every time I walked by, would sometime make me food and babysit when my dad’s not home.” He said.

“That so?” (Rynosuke)

“Come on man, show some sort of emotions or something. Why keep the poker face all the time?”

I stayed silent.

We went on a little bit further before reaching a heavily blockaded pillbox with barbed wires and machine guns. This was kind of difficult to flank as the road was basically blocked off and if we were to use the buildings it would be quite dangerous since the places around us were very unstable. A single explosion would bury us under the rubble.

The plan was to slowly make our way to the pillbox and satchel charge the place. However, some smartasses decided to jump the gun. One of the group behind us with a sniper decided to take out a few of the guards guarding the top and trenches of the pillbox. The gunshots alerted the insurgents and within a few seconds, their miniguns started to spin their barrels, wiping almost everyone in our battalion in a few minutes. I was about to get my head blown off for trying to toss a charge into the pillbox. I ran through the trenches in front of the pillbox and got in range to throw a c4 before almost getting shot by one of the insurgents handling the lower paths of the pillbox.

“Hey! Ryno! Move!”

My partner shouted as he tackled me to the side,

“What the hell were you thinking?!”

He then started to berate me.

“I’m sorry…I…”(Rynosuke) I stuttered for a few moments before getting a slap on the cheek.

“You’ve survived more fucked up shit, pull yourself together! You still have a sister at home for fuck sake!”

“But…” (Rynosuke)

“No buts ya hear me?! Stay alive till the end you hear me?!”

He then threw a smoke grenade and pushed forward in my stead, with a knife in hand, he rushed forward to stab the guy in the neck. Jumping off the wall of the trenches, he elegantly used his knives and Beretta 93fs handgun. As commandoes, we had always been trained in close quarters and that meant, pistols, single-handheld shotguns or double-barreled sawn-off. Though assault rifles were used from time to time, but mostly on medium engagement distance. If we were to face an enemy head-on.

My partner was one of the first generations of Cadets to face the battlefield and damn! He got skills. I wasn’t that impressed of his flamboyance and arrogant smiles when he slit the throats and stabbed the faces of the insurgents as I moved into the set the charges, but now looking back to it, it was kinda crazy.

“Ryno! Satchel! Now!”

Following his orders, I then tossed a c4 satchel into the openings of the pillbox, he then tackled me to the ground, as I pressed the detonator and blew the pillbox sky-high. As the dust settled, several of our guys then started to move in and took down what was left of the insurgents.

“Idiot…”

He said as we both emerged from the rubbles and limped back to the remnant of our battalion.