All You Need Is Kill (24 page)

While I live and breathe, humanity will never fall. I promise you. It may take a dozen years, but I will win this war for you. Even if you won’t be here to see it. You were the only person I wanted to protect, and you were gone.

Hot tears threatened to fall from my eyes as I looked out through the cracked glass at the sky, but I wouldn’t cry. Not for the friends I would lose in the battles ahead. The friends I wouldn’t be able to save.
I won’t cry for you until the war is finally over.

Through the warped window I saw the sky, crystal blue, seeming to stretch forever. A cloud drifted lazily along. I turned to face the window, and like a bone-dry sponge soaking up water, my body absorbed the clear boundless sky.

You hated being alone, but you kept your distance from the barracks, slept and woke in solitude, because it was too hard to face the friends you knew were going to die. Trapped in a cruel, unending nightmare, your only thoughts were for them. You couldn’t bear to lose even one of them, no matter who.

Red was your color, yours and yours alone. It should rest with you. I will paint my Jacket sky blue, the color you told me you loved when we first met. In a field of a million soldiers, I will stand out from all the rest, a lightning rod for the enemy’s attacks. I will be their target.

I sat there for some time holding the last cup of coffee she’d ever made, for someone she’d barely known. Its thin aroma stirred in me an insufferable longing and sadness. A small colony of blue-green mold bobbed on the surface of the coffee. Raising the cup to my lips, I drank.

Afterword

I like video games. I’ve been playing them since I was a snot-nosed kid. I’ve watched them grow up along with me. But even after beating dozens of games on the hardest difficulty mode, I’ve never been moved to cheer until the walls shake. I’ve never laughed, cried, or jumped up to strike a victory pose. My excitement drifts like ice on a quiet pond, whirling around somewhere deep inside me.

Maybe that’s just the reaction I have watching myself from the outside. I look down from above and say, “After all the time I put into the game, of course I was going to beat it.” I see myself with a shit-eating grin plastered on my face—a veteran smile only someone who’d been there themselves could appreciate.

The ending never changes. The village elder can’t come up with anything better than the same, worn-out line he always uses. “Well done, XXXX. I never doubted that the blood of a hero flowed in your veins.” Well the joke is on you, gramps. There’s not a drop of hero’s blood in my whole body, so spare me the praise. I’m just an ordinary guy, and proud of it. I’m here because I put in the time. I have the blisters on my fingers to prove it. It had nothing to do with coincidence, luck, or the activation of my Wonder Twin powers. I reset the game hundreds of times until my special attack finally went off perfectly. Victory was inevitable. So please, hold off on all the hero talk.

This is the sort of thing that went through my head while I was writing. Without the help of a great many people, this novel would never have made into this world. It’s a dark story, with characters dying left and right, but I’m happy with how it turned out.

I’d like to thank Yoshitoshi Abe for so perfectly realizing the world of the novel in his illustrations; my chief editor, Miyuki Matsumoto, who went above and beyond the call of duty for the book; After Glow’s Takeshi Yamazaki for his wonderful design work; Jun Masuda and his incredible friends for their help checking all things military; and finally Chōhei Kambayashıi for his many insightful suggestions.

Oh, I nearly forgot. Thanks to all the good little boys and girls out there sending me those jet-black feeds.

—Hiroshi Sakurazaka

About The Author

Photo by Yoshihiro Hagiwara

Hiroshi Sakurazaka was born in 1970. After a career in information technology, he published his first novel,
Wizard’s Web,
in 2003. His 2004 short story, “Saitama Chainsaw Massacre,” won the 16th
SF Magazine
Reader’s Award. His other novels include
Slum Online
and
Characters
(co-written with Hiroki Azuma).

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