But lately, Your Majesty had been acting rather strangely. She no longer appeared on the balcony every day to watch us. Then, two months ago, I suddenly
got the news that they were recruiting soldiers. I thought it over...
For Your Majesty, for Chang'an, for my son and daughter, and for my gentle yet fierce wife, I thought...
I wanted to enlist.
After more than two months of training, we set out. Your Majesty was leading the expedition herself, which surprised me greatly. Even more surprising was that the troops
actually marched straight into the tropical rainforest.
On the first day, we didn't see a single bug. Quite a few of my comrades were saying things like, "Maybe something's wrong..."
I paid them no mind. Or rather... I still believed in that person.
Starting on the second day, we began encountering more and more bugs. There seemed to be a lot of them, but if you counted carefully,
there were actually far too few. It was
an unnaturally small number.
There was even more talk of that sort among the troops.
By the time the thirty-first came around, it was New Year's Day. My wife was probably at home with the kids, wasn't she?
I thought about it and took the photo from my breast pocket. My daughter was three, my son one, and my beautiful, charming wife had short hair.
"Hey... Four, why are you looking at it again? Seriously, I've never seen anyone so homesick."
"No, listen, my wife is wonderful..."
"Enough, enough. I'm sick of hearing about it every day. We get it, your wife's great and the kids are good."
"I..."
"All right, stop it. We're already close to the bug nest. At this rate, we'll reach it tomorrow. If nothing unexpected happens,
we're bound to