Noah heard footsteps.
When he turned around, the slender figure was already almost pressed against his back. If he had turned a second later, their heads probably would have collided.
Standing before him was a girl of around seventeen or eighteen. She was quite pretty, with pale blue hair falling to her waist. An air of lingering sorrow hung between her brows, while her azure eyes seemed shrouded in mist, dreamy and unfocused.
A faint fragrance drifted into his nostrils. Noah instinctively took two steps back. After putting some distance between them, he found that she was still standing there silently watching him, with no intention of speaking even after quite a while.
Unable to make heads or tails of it, he had no choice but to ask first. "Do you need something, Mia?"
"..."
The blue-haired girl finally moved. She raised her head and stared blankly into Noah's eyes.
"...Shiya."
After a long while, her voice came out like a murmur in a dream. "I'm Shiya, Clangard Shiya, from the New World."
Noah froze for a moment, then realized what had happened. His face immediately reddened.
There were so many people in the Marine Headquarters Elite Training Camp that remembering most of their names was already difficult enough. Although the girl before him had joined at the same time as he had, they had never spoken before. His impression of her was vague, and he had mistaken her for another blue-haired female marine.
"I'm sorry!"
He gave a slight bow and apologized sincerely—after all, they had been colleagues for nearly a year. Getting someone's name wrong was truly rude, no matter how one looked at it.
"It's all right..."
The blue-haired girl continued staring fixedly into Noah's eyes. "I might get angry if it were someone else, but if it's Noah..."
As she spoke, she actually raised her slender right hand toward Noah's face, murmuring in a soft, gentle voice, "Everything can be forgiven and understood..."
"My apologies."
Noah finally realized something was wrong. He took another half-step back to avoid her hand, his expression abruptly turning serious. He even used an honorific.
"Perhaps I wasn't clear enough earlier, so let me ask again, Miss Shiya. What did you come to see me for?"
Shiya blinked, looking at him in confusion as if she were pondering the meaning of his question. Only several seconds later did she seem to snap out of it, revealing a sweet smile.
"Me? Of course I came to confess my feelings to Noah. I've endured it for so long already. If I kept bottling it up, I was afraid I wouldn't be able to bear that pain mentally."
Her tone was light and lively, like a lark singing in the woods.
Noah was stunned. Before he could respond, Shiya tilted her head slightly and pointed to a building in the distance, asking softly, "Do you see that building?"
"Mm..."
Shiya had successfully led his thoughts away. Noah subconsciously glanced in that direction. "Isn't that the dormitory building Marine Headquarters specially assigned to female soldiers?"
"That's right."
Somehow, the blue-haired girl produced a monocular telescope from her short skirt. "Over the past year, for three hundred nights, rain or shine, I stood by the railing on the third floor of that building every day, watching Noah on the training grounds."
Since when?
A chill ran down Noah's spine. He stared at Shiya in disbelief—was this girl some obsessive stalker? He had spent several hours here every night training extra, and she had silently watched him from somewhere he could not see for nearly an entire year?
"From the first day I saw Noah, I liked you."
Shiya caressed the telescope that had accompanied her for a year. Her eyes were hazy, like a lake blanketed in morning mist. "At first, I liked your looks. Then I fell for your sunny, cheerful personality. Later, when I saw you desperately honing yourself for your dreams, covered in sweat, I liked you even more. It hurt my heart terribly to see you like that."
"Do you know, Noah? There were so many nights..."
As she spoke, her right hand unconsciously reached out again, wanting to wipe away the lingering sweat on Noah's forehead. "Whenever I saw how exhausted you were, I wanted to rush down from the building to your side, wipe away your sweat, and cheer you on. But it was only today that I finally found the courage to take this step..."
Noah inconspicuously took another half-step back.
At that moment, he was beginning to question his life. Maybe he had not transmigrated into the world of pirates at all, but into some melodramatic Japanese school drama airing at eight on Friday nights.
Otherwise, how could he have been perfectly fine, running laps and doing push-ups, only for an obsessive girl claiming to have liked him for an entire year to suddenly appear and confess so abruptly?
"Miss Shiya."
Noah decided he could not let her continue rambling like she was dreaming. He gave a light cough and forcibly interrupted the blue-haired girl's confession. "I must make something clear. Before tonight, we had almost no interaction at all. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been rude enough to forget your name..."
After carefully considering his wording, he continued, "In short, confession is like the victory song we sound at the moment we defeat pirates, not the charge signal before boarding battle. Do you... understand what I mean?"
Shiya's hand froze halfway through wiping his sweat.
Under the dim light, she quietly watched Noah, who was resolute yet distant. She said nothing for a long time, until her stare made his skin crawl and he could not help looking away. Then she smiled softly.
"All right."
"What?" Noah suspected that she had not listened to a word he had said.
"I mean, since that's how Noah understands it, then please treat my confession tonight as the charge signal."
Shiya put away the telescope and smiled faintly. "Noah was startled by me, right? That's perfectly normal. There's always bombardment before a boarding battle, isn't there? Boom! Suddenly firing without warning—anyone would be frightened enough to cover their ears."
"But I've already climbed over the ropes and jumped aboard. Next comes close-quarters combat at very close range. I'll work hard to win, so Noah should be careful..."
Damn it, girl, you still didn't understand what I meant!
Black lines filled Noah's forehead. He had every reason to suspect that this colleague named Shiya, even if she had not reached the level of an obsessive yandere, was at least somewhat unhinged, with a thought process utterly incomprehensible to normal people like him.
Who would dare accept a confession from someone like that?
He was beginning to regret using the detector on Garp in the cafeteria earlier. If he had the system's strategy prompt, he could at least have seen through her and found the most appropriate and effective reason and method to reject her.
But who could have predicted that something like this would happen in the middle of the night on the training grounds?
"Let me make it even clearer: I refuse your confession, Miss Shiya."
Looking at the blue-haired girl who had been staring at him the whole time, he racked his brains for a reason—what should he say now? Should he imitate Huo Piaoji and declare that, as a proud Marine Headquarters elite, how could he think of a home before all pirates were destroyed?
"Although I'm sorry, I'm just this kind of person. I have rather high standards for a partner..."
Noah finally managed to find an excuse that might brush her off, saying solemnly, "More precisely, looks and figure aren't important. I will absolutely never accept someone whose strength is inferior even to mine as my other half..."
The moment he said it, he wanted to slap himself.
As expected, his imagination was simply too rich. He could make up nonsense this absurd.
"Then aren't I just perfect?"
"Huh?" Noah froze.
"I've quietly paid attention to every one of Noah's assessments."
Shiya raised her head and spoke in a cheerful, light voice that seemed almost like singing. "You're between fiftieth and sixtieth place every time, right? As for me, from the day I entered camp until now, Teacher Zephyr's evaluation of me has never fallen out of the top ten."
The contract status has been changed. I only realized afterward that Wolf King and Serious Yet Timid Alone had tipped me. This newbie thanks you here! I'll start updating twice a day now~
Before you continue