On the deck of the warship heading back, Lipo skipped over to the cage holding Bullet, a fresh carrot in her hand.
She tilted her head, her furry ears twitching gently, and passed the carrot through a gap in the iron bars.
"Hey, big guy, want some?" she asked with a grin.
Bullet slowly raised his head, staring at the rabbit girl he had sent flying with a punch not long ago, his brows tightly furrowed.
"I tried to kill you earlier." His voice was low, edged with a hoarse chill. "And this is how you treat me now?"
"It's fine, it's fine!" Lipo waved her hand, the carrot bobbing between her fingers.
"Gern told me you're a comrade in justice now, too! Comrades don't hurt their comrades anymore!"
"Comrades... don't hurt comrades?" Bullet repeated, his lips curling into a sneer. "Heh."
For a moment, his gaze grew distant.
Comrades?
What a ridiculous word.
Bullet had once naively believed that as long as he was strong enough, he would earn recognition and find true companions.
And what had that gotten him?
Betrayal, betrayal, and more fucking betrayal.
As a child soldier, he had been brutally branded with the mark "Number 9." To those officers who looked down on everyone,
he was nothing more than "the ninth bullet of the Douglas Unit."
A tool for killing, ready to be fired at any moment.
Yet even so, he had foolishly regarded the man who gave him his surname as his father.
And what had happened?
When he became unstoppable on the battlefield, when his strength began to make that man feel threatened,
the blade that should have guarded his back had instead pierced his heart from the direction he trusted most.
He still remembered that rainy night, blood mingling with rainwater as