Part 3: You're a Boy?
Volume 1: Kamille Bidan
“Kamille!” His mother Hilda’s voice came flying at him not even a second later. She was quick to catch things like this.
“The rotation of the colony must be fast.” Saying just this, Kamille stood. While looking at the schedule for arrivals at the bay deck reflected on the monitor, he had found the name of a ship he liked on the list. At times like these, he would get so happy without even thinking that this sort of thing would happen. It was a bad habit of his.
Kamille could not hear these words of Hilda’s. But things were always like this. Nothing worth worrying about.
“When are we going back to Earth?”
“…?!” Kamille unconsciously stopped at his father’s conclusive tone.
Sounds like you’ve been getting ready to say those words for a while, doesn’t it…?!
Speaking about the Earth had been Kamille’s greatest weapon in talking back to his parents. The moment he mentioned it, his parents would falter, and tell him to wait just a little longer. With that phrase, any lecture he had been getting up to that point would end.
Kamille did not really care whether they returned to Earth or not. He liked Earth for what it was, and did not hate the city of New Seat, located near Tokyo, where he had been born. Kamille’s natural curiosity let him enjoy colony life. Although subtracting the fact that Green Oasis had become a base for the Titans was a necessary condition for that…
“I’ve made my decision. That’s all. You’re not a child anymore, are you? You can imagine my reasons.” His father tossed several sheets of newspaper into the disposal, and then stood.
“I’m going ahead. I won’t be able to make it home today either, with the preparations to welcome the Titans.”
“Should I not have said it? I’m pretty sure you were the one who said you wanted me to make my decision quickly…”
“Even if I have made a decision, it doesn’t mean we have to move on it right away. We have to live here in Green Oasis until our work is completed. Nothing is going to change. This just means we’ll have to use some of our vacation time to search for the colony where we’ll spend the rest of our lives…”
As was his habit, he jogged towards school. About five minutes later, his father’s eleca (electric car) went racing by on the road to his left.
Kamille knew about the woman who was supposedly his father’s lover. It was some woman who worked somewhere completely unconnected to his father’s job. Rumors about them had passed along through Kamille’s high school at a frightening speed. It seemed that his mother did not know the truth, but at the same time, no one knew what his mother was always doing at Green Noa 2, either.
It was said that there was something remarkable behind the fortification of Green Noa 2, but not all the details were known in Green Noa 1, as might be expected. At the same time, it was common knowledge in Green Noa 1 that a battleship of considerable size was being built, and that in the future, the military facilities at Green Noa 1 would likely be moved over to Green Noa 2. The additional fact that Colonel Bask Om, the director of the Titans, liked to call Green Noa 2 by the code name “Gryps,” was also well known.
Kamille’s mother, Hilda, specialized in materials engineering, and in the military was treated as a first lieutenant, while his father, Franklin, was a captain and a specialist in mobile suit engineering. The two had come up to Green Oasis in order to participate in development plans for a new Gundam. As his mother specialized in materials engineering, she quickly ended up going back and forth between Green Noa 1 and 2 often, and as his father had recently started mobile suit combat testing, he was in Green Noa 1 quite a bit.
His mother was a woman too involved in her research. At parties of work friends and such, every last one of his mother’s coworkers praised her. As a child, he could feel pride at this. But at seventeen, he understood that adult women too serious and involved in their work could not be satisfying presences at all, either as women or as mothers.
So Kamille spent every class that was not connected to electronics and computers with his mind elsewhere. On the other hand, he had been able to pick up some special tricks. He showed off, his trick of sitting with his back up straight all day long, sometimes even falling sleeping that way, better than anyone else’s.
But this created two misunderstandings. Among the teachers, this created the misunderstanding that Kamille’s graceful looks, which appeared neither male nor female, made him a model student. The additionally misunderstanding, that he was a “Girl of Stone,” who only made a show of listening to the words of the teachers, made him infamous among the other students. This was the exact opposite reputation that Kamille had planned on, but he didn’t care.
So the wisdom he gained at the border of his fifteenth year was the skill of ignoring the abuse of his friends. With this, Kamille grew up.
When class ended, Kamille dashed to his club meeting. He was in the karate club.
“Who’s sick?!” The vice-captain, Ranban Squarm, dressed in a karate uniform, glared at him.
“What did you say?!” By the time Ranban Squarm, in an attempt to punish Kamille with his iron fist, ran out into the middle of the dojo, Kamille was already dashing out through the exit.
“Wait!” Mezune Mecks grabbed on to Kamille’s arm. “You’re taking off today?!”
“Shut up!” One of Mezune’s hands flew through the air. His slap was quick.
“I’ll be back soon!”
Hearing these jeers, Kamille started running.
She always does this!
Kamille’s running speed was not slow by any means, but Fa Yuiry’s gait slid in next to his. The line from Fa’s ear to the nape for her neck was beautiful as she positioned herself diagonally in front of him.
“Because I’m cutting. Get away from me.”
“Because everyone will realize that I’m Kamille, right?!”
Kamille dashed down the stairs leading from the school grounds along the road, and continued towards the eleca parking lot. There were rentable eleca there. They did not necessarily collect there, though. There was a system in which several parking lots were connected by computer, and eleca would be automatically dispatched to the areas with the higher usage rates.
While Kamille pressed the eleca’s starter, Fa came dashing in.
“…Get out!”
“You’ve got homework, don’t you?”
“Hey! You cutting?!” The passerby teasing them was a classmate.
Kamille rode the eleca right to the linear car entrance. Even inside a colony, when traveling in long distances, like from one end to the other, linear cars were faster. The linear car ran along a rail on the outer wall of the colony. In short, they would end up going out into space.
“Am I really gonna make it?” Kamille waited impatiently for the linear car, pressing the call button repeatedly.
“Tch!” Kamille chewed his nails.
“If you don’t want to see it, you shouldn’t have come along.”
Shhhuu!
“Here’s my card! Hurry to the port.”
Through the sun visor in front of them, one section of the buildings in the port appeared to be standing still against the many stars. The stars passed by their left side at a violent speed. Next, the port block approached, and in the next moment, the linear car matched its speed to that of the port wall, sliding into the correct position to moor.
However this second ward (the base) of the Green Oasis colony was already being used entirely for military affairs. All of the normal factory blocks had already become military facilities, turning into mobile suit development areas or pilot training centers.
At this point, the stars finally appeared to have halted.
Kamille dashed out of the hatch while looking at his watch.
“Please be careful. This is a gravity-free area. Please make use of your shoes.” The synthesized voice of a woman rang out obnoxiously.
Kamille, grabbing on to the grip used for movement on the wall, finally regained his body’s balance.
Lift grips are always attached to walls for people to move along. A person could move about easily just by grabbing on and pressing the acceleration button. The skill to move from wall to wall and corner to corner was easy to learn. Of course, when it came to places that would be equivalent to intersections, there were signals which kept people from bumping into each other, but in general, a system controlling each of the lift grips was thoroughly in place, and people using lift grips to move about did not bump into each other.
Landing on the floor, Kamille turned his gaze to the monitor on the side. There, the name of the Temptation, the name of the captain, the number of passengers and other such information was displayed. Kamille noted the name of the captain, Bright Noa.
“It’s not like some unusual ship arrived or anything.” Fa pouted at Kamille’s rush.
“You know him?”
“He’s not a newtype, is he?”
“No, he’s not…” Fa, realizing that Kamille was staring straight at a single point, swallowed her words.
Fa realized that Kamille was watching the hatch of the Temptation open.
Three floors below them was the area connected to the hatch of the Temptation. The passageways to the quarantine and inspection blocks were already open. They were treated this way only in times of special cases where passengers who did not need to be inspected were heading through.
“Kamille!”
At this cry, the man from the Titans spoke.
But Kamille certainly heard it. He knew what it meant, too.
“…?” The man must have thought that the boy walking straight towards him might have been someone he knew. He turned his body towards Kamille. “…?”
“Lieutenant Jerid, which hatch do you think the luggage will come from?” The Lieutenant tried to turn in the direction of the voice.
The Lieutenant looked down on Kamille at his confrontational words.
“Is there something wrong with it?!”
“Don’t screw with me!” Before his words even ended, Kamille had thrown his body into Jerid Messa’s. Continuing on, Kamille’s right hand smashed into Lieutenant Jerid’s chin. This sort of forced karate did not know how to hold back.
“Cut it out!”
Airport employees and the military police guards came swarming down on them.
“As I just got off here to pick up my friends, and this happened…I’d like an apology…”
“What…?!” It was because of the look in Jerid’s eyes that Kamille let out these rebellious words.
Holding back, Jerid kicked Kamille in the nose with the tip of his boot. In that moment, Kamille heard a sound as though the world had splattered open.