"Have you heard of the sunk-cost fallacy?"
"Have mercy."
"It's when someone keeps their course on a fruitless venture, thinking that jackpot is guaranteed with enough effort."
"I get paid to scout. Not to listen to your inane ramblings."
"Hear me out. Anyway, people say to work hard, and you'll be rewarded. Isn't that just sunk-cost as well?"
"If you get paid a wage, then it isn't fruitless."
"Do you think your job is sunk-cost?"
"No. It's a job. It's a job that pays money because it's unenjoyable. If it was enjoyable, people would pay money to do it, and call it entertainment."
"But isn't what you're ultimately looking for sunk-cost?"
"See, I don't particularly care about finding the candidate. That's your concern. I don't particularly care if I find this hypothetical candidate. If I do, great! Good for you."
"You know, I was hoping that you'd comfort me in this endeavor together in looking for this person. Since the search has been mostly fruitless."
"I don't get paid to comfort you. Call your therapist from HR. Besides, you don't search. Your job is to make searchers tired."
"You wound me."
"The truth hurts, eh?"
"You know, it's okay to lie every now and then."
"Are we about to discuss the morality of white lies?"
"No. I'm asking you to be more considerate instead of approaching every social interaction with a baseball bat in hand."
"This job has tired me out to my wit's end. Societal niceties will have to take a backseat for now."
"Until when?"
"When we're both retired and playing chess on a porch complaining about our weak knees and our insolent in-laws."
"I look forward to that day."
"You're too optimistic for this job, old man."
—
Word must've gotten out about the so-called tryst between him and Akagi. He noticed that he got quite a few extra looks from others. Not just from the Sakura Empire. At the canteen, Javelin opened the can of worms as soon as he sat down.
"Commander, we've been hearing from so-and-so that you rejected Akagi's confession…"
Z23 shushed her, but he heard everything he needed to.
He supposed that in the vaguest sense, it wasn't quite wrong, but the connotation was completely off. When did a naval base suddenly become high school? His head pulsed once, and he winced. He popped an aspirin.
"Well, maybe you should ask whoever spread that," he remarked, scathingly. "They clearly have a better idea of what happened than me and Akagi ourselves."
The power quad looked down, unable to make eye contact with him. The commander had no inclination of continuing that particular topic, so he let the moment fall into an uneasy silence. However, things couldn't lie where they were.
A mild commotion started to grow into a general riot. The canteen was always loud, but the usual brag, bluster, and banter was being drowned out by genuine anger coming from a certain portion of the room. Where the Sakura Empire tended to congregate.
A certain someone rose from the table and marched her way to the commander's side, despite multiple pleas and arms begging otherwise. He didn't even need to look up from his tray to guess who it was. "Ho, Kaga. What brings you here?"
"Shikikan, I expect eye contact when we're speaking to each other," Kaga's cold tone replied.
"I'll do the eye contact once we're speaking of matters that aren't related to stupid high school gossip."
"Shikikan," she warned.
He gave a heavy sigh, stood up, and turned to face the wrath of Kaga. The canteen's usual hubbub had slowly quieted to watch the confrontation between the carrier of the First Aircraft Division and the slouched posture of the commander.
She stared down the half-lidded, baggy eyes of the commander, which only seemed to further spark her icey fury. "What did you do to my sister?"
He laughed: a singular ha! that betrayed any mirth. "I expected an apology of some sorts to give, but apparently we're still in the interrogation phase. You should ask Akagi instead. Not my information to give." He went to turn around and sit back down, but Kaga grabbed his shoulder with an iron grip.
"Shikikan," she warned again.
"Imagine going to bully your superior for answers instead of politely accepting your sister's request to keep it between us two," he snarked. For some reason, Kaga didn't scare him any more. He should've been frightened out of his mind, but the demand for sleep overruled self-preservation.
She snarled, and tightened her grip on his shoulder. The dull ache in his shoulder turned into pulses of pain, matching the one in his head. "Akagi came in yesterday and has refused to leave her room. If you dare say that to my face, I will personally ensure that the Sakura Empire will never follow your orders again."
He sighed, one fraught with great exaggeration and some genuine tiredness. The cool gravy of common sense started to chill the passion of anger. He couldn't really do anything outrageous for too long. The curse of rationality. "Akagi and I had a misunderstanding," he muttered, so only he and Kaga could hear. "I rejected her."
Kaga's gaze remained the same, but her eyes shone with the clarity of understanding. She released her grip on his shoulder and backed off, then left the canteen. Perhaps to press more answers out of her dear sister.
Soon after he collapsed back into his seat, surrounded by the stares of hundreds, the general hubbub returned to normal. Or at least as normal as it could be, whispering in many voices the happenings of the past minute.
The commander's table, on the other hand, was dead quiet. He was certain that despite his whisper, everyone at his table was able to hear every word between him and Kaga. He hoped Javelin would pipe in with another one of her inane topics of conversation, but no one seemed willing. They'd rather mull over this pressing information that was clearly none of their business.
"Say something. Say anything," his mind begged them. But alas, kansen were not telepathic. Disgusted by them for caring too much, and at himself for inaction, the commander followed in Kaga's steps and left the canteen to murmur.
—
Of course, by dinner, the entire place knew of Akagi's rejection by the commander. He had hoped that the unsaid message to 'not spread rumors' would be self-evident. But exceptions had been made, so every man, woman, child, and goldfish in this part of the naval base knew. Might as well yelled it at the top of his lungs if he knew that it'd go around with the word of mouth.
Akagi was still not at the canteen. And neither was Kaga. Quite frankly, he shouldn't have come either. He wondered if he should've just said yes to Akagi's proposal. Yes, it came out of blue, and yes, it was completely unwarranted, but he and Akagi wouldn't be in this deep pile of shit anymore.
It wouldn't have been that bad.
This time, instead of sitting with the power quad, he looked for a completely open table. With no one. He didn't feel like sitting at a table with mounting tension over who blabbed.
There weren't any with zero people. But there were a couple with only a single person. So he took the one near the corner where the only other occupant sat at the very corner so he could take the other.
He didn't bother with an "excuse me" or any other nicety. Just plunked down his tray and sat. Thankfully, the other person didn't seem to notice or care about his presence. So in this realm of a table, there was nothing but comforting silence. At least he wouldn't be beleaguered by inquiring about Akagi, Akagi, Akagi.
Because there was nothing else to focus on, he started to notice the other occupant at his table. She looked remarkably like Enterprise, but instead had a thick winter coat. Then again, he was horrible with differentiating faces. Anyone with white hair looked like Enterprise at this point. But this person had a much more dour expression than Enterprise, and was not surrounded by adoring fans.
"Ahem." The commander was startled to see Bismarck looming over him with her own food. "Is there any particular reason why you chose to sit here today, Kommandant?"
He looked back down at his food, unable to compose words with direct eye contact with the imposing battleship. "Thought I would like some change of pace," he muttered.
She considered that, then set her food across from the winter-coated individual. "I suppose that this has nothing to do with the rumor circulating about?"
He groaned. "So you've heard as well."
"You'd have to be deaf not to. In my line of work, I've been told several times over by different excitable destroyers," she said, tucking in.
He groaned again. "Why can't people be reasonable and not spread stupid rumors?"
"Are you implying you didn't spread elementary school love affairs when you were younger?"
He tried to reflect honestly. "No, never."
"Not even your parents? Your siblings?"
He quieted to that.
"In any case," Bismarck said, wiping her mouth with a napkin, "let me introduce you to my sister, Tirpitz."
Oh. It all made sense now. It was only now he realized that Tirpitz hadn't interjected into the conversation at all or even look up from her food. She only looked up to make brief eye contact and nod to acknowledge him before returning her focus on her food. Rather, gazing in the general direction of her food. Her focus was some unknown topic entirely in her head.
It turned out that Bismarck sat with Tirpitz every dinner. For time to themselves. That probably answered the question why the Iron Blood was looking in his direction so much. Excluding the obvious rumor.
All the while he and Bismarck chatted, he couldn't help but feel like he was intruding on something. But Bismarck insisted that he stay, because it was their first time meeting. But by the way things were going, it felt like Tirpitz was the stranger between the three of them. And he couldn't help but keep thinking about Bismarck's words from the past.
"Cold, and distant... she's content where things lie at the moment. And this hasn't changed for quite a while." He could see all the effort exerted by Bismarck to include her. But Tirpitz only responded in monosyllabic responses and didn't ever turn to face her sister. It made him angry. And in turn, he could only feel a growing sense of shame for himself. They were not too different, the two of them. Pushing away everyone and everything. Never looking up past their immediate sphere of concern and seeing the hurting half-smile of others who cared. Perhaps there was one person who truly had nobody to care for them. But that person was neither of them.
Eventually, Tirpitz finished and excused herself. And Bismarck and the commander watched her go. They sat in stony silence as the rest of the canteen was still flush with activity.
Bismarck closed her eyes. "We've been together for several years at this point. And nothing seems to change. Sometimes I wonder what's going on inside of her head. She always says that it's nothing."
The commander looked down, unable to answer her.
"But I hold the hope that one day, she'll be able to answer me. With sincerity. But until then, I can only wait."
All of his words in his head were being drowned out by the pumping of his heart. He tried to speak, but nothing made it past the lump in his throat. The only thing he could do was clench his fists and grind his teeth.
But he didn't know why he did it all. Something about the contrast between Tirpitz's aloofness and Bismarck's sincerity made him twist inside. There was the obvious anger of injustice that burned, but sorrow of futility made his heart wrench. Why wouldn't Tirpitz return her sister's care for several years? How could she be so callous? How could someone just tread over someone like that without even looking?
But he knew the reason why. He'd been in a similar position before. His foresight diminished to only see to arms' length. It was like wandering and groping in a dark room. You bumped into things, you tripped. And never once did you think that there were others in the room with you. Because why would anybody care?
People were inherently selfish. Nobody signed up to be a mother, a father, a sibling, a friend, or a teacher to someone with more self-inflicted problems than a shounen protagonist with none of the recklessness to back it up. So why would they care? Why should they care?
But they did, anyways. He'd hurt his mother like that. She cried in front of him, but all he could do back then was just look away. He couldn't even force his own tears on his own at the time.
So it was all this pent-up emotion that clogged his throat and threatened to spill out of his eyes. He had to go. He had to leave.
He tried to excuse himself but his words came out slurred and jumbled. But Bismarck seemed to have understood, and solemnly nodded. He left in a hurry, looking for Tirpitz.
—
It was a fool's errand to have tried to look for her. Perhaps his heart would have had him running straight into Tirpitz, but he only ended up wandering the premises of the port until the lump in his throat went away.
He was partly glad that he didn't find Tirpitz after the fact. He wouldn't have been able to string sentences together and would've probably looked like a raving lunatic. Or perhaps he wouldn't have been able to say a single word, fuming but silent all the same. In either case, he wasn't able to have words with her. But he resolved to talk.
But in his wandering, he managed to find his spot at the beach from the party. The tents and tables had all been taken down, but he ended up finding the red solo cup he ditched a long time ago. The high tide didn't reach far enough to wash it out to sea. He sat down next to it, watching the waters crash against the sand in a steady rhythm.
And he finally was able to clear his mind and not think about anything. The stars had come out, dotting the sky with their pinprick holes in the dark quilt of the night. The seaside air was fresh, free from the scent of man. He hugged his legs and let his chin rest on top of his knees, letting the moment consume him.
It was nice. No worries about the Akagi and Kaga, no more thoughts about Tirpitz. The whispers and quiet gossip that permeated the naval base earlier was drowned out by the whistling breeze and tiny waves crashing. But his mind couldn't help but wander.
Like a video recording, his mind began to play back the memories starting with his arrival on base. And he couldn't help but wince with every lapse of judgement which resulted in consequences for himself and everyone else here. But the one which stood out the most was his encounter with Akagi. In his defense, he had the aches of a migraine and had almost no food that morning when Akagi drove him to his wit's end. She was the one who did everything so everything he did back was justified. Justified, but it left an awful taste in his mouth whenever he thought about it. He hugged his knees closer to himself.
He should go apologize. To both Akagi and Kaga. Even if Akagi would never forgive him, it'd still be a load off of his mind. Perhaps he'd held the kansen to a higher standard than he should've. He thought they were made of sterner stuff than he was, but it turned out some of them were just as neurotic as he was.
If he had a sound body and mind, circumstances would have been much different. It was impossible to deny that many kansen were attractive. But thoughts of having a future with any of them made his entire core well up with shame. He had dreamed of fantasies living out a future with Bismarck, who'd made such a strong impression on him. Maybe it was something about her elegance and unflinching nature which appealed to him. But never did he imagine her indecent. The fantasies had always stopped there. He could imagine a wedding, raising children, but could never commit the deed in his mind. He never could destroy this pure picture of her in his mind.
If he was more outspoken, and confident. If only, if only. The fantasies can only remain fantasies. Never would they be reality. As for now, all he could do was do the only thing he was good at: strategy. And hope someone might notice.
He sighed, and shivered. The cold easily got in his clothes. Perhaps he'd go inside soon, in a bit. He would've stayed longer if there was someone else to talk to. But no one came.
—
