Infiltrating the Superhuman Training Girls’ School of the Republic of China!

I shook hands lightly with Lieutenant Duey and took an awkward stance.

“My name is Shin Eun-young. I’m just… a regular university student who came here.”

“Wow, really? I was sure you were a soldier.”

“Uh… pardon?”

“Actually, I was watching. The way you were standing, looking at that hut.”

Catherine Duey’s eyes sparkled in a slightly different way than before. Don’t be flustered. I am Shin Eun-young. An ordinary college student, a bit surprised by her suddenly awakened ability, a typical Korean honor student.

“Um, what do you mean by that?”

“Well, how should I put it in Chinese… Discipline, yes, that’s it. Strictly speaking, it’s not exactly discipline, but that unique aura that people who have been in military organizations give off… Ah, Chinese is really difficult. Do you happen to speak French?”

“I’m sorry, but French is a bit…”

I can speak it a little, but not very well. Russian maybe. I’ve learned Russian and Japanese almost to a native level because we often have to deal with communist country operatives, but I didn’t have time to learn languages of countries we’re unlikely to meet as enemies.

“Hmm, I’m sorry. If I had known, I should have studied English.”

“No, your Chinese is plenty good, Lieutenant.”

“Thank you for saying so. Anyway, you had an aura. That, how should I say, excellent quality that one feels from soldiers!”

Oh my, those cute sparkling eyes are starting to look somewhat formidable. I should probably explore a bit more about this woman before moving on. A French Army Second Lieutenant?

“Th-Thank you. I was worried about whether I could adapt to this school after just having my interview, but hearing that makes me feel reassured.”

“Hmm… What did they talk about in the interview?”

“They seemed to say things like they prefer people with military experience.”

“I see, as expected. The Chinese are a bit nasty, you know. They have such a short history of having a proper military, yet they’re only good at being arrogant. Oh, did my words make you uncomfortable?”

“No, I’m not particularly uncomfortable, Lieutenant. France certainly has reason to be proud of its military.”

France, traditionally the strongest land army power in Europe. Under the emperor Napoleon, they once nearly conquered Europe, and in the ‘Great War’ that was called ‘the war to end all wars’, they succeeded in stopping the German army. Of course, there are certainly areas where they’ve been embarrassing themselves in various ways, but…

“It would have been nice if that French army hadn’t lost to China in Vietnam…”

“Ahem, cough!”

Lieutenant Duey coughed loudly and lowered her head. Well, it wasn’t a big war. Twenty years ago, France clearly could have continued the war, but judging that they couldn’t permanently damage their friendly relations with China, which was emerging as a world superpower, they began to withdraw completely from Indochina and step back from managing their Asian colonies.

It’s still a bit noisy in Algeria, but the status of the French colonial empire in North Africa remains solid. As someone from a country that was a colony of the Japanese Empire until 70 years ago and is still sometimes half-jokingly treated as a tributary state of China, it’s not a very pleasant attitude to see, even though I don’t have much loyalty to my own country.

“You’re the type to say everything on your mind, aren’t you? I like it. I like it. Even that is cute.”

“Cute?”

“Yes, cute.”

“Perhaps you made a mistake with the word because you’re not fluent in Chinese…”

“No, you, you look cute. Cute, mignon. You’re from Korea, right?”

“Yes, that’s right, but…”

“Actually, you can tell by looking. Judging by your skin color and features, you look like you’re from East Asia, specifically Northeast Asia, and there’s no way a Japanese person could enter China. There are various possibilities, but among foreign students, you can only be Korean. But at first, I really thought you were a Chinese official. Somehow, I felt like ‘this person is a soldier!'”

For someone claiming to be poor at Chinese, she’s quite talkative. The vocabulary she uses is certainly not at a native level, but it’s definitely not poor enough to say she can’t speak Chinese.

“Hearing that makes me feel like I’ll be a good student too, Lieutenant.”

“But this is a school that educates superhumans, right?”

Lieutenant Duey tilted her head.

“Yes, isn’t that why you transferred here too, Lieutenant?”

“If it’s a school, there’s no need to be too formal, right? It’s not a military academy. Actually, I haven’t had my interview yet, but I’ve heard a bit about what kind of person is inside there…”

“Hmm… There was someone who looked like a Chinese military officer in uniform conducting the interview… Is that person a real soldier?”

“Yes. They say she’s a Major in the National Revolutionary Army, named Zhou Lizhi. Apparently, she’ll be our instructor for a year after we enroll.”

“How do you know that…”

“Well, I’m in the army, aren’t I? This is a kind of dispatch mission, so of course, my country tells me what they know. It’s not like that instructor’s identity is a secret or anything. You must have received a recommendation from your government to come this far. Didn’t they tell you anything?”

“Yes, haha… Since I’m not a soldier or anything like that, I haven’t heard much yet…”

This “haha” laugh is also a bit awkward. Nevertheless, such an embarrassed laugh came out naturally. It’s the result of thorough self-hypnosis, but I’m not sure if I should be proud as an agent or afraid as a man that my behavior is gradually changing like this…

“Hmm, then I guess you don’t know this either…”

“Wh-What?”

“There’s a rumor that Major Zhou Lizhi is actually a terrible pervert… Isn’t that interesting?”

Just as I was about to ask her what on earth she was talking about, the door of the hut swung open and Major Zhou appeared.

A disciplined posture that remained unruffled despite bursting out the door in an instant. Eyes as black as onyx, but with a sharp gaze as if burning. The sun and white pattern engraved on the military cap she wore on her head shone much closer to the sun than her two eyes.

“Next applicant, Second Lieutenant Catherine Duey. If you’ve arrived, why are you standing out there instead of coming in?”

“I’m sorry, Major Zhou.”

“…Do you know about me, recruit?”

Well, even with the difference in rank, it’s not very polite to be so condescending to an officer from another country. But… ‘recruit’, huh. She called me that too. Anyway, this interview procedure is just a formality. If you’re recommended as a foreign student to this school, it means you’ve been recognized by the government of one of the capable countries, and if they reject this foreign student, it would mean the Chinese government is refusing a diplomatic request from the French government.

Zhou Lizhi treated Duey not as a French Army officer, but as a foreign student she would be receiving as a student.

“Yes, I heard a little from headquarters…”

“The French, always doing unnecessary things. I’ve been going around asking them not to say much about the instructor until the interview, you know.”

But not seeming to think it was a big secret, Zhou Lizhi gestured to the lieutenant without showing much reaction.

“Just hurry up and come in. Even if you have the French army backing you, don’t you still need to have an interview?”

“It’s not that I have the French army backing me, but that I, along with my comrades, am supporting France, Major.”

“Yes, I too, along with my comrades, am supporting China. So why don’t you stop dawdling and come in? And you there. Do you have some business left that you’re lingering around? If your purpose is to tour China, I won’t stop you, but if that’s the case, I’d recommend going to downtown Guangzhou, there’s much more to see there.”

“Ah, yes, yes, I understand, Instructor.”

Lieutenant Duey started walking towards the hut with a relaxed demeanor, but I momentarily stumbled over my words, genuinely overwhelmed by Major Zhou’s presence. Has my mind become weak just because my body has changed?

Catherine Duey glanced back at me just before entering the interview room and winked with one eye. Not knowing how to respond to the French army beauty lieutenant’s wink, I just waved my hand.

…Generally, it’s said that many high-profile “superhumans” tend to have eccentric personalities. Research results are not yet definitive, so hypotheses vary.

Among scholars, some say that the manifestation of superpowers causes hormonal changes that alter personality, while others argue that for some reason, people who are originally unique in personality tend to awaken abilities more easily. Anyway, it’s a well-known fact that most “superhumans” often show somewhat extraordinary traits even before awakening their superpowers.

I’ve dealt with quite a few extraordinary people so far, but I’ve rarely had to deal with a large number of superhumans at once.

If even a young lieutenant whose name wasn’t known to me is such an inscrutable person…

It seems certain that this mission will not be easy at all.