My Beloved Oppressor

ly on the cheek, and stood up.

 

“Don’t you think you hit him too hard? Be nice.”

 

The boy lay dead with his eyes open.
The woman puffed her cigar and quickly turned around.

 

A voice followed, “Come.”

 

Slam.
The warehouse door closed.
Silence crept into the dark interior.

 

The boy raised his upper body in a heap and dragged himself toward the wall.
He sat leaning against the wall and coughed.

 

His gray training suit was crumpled and dirty.
The boy struggled to sit up, and the name tag on the right side of his jacket came to his view.

 

‘Heiner Valdemar.’

 

Heiner spit out a plop of blood.
His whole body ached, but fortunately there were no broken bones.
The men didn’t want to draw the director’s attention and beat him (Heiner) to relieve their anger.

 

 

Lynchings were common here.
Groups formed among the trainees, who had various reasons to relieve their stress and eliminate their rivals.

 

Most of the time there was no valid or appropriate reason for the lynching.
If they just wanted to hit, they hit.
If someone died, well, it was their bad luck.

 

As Heiner was an excellent trainee in the eyes of the supervisors, he caught people’s attention.

Heiner checked again for any broken bones and then slowly stood up.

 

“Ugh.”

 

The groan he had been holding back for so long flowed out.
He forced himself to his feet through clenched teeth.
If he missed a class, he would lose points.

 

Here at the Sutherlane Island Training Institution, they had survival training every three months.
The term was “survival training,” but it was murder training.
In fact, killing was sometimes allowed in the training.

 

In survival training, weapons were assigned according to scores.
If your score was low, 

you would be thrown into the woods with your bare hands.

 

Heiner struggled with his steps.
A quick peek under his training jacket revealed a dark bruise on his stomach.

 

Heiner stopped to take a painkiller out of his inside pocket.

 

He had to learn to feel dulled by pain.

 

Because he was due for torture training soon.

 

He took a deep breath and moved quickly.
His whole body seemed to be screaming, but he didn’t show it, at least outwardly.

 

However, Heiner ended up having to show up late for class that day and lost his points.

 

***

 

The Sutherlane Island Training Institute was an institution under the Royal Military.
At the training center, spies and informants were intensively trained.

 

The best among them even formally joined the army.
Of course, in order to do so, they had to prove their loyalty to the royal family by overcoming the threat of death in various operations.

 

Those who entered the training institution were mainly teenagers and were divided into two types.
Criminals and orphans.

 

For more than a decade, the royal family removed the homeless and orphans for the sake of the city’s aesthetics.
The homeless disappeared out of sight and the orphans were sent to training camps.

 

Heiner was one of them.
He lost his parents at an early age and grew up in an orphanage with poor facilities until the age of 12.
He then boarded a ship bound for Sutherlane Island.

 

The children trapped on the island were brainwashed and educated to pledge allegiance to the royal family.
Then, after graduating from a six- to seven-year completion course, they worked in the shadows under the military.

 

The survival rate by the time of graduation was around 30%.
It was a low number, but orphans were so plentiful that the military considered even that to be a lot.

 

“Heiner.”

 

The candle flickered at the approaching opponent’s presence.
Heiner raised his head, in the middle of sorting through his royal history textbooks.

 

It was Ethan, who shared the same room.

 

“Is your body okay? The day after tomorrow is survival training.”

 

“…… just so so.”

 

In fact, Heiner wasn’t in very good shape.
The bully men had been tormenting Heiner relentlessly after that.
He could not make his usual moves during training.

 

“What’s the score?”

 

“Not high.”

 

“Oh, I see.
Hmmm, so what I was going to say is that if we were on a different team tomorrow ……”

 

Ethan hesitated to speak for a moment.
He was a year younger than Heiner.

 

“Let’s just keep each other alive.”

 

“….”

 

“We don’t want each other to have new roommates again who we don’t know, do we?”

 

The candles melted.
Heiner asked, glancing at the two empty bunks that had not yet been occupied.

 

“What about Hugo and Stefan?”

 

“I’ve made an agreement with them as well.
So are you going to do it or not?”

 

Heiner struggled for a moment.

 

He was not in a good condition, no, he was in pretty bad shape, but he was sure he was able to compete and win two or three rounds.
Of course, he assumed they had the same weapons.

 

But with the current score, the odds were high that he would get good weapons.
There didn’t seem to be anything wrong with accepting Ethan’s proposal.

 

‘…… okay.’

 

“Yes, good choice.
Don’t hit each other in the back?”

 

Ethan slapped Heiner on the shoulder with a bright face.
Heiner nodded expressionlessly.