In the several months Charlotte had been away from the Owl Dragon System, she had come to find that she was already used to being at this man's side, already used to living in that Owl Dragon System — and that the place had plainly become her new native home.
And at the same time, a certain feeling in her heart toward the Commander-in-Chief had gone on quietly fermenting.
"What is it? Not eating?" Zhao Chen seemed not to have caught anything of Charlotte's mood, and pointed at the fine dishes on the table.
Could it be he had forgotten long since?
Charlotte's spirits sank a little; looking at that table laid from end to end with fish, she found she had rather lost her appetite.
He was the Commander-in-Chief, after all… with so very many people about him… how should he remember one small request he'd granted her back then.
"Why have you stopped eating?" Zhao Chen saw that Charlotte had not set to at once — which was out of the common way for her — and asked.
"Eat! Of course I'll eat!" Charlotte, without another word, took up fish of every sort with both hands together and set about eating.
The posture of her was for all the world as though she were in a battle.
Zhao Chen very nearly could not keep from laughing. This girl could never hide what was in her mind; her every feeling was written on her face.
"That fish of yours over there looks good. Let me try some." Zhao Chen took up his chopsticks of a sudden, as though he meant to reach for the plate of fish in front of Charlotte.
Charlotte still had a small dried fish stuffed in her mouth, and paid no mind at all to the Commander-in-Chief's move.
But the next second, a pair of eyes she knew well was less than a centimeter from her own.
And there was a warm touch on her lips.
The Commander-in-Chief was 'biting' her!
But it seemed a bit unlike the time she had bitten the Commander-in-Chief, back then. She felt her own heart go racing, and there was a feeling in it of being about to smother!
Mmf—!
And then she felt a drawing pull, and the fish in her mouth was taken clean away.
Her tail stood straight up on the instant, the white fur all over her seemed to puff out at once, and a shiver ran through her from head to foot.
By the time Charlotte came back to herself, the fish in her mouth was gone.
Zhao Chen had returned to his own seat; the fish was already eaten, and he wiped the broth from the corner of his mouth with a hand.
And with a faint smile he watched the Charlotte across from him, who did not know what to do with herself.
"You… you… what did you go snatching my little dried fish for—!" Charlotte's head seemed to have short-circuited altogether; the words were out of her without thinking.
The look of her was for all the world that of a great innocent white cat whose dried fish has been snatched away.
"Or shall you snatch one of mine, then?" Zhao Chen put a piece of dried fish into his own mouth, and gave Charlotte to understand that she was welcome to come and take it off him.
Charlotte's first instinct was to go and take her revenge — but recalling that strange touch of a moment ago, she sat herself down again in her chair, meek as anything.
"Hmph."
Charlotte went on eating the food in front of her.
Zhao Chen smiled and said nothing.
What he had promised Charlotte before, he could hardly have forgotten; and this, one might say, was the promise made good.
For the 10-odd minutes that followed, the two of them fell into a strange sort of air together, heads down over the fish and saying little.
Only once the awkwardness had eased did they begin to talk of how matters stood with the Owl Dragon Legion's growth.
Charlotte put forward a very fine view of it, and Zhao Chen was heartily of the same mind.
"To my thinking, the fleets the Owl Dragon Legion builds next needn't be built to the regular establishment at all. We could forge some special-purpose fleets, and in that way bring out the advantages of particular hull types and particular commanders. Baixue, for instance, is skilled at commanding interstellar missile ships. Then why don't we simply form an interstellar fleet outright of interstellar missile ships and interstellar escorts, with a small number of other hull types added in? That fleet's task would be to furnish long-range fire support on the battlefield. And then there are the interstellar stealth bombers that Zhao Wan'er is so skilled with! We put together 300 of one and the same model — 1,000, even — and then, when there's a mission of assassination or surprise assault to carry out, the efficiency of it can be raised enormously! Our Owl Dragon Legion is growing at present. What we need is not only those regular all-purpose fleets, with their many hull types working in concert, but some special fleets besides, that bring out the fighting power of a single hull type."
Zhao Chen was heartily of a mind with this notion of Charlotte's; he had in fact had contingency plans of his own along these lines.
An arrangement of that sort could put everything to fuller use, and with the division of labor drawn fine on the battlefield, bring out each hull type's fighting power to the utmost.
"This matter — talk it over with Lilith afterward. Best if a detailed outline of the plan is drawn up before you leave. And then, if there's need of it, Annie can be had to fall in with the relevant production tasks," Zhao Chen said.
Charlotte nodded. Though she had not been in the Owl Dragon System this while, Lilith had sent along an updated report on the great bulk of the Owl Dragon Legion's affairs at intervals throughout.
Those intelligence files Charlotte had gone through in detail every time, and committed to memory.
So although she had not been with the Owl Dragon Legion, her grasp of it was a very thorough one still!
For in the end, this big white cat's final home was here.
The whole-table feast of fish enjoyed down to the last of it, Charlotte leaned back comfortably in her chair, patted that little belly of hers, and could not keep from letting out a 'roar' of her own.
Hic~
"Get yourself a good rest now you're back. Those matters of work can be dealt with after you've rested well enough," Zhao Chen said.
Charlotte nodded; she rose, and was on the point of walking out of the private room when she turned her head back with a mischievous look at the Commander-in-Chief and said, "This time… doesn't count! I've looked into it! Other people don't do it that way at all! They… they all put their tongues out! When I come back next time, you… you… have to teach me this again!"
With that, Charlotte fled the private room at a quick step.
Put their tongues out?
Zhao Chen was taken aback. Wherever had this big white cat of his been learning such things.
…………
The Warhammer Interstellar Commonwealth · the Revolutionary Army's Dragon-Tiger Legion base.
"Ah-choo." Midai sneezed.
She looked at the work heaped up like a mountain before her and grumbled, "When is Sis coming back? She's been gone a matter of days and I'm missing her already. Back when Sis Charlotte was here, I used to think this work was simple enough. Only now do I know… this simply isn't a thing a tiger can be doing."
And while she grumbled over the work in front of her, Midai had a romance drama running, downloaded well in advance.
Apart from the soldier's life, these romance dramas were what she liked best in the world.
She had recommended no few of them to Sis Charlotte before now — and the ones she picked were all of the sort where the heroine turns the tables and lands herself a male lead of exalted station.
"I do wonder — I've had Sis Charlotte watch so many good dramas; has any of it dawned on her yet? Because otherwise, with that read on people of hers, there's no telling what year of the monkey it'll be before she settles that Commander-in-Chief of hers." Midai folded her arms and muttered away like a strategist at a war table.
Just so — every scrap of the strange and wonderful knowledge Charlotte had picked up had been peddled to her by Midai.
To Midai's eyes, Sis Charlotte was fond of that Owl Dragon Commander-in-Chief. All this while, Sis Charlotte would often enough be looking, in private, at photographs and videos that had to do with the Owl Dragon Commander-in-Chief.
And whenever a chance offered, she would praise the Owl Dragon Commander-in-Chief's wisdom and martial prowess to the other people of the revolutionary army — near enough to shaping him into a deity outright.
But Midai understood clearly: with Sis Charlotte's character, if the other party never took the first step, this feeling of hers would likely just stay stuck where it was.
"For the future of the White Tiger clan! I, Midai, must find a way to get the Owl Dragon Commander-in-Chief into Sis Charlotte's bed!" Midai clenched her fist, righteous and solemn as a magistrate.
And this notion of hers was not for Sis Charlotte's sake alone, but for the future of the White Tiger tribe as well!
The Owl Dragon Legion was very strong; that the revolutionary army could hold itself upright at all now rested entirely on the Owl Dragon Legion's backing from behind.
But that backing was like duckweed adrift on the water — it might be gone at any moment.
The only way was to establish a bond that held fast.
And Sis Charlotte's relation with the Owl Dragon Commander-in-Chief was, naturally, the most reliable bond of all.
Her thoughts running along these lines, Midai set about searching out a whole run of woman-pursues-man and woman-makes-the-first-move 18R films, letting out, every so often, a chuckle worthy of somebody's meddling aunt.