Story Reader / Interlude / Under a Pale Moon / Story

...Unknown virus causing a pandemic... Panicking people, malfunctioning and crazed machines... Attack... Military... Frontlines... Medical... Warfare... We urge you to keep calm and...

I will never agree to this! I-if my children become infected... That's a battlefield! Even if it's not the frontlines, it's too dangerous! I will never agree to this!

...No one, not any organization, not any person can run from this duty... Nobody! That includes me! And this family!

Just use your authority! You're the chairman of the medical research center! Do something about it!

You mean evading a draft...? This is a war of all humanity! There's nowhere to run as long as we're on Earth!

After a clamorous argument, the two fall into a long and deep silence. Resounding in the house are the cries, gunfire, and mechanical buzzes of the virtual screen.

Father. Mother.

...

Let me go to the war zone. Please.

I'm never going there! If I go there, then there'll be no one to take over Father's position in the medical research center!

He... can't go. Father's work requires a successor.

Not me as well, I won't! I'm just a girl! And wasn't I to meet a boy from some chairman council?! I'll be engaged soon!

And she... has someone she likes. If she goes to the war zone, then Mother will worry for her terribly.