Rhodes Island is a pharmaceutical company on wheels that treats the Infected. Aboard this vessel live operators who march to the battlefield, children who came to be treated, and people washing dishes in the kitchen — all side by side.

There's no grand event in this story. It's simply a collection of fragments from a few ordinary days.

People leaving their pets in someone's care, opening old diaries, sighing in the kitchen. Those who drifted onto this ship for their own separate reasons quietly ask themselves, 'Why am I here?' — that's the kind of day this is.

I asked someone to watch Roundy, Spiky, and Blackie — turns out they were all explosive Originium Slugs

Vanilla is an intern huntress dispatched from Blacksteel. With a mission alongside her seniors coming up in a few days, she found herself needing someone to look after her beloved pets.

Roundy, Spiky, and Blackie are Originium Slugs, and Sturdy is a mini Sand Metal Crab. When the Doctor's eyes lit up at the word 'Originium,' Vanilla panicked and cried out that they must never, ever eat the little ones. (Press Blackie's horn, apparently, and it explodes.)

Luckily, help turns up. Melantha is a taciturn Guard who rarely shows her true feelings, and Steward is the sort who looks after her attentively. The two of them agree to take the pets in.

Then Blaze shows up with Dora, a child who came for treatment, and bluntly declares that Rhodes Island isn't a place that heals people for free.

They don't take money, she says, but they do take payment — because these children will grow up to do greater things, so it's an 'advance investment.' Steward sees it a little differently: not everyone has to share the same intent; as long as they're all headed the same direction, they can walk together.

Vanilla, who had been showing off even the exploding shell-horn back in her room, makes a request as they part: to call her along next time they go to visit the children. She says she's come to want to fold paper flowers together with them.

She writes in her diary every day because every day she forgets

Ptilopsis is a Medic who came from Rhine Lab, following Silence. She takes out an old diary and reads back through it, page by page.

Oripathy has taken much from her. Sometimes when she wakes, she says, she forgets where she is or what she had been doing. So she writes in her diary every day, so as not to forget.

On an outing after a long while, Ptilopsis realizes she has been living while forgetting far too many of the things she took for granted — and that she had always drawn a line around the stories of her comrades' lives, dismissing them as 'nothing to do with me.'

What matters is that simply not forgetting is not enough.

— Ptilopsis

So she goes to see Silence — wanting to talk not about their usual topics, but about things she had never thought to bring up before. She's come to want to know the people dear to her a little more.

Rhodes Island's fussiest cook, caught mid-sigh at the stove

Matterhorn is a shield operator from Kjerag who also mans the ship's kitchen as its cook. When it comes to hygiene, he's exacting.

Catching Ethan sneaking food, Matterhorn gets angrier not at the theft itself but at 'eating with bare hands without even washing them.' Ethan keeps teasing him by calling him 'old man.'

All that day, Matterhorn sighed often. His master, SilverAsh, had dropped by briefly to request a taste of home for his younger sister, Enya, before leaving again.

The one who most loved drinking tea with fragrant balm stirred in had originally been his master himself — yet ever since returning from Victoria, he had never once taken it that way. Perhaps he had forgotten. Matterhorn forces the thought aside.

To this Matterhorn, Ethan quietly presses a clumsy sandwich into his hands and bolts, saying it should at least count as a heartfelt token of thanks. Matterhorn took it gruffly — and according to Vulcan, the look on his face was actually rather pleased.

A wanderer who roamed the world in search of her name — and it had been carved on her axe all along

There was a wanderer who had been captured and brought in from Leithanien. She barely spoke the language and swung her weapon carelessly, so everyone just called her 'Pero.'

Vulcan is a blacksmith from Minos. Examining the old axe the wanderer cherished, she manages to read the ancient Minoan script carved into its handle.

It was her name: Ceobe. A name no one in the world had ever been able to read, and Vulcan was the first to call it aloud. She even gave her the nickname 'Keo.'

Ceobe's wishes were humble: to eat her fill, to sleep under a fluffy blanket, and to have a big room to hold all her treasures. When told that achieving this would mean using her head and fighting bad people, Ceobe's eyes sparkled as she answered, 'So you're telling me to become a hero?'

Vulcan writes her own name in the guarantor field. When the personnel officer asks why she'd take in a woman like that, the blacksmith gives a short answer.

There's no such thing as a bad person among those who love weapons.

— Vulcan

She picked combat duty because she hated desk work — and now brings trouble on herself every single day

Orchid is a civilian-born operator who used to live in the city. The truth is, she hated sitting in an office, so on a whim she went and applied for combat duty.

Orchid always frets over young Popukar. The child had been working at a logging camp before Kal'tsit and Ansel brought her in, and she still clings to the words that her parents 'went far away.' At that, Orchid wordlessly pulls the child into a tight embrace.

Midnight, who hails from Higashi, is an operator with a sharp read on people's hearts. To Orchid, whom he meets at the training grounds, he tells his own story.

Once, when he was riding high, there was a junior who envied him. The junior went so far as to infect him with Oripathy, and in the end the two turned their blades on each other. Midnight had to bring that ending about with his own hands.

Even so, Midnight is calm about it. Having glimpsed the cruel truth of the world, he says, doesn't mean you must let that truth stain you. Don't blame yourself for having grown up sheltered — decide for yourself how you'll live from here. In the end, Orchid resolves to stay a combatant, even though it doesn't really suit her.

Honestly… I'm always bringing trouble on myself.

— Orchid

The most terrifying instructor was, in truth, the kindest

It was test day for the Reserve Op Teams. Dobermann is an instructor notorious for putting rookies through the wringer. When Fang and Beagle volunteer to help clean her room, a somewhat special story begins.

From the wardrobe, a set of old dog tags falls out. Allen, Juan, José… inscribed with the names of comrades who died back in Dobermann's Bolívar days. They weren't close — they'd barely exchanged more than a few words — yet to her, they were precious people.

Once a colonel of the autonomous government, then passing through the resistance before drifting here, she says this about soldiers: the soldier who gives up on thinking is the finest soldier. But that is a cruel thing, and there is only one answer — to hand down the 'precise orders' that a soldier can trust and follow.

Dobermann, who had never seen such a thing anywhere in Bolívar, says that at Rhodes Island she saw it for the first time.

Because this is a utopia that idealists risk their lives to protect, for the sake of small wishes.

— Dobermann

Grinning mischievously that anyone who gives that exact answer on the test scores a zero, Dobermann, alone in the room the youngsters have left, murmurs the three names again. Allen, Juan, José. Even having found a new future, she says, her roots are still in Bolívar — and someday she'll have to go back.

Come in through different doors, looking the same direction

The huntress who left her pets in someone's care, the Medic who started writing her diary anew, the wanderer who gained a name, the civilian who stayed almost by accident, and the instructor who never forgot her roots. The reasons they drifted to Rhodes Island were each their own.

For money, for treatment, out of a hatred for the office, or simply to find a name. And yet one day, without quite meaning to, they all come around to thinking, 'Maybe I'll stay a little longer.' Not because anyone told them to — but of their own accord.

There was no grand event. Just an ordinary day of feeding pets, writing in diaries, laying out a meal, and folding paper flowers. And those small fragments, gathered together, are what nudge this ship on wheels a little further forward today, too.