Love and War Arc

The Love and War Arc covers chapters 97 through 102 in volumes 14 and 15, following the Term Finals Arc and preceding the Term Break Arc. Uniquely for the series, the Forger family never appears; the entire arc belongs to Henry Henderson and Martha Marriott, whose dance at Eden Academy's end-of-term gala prompts both to revisit their shared youth. Author Tatsuya Endo originally conceived the material as a Short Mission before its length pushed it into the main chapters.

Nearly fifty years earlier, a seventeen-year-old Henry watches a scholarship transfer student named Martha perform ballet at a dormitory talent show and utters the word "elegant" for the first time in his life. Morning tea chats in the school gardens follow. When resentful classmates jump Henry in his final year, Martha's intervention drives him to strike one in her defense, an incident his teacher buries for political convenience. Disillusioned, Henry resolves to end conflict through teaching. Wartime shortages let him graduate early and come back to Eden as Martha's History teacher, and their tea tradition resumes even as the first East-West war looms over everything. An air raid kills members of the ballet troupe Martha hoped to join, so she enlists instead, opening a rift between them. At her graduation party the two share an awkward dance, and an air raid siren cuts off her attempted confession.

Letters carry their friendship through the war until Martha volunteers for the front, loudly vowing to take at least one enemy down whatever the cost. Her final letter admits the choice was a mistake, but before Henry can answer, her regiment is reported wiped out. Grief drives him to denounce an enlistment campaign at Eden, landing him in a military jail; his father secures his release, later arranges his marriage to a woman named Lucia, and Henry resumes teaching, at one point reminding a young Donovan Desmond that giving up on people would mean the end of human history.

Martha, in truth, survives. Shot during a firefight and swept off a cliff, she wakes in Westalis under the care of a stern old widow, Mrs. Anabel, who lost her own daughter to the war yet sends Martha home with bread, money, a scarf, a map, and a note urging her onward. Disguised as a man, Martha endures the long road east, learns from enemy soldiers that the fighting has ended, refuses a proposal from a fellow survivor named Paul, who dies before reaching home, and finally returns to Berlint. Her reunion with Henry ends in silence when he introduces Lucia as his wife.

Present-day Martha tells Becky the rest without bitterness: Lucia proved a fine woman whose uncle put Martha on the ballet stage at last, and Henry made a devoted husband. When Becky blames the war and the elites who ran it, Martha counters that easy explanations comfort people more than they explain anything, and that even her return to fight in the second war gave her no answers beyond the misery of battlefields. The arc closes at a cemetery, where Henry thanks her for the yearly flowers and invites her to tea once more. Beyond its two leads, the arc establishes that two East-West wars preceded the present story and offers the first glimpse of Donovan Desmond's school days.