I went silent.
Even though I no longer had any real relationship with them, I couldn't simply forget the fact that, not too long ago, they had been ordinary students who were preparing to graduate from high school.
They were heroes now, and their circumstances had obviously changed dramatically since then.
Still, that didn't magically erase their previous lives.
They had once been teenagers who worried about school, exams, friendships, and whatever other ordinary problems people their age usually dealt with.
Now they were being asked to prepare themselves for actual warfare.
That was quite a jump.
Going from worrying about graduating high school to learning how to survive a battlefield wasn't exactly the sort of career progression anyone would put on a school brochure.
Even so, they were the ones who had come to me and asked me to train them.
I wasn't forcing them into anything.
