
by Akayane
Two years after leaving Vietnam, William R. Kirkus is being sent back. March, 1975. South Vietnam is weeks away from collapse. U.S. Army Captain William R. Kirkus, haunted by what happened during his service in Vietnam, now commands Ghost—an eight-man special operations unit sent to fight the wars that can never officially exist. Their next mission takes them into enemy-controlled territory along the Cambodian–South Vietnamese border. Their objective: extract a Soviet chemist seeking to defect to the United States. Failure could upset the military balance between the United States and the Soviet Union—and push the Cold War toward a global conflict. But William isn't returning to Vietnam alone. The seven soldiers under his command each carry a dark past of their own. And somewhere in the country William thought he had left behind lies the truth about the tragedy that has haunted him for years. Who is the Soviet chemist they have been ordered to retrieve? What really happened to William in Vietnam? And when every side believes it is fighting for justice— who gets to decide which justice is absolute? Vietnam, March 1975. The war is almost over. For Ghost, the mission is just beginning. Translation & Cross-Posting Notice: This is the official English translation of my original Japanese novel. AI-assisted translation and editing tools are used in the translation process, with the final text reviewed against the original Japanese. This story is officially cross-posted on Royal Road and SpaceBattles by the same author.
No streak history
One state-enhanced oracle order, filtered by each list. Observed Royal Road ranks remain separate ground truth.
Rank updated 6 Oct 2026, 03:28 UTC
Entry forecast updated 6 Oct 2026, 03:28 UTC
Ranking model: rs-public-oracle-state-v1
Forecast model: rs-model-entry-v1
Chart history contains only this ranking model's runs; legacy points are not spliced in.
Coupled 14-day outlook
rs-joint-entry-copula-v1
Any eligible RS entry
4%
Two or more lists
2%
Likely threshold order: Historical → Drama → Action → Main.
Leading bundle: Historical (2%).
Estimated from one fitted shared story path; category probabilities are not multiplied as if lists were independent.
Separate entry forecast; this probability does not enter the ranking score.
Overall Rising Stars Shadow RS rank
#5554 of 5,638 · 5504 below RS #50
By genre
beats 91% of similar stories
not enough data yet
beats 11% of similar stories
Hidden gem — exposure is the bottleneck
Readers who find this story follow it at a high rate; there just aren't enough of them. In our cohort data, near-daily posting lifted the odds of reaching 25 followers from ~0% to 17% — more chapters, shoutout swaps and ads buy the eyeballs this conversion deserves.
Benchmarks: 8,060 active Royal Road stories, percentiles within the 50–149 chapters band, cohort of 2026-07-02. Conversion is measured as followers gained per 1,000 views over the recent window.