The Third Legion’s headquarters was quieter than it had seemed from afar. At the forward medical tents, screams and the clatter of stretchers always came first, but here it was different.
The earth underfoot was harder, the tent ropes drawn tighter, and even the torches did not flicker recklessly. It was not that there was no sound. The sound had been ordered.
Ruan Hesse found that order somehow more unsettling.
Beside him, Karen walked a step apart. It was the gait of someone who knew that staying too close as a guard would draw attention, but staying too far would make it hard to intervene.
Ruan thought about turning back and stopping her two or three times, then gave up. That person’s stubbornness moved before words ever did.
The sentry before headquarters looked Ruan over, then immediately opened the way. In that brief glance were curiosity and a hint of verification. It meant his name had already spread as far as it could.
When he entered the tent, the first thing that caught his eye was the situation board. On a map spread over gray cloth, black pins and red pins were packed densely together.
Beside it, piles of reports were stacked in layers. It was a space where the smell of ink came before the smell of blood.
Aizen Locke stood before the situation board. A refined black military uniform, spotless gloves, and the face of a man who was not trying to look unweary, but truly did not let his weariness spill outward.
As soon as he saw Ruan enter, he did not tell him to sit. Instead, he asked very briefly.
“Ruan Hesse.”
“Yes.”
“No need to sit. This won’t take long.”
Ruan only lowered his head. Aizen left Karen standing where she was at the back. Whether he was pretending not to see her, or had seen her and judged there was no need to mention it, Ruan could not tell.
Aizen lightly pushed a few reports on the table with his fingertips.
“Messenger Hain. Archer Ramon. Both returned to duty after passing through your tent. The number of men running fevers from infection has gone down, and the evacuation routes have been organized. You even changed the tent sections.”
Ruan lowered his gaze for a moment before answering.
“I did it because they had to be saved.”
“Because they had to be saved.”
Aizen repeated the words once. It was not mockery. If anything, his tone was closer to that of someone recalculating a figure.
“The soldiers put it differently.”
“I don’t know what you heard, but most of it is exaggerated.”
“They say you raised a dead messenger. That once the youngest military doctor lays a hand on someone, they stand again. Things like that.”
Ruan steadied his breathing and said,
“The messenger was not dead. The archer’s wound was not that deep, and he got past the fever. They stood again not because of my hands, but because they endured.”
Aizen neither nodded nor changed his expression.
“I’ve also received reports that, because of rumors like that, more soldiers are hiding their wounds and enduring until they come too late.”
“Yes.”
“They say you personally stopped Ramon.”
“Yes.”
This time, Ruan continued first.
“If it keeps spreading like that, more of them will come late. This isn’t a place that makes men stand again. It’s a place that has to lay them down before it’s too late.”
The instant he heard those words, Aizen’s eyes changed very slightly. Like a man who had known the answer from the beginning and was now confirming it from the other person’s own mouth.
He pushed the report in his hand aside and took a step toward the situation board. The pins on the map showed from a different angle.
“I also saw the roster of soldiers who died in your tent.”
Ruan’s hand gripped the hem of his coat once, then let go.
“You even wrote down the facial features of nameless soldiers. That’s not common on the front.”
“If records are omitted, their families won’t know.”
“The military can run well enough on numbers.”
“Families cannot.”
A brief silence fell. The inside of the headquarters tent was still quiet, yet in the space between those few words, the air seemed to sink slowly.
Karen did not move in the slightest at the back. The two staff officers also stood with even their breathing suppressed.
Aizen looked at Ruan for a while, then asked,
“Why couldn’t you let go yesterday?”
Ruan could not answer right away. Harben’s face came to mind. The face that had asked whether he had not arrived in time, since he had made it that far. In the end, Ruan had failed to hold on to him, and in the meantime had lost another.
Aizen did not urge him. He chose to wait. That waiting felt even more like pressure.
Only after a long while did Ruan open his mouth.
“I knew I couldn’t save him.”
“And yet you held on.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Ruan looked down at his own hands once. Today, too, they had taken pulses, pressed wounds, and even before coming to headquarters, they had rewrapped someone’s bandages. But yesterday, those hands had not been able to let go to the end.
“He had come that far. I didn’t want him to die because I was the one who let go first.”
Aizen’s expression still did not change. But one of the staff officers beside him lowered his gaze very slowly. It was the expression of someone hearing an answer difficult to place inside a calculation table.
Ruan did not stop speaking.
“But because of that, I lost one more person. I knew it. That’s why it was even more cowardly.”
When those words ended, only the air before the situation board grew heavier. Aizen turned his gaze toward the map for a moment. Several red pins and several black pins were driven thickly into it.
To someone, they might be marks of losses and positions held, but to Ruan now, they looked like places where names were missing.
At last, Aizen spoke.
“I understand why you did it. And I understand that the front needs humans like that.”
The word needed did not sound like praise. It was merely a word used to wrap the sound that came from the mouth of a man who had already calculated where something could be put to use.
As if reading that emotion, Aizen added briefly,
“Do not misunderstand. I didn’t call you here to hold you up like some saint. The survival rate of the front where you are stationed is actually changing. That made you worth verifying.”
In the end, Ruan asked,
“So what do you want?”
Aizen did not delay his answer.
“First, your tent will be maintained as it is. I’ll attach one more evacuation team, and supplies will not be reduced.
Second, we’ll compile a separate list of the soldiers you saved. Not just officers, but messengers, noncommissioned officers, engineers, and nameless infantrymen as well. We need to see who survived, and what lines did not break because of it.”
Ruan’s face immediately hardened.
“Are you saying you’ll look at people only as numbers?”
“No.”
Aizen’s answer was immediate as well.
“I’m saying I’ll look at them as numbers, too.”
Those words were strangely honest. That made them even harder to refute.
Aizen folded one report and added,
“If you are the one who holds on to names, then I am the one who sees where those names are holding the front together. With only one of those, we won’t last long.”
Ruan only rubbed the hem of his coat once with his fingertips. It was hard to say Aizen was wrong, and yet he did not want to accept it.
That was when Karen spoke for the first time.
“You’re very good at using people, Commander.”
The faces of both staff officers stiffened at once. But Aizen only glanced at Karen once and said,
“There are times when people must be used if they are to survive. I doubt you don’t know that.”
Karen’s gaze chilled. Whether as someone born to a noble house of Norgard, or as a patient now standing inside the headquarters of an enemy nation, that at least was hard to refute.
Aizen did not prolong that line of conversation. Instead, he looked back at Ruan.
“I’ll only redirect the rumors. We’ll erase the nonsense about you raising the dead. Instead, we’ll spread the word that if someone is injured, they must be carried to your tent before it’s too late.”
At those words, Ruan lifted his gaze very slightly for the first time.
“Will it really turn out that way?”
“Not completely. People believe in the direction they want to hear. Still, it’s better than leaving it alone.”
Strangely, it sounded like the most realistic promise. Because he was not a man who claimed he would set everything right at once, the words were easier to trust.
After a brief silence, Aizen spoke for the last time.
“Go back and keep doing only what you must. However, next time, you must also learn how to let go of those you have to let go. If you collapse, the men who believe in your name will collapse with you.”
The moment Ruan heard that, he recalled what Sera had said yesterday. Next time, let go of the people you have to let go. It meant the same thing.
And yet it struck colder than Sera’s words. Because Aizen was a man who spoke not in comfort, but in consequences.
Ruan slowly lowered his head.
“Understood.”
Until they left the headquarters tent, Aizen did not call him again. He neither held him back nor consoled him. Like a man who had finished confirming what he needed to confirm, he returned to the situation board.
When they stepped outside, the wind felt much colder.
Karen moved right beside him.
“Not the kind of person I like.”
“Yes.”
“But he doesn’t lie.”
“Yes.”
Ruan could say no more than that. The smell of blood, which he had briefly forgotten inside headquarters amid the scent of ink, returned again. From the direction of the medical tents came the faint smell of boiling water mixed in with it.
The way back felt shorter than the way there. Not because his body was lighter, but because his thoughts had grown heavy.
When he returned to the tent, two new stretchers had been added. Before Ruan even took off his coat, he went to the side of the first stretcher. He checked the pulse, looked at the wound, and confirmed the order of the next patients.
Orte asked quietly,
“What kind of person is the commander?”
Ruan pressed down on the wound and answered briefly.
“He is not someone who sees people only as numbers.”
“Then?”
“He is someone who sees them as numbers, too.”
Orte asked no more. Sera also glanced at Ruan for a moment, then changed the water bucket again. Karen returned to her place by the entrance and stood there.
Until the sun began to sink, Ruan was not able to rest his hands even once. Only after night fell did he sit at the roster table. He dipped his pen in fresh ink and began writing today’s names one by one.
Morning stretcher.
Spear wound to the left shoulder.
Recovering.
Afternoon evacuation.
Supply soldier.
No fever.
Monitor progress.
And two dead.