The next morning, the medical tent was even busier than the day before. With an additional evacuation team, stretchers came in faster, and boiled water never ran out. The moment Sera saw that the water barrels had been moved, she clicked her tongue.
“It’s true.”
“What is?”
“What the commander said. He said he’d assign an evacuation team, and he did it right away.”
She shoved an empty water barrel into place and added,
“I heard one of the staff officers went over to the left wing yesterday. Seems like your name made quite the rounds overnight.”
Instead of answering, Ruan pressed at the side of the infantryman who had just been brought in. The wound was not deep. The problem was outside, not with the patient.
From the morning on, the entrance to the tent had been strangely noisy. Aside from the sound of stretchers being pushed in, low voices kept stopping at the doorway, then scattering away.
Karen stood near the entrance, just as she had yesterday. Today, she even had a hand resting on the hilt of her sword.
Sera muttered under her breath.
“Here we go again.”
“What?”
“That sound. That’s not the sound of patients.”
Ruan could distinguish it now too. The voices of people who needed to live were urgent. But the voices outside the tent now were not urgent. They were weighing, probing, watching for reactions.
Orte said as he flipped through the record board,
“It will be worse because you went to headquarters.”
“What will?”
“Everyone knows now. That the commander summoned you.”
Ruan’s hand paused for a moment in the middle of stitching. The words exchanged at headquarters yesterday rose again in his mind. The one who held fast to a name, and the one who watched what that name held fast to. Those words had not faded easily overnight.
Just then, the entrance flap was drawn aside, and two men in neatly arranged uniforms came inside. Neither of them was a patient.
On their armor, dust showed before bloodstains did, and the decorative cords were far too clean for the front line. Their faces seemed better suited to the rear of headquarters than the very front.
They looked less like men who had just come out of a battlefield and more like men who had come to choose what share they could salvage from it.
Sera’s expression hardened first.
“If you’re patients, call for a stretcher first.”
“We are not patients.”
The man in front lifted his chin slightly.
“We come under Lord Bellot.”
Ruan did not know the name. Even so, he could tell the man was likely some noble officer.
The man swept his gaze once around the tent, then stopped at Ruan.
“Military Surgeon Ruan Hesse.”
“Yes.”
“It seems your hands will be needed first near the left-wing command tent. From today onward, we would like you to prioritize our patients.”
The words came so abruptly that Ruan did not immediately grasp their meaning.
“Are you saying there are patients?”
“I mean there will continue to be patients from now on.”
The man continued speaking as though he were making the most natural proposal in the world.
“Lord Bellot commands the left-wing lancers. Once this offensive begins, that side will be the first to take the blow. If he falls, it will not be one lancer unit that shakes, but the entire left wing. What meaning is there in holding on to a line of infantrymen here? What your hands may have to stop is not a few wounds, but an entire front.”
The air inside the tent went cold at once.
Sera spoke first.
“What did you say?”
“You heard me well enough.”
“You must think patients lie down here according to the worth of their names.”
The man did not even look at Sera as he continued.
“We will prepare a separate tent for you. Medicinal supplies and materials will also be diverted to you on priority. During the hours when a senior healer cannot come, having you attached exclusively to Lord Bellot would be the most efficient arrangement.”
Only then did Ruan understand exactly what those words meant. It was not a simple request. They meant to separate him from this tent full of patients and tie him down inside the tent of a noble officer.
At that moment, Aizen’s words from yesterday returned to him. Before someone tries to use those hands as a private possession, rather than as an asset of the corps.
Ruan said quietly,
“I am assigned here.”
“Assignments can change.”
“Patients are waiting.”
“That is precisely why I am saying this.”
The man smiled with a face that found it all perfectly obvious.
“You are already calculating, are you not? Who must be held onto first so the front wavers less.”
Ruan only pressed harder with the hand he had on the patient. It was unpleasant, yet not a statement he could easily dismiss outright.
Then Karen took one step in from the doorway.
“Don’t use that mouth to decide the order of patients.”
The eyes of both men turned to Karen at the same time. Karen did not hide her bandaged side. Even so, her sword remained threatening.
“If you are a knight, watch your tongue.”
“You were the ones who started spouting rotten nonsense inside this tent.”
The man in front narrowed his brow.
“We came to make a proposal.”
“It sounds like a threat to me.”
Without looking away, Karen added,
“If I were on that side, I would have done the same thing. When you find a useful asset, it’s only natural to try to put a leash on it first. But this place is not inside your ledger. It is in front of patients on stretchers.”
Before Karen finished speaking, another set of hurried footsteps approached from outside. This time, it was Bern.
The old surgeon pushed aside the entrance flap and stepped inside, immediately taking in the situation. The two noble officers standing before Ruan. Karen gripping the hilt of her sword. Sera, stiff-faced. And the patients on the stretchers. Not once did he look surprised.
“This is a military medical tent. If you’re not patients, get out.”
The man in front raised the corner of his mouth in a mocking smile.
“Good timing, since we were speaking to the chief military surgeon as well. We came to deliver Lord Bellot’s request. We wish to move Ruan Hesse to the left-wing command tent as an exclusive physician.”
“No.”
“If Lord Bellot falls, the left wing will shake. Surely you can make that much of a calculation.”
Bern did not answer at once. In that brief gap, another stretcher stopped in front of the entrance outside. The assistant soldier hesitated, watching the mood inside, shifting anxiously on his feet.
Then Ruan saw the blood spreading beneath the canvas first. It was a young spearman whose left shoulder had collapsed. On the sleeve of the assistant soldier supporting him from behind, the mark of the left-wing lancers was faintly stained.
Before he knew it, Ruan stepped forward.
“Move aside. A patient is coming in.”
With that single sentence, the silence broke first. Bern immediately turned and opened a path, and Sera pulled the stretcher inside first. Karen glared at the two noble officers to the end, yet stepped back so as not to block the patient’s path.
The man looked at Ruan one last time.
“You will soon understand what it is you are holding onto.”
Bern cut him off at once.
“Say that outside when there are no patients.”
In the end, the two left the tent. Only the decorative cords on their backs swayed pointlessly.
Once the stretcher came inside, Ruan immediately checked the wound. A spear wound driven diagonally beneath the shoulder blade. Now, hands came before words.
“Knife.”
“Here.”
“More water.”
“It’s boiling.”
“Brother Orte. Name first.”
“I’m getting it.”
The familiar flow filled the tent once more. It was an entirely different kind of urgency from the air that had occupied it just moments before.
When the stitching was about half done, Sera said quietly,
“So people like that really do exist.”
“They always existed.”
Bern spoke curtly.
“They’ve only come openly now.”
Ruan pressed at the wound and asked,
“Why now?”
“Because the commander saw you.”
Ruan’s needle skipped a stitch.
Bern took the wet cloth and continued speaking.
“Before, it was a rumor. The youngest military surgeon saved a few lives, they said. That was all. But now everyone knows. Headquarters is not simply ignoring you. Then every bastard who catches the scent will come running. They’ll try to hold you down, pull you away, tie you to their own side.”
Orte, in the middle of writing the affiliation under the name, paused briefly.
“He is an assistant soldier from the left-wing lancers.”
Hearing that, Ruan looked once more at the spearman’s face. Far more than the men who had stood before him just moments ago talking about the left wing, this blood-soaked assistant soldier came into his eyes first. For some reason, that fact stood out even more clearly.
After finishing the stitches, Ruan looked down once at his bloodstained hands. They no longer felt like his hands resting on a patient’s flesh, but like an object someone had begun to appraise. That was the sensation he found hardest to endure today.
He picked up a water barrel and stepped outside the tent for a moment. The sun was already slanting. Lines of half-dried bloodstains marked the dirt, and in the distance, along the evacuation route, two stretchers were slowly coming up.
As Ruan filled the water, he gauged their speed with his eyes. They were not urgent yet. Just being able to make that judgment loosened his hands a little.
Karen’s voice came from behind him.
“More will come from now on.”
Ruan did not look back.
Karen added quietly,
“If I were on that side, I would have done the same thing. When you find a useful asset, it’s only natural to try to put a leash on it first.”
Ruan tightened his grip on the handle of the water barrel again. The cold metal pressed into his palm.
When he returned inside the tent, Orte was flipping through the record board. Beneath the spearman’s name, there was still an empty space. Ruan looked at it for a moment before saying,
“Starting tomorrow, please record their affiliated unit as well.”
Orte raised his eyes.
“Why so suddenly?”
“I think we need to know faster where people are coming from. Whether officer or infantryman, we need to know which line is breaking first.”
Orte gave a short nod.
“I’ll do that.”
Bern heard the exchange and looked at Ruan once without saying anything. Sera took the water barrel and pushed it into place.
Turning toward the next stretcher, Ruan said quietly,
“I will just stay here.”
Bern answered briefly.
“Yes. That is for you to decide.”
Outside, the evening stretchers were coming in again. Ruan wiped his hands and walked straight toward the next patient. When the spearman’s breathing heaved roughly, Ruan immediately pressed down on the wound. What he had to hold onto now was not a name or a rumor, but the pulse before his eyes. Someone outside called his name again, but he did not even lift his head.