Before the sun came in, the medical tent was always much the same.
The smell of blood, soaked in through the night, rose first from between the damp canvas.
Over it lay a thin cover of medicinal herbs cooling in boiled water.
Some people moaned, and some clenched their teeth.
But that day, another sound was mixed in.
The sound of pages turning.
Sera was crouched beside the water bucket, leafing through the roster.
Bern had set the bandage box and the scabbard aside separately.
Orte had divided the death records in two and bound one half with a new cord.
Ruan watched the scene for a long while and still did not know what to say.
“Why are you organizing things already?”
Without even lifting her head, Sera answered.
“The order came down.”
“We haven’t finished with today’s patients yet.”
“That’s why we’re doing it in advance.”
Sera let out a short breath.
“Because you won’t be ready to leave even by evening.”
Ruan could not argue.
He had no strength left to argue.
The fingertips that had held on to Roen Hasta yesterday were still trembling heavily.
One side of his head felt heavy and cold, as if it had dried while still wet.
Bern closed one of the boxes and said,
“We’re leaving this behind.”
“What?”
“The sword.”
Ruan lowered his eyes without realizing it.
It was the sword he had forced himself to grip during the attack on the tent, only to be unable to use it in the end.
He had kept it close ever since, but it had never once felt familiar in his hand.
“At the next place, things will get even closer.”
Bern added,
“In that case, it’s better to attach more men to the evacuation unit than to put a sword in your hand.”
Sera cut in bluntly.
“You only figured that out now?”
Bern did not answer.
Only Ruan looked at the scabbard for a moment before turning his gaze away.
At the entrance, Karen lifted the tent flap and stepped inside.
A thin layer of night mist clung to the edges of her armor.
“People are starting to gather outside.”
“Are they seriously wounded?”
“No.”
Karen chose her words for a moment.
“More of them want to say goodbye.”
Ruan’s expression hardened at once.
“Stop them.”
“I am.”
Karen’s voice was low, but firm.
“That’s why they haven’t come in here yet.”
That answer made Ruan feel strangely more stifled.
Because it meant that what had to be held back was not an enemy with a blade, but people’s gazes.
Just then, a small cough sounded from outside the door.
Without even asking permission, Orte lifted the tent flap a little.
Outside the threshold stood two evacuation soldiers and three infantrymen.
All of them were holding their caps in their hands.
One of them was a soldier who had recently been carried back in with a high fever.
“It will only take a moment.”
Ruan immediately frowned.
“Are you patients?”
“Not yet, sir.”
“Then stay outside.”
His voice came out sharper than he had expected.
All three soldiers flinched at the same time.
Even so, they did not withdraw.
The infantryman in front cautiously opened his mouth.
“We heard the rumor.
They said you were being transferred today.”
Ruan said nothing.
“Before that.”
The soldier bowed his head even lower.
“I wanted to thank you for saving my life.”
At those words, the air inside the tent sank in a strange way.
Sera’s hands stopped, and Bern’s fingers stiffened on the lid of the box.
Orte, pen still in hand, lowered his head slightly.
Ruan looked from one face to another, then cut him off shortly.
“It is not something to thank me for.”
“Even so.”
“I did not save you.
You were the ones who endured.”
He said it that way, but the soldiers’ expressions did not ease.
If anything, they grew even more closed.
They were the faces of people whose faith had been refused.
Karen stepped closer to the door.
That movement alone was enough to keep the soldiers from saying anything more.
Even after they withdrew, Ruan stood for a long time looking only at the entrance.
Sera said quietly,
“From their point of view, they probably wanted to see your face one last time.”
“Why?”
“Because they might not see you again.”
Ruan could not answer.
He was the one leaving, yet it felt as if they were the ones being abandoned.
Bern held out a bundle of rosters.
“Two replacements are coming in.
How to divide the sanitation area, the order for boiling water, how long to boil the suturing tools.
We’ll hand over exactly what Sera organized.”
Sera nodded.
“We have to teach them handwashing from the start.
The main camp has plenty of people, but they’re lax about things like this.”
“Shouldn’t the main camp be better?”
“Does being big make everything better?”
Bern let out something like a snort.
“Anywhere with a lot of people gets slow.”
Holding the bound records to his chest, Orte came over to Ruan.
“I will take this with us, and leave this one behind.”
“Why did you divide them?”
“Because the names you saw with your own eyes should remain by your side.”
Orte held out a thin ledger.
Its cover was worn with the touch of many hands.
The corner of the first page had dried wrinkled after being wet.
“And what stays behind?”
“The deaths bound to this tent.”
Orte’s voice was always quiet, but that day it was strangely heavier.
“Even if you leave, the people who died here must not disappear with you.”
Ruan stood there for a long time, unable to take the ledger.
The moment he accepted it, it felt as if he would truly become a person who was leaving.
Karen took it first and placed it in his hand.
“Hold it.”
“Karen.”
“You are leaving.”
Karen’s voice did not waver in the slightest.
“Whether you like it or not.”
Only then did Ruan take the ledger.
The paper in his hand was warmer than he had expected.
It felt like the warmth left behind by the names of the dead.
Before it was even midday, a messenger from the main camp came down.
He carried a plaque stamped with the legion insignia, transfer orders, and even an assignment chart for the evacuation unit.
Sera hung the new plaque on the plank that served in place of a door.
Orte cleared the space beside the record desk.
Bern brought in the two replacement military doctors and personally pointed out the order of the water, knives, and bandages.
As Ruan watched all of it, his hands kept feeling empty.
The places where he had always moved first were being filled not by him, but by other people’s hands.
One of the replacements asked carefully,
“What should we look at first here?”
Ruan paused for a moment before answering.
“The smell before the wound.”
The other man blinked.
“Whether it is the smell of blood turning sour, the smell of pus mixed in, or the smell of ruptured intestines.
You have to smell that first if you want to get the order less wrong.”
Even as he spoke, Ruan felt sick inside.
Explaining his place was the same as taking his own hands away from it.
Seeing his expression, Sera deliberately continued more quickly.
“Boiled water on the left.
Fever patients in the back.
Do not mix patients right after suturing with those in recovery.
And even if that man sounds blunt, he’s right, so wash your hands before you talk back.”
The two replacements hurriedly nodded.
That afternoon, stretchers came in three more times.
Ruan could not stand back like a man who was leaving.
Once, he held an arm. Once, ribs. The last time, the thigh of a young messenger.
After the third stretcher was brought in, Karen said in a low voice,
“We leave at sunset.”
Without stopping the hands binding the patient’s leg, Ruan asked,
“Who decided that?”
“Aizen.”
“There are patients left.”
“I know.”
“Then.”
“That is probably why he told us to leave before it gets any later.”
Ruan bit his lip.
Before it gets any later.
Aizen, Bern, Sera—all of them were using those words to mean something different.
He alone still had not accepted them to the end.
As the sun began to tilt, the inside of the tent was briefly empty.
Only very briefly.
In that short gap, Bern placed one last bundle of bandages in his hands.
“Don’t ruin your hands first even after you reach the main camp.”
“Teacher.”
“You still don’t know how to let go of those who can’t be saved.”
Ruan lowered his head.
“Yes.”
“Then at the very least, avoid being the first to fall while trying to save everyone.”
That was far more like Bern than any comfort would have been.
And so it remained with him all the longer.
Sera placed one more pouch of medicinal ingredients on top.
“I packed this.
Use it when your headaches come.”
“Sera.”
“Don’t say thank you. Just actually use it.”
Orte approached last and said,
“Wherever you go, please leave the names behind.”
“I will not forget that.”
“I know.”
Orte smiled very faintly.
“That is why I am asking.”
When he stepped outside, people were standing all the way to the end of the muddy road.
There were not many.
But there were not few, either.
Most were faces whose names he did not know.
They might have been people who had been treated once and passed through, or they might have simply endured by trusting in that tent.
No one shouted loudly.
No one blocked the road.
They only took off their caps, bowed at the waist, or held their breath and made way.
Those gazes were the hardest for Ruan to bear.
They were not gratitude or cheers.
They were eyes filled all at once with fear, expectation, and reliance.
“Please don’t go.”
A very small voice came from somewhere.
Ruan could not look that way.
If he did, his feet might stop.
Karen took a step ahead.
Not with her back to him, but at his side.
It was not a position to block him, but one that said she would walk with him.
Ruan looked back only once.
The tent looked no different from usual.
Yellowed canvas, wet stakes, flaps swaying in the wind, two new stretchers propped up near the entrance.
And yet, strangely, it felt as if all the names he was leaving behind remained inside it.
The dead.
The living.
Those he had failed to save in the end.
Those who had wept in his hands.
Ruan gripped the ledger tighter.
“Let’s go.”
Though it was his own voice, it sounded like someone else’s.
Karen matched his steps without a word.
Sera and Orte remained in front of the tent.
Bern did not look back until the end.
Instead, he was already listening to the two replacements report on the next patient.
Only after seeing that did Ruan breathe a little.
Even if he left, the tent would not collapse.
That fact entered him as a pain greater than relief.
It had to keep running without him,
but he could not understand why the fact that it would run without him felt so heavy.
As they turned onto the road toward the main camp, the smell of medicinal herbs gradually thinned.
In its place, the smell of wet earth, the scent of distant banners, and more people and more voices drew near.
Ruan did not close his eyes.
If he did, he felt that only the tent he had just left would rise before him.
And so he walked forward until the end.
Not with the steps of a man leaving,
but with the steps of a man being dragged into the smell of even more blood.