Karen did not take a single step back from the threshold all morning.
When two unwounded officers looked around inside the tent, her gaze reached them first.
Her hand always remained near the hilt of her sword, and if anyone tried to take one more step inside, Karen moved before they could.
Headquarters was different from the front line. Mixed in among the bleeding were eyes that had come to look at Ruan.
Eyes that might have held curiosity, confirmation, or calculation lingered at the entrance before scattering.
Sera clicked her tongue as she set down a water bucket.
“Looks like you really plan on becoming the door today.”
“Doors are better kept closed.”
It did not sound like a joke at all.
The same sort of thing happened several more times throughout the morning.
A messenger whose life had been spared the day before approached, saying he wished to offer his thanks, only to stop at one word from Karen. A clerk who came with a roster was told at the entrance to show his hands first, and immediately withdrew.
Some whispered that she was a loyal guard, while others decided that Ruan must be someone who needed to be protected even to that extent within headquarters, and turned away without daring to look for long.
Sera also pretended not to hear the whispers and simply carried the water buckets.
Around then, there was one more small clash. An unwounded staff officer had taken a seat inside and had been watching Ruan wrap bandages for quite some time, until Karen finally stepped in front of him.
“If you are not a patient, please wait outside.”
“This is a command inspection.”
“Is inspection done only with the eyes?”
When the staff officer, looking displeased, did not move aside, Karen grabbed the back of his chair and pushed it toward the entrance. In the end, the staff officer withdrew without another word. Even after that brief commotion, Karen returned to the spot where she had first been standing. As if even those few steps had meant abandoning her post.
Only Ruan grew quieter and quieter.
Even a pointless question made strength gather in his fingertips.
The tip of the needle felt colder than usual.
It was close to noon.
A small disturbance arose from the outer tent on the right.
Someone urgently called a name.
Then a young man with a bloodstained bandage wrapped around him came running toward them.
It was a soldier clutching his left side.
But in his right hand, he was holding something like a short knife.
Rather than a military dagger, it was closer to a small tool for cutting bandages, but the sight of him nearly stumbling in with it gripped in a bloodied hand could look completely different from a distance.
Karen moved first.
Just before the soldier crossed the entrance, she twisted his wrist up and pressed down on his shoulder.
His knees buckled into the wet mud, and the soldier was driven straight to the ground.
The small knife in his hand flew off to the side.
“Stop.”
The soldier could not even scream properly.
Only a stifled breath escaped him.
“Wait… I need the medical officer…”
“Tell me what you’re holding first.”
“The bandage stuck… I had to cut it…”
More strength entered Karen’s hand.
The soldier’s face instantly went pale.
Only then did Ruan turn around.
The soldier sprawled on the ground, and Karen pinning him down.
The blood spreading further from his side.
The moment he saw that scene, his face turned cold.
“Let him go.”
Sera ran over first and picked up the fallen tool.
It was an old knife about the size of a palm.
Something used to cut the ends of bandages or sever herb stems.
“This isn’t a weapon.”
Karen’s hand stopped a fraction too late.
Even in that brief moment, more blood spread beneath the soldier’s side.
Unable to endure it any longer, Ruan stepped forward.
He pushed Karen’s wrist away himself.
“Move.”
He immediately knelt on the ground and pressed down on the soldier’s wound first.
The suture line on his side had half reopened.
It was a wound that would not have burst if he had walked calmly.
“Sera. Clean cloth.”
“Here.”
“Brother Orte. Name first.”
“I’m listening.”
The soldier barely spoke through gritted teeth.
“Ethan… Third Shield Unit…”
“Don’t talk. Catch your breath first.”
Ruan spoke while pressing down on the wound.
“Don’t do this in front of a patient.”
“He came running in with a knife.”
“So you pinned him to the ground?”
“He was coming straight for you.”
Sera looked up while changing out the bloodied cloth, then soon lowered her gaze.
The tip of Orte’s pen also stopped once on the paper.
No one outside the entrance could move easily.
Karen spoke in a low voice.
“There are times when checking too late means it’s already over.”
“This is not the middle of a battlefield.”
“Do you think a blade comes slower because this is headquarters?”
Only then did Ruan look back.
There was no anger on Karen’s face.
He hated that calmness even more.
Because she looked like someone who had already imagined the same situation many times.
“This is a place where injured people are laid down. Whoever comes in, if they’re a patient, I have to look at them first.”
“I look first at the hands coming toward you.”
“As if I’m someone so important.”
“That’s the problem.”
For the first time, Karen’s words took on an edge.
“You always start with that.
To hold on to one more patient, you always push your own body to the very back. You say it’s fine no matter who approaches, and even if a blade comes at you, you look at someone else’s wound before your own.”
“This is not the time to talk about that.”
“I’m saying it because this is the time.”
Karen’s gaze fell to Ruan’s hand.
The hand still unable to leave Ethan, even after pressing down on the blood and wrapping the bandage.
“You value yourself far too cheaply. And even then, you always put on that unaffected face first. You don’t even consider that the one who’ll break first might be you.”
The doorway went completely silent.
Sera swallowed her breath, and Orte only looked down at his record board without a word.
Ruan could not answer at once.
He was angry.
But what he hated most was the fact that he could not immediately cut her words off as entirely wrong.
He pressed down on the wound again.
He did not take his hand away until Ethan’s ragged breathing settled a little.
Only after that did he speak shortly.
“Here, the patient comes before me.”
“You always say that.”
“Is that wrong?”
“The problem is that you hide behind those words.”
“You’re saying I’m hiding?”
“Yes. Because you always pretend not to see the danger coming toward you.”
Ruan clenched his teeth.
“Then are you telling me to suspect injured people first?”
“No. I’m telling you not to notice too late when something is aimed at your neck.”
“Of course the wound comes before my neck.”
“To you, I suppose it does.”
Karen’s voice trembled a little for the first time.
“But that isn’t how it looks to the people watching.
You always put yourself last.
And then you put on a face like nothing is wrong.”
Those words were closer to long-accumulated frustration than accusation.
That was why they struck even more directly.
At that moment, Bern entered.
The old veteran took in the bloodstains on the floor and Ethan’s opened suture line at a glance.
He immediately held out a hand to Sera.
“Thread.”
Bern knelt beside Ruan and asked briefly,
“What happened?”
“He ran over and burst his stitches.”
Sera answered in his stead.
After hesitating briefly, she added,
“Before that, the knight pinned him down first.”
Bern looked at Karen only once.
His eyes held neither rebuke nor support.
“It’ll close. But if you run one more time, it really will get worse.”
Ethan, his face drenched in cold sweat, only rolled his eyes.
Only then did Ruan withdraw his hand a little.
As Bern looked inside the wound in his place, Ruan felt the strength leave his whole body all at once.
Outside the entrance, someone muttered very quietly,
“At that point, isn’t it practically an oath to give up her life?”
Sera immediately whipped her head around.
“We can hear everything, so shut your mouth.”
Not even a short laugh came.
Instead, he only felt more tired.
The disturbance seemed to end like that.
Ethan was laid back on a stretcher, and the people who had been frozen outside scattered as well.
Even so, the air at the doorway did not return to how it had been before.
Karen did not leave her place in the end.
She merely stood a little farther back.
Ruan also said nothing more.
Because he knew that if he said one more word, the fight would only grow bigger.
All afternoon, Karen stood at the entrance, and Ruan looked only at the stretchers inside.
Though they were in the same space, the distance between them was farther than it had been in the morning.
Sera changed the water bucket twice for no reason, and Orte wrote his records more slowly than necessary.
Neither seemed to have any intention of making the two speak to each other.
Their faces showed that they knew today was a day when words meant to soothe either side would only make matters worse.
As the sun began to tilt, Orte closed his record board and said quietly,
“Today, it seems words other than names will linger longer.”
Ruan pretended not to hear.
Sera deliberately changed the water bucket even more noisily.
Bern did not add a single word to the end.
It was when Ruan stepped outside briefly to wash his hands.
The face reflected on the water was no different from usual.
But the words left in his ears would not wash away, not even with water.
You think too cheaply of yourself.
Ruan looked away from the water first.
He did not want to mull over those words.
The more he tried not to, the slower his denial became.
Footsteps sounded behind him.
He knew it was Karen without turning around.
She did not come close, and spoke in a low voice.
“Next time, I’ll look more carefully.
But I still won’t be able to not stop them.”
Only after a long while did Ruan answer.
“This is a place patients come to.”
“I know.”
“Then don’t forget it.”
“You don’t forget either.”
Ruan did not turn around in the end.
In the distance, two headquarters staff officers passed by and glanced in their direction once.
Within that brief look, curiosity and calculation were mixed together.
The look did not linger for long, but it was enough.
The threshold Karen guarded was no longer solidifying within headquarters as a simple boundary, but as a rule: if one wanted to approach Ruan, one had to receive permission first.
Sera adjusted her grip on the water bucket handle and pretended not to notice that strange air, and Ruan still looked only toward the patients, but outside the door, a different kind of calculation had already begun to quietly take root.
At headquarters, wounds were not the only things that spread.
The way one person was surrounded was hardening quickly as well.