The medical tent pitched close to headquarters had not been able to stay in the same place for days.
Before sunrise, they unpacked only half their belongings, and before sunset, they tied half of them up again.
It was just as Eisen had said.
The place where Ruan was needed was not any one spot, but wherever the line seemed likely to break first that day.
People called that protection.
To Ruan, it felt more like being dragged toward wherever more stretchers were gathering.
The people at headquarters said his position had improved, but to Ruan, it was only a place where patients on the verge of death arrived more quickly.
That morning as well, he was looking over a new assignment chart amid the smell of freshly boiled water and damp bandages.
Where to move the fever patients so they would mix less. Which side to pull one of the two operating tables toward so the stretchers would clog the way less.
Things like that were tangled across the paper.
Just then, a supply cart stopped in front of the tent.
Along with sacks of medicinal herbs, a small bundle of letters was unloaded.
Sera picked up one of them.
“It came again.”
The moment Ruan saw the envelope, he knew.
The habit of folding over the end was exactly the same.
It was Melly’s handwriting.
Karen asked from beside the entrance.
“Good news?”
“I haven’t read it yet.”
Even as Ruan said that, he tore the envelope open at once.
Melly’s letters, if he put them off thinking he would read them later, always weighed on his mind longer.
As soon as he unfolded the paper, the first line caught his eye.
“Brother, you always write that you’re fine first.
And letters like that always come when you’re the least fine.”
Ruan’s fingers stopped there.
Melly continued.
“On days when you really have time to spare, you write at length about useless things too, like what the smell of blood is like and what medicinal herbs smell like.
Two-line letters are all lies.
I’m fine.
I’m doing well.
I don’t believe you.”
At the end, she had written that he should not eat only the ends of the bread, but have some soup too.
That one line stung more sharply than all the sentences before it.
“Did you get scolded again?”
Karen asked, coming closer.
“Something like that.”
“By your younger sister?”
“She says I’m lying.”
Karen looked at Ruan’s face for a moment, then said very quietly,
“She isn’t wrong.”
Ruan did not answer.
He raised a hand to argue, then lowered it again because of the throbbing inside his wrist.
His damp bangs, wet from washed water, clung to his forehead, and among them, there were even more white strands than before.
Karen’s gaze lingered there for a beat.
It was then that the urgent sound of stretchers rose from outside the tent.
An orderly flung the flap aside and shouted,
“Recon line collision!
Two spear wounds, one thrown from a horse!”
Before Ruan could even fold the letter and put it in his breast, he turned.
The young spearman lying on the front stretcher was breathing shallowly and rapidly.
The stab wound below his ribs was clogged with mud and blood together.
Ruan cut open his clothing and smelled it first.
There was a metallic scent that had brushed all the way inside the chest.
“Name.”
“It’s Daren.”
The evacuation soldier answered for him.
“Spearman Daren!
They say the spearhead went in at an angle!”
Ruan lifted Daren’s eyelid once and immediately asked,
“Did he walk here?”
The evacuation soldier hesitated.
“From midway, yes.”
“Next time, you’ll die doing that.”
With a face gone deathly pale, Daren barely tried to smile.
“Everyone looked busy.”
“You are busy too.”
Ruan cut him off shortly.
“Don’t hold your breath. Breathe out.
Sera, water.
Before Bern comes, we’ll open it with the small blade.”
Karen pushed over the water container, and Sera was already unwinding bandages.
The moment Ruan put his hand inside the wound, he felt the inside of his wrist twist with pain.
Still, he did not stop.
If he stopped, that would be where Daren’s breathing sank.
“It grazed the lung.”
Ruan spoke in a low voice.
“For now, the blockage comes first.
We have to drain the blood, then open the airway.”
Sera glanced at his face.
“Is your hand all right?”
“It’s fine.”
The answer came too quickly.
Sera’s brows stiffened.
Karen asked no more, and Sera silently handed him the next tool.
Only after a long while did Daren’s breathing catch once, deeply.
Only then did Ruan lower his shoulders by the slightest amount.
“Do not fall asleep.”
“Am I alive?”
“For now.”
Only after Daren was moved to a bed in the back did Ruan take out the letter again.
There was blood on the corner of the paper.
It was someone else’s blood.
And yet it felt exactly like a mark stamped onto his own lie.
Sera slid a blank sheet of paper and a pen toward him.
“If you’re going to write back, do it now.
In a little while, more stretchers will come in.”
Ruan hesitated for a moment, then unfolded the paper.
It was not that he did not know what to write to Melly.
The problem was that every word he knew was far too proper.
That because he was close to headquarters, he was safer than before.
That though they moved often, he was doing well.
That he was sleeping little by little.
In the end, he wrote it all.
“Because I’m close to headquarters, it’s safer than before. There is a lot of work, but it is not particularly dangerous.
The people I work with are trustworthy as well. So do not worry too much.
I am fine.”
Even after writing the last line, he could not set down the pen for a long while.
Last night, too, he had lain down, but the time he spent counting patients’ breaths had been longer than the time he slept.
He could not send home words about how heavy his wrist grew every evening, or how he did not know in which tent he might collapse.
Letters were meant to ease worry,
but Ruan’s letters always folded themselves around hiding it.
Karen asked from behind him.
“Are you really all right?”
Ruan paused for a moment while folding the paper.
The first line of Melly’s letter came back to him.
Brother, you always write that you’re fine first.
And yet the words that left his mouth were the same.
“I’m fine.”
Karen gave no answer to that.
Instead, she took the folded letter from Ruan’s hand and put it into the envelope for him.
“You look like you can’t lie any more than this.”
Ruan could not deny even that.
That night, even after he sealed the letter, Melly’s sentences kept appearing before the eye of the needle.
Her words telling him to have some soup too.
Her words saying that on fine days, he wrote at length about more useless things.
Her words asking first whether his hand was all right.
While stitching the wound of the next stretcher patient, Ruan missed the eye of the needle once.
Each time he pulled the flesh taut, strength drained from the inside of his wrist.
If the orderly was even the slightest bit slow in handing him thread, the inside of his throat turned rough.
He could not tell whether it was because he was exhausted or because of Melly’s letter.
At the second knot, the thread loosened slightly.
Ruan pretended not to notice and pulled it again.
Karen saw that change too.
She did not ask outright, and only when Ruan turned his wrist one more time did she quietly exchange the knife for a new one.
Feeling as though even that had been seen through, Ruan spoke even less.
When a brief lull came in the middle of the night, Sera brought a bowl of water and set it down beside the desk.
“Did you send the reply?”
“Yes.”
“What did you write?”
“That nothing much was happening.”
At those words, Sera looked utterly dumbfounded.
“Doesn’t it prick your conscience to write that with the face of someone with the most happening in the world?”
Ruan could not laugh.
“It does.”
“And you still write it?”
“If I don’t, she’ll notice even more.”
Sera thought for a moment, then tossed out,
“I think she’s already noticed everything.”
Ruan did not argue.
Melly, Karen, and Sera were already reading the same line.
Ruan alone was still clinging to that sentence.
Close to dawn, a message came telling them to move briefly behind headquarters.
With the same hand that had sent the letter, Ruan picked up the assignment chart again.
It was only a short move between the barricade line and the evacuation line, and yet his shoulders felt even heavier.
He had written to Melly that he was close to headquarters, and the reality was that he could not remain in the same place for even half a day.
Thinking of that contradiction, he stopped for a moment.
Should he write it in the next letter?
In truth, in more detail.
At least that they moved often.
But soon, stretcher wheels scraped over the planks.
Ruan folded away his thoughts again.
It was always like that.
The desire to be honest arose for a moment, then was pushed aside before a patient’s breathing.
When he heard that the first courier would depart in the night, Ruan touched the envelope one more time.
If he opened it now, he could still correct it.
Instead of saying he was close to headquarters, he could say he could not stay in one place for long.
Instead of saying he was fine, he could say his wrist felt heavy these days.
He could write at least that much.
But on the bed right beside him, Daren drew in a harsh breath.
Ruan turned.
The envelope was placed back on the desk, and his hand went to Daren’s pulse.
Seeing that, Sera clicked her tongue softly.
“You didn’t fix it again.”
“No.”
“I knew it.”
Without answering, Ruan placed a hand over Daren’s rib cage.
Whether his breathing held. Whether blood was filling up again.
That was all he had to see right now.
Outside, stretcher wheels scraped over the planks again.
From Daren’s bed, the sound of shallow breathing still continued.
Sera put fresh water on to boil, and the orderly cleared away the damp cloth.
Ruan put the envelope into his breast and turned again.
Melly probably would not believe this letter either.
Even so, he intended to send it again.
At least the sentences heading home had to remain intact.
How many times he had missed the needle today, how many times he had pressed down on his wrist—all of that had to be left on this side.
So today, too, he wrote that he was fine in the letter.
That single phrase, at least, he could still write neatly.
When the first courier departed, that envelope would leave with him.
Melly would probably realize it again the moment she read it.
On days when the ends of his letters grew short, on days when the sentences were too orderly, she would know that her brother had once again put his own body last.
Even knowing that, Ruan could not take the envelope back.
Because with the strength left in his hand, a lie could be written more neatly than the truth.
Ruan pressed the corner of the envelope shut.
He wanted to leave at least the words going home from crumbling.
That was the last shred of dignity Ruan could not bring himself to give up.