The Royal Medical Officer entered, his attire preceding his scent.
Elric's gloves were nearly white. That color was so different from the dried blood on the tent floor that it caught the eye first instead.
Elric did not mention that difference. Instead, he left a small mark on the very bottom line of the record tablet.
Most people coming and going in the Main Camp Medical Bureau had blood on them.
Those with even slightly less were the supply officers or record keepers.
But the man who entered around noon was different.
His collar was not the least bit disheveled, his boots bore almost no mud, and his gloves were stained not with blood but with dried medicinal powder.
Ruan looked first at the man's gloves.
They were hands stained first with medicinal powder rather than blood.
The man paused briefly at the entrance and surveyed the entire Medical Bureau.
From the spacing between cots and the waiting board to the path boiled instruments and soiled linens traveled, and all the way to the fever patient area.
He swept over the structure rather than people's faces.
"I am Royal Medical Officer Elric Sein."
His introduction, too, was brief.
The people of the Main Camp Medical Bureau straightened their postures almost simultaneously.
Helmad, too, schooled his expression.
"I have come by order to inspect the 3rd Legion's medical system."
Ruan did not like those words.
Because, as the word 'inspection' always implied, it felt like someone was trying to measure a living place by standards written on paper.
When Elric Sein looked toward Ruan, he paused very briefly.
His gaze swept over the whitened patch on one side of Ruan's head, his wrist bandage, and his blood-stained apron all at once.
"You are Ruan Hese."
"Yes."
"I have heard your name many times."
A tone containing neither praise nor mockery.
A voice that revealed no intention.
Karen shifted her posture slightly by the door.
Ruan felt that movement but deliberately pretended not to notice.
Elric immediately turned toward Helmad.
"I will begin with the placement chart and recovery records."
"I will prepare them right away."
"They mean nothing if not now."
At those words, Helmad immediately picked up the record tablet.
Elric did not ask Ruan any separate questions.
It was a method of checking the records after seeing the site first.
He walked around inside the Medical Bureau throughout the afternoon.
He observed one by one who lay on which cot, where the fever patients were shunted off to, and which paths the stretchers used to enter and exit.
He missed neither the hands of auxiliary soldiers wrapping bandages, the times the boiled water was changed, nor when the lines on the waiting board shifted.
Ruan hated that observation.
They were hands that moved not with admiration or awe, but with categorization and analysis.
It was different even from Aizen.
Aizen calculated the structure.
Elric was digging into the empty explanations inside people's bodies.
The first clash came sooner than expected.
In the recovery area, Ramon was being scolded by Sera for mimicking drawing a bowstring again when Elric stepped forward to check that arm himself.
Ramon looked uncomfortable but could not openly refuse before the title of Royal Medical Officer.
Elric pressed the scarred area for some time, measured the range of motion, and flipped through the record tablet again.
"At this point, it shouldn't have returned this far yet."
He said it like a soliloquy, but it reached Ruan's ears clearly.
"It differs from person to person."
When Ruan spoke briefly, Elric looked directly at him for the first time.
"Correct. That is why I examine the records together."
That answer was neither a negation nor an affirmation.
Ruan did not say more.
The longer he spoke, the more Elric's pen would move by another line.
Shortly after, Elric looked toward Deron as well.
The spearman was still in the recovery area, but his eyes were like those of a perfectly healthy soldier.
"This patient as well."
Helmad answered in a low voice.
"An abdominal spear wound."
"I know. Because I have read the records."
Elric only slightly lifted the edge of the cloth covering Deron's stomach before closing it again.
"Far too fast for recovery at this stage."
Deron had a face that did not quite understand what those words meant.
Only Ruan felt his mouth go dry.
Sera, seeing that expression from afar, very slightly furrowed her brows.
She, too, seemed to have realized where this conversation was flowing.
Around sunset, Ruan happened to witness a scene of Aizen speaking with Elric off to the side.
It was between the supply tents behind the Medical Bureau.
Neither raised their voices, but their attitudes were completely different.
Aizen stood like one whose calculations were finished, while Elric stood like one whose calculations were not yet done and needed to look further.
Watching that, Ruan grew even more tired.
A single commander was already burdensome enough; now it was as if another inspection sheet had been tacked on.
In the evening, Elric eventually stood before Ruan once more.
"I acknowledge the effects of the system improvements."
Those were his first words.
"Separating the evacuation line on the waiting board in the fever patient ward. Fast results, for something changed by a single junior military medical officer."
It could have sounded like praise.
But Ruan immediately read the temperature within those words.
It meant he acknowledged it but did not fully believe it to the end.
"However."
As expected, the next words followed.
"No matter how good the system, some recovery cases have far too scant an explanation."
Elric placed small dots next to Deron's and Ramon's names.
They were hands that left marks instead of explanations.
Ruan tried to manage his expression but did not know if he had failed.
Elric's gaze became minutely sharper.
"What do you mean?"
"The meaning is in what the records say."
Elric held up the record tablet once.
"Abdominal penetration, recovery trajectory, return, early ambulation, body temperature recovery speed. There are several lines that do not align with standard healing arts."
"People differ."
"They differ."
Elric immediately took it up.
"When that 'difference' repeats, coincidence alone becomes insufficient."
Karen took a step from beside the door.
Ruan immediately opened his mouth at that movement.
"Karen."
It was a restraint.
Elric had a face that missed not even that small scene.
"I have not come to interrogate."
He said calmly.
"I have come to confirm cases where the theoretical explanation is empty."
"This is the field."
Ruan answered as evenly as possible.
"It is a place where a delayed hand is a greater problem than an empty explanation."
"That is precisely why, because it is the field."
Elric did not back down.
"The more it is the field, the records left afterward become the sole explanation."
Those words were so very like a medical officer.
That was why Ruan found it harder to retort.
Because he, too, was one who left records.
He hated erasing the traces of who had lived and died more than anyone.
Elric spoke last.
"Tomorrow I will examine several more cases directly."
"Please do."
"I will also continue cross-checking the records."
"Do that as well."
He spoke thus, but Ruan's insides had already hardened.
He did not know if the records he had to leave would draw out even what he had to hide.
After Elric left, Sera immediately came to his side.
"That man didn't just come for an inspection."
"I know."
"What did he see?"
Ruan could not answer.
He could have pretended not to know, but looking at Sera's eyes, he could not.
"An unexplainable speed."
Sera bit her lip.
"And it had to be someone who believes most in records."
Ruan pressed his wrist with a tired face.
A chill rose deeper than pain.
"Even so, records must be left."
"Do you think now's the time to say that?"
It was a voice mixed with irritation and worry.
"Can't you see it in his eyes? He's the kind of man who will hound you to the end over whatever you're hiding."
Ruan briefly watched Elric's retreating back.
It truly was such a face.
A man who, once he thought something strange, could not let it go until he had checked it to the end.
Elric's marks remained here and there in the ledgers.
They were neither sword nor arrow.
Dots and lines. Indelible ink.
Ruan had thought it would be less frightening than the battlefield. It was not.
Elric did not let go of the evacuation team ledgers until the sun had fully set.
He cross-checked down to what hour which stretcher came in and how quickly who had been moved to the operating table.
Helmad had an openly exhausted face, but Elric skipped not a single line.
"Is the field always passed over by intuition like this?"
When he asked quietly, Helmad answered bluntly.
"If we don't, the patients die first."
"That is why you must leave more results."
Elric swept even the erased traces of the waiting board with his pen shaft.
"So that you can explain later."
Ruan hated those words even more.
These days he was being pushed more and more toward being unable to explain, while that man was conversely tightening the weave of explanation.
That night, Ruan was certain.
Elric was not a man who would stop at doubt.
He was a man who would make evidence to the end.
As the night deepened, that certainty became clearer.
Elric called forth one more recovering patient.
He asked first about what came after the wound.
When he had started walking again, when he had gripped a sword again, when the fever had broken.
What ordinary medical officers asked about were pain and current condition.
But Elric was digging into the time after recovery.
Ruan felt chilled inside throughout hearing those questions.
The tip of Elric's pen roamed over the ledger before stopping on only a few lines.
Records that had appeared unrelated to one another were connecting into one within that hand.
The patient had a face that did not know why those questions were being asked.
Deron thought for a moment before fumbling over dates, and Ramon counted days by folding his fingers.
Elric recorded even that hesitation.
He had a face that would write down even the reason the answer was delayed.
In the silence, the tip of Elric's pen stopped beside Ramon's name.
Elric was watching even the time it took for the answer to come out, not just the answer itself.
Aizen, too, could not fail to know the direction of that gaze.
When the two encountered each other again around evening, neither showed any sign of backing down.
Ruan belatedly realized that he had been wedged between them regardless of his own will.
Before leaving, Elric swept through the Medical Bureau ledgers one last time.
"I will look again tomorrow."
After those brief words, the nib of Elric's pen touched the ledger once more.
It did not mean he would see the patients again alone.
It meant he would continue looking at the records, the deviations, and the exceptions.