There were days when a name came before the plea to be saved.
It was not Ruan who noticed that the order had changed.
At the very top of Orte’s record board, one name had been written first.
It was not a patient’s name.
Ruan Hesse.
Beneath that name, pleas to be saved were lined up one after another.
Ruan plunged his hands into the basin.
The murky water was quickly stained red.
His fingers trembled finely.
His knuckles were stiff, as if sand had gotten into them.
The heat climbing up the back of his neck narrowed his eyes.
He retied his soaked apron and turned toward the next stretcher.
At the entrance, Karen was holding people back.
There were more eyes trying to peer inside than arms pushing wounded soldiers in.
Karen’s gaze cut those eyes down one by one.
Her hand remained close to the hilt of her sword.
On one side of the tent, boxes sent down from the headquarters medical bureau were stacked high.
Bandages, thread, medicinal herbs, even bottles for boiling water—there was far more than before.
It was support sent by Eisen.
In exchange, the records had become more meticulous.
Who lived, who died, what was used and how much—each day it was all left on paper and sent up to headquarters.
Elik Sein’s eyes had not yet appeared, but his name was already attached somewhere to those papers.
The tent flap was roughly thrown open.
A stretcher was pushed inside, dripping rainwater.
The armor of the soldier lying on it had been split open in a long line from chest to abdomen.
Between the hands with which the medic was pressing down, blood and intestinal fluid seeped out in a wet, sticky mess.
“Here.”
Ruan spoke shortly.
At that word, the stretcher was immediately moved to the center.
Ruan knelt and looked into the wound.
The moment he lifted the gauze, dark-red blood surged up again.
“Move your hands.”
As soon as the medic pulled away, Ruan shoved in a clamp.
A hot, slick sensation spread all the way to his wrist.
The soldier’s body arched like a bow.
His mouth opened, but no proper scream came out.
Only foam mixed with blood spread around his lips.
“Keep pressure on it. Don’t leave a gap.”
Ruan did not raise his head.
He saw nothing but the ruptured end of the blood vessel and the blood soaking into the open flesh inside the abdomen.
He pushed in gauze and wiped his field of vision clear.
With his fingers, he groped for the bleeding point.
Fatigue surged up along the inside of his spine, but his hands did not stop.
The soldier’s eyes wandered through empty air.
Their focus was already growing dim.
They were the eyes of a man with death rising to his chin.
The soldier’s hand scraped once at the dirt floor, then grasped uselessly at the air.
Then it caught the end of Ruan’s sleeve.
It was a hand clotted with black soil and dried blood.
One word slipped from between lips whose breath was about to cease.
“Sir Ruan.”
Blood mingled with his hoarse breath, splitting the sound.
Even so, the name alone was clear.
“Save me... please....”
The soldier gripped his sleeve more tightly.
Though the words were a plea to be saved, there was a strangely clinging force in them.
The breath attached to the end stretched long, like a prayer.
Movement inside the tent halted for a moment.
The arms wrapping bandages and the hands holding stretchers both slowed.
Even those who had been groaning lifted their wet eyes to look at Ruan.
Those gazes were not faces of gratitude.
They were faces that, without even knowing what they had seen, had already seized upon a name.
But Ruan did not see their meaning.
“Pulse is dropping. Needle.”
He did not look into the soldier’s eyes.
He pulled free the hand gripping his sleeve and caught the vessel.
“Thread.”
The assistant handed over the thread with trembling hands.
With blood-soaked fingers, Ruan tied the knot swiftly.
“Open it wider. I can’t see.”
Each time his short, dry words fell, the hands that had frozen began to move again.
All that remained to Ruan was the amount of bleeding, the breathing, and the sensation beneath his fingertips.
What was needed now was not an answer, but the order in which to tie things off.
The tip of the knife cut through the wet armor straps.
A severed piece of metal fell to the floor with a dull clack.
Ruan widened the area around the wound further and checked inside.
Beneath the blood-soaked cloth, the organs sagged and trembled.
He drew in a short breath.
“Hot water.”
A steaming basin was pushed to his side at once.
Ruan wet the gauze and wiped away the blood.
Another leaking vessel was revealed inside the abdomen.
Without hesitation, he pushed in his fingers and pressed down on the spot.
The soldier’s back rose high off the stretcher once, then fell.
“Hold him. If he moves, it’ll burst.”
Two assistants pressed down on his shoulders and waist.
Ruan threaded the needle again and drove it in.
The sensation of piercing wet flesh traveled up through his fingers.
His wrist tingled, but he could not stop.
He stitched, cut, and pressed again.
In his mind, he swiftly divided the places where the blood stopped from the places where it still leaked.
With one small mistake, this soldier would end here.
With eyes half-rolled back, the soldier looked up at Ruan.
His lips moved again.
The sound was almost inaudible, but the shape was the same.
It was Ruan’s name.
Even as Ruan looked at those lips, he did not read their meaning.
He only watched to see whether the tongue was curling, whether the breath was growing short.
“His breathing’s getting shallow. Lay him down slowly.”
At Ruan’s words, the medics adjusted his posture.
The stretcher legs creaked.
On the next cot, an old soldier clutched the small wooden tag hanging at his neck, then slowly lowered his hand when he saw Ruan pass by without even lifting his head.
Another wounded soldier muttered something with parched lips, but in the end could not make a sound.
The gazes inside the tent continued to gather in one place.
No one spoke loudly.
That quiet lingered inside the tent longer than the groans.
In the corner of the tent, Orte watched the scene with the ledger open before him.
The fingertips holding the quill stiffened slightly.
It was not unfamiliar for a dying man to cling to the medic before his eyes.
Even so, the name he had just heard remained in his ears differently than usual.
Orte slowly looked around the inside of the tent.
The soldiers’ eyes were gathered to one side.
They were eyes waiting for their turn, yet they were far too quiet.
Someone’s lips parted and closed.
Someone clasped their hands over their chest, then hurriedly loosened them.
No words had yet been spoken, but their expressions had already crossed one step ahead.
Orte recalled the records from a few days ago.
Before, pleas to be saved had come first, and thanks had followed after.
A name was always left behind only after someone survived.
But now the order was changing.
There was a name they sought before their breath cut off.
A change that had been hard to catch in the records was clearly visible today on people’s faces.
Orte looked down at the blank space near the bottom of the ledger.
It was the paper that would go up to headquarters tonight.
The paper on which life and death, treatments, medicine consumption, and progress would be written.
Eisen would read this paper as numbers.
Elik Sein would read it as traces.
And someone else might attach an entirely different meaning to it.
Just then, Ruan tightened the final knot.
The gaping wound was barely closed.
The leaking blood stopped.
The breath that had been breaking in the soldier’s throat connected once more, rough though it was.
“Keep watching his temperature. If it starts leaking again, call me immediately.”
Ruan stripped off his gloves and threw them aside.
Cold sweat gleamed faintly on the backs of his wet hands.
He staggered, caught the edge of the table, then soon let go.
His vision darkened for a moment, but he walked on toward the next stretcher.
Outside the tent, stretchers were still lined up.
At that moment, short breaths escaped here and there.
It was not only relief.
Karen immediately moved to Ruan’s side.
Her hand slowly hardened over the hilt of her sword.
Rather than the enemy, she watched the inside of the tent.
Red, wet eyes were still following Ruan.
Ruan picked up the chart.
He checked the next patient’s name first.
This time, it was a young infantryman whose wound had been made by a spearhead slipping in beneath his shoulder.
A fever had risen, and his eyes were unfocused.
Ruan unwrapped the wet bandage, opened the wound, and first smelled it.
The smell of pus was still faint.
He pressed the swelling with his fingers, then said briefly,
“He can make it through tonight. Give him water first.”
The infantryman looked up at Ruan with a fever-flushed face.
He looked as though he might burst into tears at any moment.
But he, too, swallowed the name before any words of thanks.
His lips only parted and closed, and in the end he could say nothing.
Ruan did not look at his face and wrapped the bandage again.
His hands moved quickly, without any sign of being overly gentle.
That indifferent movement made the soldiers even quieter.
Inside the tent, though no one ordered them to, some began to straighten their backs.
A man who had not even been able to lie down propped himself up on his elbows.
A man who could not walk craned only his neck from atop his stretcher to look toward Ruan.
Not one of them raised his voice.
That silence clung to the soaked tent.
Karen looked back toward the entrance once more.
Rain-soaked soldiers stood still in every gap of the tent.
No one pushed their way inside, but no one left either.
Their faces looked less like faces waiting for their turn than faces waiting for the next miracle.
All were quiet.
Only then did Orte set the tip of his pen to the ledger.
He pressed the service number that had nearly moved onto the list of the dead into the column for survivors.
In the reason field, he wrote only: survived after immediate treatment for abdominal penetrating wound.
In the narrow space remaining after that, the pen tip stopped.
It was the field for the name of the practitioner.
Orte looked down at that blank space for a long while.
From outside the tent came the sound of another stretcher leg scraping through the mud.
Inside, someone called Ruan’s name once more in a very small voice.
Ink seeped into Orte’s thumb, spreading black.
He could not wipe away the stain.
It was right beside the place where the name would be written.
He could not wipe that away immediately either.
His fingers grew colder.
A single drop of black ink gathered at the end of the nib and fell onto the parchment.
In the space where the name was to go, a black stain slowly spread.
Orte could not take his hand away until the spreading stopped.