White was mixed in among his wet hair.
At first, she could have blamed it on the lamplight. The flame hanging by the wash water at the back of the tent was wavering, and Ruan had just washed his hair, so his black hair was soaked darker than usual. Among it, several white strands stood out with unnatural clarity.
Karen stood holding the water bucket, then stopped moving.
“Turn your head.”
Ruan paused in toweling his hair and looked at her.
“Why?”
“Turn it.”
Her tone was lower than usual. Ruan hesitated for a moment, then turned his head to show her the side. Karen took one step closer. She did not reach out. She knew that if she touched him, Ruan would step back.
There were not just one or two white strands. They began near his temple and spread thinly toward the back. The color that had been hidden by blood and dust became clearer once wet with water. It was like how, when blood was washed from a wound, the deeper mark beneath was revealed.
“There are more.”
Karen spoke.
“It’s white hair.”
The word fell inside the tent even colder than the white strands themselves.
Ruan tried to smile with the towel still resting on his head.
“It looks that way because of the light.”
“The light was here yesterday too.”
“When you’re tired, hair can look like that.”
“It didn’t appear because you’re tired.”
Ruan’s smile came just a fraction late. Karen did not miss that brief gap. Before she looked at Ruan’s hair, she looked at his right wrist. The bandage was still wrapped around it. Since it had been changed during the day, the outside was clean, but the marks where the flesh was pressed beneath the knot could not be hidden.
“And your wrist?”
“It’s fine.”
“I heard that yesterday too.”
Ruan rubbed his hair more roughly with the towel. The white strands slipped beneath it. But being covered did not mean they had disappeared. Karen knew that all too well. Wounds, accents, old traces—things like that always remained in such ways.
Sera came in carrying a basket of medicine bottles and stopped. Reading the atmosphere, she quietly set the basket down.
“Doctor, I saved a little evening porridge for you.”
“Thank you. I’ll eat it later.”
“Not later. You need to eat it now.”
Sera’s words were gentle, but firm. Her gaze also flicked briefly to Ruan’s hair before lowering again. They were eyes pretending not to have seen what they had seen. But the moment there were two people pretending not to see, it was no longer something hidden.
In the end, Ruan sat on a low stool. Karen stood not in front of him, but beside him. She knew that if she pressed him from the front, Ruan would smile more and lie more.
“When did it start?”
Karen asked.
“What?”
“The white hair.”
“Who counts hair on a battlefield?”
“I do.”
This time, Ruan could not answer. Because he knew she was not joking. Karen really had been counting. When she first saw one strand. When she saw the number increase after a major treatment. When the day his wrist was wrapped overlapped with the day the color deepened. She had simply remembered without saying anything.
Karen spoke slowly.
“At first, it was only on one side. After you saved three people through the night, it became two strands, and it increased again the day the northern evacuation line collapsed. Yesterday, your hand trembled, and today it’s come this far.”
Ruan looked down at the bowl of porridge. Warm steam was rising from it. His stomach was empty, but he felt as though he would throw up the moment he ate.
“It’s a coincidence.”
“If it happened once or twice, I would let it pass. But you always change the next day after the same kind of thing.”
Her words were closer to confirmation than interrogation. Karen did not demand an answer. If anything, her face looked afraid of hearing one. They both knew that if a certain sentence was spoken, there would be no turning back from that moment.
Karen took a folded piece of paper from her waist. It was not an official record. It was the back of a medicinal supply requisition Ortega had been about to throw away, where she had left short marks.
“What is that?”
“What I saw.”
Ruan did not snatch the paper away. If he did, it would feel like an admission. Karen lowered the paper so he could see it. One line after the northern gate recovery. Two after the collapse of the evacuation line. Wrist bandage on the day the external request came in. The words were brief, and because of that, there was even less room to evade them.
“You even kept records?”
“I didn’t want to miss it by relying on memory alone.”
“That’s Ortega’s job.”
“So Ortega couldn’t write it down because if he did, it might become a report.”
Ruan closed his mouth. He remembered Ortega cleaning his pen nib during the day. Everyone had been watching, and everyone had been trying, in their own way, not to write anything down. But Karen had written it down. Not to report it, but so she would not lose it.
Sera looked at the paper and drew in a very small breath.
“I saw it too... twice.”
Ruan raised his head.
Sera’s face immediately filled with regret, but she did not take back her words.
“After major treatments, you always ran a fever. And the next day, your hair color looked a little different. I thought it was because there was blood on it, but after you washed it, I could see it more clearly.”
“Sera.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything.”
Sera hooked her fingers tightly around the basket handle.
“But if your wrist is like that too, then I don’t think this is just fatigue.”
The tent fell silent. Outside, only the low dragging sound of cartwheels passing by could be heard. Ruan searched for an excuse. Battlefield dust, lack of sleep, the smell of medicine, an illusion caused by wet hair. There were many words he could think of, but none were solid enough to pass through Sera’s expression.
Ruan slowly lifted the spoon. He started to take it with his right hand, then stopped and moved it to his left. He tried to do it too naturally, and that made it even more obvious. Karen’s eyes followed the movement.
“Your right hand.”
“Bern made a fuss and told me to rest it.”
“Bern said something right, then.”
“It doesn’t happen often.”
The brief joke reached no one. Sera did not laugh. Karen did not laugh. Ruan alone lifted the corner of his mouth slightly, then let it fall.
From outside the tent came the sound of a cart transporting patients. Its wheels rolled heavily through the mud. At the sound, Ruan’s shoulder moved ever so slightly. It was his habit of getting up at once.
“Sit.”
Karen said.
“I only heard the sound.”
“I’m saying it because you get up just from hearing the sound.”
Ruan set down the spoon.
“If I don’t go, who will see to them?”
“If you collapse, who will?”
At those words, Sera lowered her head. The question they had been holding back for too long had come first from Karen’s mouth. Ruan said nothing for a while. He had heard people worry about his body many times. But the moment those words were set on the same scale as the patient roster still felt unfamiliar.
Karen picked up a small cord that had been leaning against a tent pole. It was a thin cord used for tying bandages. She wound it around her fingers and unwound it as she spoke.
“I’ve always counted traces.”
Ruan looked at her.
“Numbers of footprints. Lengths of severed cords. The number of times someone’s tone changes. To survive, I had to watch things like that. But I didn’t want to watch yours.”
Karen’s voice was low. It almost sounded like a confession, but she did not let her emotions stretch on for long. Instead, she looked again at Ruan’s wet hair.
“Now I will.”
Ruan exhaled wearily.
“What changes if you watch?”
“At least I might catch it late, rather than miss it without knowing.”
“And if it’s something you can’t change even if you catch it?”
“I’ll think about that after I catch it.”
That answer was very like Karen. Ruan could not argue further. She always reached out her hand before searching for a reason. This time too, before she even knew what it was, she was preparing to seize it.
“Karen.”
Ruan chose his words for a moment.
“Some things become more dangerous the moment you give them a name.”
“So I haven’t named it.”
Karen put the folded paper back at her waist.
“For now, I’m not naming it. I’m only counting the numbers.”
Those words were more frightening, if anything. Ruan felt as though he had seen not his own hair, but a new compartment formed in Karen’s memory.
Just then, outside, there came the sound of a stretcher leg sinking into the mud. Ruan tried to stand first. His right hand lagged one beat behind. Karen counted even that beat.
“Are you saying you’re going to watch me?”
“Yes.”
The answer came too quickly. When Ruan was the one left speechless, Karen added,
“Because you won’t watch your own body.”
The words were cold, but beneath them lay fear more than anger. Ruan noticed it and pretended he had not. He felt that the moment he acknowledged it, his lies would no longer be able to hold for long.
Sera cautiously approached and held out a dry towel.
“You need to dry your hair more. You’ll get a fever.”
Ruan took the towel. This time, Karen reached out and caught the end of it. For a very brief moment, one side of his wet hair was revealed. Her eyes moved. They were counting eyes.
One. Two. Three.
Karen did not say it aloud. She knew that the moment she did, Ruan would hide it again. The wrist bandage, the major treatments, the increased white strands. There was still no answer. But a line had formed.
Ruan covered his hair with the dry towel. The white was hidden again.
Karen stared for a long time at the place it had been covered. The hidden color had not disappeared now. It had become a number she had begun to remember.
That night, Karen did not sleep. Even after Ruan had fallen into a shallow sleep, she sat beside the tent pole and listened to the sounds outside and the breathing within at the same time. Ruan’s right hand was not on his chest, but lowered near his side. Even in sleep, it was a place he was unconsciously trying to hide.
Karen did not take out the paper at her waist. Even without taking it out, what was written there was already in her mind. The northern gate recovery. The evacuation line collapse. The external request. The penetrating chest wound. And today, five white strands among wet hair.
Five was a small number. But Karen knew that small numbers killed people slowly. One missing nail. One delayed messenger. One breath fewer.
She tried not to look toward Ruan’s head, but in the end, she looked again. One white strand that had slipped out from beneath the towel was caught on the edge of the lamplight. Karen did not reach out.
From that day on, the number five became Karen’s boundary line.