The letter arrived late in the afternoon.
It was a small bundle that had come wedged between damp sacks of rations.
The outer cloth was clammy, and its corners were caked with dust and dirt.
Even so, the knot binding it was strangely neat.
Ruan knew who had sent it just by looking at that knot.
Melli.
Letters from home were always like that.
Pointlessly orderly, pointlessly firm.
A person’s nature had a way of lingering even in a knot.
Sera, who was sorting through the medicine chest, gestured with her chin.
“Your younger sister?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you already look exhausted?”
Instead of answering, Ruan untied the bundle.
Inside were dried silverleaf grass, a single root with a strong bitter scent,
and a letter that was not at all short.
He carefully unfolded the damp paper and began reading from the first line.
Brother.
If you start by saying you’re fine, I’m going to tear this up, so I’ll say this first.
The moment she saw that sentence, Sera quietly stifled a laugh.
Ruan pretended not to hear and kept reading.
The weather here is clear. The stream is flowing again, too. But every time a letter from you arrives, I feel worse. Because whenever you write that you’re fine, you haven’t been fine at all.
Last time, you said you’d hurt your hand a little, then two lines later wrote that you couldn’t hold a needle for long. Before that, you said you got caught in the rain a little, then wrote that you had a fever for three days.
You’re terrible at lying, but strangely diligent when it comes to hiding things.
So this time I’ll just ask. Where does it hurt, and how badly?
Ruan unconsciously held his breath.
The words on the paper were only ink, yet they felt strangely like fingers pressing precisely into flesh.
Even as Sera went some distance away to change the water, she looked back.
“What does it say?”
“Nothing much.”
“With that face?”
Ruan lowered his gaze again.
I was organizing Mother’s medicine cabinet and found a note you’d stuck there a long time ago. Fever, cough, fatigue, no overexertion.
The funniest part was that the thing you follow the least was written the neatest. No overexertion. The words you always said to others—say them to yourself this time, too. Don’t overdo it. Just stay alive.
If I write that you matter more to me than a hundred wounded people, you’ll get angry again. But I’m going to write it anyway. Because it’s true.
Ruan pressed the end of the letter beneath his fingers for a long time.
The paper grew a little warm, as if it had absorbed his body heat.
Melli had always been like that. She never began with comfort.
She stabbed first at the place that hurt the most, and only then laid medicine over it.
That was Melli’s way.
Near the bottom of the letter were instructions on how to use the herbs and more news from the village.
That the stone wall by the stream had collapsed again, that the old man across the street’s knees had worsened again, that spring sowing had been delayed a little.
They were ordinary sentences.
That was why they hurt more.
On the battlefield, that kind of ordinariness was far too distant.
Karen’s voice came from inside the tent.
“Family?”
When Ruan lifted his head, Karen was looking at him from the empty seat beside her.
Today, much of the color had returned to her face, but her gaze was still sharp enough to dig through a person’s insides.
“My younger sister.”
Karen looked for a moment at the letter in Ruan’s hand, then said,
“It looks like the sort of face that tells you to stay alive.”
Ruan could not answer right away.
Sera cut in for him.
“That’s right. From the very first line, she told him not to lie to her.”
Karen gave a short laugh.
“A good family.”
Ruan lowered his head.
A good family.
It was true. That was why he felt even more sorry.
The replies he sent were always short, and the important parts were always left out.
He tucked the letter into his breast and rose from his seat.
“It’s time to organize the list of the dead.”
Sera’s expression stiffened for a moment.
The air that had just been filled with talk of letters cooled in an instant.
On a small table behind the medical tent, name tags and record sheets were piled together.
Damp paper, blurred ink, wooden tags stained with blood.
It was a place where the living were evacuated, and only the names of the dead remained.
Ruan picked up the first wooden tag.
Andre. Third supply unit. Penetrating wound to the right chest. Time of death: just before dawn.
He wrote it down carefully. His handwriting always tried to remain even.
He believed that, at the very least, the names of the dead should not be written carelessly.
The second had no name.
Messenger’s assistant. Around twenty years old. Only his facial features were briefly noted.
The third had died of excessive bleeding after a leg amputation.
The fourth, head trauma.
At the fifth, the tip of Ruan’s pen stopped.
Record missing.
He hated those two words most of all.
Someone who had died without anyone knowing who they were. Someone whose name could not even return to their family.
Sera sat beside him, unfolding another set of documents as she said,
“If we ask the equipment unit, there might be someone who saw his face.”
“I’ll look into it.”
“You don’t have to finish writing everything today.”
Ruan shook his head.
“If I leave it until today passes, it will be even more confusing tomorrow.”
He picked up the pen again, but one blank space refused to be filled.
He thought of a face he had missed last night. A soldier whose head had fallen back and gone cold before Ruan could even ask his name.
If he had only moved his hands a little faster.
No, if he had let go of someone else a little faster before that.
Once his thoughts began flowing that way, there was no end to them.
On the battlefield, death was common. So most of the time, it was handled as a number.
So many lost, so many evacuated, so many missing.
And yet Ruan kept trying to turn those numbers back into names.
There were even moments when he held on to the name tags of the dead longer than to the living who had survived.
Karen spoke quietly.
“Are you holding on to the names of the dead, too?”
Without raising his eyes, Ruan answered,
“If their names are missing, their families won’t know.”
“It isn’t your fault.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
Karen was silent for a while.
On the battlefield, death was quickly sorted away.
A few casualties. More often than not, a single line like that was the end of it.
And yet Ruan was turning those numbers back into people, one by one.
Karen found it unfamiliar.
Hands that even left the names of enemies in the records.
It was a kind of obsession rarely seen on the battlefields she had lived through.
Suddenly, she wondered.
If she had died last night, would this man have written down her facial features first, without even knowing her name?
Would he have tried that hard to send her back to someone?
Strangely, that thought touched flesh more deeply than the point of a blade.
As if trying to change the mood, Sera shook the medicinal herbs taken from the letter.
“Do you know why she sent this?”
The moment Ruan smelled it, he answered,
“For headaches.”
“Correct.”
“We used it often when I was young.”
Karen immediately asked,
“Do you get headaches often?”
Sera started to open her mouth, then noticed Ruan’s expression and closed it.
Ruan cut in first.
“Everyone does on a battlefield.”
Karen looked as though she did not believe that answer, but she asked no more.
Instead, she looked through the pile of records and picked up one sheet.
“This is a record for an enemy prisoner.”
“If they’re patients, enemies are written down too.”
Karen’s eyes wavered in an almost imperceptible way.
It was not common on a battlefield for an enemy’s name to remain in the records.
She set the paper down and let out a short breath.
This place is different from the battlefields I know.
A tent that first tried to hold on to enemies, allies, and the dead alike by their names.
And at its center stood a military physician who could barely even hold a sword properly.
Only when the sun had begun to sink and he had written down the final name tag did Ruan stop his hand.
His wrist was heavy, and his eyes stung.
Still, he pressed the record sheets down one by one to dry them and put them in order.
He checked them again to the end, making sure no name had been left out.
Sera watched him, then said quietly,
“Your sister was right.”
“About what?”
“That the person who tells everyone else not to overdo it is the one overdoing it the most.”
Instead of replying, Ruan took out the letter again.
The damp paper was warmer than before.
He took out paper for a reply and began writing briefly.
Melli. I received your letter. Things here are still bearable. I’ll make good use of the herbs you sent. If the stone wall collapses, you can build it back up again. Be careful not to catch a cold.
He got that far, and the pen stopped.
The words he truly wanted to write always remained behind.
I want to go home too. Too many people die here. Today, I couldn’t find three names again.
Sometimes, the faces I missed even after my hands reached them linger into the night.
And sometimes, after I save one person, it feels as though something inside me is slowly draining away.
He could not bring himself to write such things in the end.
Ruan folded the paper in half.
Even as he folded his reply, his gaze kept returning to the first sentence.
If you start by saying you’re fine, I’m going to tear this up.
Melli always wrote like that. Frighteningly accurate, and strangely gentle.
She had been like that even when their mother was alive.
When someone was sick, she was the child who picked up the basket of herbs and followed them around before she cried.
For a moment, he recalled his mother’s hands.
Hands that, after feeling the forehead of a feverish child and ultimately failing to save them, washed themselves again and again despite already being clean.
Ruan had never forgotten that sight.
That winter, he had learned what it meant for the face of someone you failed to save to remain at your fingertips.
Karen silently watched Ruan’s silence and asked no more.
Instead, she said in a very low voice,
“Your sister knows every time you lie.”
“Because she’s family.”
“And she still sends letters.”
Ruan smiled very briefly.
“That’s what makes it even scarier.”
Sera nodded.
“That’s right. She’s the kind of person who worries about you but will never let you off easy.”
As the sound of a stretcher drew closer outside, Ruan tucked his reply into his breast.
The warmth of the paper still remained.
He felt that warmth for just a moment longer, then immediately walked off to receive the next patient.
As if the word home was distant,
but not completely severed.