No gunshots rang out.
The battlefield was utterly silent.
There was no gunsmoke and no shouting—only darkness. A blankness that shouldn’t have existed on a battlefield enveloped my vision.
“…Where am I?”
I tried to walk, and only then noticed something beneath my feet.
“…!”
My breath caught.
There were people lying at my feet: men drenched in blood.
I stood atop them with a gun in my hand.
“…You.”
My finger on the trigger felt strangely heavy.
That man lay at my feet.
He was the soldier whose face I had shot—the first man I had killed.
His blood-soaked face looked up at me.
There was no hatred in his eyes. Only confusion.
“Why?”
His mouth moved.
I heard his voice clearly.
“Why did you kill me?”
I couldn’t answer.
Because it was war. Because he was the enemy. Because if I didn’t kill him, he would kill me. I could have given any number of explanations and excuses, but no words came from my mouth.
Instead, another voice sounded.
From behind me.
“Die.”
I turned around.
The person standing there was me.
My uniform was covered in blood.
The wounds in my abdomen and the blood flowing from them must have weighed me down. My eyes were clouded and my body looked ready to collapse, yet sheer obsession kept me standing.
“…Ah.”
That other me fired at the fallen soldier.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Again and again.
The bullets didn’t stop.
“…Stop.”
The word escaped me, but so small a voice changed nothing.
The one firing was me.
There was no way I could stop him.
The fallen soldier looked at me.
“I didn’t want to die yet.”
The words tightened something deep in my chest.
The soldier’s face changed, one after another.
A young man whose name I didn’t know.
A trembling recruit.
A man wearing rank insignia.
The faces of the people I had seen appeared in turn.
“You did this.”
The voice was quiet.
“Was it to win?”
No.
“For your family?”
No.
No, no, no, no, no—the blood beneath my feet slowly spread.
It soaked into my boots.
Warm.
It wouldn’t come off.
No matter how hard I stamped the ground, I couldn’t shake it away. Nothing came from my mouth. I could only listen to the voices around me accusing me.
“…No.”
At last, I found my voice.
“I am…”
What?
A commander? An invader? A murderer? A hero?
Before I could find an answer, a gunshot rang out.
This time, it was the sound of a bullet piercing my chest.
……
…………
“…!”
I suppressed both my voice and my breath.
With a trembling hand, I touched my chest. The familiar slick sensation wasn’t there. When I opened my eyes, I saw the ceiling I had looked at before falling asleep.
It was the ceiling of an inn in the capital.
“…Hah.”
I sat up, checked that Sister Shia was sleeping peacefully in the next bed, and crawled out of my own.
“…Urgh.”
Nausea.
The now-familiar sensation welled up, and I hurried to the toilet.
“…Ughhh!”
Trying not to make too much noise, I vomited everything I had eaten that day.
“There shouldn’t be anything wrong with my organs.”
Had the surgeon who treated me misdiagnosed something? Lately, I kept vomiting whatever I ate.
…No, it probably wasn’t a misdiagnosis. The surgeon had been very skilled. The problem was me. Surely…
“…Hah.”
Once there was nothing left, I returned to bed.
“…I really can’t sleep.”
I closed my eyes.
But sleep wouldn’t come. Since going to the battlefield, I could barely remember sleeping soundly.
“I suppose I’ll give up… I can’t afford to die. Not today, either.”
I gave up trying to sleep and sat cross-legged on the bed.
I activated the magic within my body and sent it racing through me. In my field of vision, the magic leaking from my body shone faintly.
Increasing one’s magic wasn’t especially difficult. Simply circulating it within the body caused it to grow, and I had kept mine moving constantly.
I also set aside time like this to sit in meditation and do nothing but circulate it.
Driving it around with greater force produced a larger increase.
“……”
Sitting in meditation, I trained my magic for the next battlefield.
And so the night passed.
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