It Should Have Ended
It has to end. It has to end.
“Khuh… Heuh… Haa…” The breaths scraped out of my throat. At first I couldn’t tell where I was. Even after opening my eyes, everything stayed dark. The inside of my lungs still remembered the smell of gunpowder, and the roar of artillery still rang in my ears. Boom. It wasn’t artillery. It was my heart. The mad pounding inside my chest. I jolted upright on the sofa like a spring. My hands moved first. Sword. I needed my sword. At my waist—nothing. Right side—nothing. Left side—nothing. My head caught up late. This was home. Not the battlefield. Not Krasen Canyon, not the Western Front, not an artillery battery. I was on the worn sofa in my own living room.
A dark house. A cold fireplace. Closed windows. A low table. Medals scattered across it. And an empty vodka bottle.
I stared at the scene for a long time without understanding it. My eyes saw it, but my body refused to believe. My heart kept racing. My fingertips were ice-cold, my back soaked with cold sweat. There was the taste of blood in my mouth. I must have clenched my teeth while I was out. Or could it even be called sleep? It felt less like I had fallen asleep and more like I had fainted, been dragged somewhere, and then yanked back.
“Haa… Haa…” My breathing refused to settle. My throat burned. I had poured so much liquor down it, yet it felt parched. Or maybe that was why it was so dry. My head was heavy, my stomach twisted as if I had swallowed a burning stone, and behind my eyelids the white flash of explosions still lingered.
I covered my face with my hands. The dried blood on my palm scraped roughly against my skin. The sensation made my body flinch again. Blood. My blood. Not someone else’s. Not the blood from the collapsed trench, not the blood spraying from soldiers in the middle of the canyon. Just the blood from my own hand, cut on a glass. I had to check these things one by one. My house. My blood. My breath. Right now. This is not the battlefield. Only then could I keep the darkness before my eyes from turning back into the inside of a command tent.
It was a dream. The thought came late. A dream. Just a dream. Saying it that way made everything feel easier. Because it was a dream, it was over. Because I had opened my eyes, it had vanished. There was no Krasen Canyon in front of me now, no magical artillery, no Lieutenant Hartmann’s urgent face. No people being hurled into the air by shellfire. So it was a dream.
Then why did the smell remain? Why did it still feel like blood and gunpowder were mixed inside my nose? Why were my fingertips still as cold as they had been in the moment I gave the signal? Why was the word “Fire” still lodged in my throat?
I lowered my hands. The living room was quiet. Too quiet. From outside the window came the faint sound of a festival winding down. Or maybe I only imagined it. The empire would still be celebrating. The war was over. The First Sword of the Continent was dead. The Alliance had collapsed. People in the capital would be shouting my name, clinking glasses, singing songs, and boasting about how great this victory was.
And I had fled all that noise and come back to this house. To be alone. So I wouldn’t hurt anyone. So no one would have to see me like this. But when I was alone, I ended up having to look at myself. That was the most terrible part.
I looked at the table. The medals were gleaming dully. Even in the darkness they shone with stubborn loyalty. Golden eagles. Swords. Laurel wreaths. Red jewels. Imperial crests. The ones I had torn off and thrown in irritation earlier. Among them, the Red Reed Plain victory medal caught my eye. The red jewel. That ridiculous stone that was supposed to symbolize blood.
I stared at it for a while, then let out a hollow laugh. My throat was hoarse; almost no sound came out.
“A dream…” The words fell from my lips. “It was a dream.”
The sentence echoed softly through the living room. It was a dream. Yes. A very fortunate thing. Krasen Canyon was not here. I had not returned to that night. Lieutenant Hartmann had not burst in demanding orders. There was no report that the second trench had fallen. The three magical artillery pieces were not waiting for my signal. I had not lowered my hand and said “Fire.”
A moment ago, that had been a dream. But that day had not been a dream. That was the problem.
I closed my eyes. The moment I did, it appeared again. The tent. The map. Bloody handprints. Lieutenant Hartmann in a wet uniform, looking at me. “Please give the order, Major.”
At the time I had been excited. I still cannot forget that fact. The thought that I had entered a game. The thought that I had obtained the cheat-like body of Irina van Evergarden. The thought that, since I knew the strategy, I could turn the tide of war. A broken character. Future knowledge. The war-hero route. In that moment I had seen this world as nothing more than a game. The lines drawn on the map were front lines. The numbers of troops were just numbers. A collapsed trench was merely a destroyed tile.
Clear the center. Send every reserve to the south. Aim the magical artillery at the waist of the canyon. When the enemy masses, fire.
I had spoken quickly. It was well done. Accurate. Efficient. Lieutenant Hartmann had looked at me in astonishment. I had been satisfied by that gaze. It still turns my stomach.
What I felt first that day was not fear but excitement. That is why even now, awake from the dream, that is the part that chokes me first. What I am truly afraid of is not the explosions. It is not the corpses. What truly terrifies me is the fact that, until the moment those explosions went off, I had been enjoying myself.
I opened my eyes. The darkness of the living room returned. But it could not completely come back to the present. The medals on the table looked like troop markers on a map. The empty liquor bottle looked like a count of artillery shells. A single button fallen on the floor looked like a fallen soldier. I shook my head.
“Stop.” I spoke quietly. “Just stop.”
I didn’t know who I was speaking to. To the memories? To my body? Or to myself, who still could not separate dream from reality?
I tried to rise from the sofa. My legs would not support me. It was the alcohol. It was the nightmare, too. My body staggered and I braced myself on the table. Clink. One medal slid and struck another. At the sound my body jerked. In an instant my vision narrowed. The metallic noise. Applause. The sound of a sword sheath striking marble. The short bursts of a machine gun. No. It was medals. It was a table. It was a house.
I clenched my teeth and gripped the table. The cut in my palm split open and pain surged up. This time the pain anchored me. It hurts. It hurts right now. Therefore this is the present.
I breathed in slowly. The smell of dust. The smell of alcohol. The smell of a house long closed. The smell of blood was very faint. But it came from my own hand. This is not the battlefield. This is not Krasen Canyon. I repeated it to myself several times. Then a laugh slipped out. This time it made a small sound.
“What a hassle…” The laugh broke apart into words. “Living is so damn bothersome.”
It really was. Even breathing required a whole procedure. Confirm where I was. Confirm whose blood it was. Confirm what the sound had been. Confirm the positions of doors, windows, shadows, and weapons. Only then could I finally take one proper breath. They called me a hero of the empire, yet I couldn’t even manage the simple act of breathing correctly.
When that thought arrived, self-mockery tried to rise. I deliberately swallowed the words. Nothing would change no matter how much I said. Mocking myself had been a daily occurrence for a while now; if I did it too long, even that would become a habit. Far too many things had already become habits. Checking windows. Freezing at sounds. Seeing blood and immediately calculating blood loss. Searching for a drink. Reviewing orders that refused to disappear even after waking from dreams. That was enough.
I groped across the table. The vodka bottle was empty. Of course it was. I had emptied it. Yet I still lifted it to my lips. Nothing was inside the clear glass. I tilted it, hoping a single drop might remain, but the bottle stayed silent. I stared down at the empty bottle.
“It’s become useless.”
No. What had become useless was not the bottle. It was me. I did not say that part aloud. The fact that it had even occurred to me was enough.
I set the empty bottle back on the table. Tap. A small sound. This time I did not startle. Or rather, I did a little, but I endured it. I could manage at least that much.
I sank back onto the sofa. The moment my back touched the cushion, strength drained from my body. Cold sweat clung to the inside of my torn uniform. Ripped medals. A bloodstained hand. An empty liquor bottle. It was a perfectly tragic scene. If a painter got hold of it, it might look quite dramatic. The Victor’s Night. Something like that. People liked that sort of thing. A picture of a hero suffering alone. Appropriately dark, appropriately beautiful, appropriately sad. Inside it there was no smell of blood, no nausea, no ugliness of waking from a nightmare and being unable to tell whether you were in your own house or on a battlefield. Just a tragically beautiful gaze.
That was how I would be remembered. The emperor had said it today: The empire will remember you. They would remember. People remember. They simply remember in the form they can bear. The blood of the Red Reed Plain becomes the red jewel of victory. The bombardment at Krasen Canyon becomes the work of a genius commander. The first order I gave in excitement becomes a hero’s decisive judgment. And the fact that I nearly vomited afterward is nowhere to be found.
Perhaps that is better. Who would want to know that much? I don’t even want to know it myself.
I raised a hand and rubbed my eyes. There were no tears. As always. The tears seemed about to come, then drifted away again. I couldn’t tell whether my body had forgotten how to cry or whether I simply hadn’t earned the luxury of crying yet. On the battlefield there had been no time to cry. If you cried, your breathing grew ragged. If your breathing grew ragged, your orders were delayed. If your orders were delayed, more people died. That was how I had lived. Now the war was over, yet my body still seemed not to have received permission to cry.
“It was a dream.” I muttered again. My voice was lower than before. “Yes.”
It was a dream. But that dream was memory. My sleeping mind had simply dragged an old scene back out. Not a new monster, but something already lodged inside me. Irina van Evergarden’s first battle. Irina van Evergarden’s first victory. And the night Irina van Evergarden first realized what she was about to become.
I had changed from that moment on. At first I thought I could endure it. Because this was war. Because it wasn’t a game. Because it was natural to be shocked. I told myself that next time I would be more careful. That I should think of the people before giving orders. That even if I used the strategy guide, I must not forget the lives beneath it. At that time I still had the strength to make excuses to myself.
But the war was long. Far too long. There was a second battle. A third. A tenth. The shock I learned at Krasen Canyon eventually became familiar pain. My hand no longer shook every time I gave the order to fire. I no longer felt like throwing up every time I cut off a retreat route. I no longer paused long when deciding to use troops as bait.
At first I thought it was growth. That I was becoming stronger as a commander. That I was finally using the cheat character called Irina van Evergarden properly. But looking back now, I had simply been worn down. Little by little. I grew used to seeing people as numbers. Used to treating screams as background noise. Used to receiving the names of the dead in reports. And I began to call that familiarity cool-headedness.
I lowered my head. My fingertips were still trembling. Less than right after waking from the dream, but they had not stopped completely. This body was truly strong. Strong enough to be called a cheat. Even now, when I held a sword I could cut faster than anyone. Even if I drank an entire bottle I did not collapse easily. Even after the war my heart beat stubbornly on its own. Uselessly sturdy. That was why I was still alive. Sometimes I couldn’t tell whether that was a blessing or a curse.
Wind blew outside the window. The closed pane rattled faintly. Click. This time I did not reach for a sword. My fingers twitched a little, but stopped there. It’s fine. It’s the window. It’s the wind. I did not say it aloud. Saying it would have made me feel even more pathetic.
The living room grew quiet again. I slowly leaned back. I did not want to close my eyes. I was afraid of what might come out if I did. But even with them open there was nothing much to see. Medals. An empty bottle. Darkness. That was all.
Even after waking from the dream, nothing had changed. Krasen Canyon had disappeared, but the result of that day remained inside me. I had survived because of that order. I had saved people with that order. I had killed people with that order. And afterward I continued to give such orders. Countless times. Far too many.
The medals now pinned to my chest were the result of all those orders. People called them victory. Sometimes I felt them like unpaid bills. Bills that had not yet been settled. Things that could not be repaid with alcohol, or medals, or the emperor’s praise.
The red jewel on the table glowed faintly. I looked at it, then reached out. The Red Reed Plain victory medal settled into my hand. It was cold. Smaller than I expected. For a token of a battle that had changed the fate of the continent, it was truly small.
I rested it on my palm and stared at it for a long time. The first bombardment at Krasen Canyon. The winter of the Western Front. The retreat battles in the north. The Red Reed Plain. Axion Liberta’s final gaze. It felt as if everything had been piled onto this small piece of metal.
Had people thought that pinning this on me would be compensation? Or at least that it ought to look that way? I didn’t know. Thinking about such intentions had become exhausting.
I placed the medal back on the table. This time I did not throw it. I set it down quietly. I did not want to hear it clink.
It was a dream. And it was not a dream.
I sat on the sofa and stared into the darkness. Outside, the war had ended. Inside, it had not. I no longer had the strength to pretend I did not know that fact.
The war is over. The empire has won. I survived.
And the me who survived still dreams of that first order.
I pressed my lips together before the words could leak out again. And for a long while I did nothing. I simply breathed. Slower than before. Quieter than before. As if I had to at least get that one thing right.
“…But.” Is it even right to do it properly?