Chapter 28
Chapter 28
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 28
Chapter Title: Red Star (6)
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I carried Astier on my back out of the slaughterhouse and entered the warehouse I'd prepared as a hideout.
A single rickety lantern accompanied the faint chill of the night air.
I carefully laid Astier's body on the floor.
Beneath the black robe, the wound was still oozing blood.
I steadied my breathing and recalled memories from the frontline.
On the Northern Frontline, battles raged for days on end, and proper treatment was a luxury.
Because of that, soldiers often died from moving without treatment or succumbed first to festering wounds.
Even in my first deployment, countless men perished without receiving care.
I myself had barely survived numerous times thanks only to my comrades' emergency aid.
Once I joined the special forces unit, I relied mostly on Crim's help.
After Crim died, I'd been handling the treatments I'd learned from her on my own.
With familiar motions, I pulled out my tools.
"Take off your clothes. I need to stitch the wound."
"...Understood."
Astier hesitated for a moment before nodding.
She silently parted her robe, exposing the wound.
Bloody bandages soaked through, and beneath them, flesh stained red.
I threaded the needle with thread.
Familiar hand movements I'd used countless times on the battlefield.
When suturing wounds, speed and precision were everything.
Yet with Astier's body before me, my hands hesitated just a little.
"It's a miracle the blade missed your heart."
The moment the needle pierced flesh, a strange sensation—like threading wet paper—transmitted to my fingertips.
Astier clenched her teeth without so much as a twitch, but cold sweat had already beaded on her brow.
Her face clearly showed the pain she endured, yet she said nothing.
She simply closed her eyes, gritted her teeth, and entrusted her body to my hands.
"Must hurt like hell."
"Does... anyone not find this painful?"
"Most don't."
As I stitched, my eyes naturally traced her body.
Layer upon layer of scars etched into her trained physique.
Some fresh, others old.
It felt eerily familiar, mirroring my own condition.
After eleven years dancing on the edge of death, not a single inch of my body remained unscathed.
The only sound filling the space was the needle piercing flesh.
I broke the silence first.
"...Have you been getting hurt like this all along?"
She didn't answer.
I finished quietly, cutting the thread, then spoke.
"When we interrogated Asren Park, you kept avoiding his eyes. And what he said at the end... that you could have stabbed him but didn't."
She drew in a small breath.
I paused without continuing.
"Did you hesitate against an enemy? No, let me rephrase. Why do you hold back?"
The words sounded ridiculous even as I said them.
What a stupid question.
Why hold back?
Anyone human would balk at killing another person.
Even I, from the modern world, had hesitated at first and nearly died for it.
Astier stayed silent for a long while before answering softly.
"...I was afraid. Afraid I might be wrong. Afraid I might misjudge them."
"Afraid you might be wrong?"
Astier reached her hand toward the ceiling.
"I don't know those people's lives. What they hoped for, what they lived for. To kill someone without knowing anything about them..."
She stared at her own hand.
No blood, no dirt.
Yet she tried to shake something off as if it were stained.
For an instant, her shoulders trembled faintly.
It was her fear and self-reproach.
"...It's impossible for me."
Her words made me pause my hands.
I carefully set the needle down.
"If you don't kill, you might end up dead yourself."
"Even so... it's better than me being wrong."
I couldn't understand Astier.
No one could deny she was worth more than those evildoers.
Yet she thought dying was better than killing.
"He'd killed dozens. Didn't deserve to live."
"Even so... he might have been a father to someone."
"And?"
"I... I'm always afraid I'll be wrong."
Her voice trembled, trailing off softly.
"I'm not sure if judging that person is truly right."
"Even if that father destroyed another family?"
"Yes. That's why they might deserve to pay the price. But I'm neither accurate enough nor worthy enough to deliver that judgment with my own hands."
Criminals paying for their crimes was only natural.
But she believed she could never be the one to deliver that punishment.
"Does anyone have the right to judge another? Without knowing everything about them... I can't be certain they're worthy of death."
Does anyone have the right to judge another human?
Does humanity truly have the ability to weigh the gravity of sins?
If the weight of sin is just the sum of victims, is that really justice?
That's not good or evil—it's mere arithmetic.
Am I truly good enough to judge others?
I recalled the bandits I'd faced on the way to the Northern Frontline.
I killed to avoid being killed.
Thousands of deaths flashed before my eyes.
In killing for my own desires, I was no different.
Did I even have the right to call it justice?
I knew it wasn't about upholding righteousness.
What I wanted was simple, personal desire.
So everything I'd done until now wasn't some grand judgment or trial.
Astier gazed at me with a pale face.
Her calm gray-blue eyes held something strangely soothing.
"Even if they're villains scorned by the world, if there's the slightest chance they could change... I have no right to deny that possibility."
"..."
People always change.
They never stop in one place, always moving forward, evolving.
That change itself proves humanity's potential to exist as humans and grow further.
"Does every human truly have that potential?"
Astier's eyes trembled without blinking.
The lantern flame flickered in the darkness as her voice flowed low.
"Three years ago, I killed a criminal."
Astier's gaze turned not to the present, but the past.
Three years prior, Astier had personally executed a criminal who'd killed her comrade.
It wasn't personal revenge.
The man had been illegally distributing a special drug, so it had to be done.
No regrets—relief, even.
She'd felt she'd enforced justice.
Recovering the drugs was straightforward.
She thought nothing would be left in his home.
But there was a child.
A child asking after the father she'd killed—what had Astier felt then?
"The child clutched a ragged teddy bear. It was past their birthday, but they whimpered that Daddy hadn't come."
Her hands trembled.
Lips, eyes—every muscle expressing her emotions shook.
Astier drew a breath.
"The child was innocent. But... because of me, they were left alone."
I watched her silently.
The regret and sorrow she'd harbored all this time surfaced on her face for the first time.
I listened to Astier's confession.
I understood her thinking.
Yet fully accepting her logic was hard.
After a silent moment gazing at her, I spoke quietly.
"So, where's that child now?"
Astier blinked.
As if surprised by a question she hadn't expected.
"...A friend in the capital is looking after them now."
"You and your friend sharing guardianship?"
"I just asked her to help—the real guardian is me."
"Then why try to die?"
Astier clamped her mouth shut.
I continued without hesitation.
"You have this habit of dressing up killing in grand terms like judgment or trial. But murder can't carry that kind of weight."
Murder can't bear lofty justifications like retribution or judgment.
Not that it means all lives have equal value or should never be taken.
I'm no bleeding heart.
"Just one thing. Die, or atone."
This was my impression from hearing her story.
Maybe she didn't want to die after all.
Her values and logic had contradictions.
"But I wonder if your death would even mean anything."
Good and evil aren't addition and subtraction.
Karma from killing others can't be forgiven by dying.
Because the one to forgive it is gone.
I can only carry it until my last breath.
"Don't die. Don't even try."
Astier was a good person.
Her hesitation and anguish as she pressed forward—that alone proved her humanity.
Most people don't.
"Fast or slow, everyone dies eventually. So live now."
I stood, turning from Astier.
"Where... where are you going?"
"I'll handle the duke's house alone."
Feeling the breeze through the door crack, I added,
"Disobeying orders means the brig."