Chapter 6. The Body Heat of a Letter
Chapter 6. The Body Heat of a Letter
The letter arrived late in the afternoon.
It was a small bundle wedged between wet ration sacks.
The outer cloth was damp, and the corners were caked with dust and dirt.
Yet, the knot that tied it was strangely neat.
Ruan knew who sent it just from that knot.
Meli.
Letters from home were always like that.
Unnecessarily tidy, unnecessarily tight.
A person's character carried over even into their knots.
Sera, while organizing the medicine box, gestured with her chin.
"Your younger sister?"
"Yes."
"Why do you already look so tired?"
Instead of answering, Ruan unwrapped the bundle.
Inside were dried Silver Leaf Herb, a root with a strong bitter scent,
and a letter that wasn't short.
He carefully unfolded the damp paper and began to read from the first line.
Brother.
If you start by saying you're fine, I'll tear this up, so I'll say it first.
The moment he 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. But I feel worse every time your letter arrives. Because every time you write that you're fine, you were anything but.
Last time, you said you hurt your hand a little, but two lines later you wrote that you couldn't hold a needle for long. Before that, you said you got caught in some rain, but then you wrote that you had a fever for three days.
You're bad at lying, but you're strangely diligent at hiding things.
So this time, I'll just ask. Where hurts, and how much.
Ruan unconsciously stopped breathing.
The characters on the paper were just ink, yet they strangely felt like fingers pressing precisely into his flesh.
Sera, going off to get some water from a distance, still looked back.
"What did she 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 before. Fever, cough, fatigue, no overexertion.
The funniest part is that you wrote the words you yourself break the most, and you wrote them the neatest. No overexertion. The advice you gave to others, now give it to yourself. Don't overdo it. Just stay alive.
If I write that one person—you—is more important to me than a hundred wounded people, you'll get angry again. But I'll write it anyway. Because it's true.
Ruan pressed the end of the letter with his finger for a long time.
The paper grew a little warm, as if absorbing his body heat.
Meli was always like that. She never started with comfort.
She would first strike the most painful spot, and only then apply the medicine.
That was her way.
At the bottom of the letter, there was more: how to use the herbs, and news from the village.
The stone wall by the stream had collapsed again, the old man next door's knees had worsened again, the spring planting was a bit delayed.
Ordinary sentences.
That's why they hurt more.
On the battlefield, such ordinariness was too far away.
From inside the tent, Karen's voice was heard.
"Family."
When Ruan looked up, Karen was watching him from the empty spot beside her.
Today her complexion had improved considerably, but her eyes were still sharp, as if digging into a person's insides.
"My younger sister."
Karen looked at the letter in Ruan's hand for a moment and then spoke.
"That's the face of someone being told to stay alive."
Ruan couldn't answer right away.
Sera cut in instead.
"That's right. The first line was telling her brother not to lie."
Karen let out a short laugh.
"A good family."
Ruan lowered his head.
A good family.
That was true. Which made it all the more regrettable.
His replies were always short, and the important parts were always missing.
He tucked the letter into his chest and stood up.
"It's time to organize the list of the deceased."
Sera's expression stiffened for a moment.
The air that had just been filled with talk of the letter instantly cooled.
On the small table behind the medical tent, name tags and record sheets were piled together.
Wet paper, smudged ink, wooden tags stained with blood.
The survivors were evacuated; 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 carefully, letter by letter. He always tried to keep his handwriting steady.
He believed that the names of the dead, at least, should not be disordered.
The second tag had no name.
Messenger assistant. Around twenty years old. He jotted down only brief facial features.
The third: amputation of leg followed by excessive bleeding.
The fourth: head injury.
At the fifth, Ruan's pen tip stopped.
Record omission.
He hated those two words the most.
A person who died without being identified. A person whose name could not be returned to their family.
Sera sat next to him, unfolding other documents, and said,
"If we ask the equipment unit, there might be someone who saw their face."
"I'll look into it."
"You don't have to finish writing them all today."
Ruan shook his head.
"If I put it off today, tomorrow will be even more confusing."
He picked up his pen again, but one blank space wouldn't fill easily.
The face of the soldier he'd missed last night came to mind. The soldier whose neck had been tilted back and was already growing cold before Ruan could even ask his name.
If only he'd moved his hands a little faster.
No, if only he'd let go of someone else a little earlier.
Once his thoughts flowed like that, there was no end.
On the battlefield, death was common. So it was usually handled in numbers.
So many losses, so many evacuated, so many missing.
But Ruan always tried to turn those numbers back into names.
There were moments when he held onto the name tags of the dead longer than those of the living.
Karen spoke quietly.
"You cling to the names of the dead, all of them yourself?"
Without raising his eyes, Ruan replied.
"If the name is missing, the family won't know."
"It's not your fault either."
"That doesn't matter."
Karen was silent for a moment.
On the battlefield, death is quickly sorted.
A single line—"so many losses"—often sufficed.
But Ruan was turning those numbers back into people, one by one.
It felt foreign to Karen.
A hand that even recorded enemy names as a record.
It was a kind of obsession rare in the battlefields she had known.
She thought suddenly.
If she had died last night, would this man have started with her facial features, not knowing her name?
Would he have tried to send her back to someone, even by doing that?
Strangely, that imagination cut deeper into her flesh than a blade tip.
As if trying to change the mood, Sera shook the herb taken from the letter.
"You know why she sent this?"
Ruan answered as soon as he smelled it.
"For headaches."
"Got it right."
"I used it often when I was young."
Karen asked immediately.
"Do you have frequent headaches?"
Sera started to open her mouth, but seeing Ruan's expression, she closed it.
Ruan cut in first.
"Everyone on the battlefield does."
Karen's face showed she didn't believe that answer, but she didn't ask further.
Instead, she looked at the pile of record sheets and picked one up.
"This is a record of enemy prisoners."
"If they're patients, even the enemy is a patient."
Karen's eyes flickered very subtly.
It was rare on the battlefield for enemy names to be recorded.
She put the paper down and let out a short breath.
This place was different from the battlefields she knew.
A tent that tried to hold onto everyone—ally, enemy, and dead alike—with names first.
And at its center stood a military medic who couldn't even properly wield a sword.
As the sun began to set, it was only after writing the last name tag that Ruan stopped his hand.
His wrist was heavy, and his eyes stung.
Still, he pressed each record sheet flat to dry and arranged them in order.
He checked everything again to see if any name was missing.
Watching him, Sera said quietly,
"Your sister was right."
"About what?"
"The person who tells others not to overdo it overdoes it the most themselves."
Instead of replying, Ruan took out the letter again.
The damp paper was a little warmer than before.
He took out a sheet for a reply and began to write a short note.
Meli. I received your letter well. Things here are still bearable. I'll use the herbs you sent well. If the stone wall collapses, just build it again. Take care not to catch a cold.
After writing that far, his pen stopped.
The words he really wanted to say always remained.
I want to go home too. Too many people die here. I couldn't find three names today either.
Sometimes, faces I touched but still missed stay with me at night.
And sometimes, after saving one person, I feel something draining out of me, little by little.
He couldn't write those words in the end.
Ruan folded the paper in half.
Even as he folded the reply, his eyes kept returning to the first sentence.
If you start by saying you're fine, I'll tear this up.
Meli always wrote like that. Frighteningly accurate, and strangely gentle.
She was like that even when their mother was alive.
A child who, when someone was sick, would pick up a herb basket and follow them around before even crying.
For a moment, his mother's hand came to mind.
A hand that had pressed the feverish forehead of a child, and after finally letting go, had washed its own clean hands over and over.
Ruan had never forgotten that image.
He had learned that winter what it meant for the face of the person you couldn't save to linger on your fingertips.
Karen, silently observing Ruan's silence, didn't ask further.
Instead, she said very quietly,
"Your younger sister knows all about your lies."
"Because she's family."
"But she still sends letters."
Ruan gave a very short laugh.
"That's why it's scarier."
Sera nodded.
"Right. She's the kind of person who worries but never lets you off the hook."
As the sound of a stretcher approached from outside, Ruan tucked the reply into his chest.
The warmth of the paper was still there.
He felt that warmth for just a moment longer, then immediately walked off to receive the next patient.
The word "home" was far away,
but as if it hadn't completely broken off.