For Karin, Who Had Only Four Days, I Gave Up Two Steps

Day sixteen on the front line.

I sat in the chair two steps from Karin's bed. It was the second day. Green eyes beneath a fall of red hair studied me, and the wariness in them had eased, just barely, since yesterday.

"...You came again."

"I did."

"Sitting there without saying a word — what kind of counseling is that supposed to be?"

"Coming back to the same place is counseling too. And if you don't feel like talking today, you don't have to."

Karin snorted, but she didn't tell me to leave. I didn't read her memory. At the distance we kept, my E-level ability couldn't reach her at all — and even if it could, there was no reason to open her memories without permission. Instead, I watched how tightly her fingers gripped the edge of the blanket, and where her eyes darted whenever boots rang out in the corridor.

Thirty minutes passed, and as I rose, Karin asked, "Coming back tomorrow?"

"Same time tomorrow."

"Then put the chair half a step closer. You're too far away to shout at from there."

It was her first choice. I left a mark on the chair leg.

"Does the half step closer apply just for tomorrow, or from then on as well?"

"I'll decide when I see you tomorrow."

"All right. Coming closer doesn't mean you can't move back again."

"Do you have to say that every single time?"

"Until you tell me it's a nuisance, Karin."

Karin sighed — but the word nuisance never crossed her lips.

Outside the tent, the royal order to return had arrived. Departure in four days. That left, at most, three more sessions and a single final morning.

Erica looked up from the schedule. "With the time this short, will you compress the stages?"

"No. If Karin's pace changed because of the day I leave, that wouldn't be treatment anymore — just a schedule bent around my convenience."

"Then who takes over once you're in the capital?"

"Starting today, you sit in on every session, Erica — that is, if Karin agrees."

When I explained the condition to Karin, her green eyes went back and forth between Erica and me.

"With both of you here, the doorway gets too blocked."

We moved the chairs — Erica across from the entrance, me against the wall — and left the middle open: a clear path Karin could take past either of us and out the door whenever she wanted.

The handover wasn't paperwork to be signed on the last day. It was the work of bringing her successor into the room, starting today.

On the afternoon of day sixteen, Karin ate lunch outside her bed for the first time. Even with the tray balanced on her knees, she kept checking the entrance.

The door was never left fully open. Whenever passing boots or a stretcher came into view, her guard rose before her appetite did. The canvas was folded back exactly as far as Karin had decided — wide enough to let in light and shadow, narrow enough that no one's ankles showed.

"Closed, it feels like a cage. Open, it feels like someone's about to walk in."

"Then instead of enduring one or the other, choose how wide it opens."

Karin picked a gap about the width of her palm. Erica marked that width with a cord, so the same conditions could be rebuilt at the next meal.

"Don't you hate sitting with your back to the door?"

"If someone comes up behind me, I can't see them."

I turned my chair around and set my own back against the wall. An arrangement that wouldn't erase her fear — only make the vigilance a little less exhausting to carry.

Erica sat across from her and told the story of her own first day at the front: how even a military physician had thrown up the first time she saw a corpse, and how she had checked the tent entrance every single night.

Karin stared at her, astonished. "You were scared too?"

"I still am. I've just gotten faster at pretending I'm not."

When the authority in the room admitted to fear, Karin's shoulders came down a little. Halfway through lunch she set down her spoon and asked before I could, "When I take up a sword again, my hands are going to shake. Will you still be beside me then?"

"For the first time, yes. After that, Erica. After that, you, alone."

"Why won't you just promise to stay?"

"Because this treatment isn't about tying you to my side. It's about sending you back out of the war."

Karin's face said she didn't like that answer, but in the end she nodded. The first thing she picked up that afternoon wasn't a real sword — it was a twig about the thickness of a chopstick.

The moment her hand closed around it, her wrist went rigid.

"You don't have to swing it like a weapon. Start with the weight — just tell me what it feels like."

"Light. The surface is rough. The end is snapped off."

"Is there blood on your hand right now?"

"No."

"If you want to put it down, put it on the table — not the floor."

She didn't set it down right away. Only after counting to ten did she lower it onto the table. The goal of that first exercise was never the swinging. It was deciding, with her own hand, when to hold and when to let go.

The second time, I showed her a short wooden sword. Karin looked at it and didn't touch. The third option — a real blade — was never brought inside the tent at all.

"Four days, and this is all we get done?"

"There's someone to carry on after the four days. That's better than straining today, taking hold of a sword, and lying awake all night for it."

"Easy for you to say. You're the one leaving."

She wasn't wrong. For a healer on his way out, just wait is an easy thing to say. The ones who had to endure the waiting were Karin and Erica.

"Which is why I'm not leaving behind my goals. I'm building a chart the two of you can keep using — one Karin can revise herself."

Instead of answering, Karin drew a mark of her own beside the twig.

The day Karin was first carried into the field hospital, she wouldn't even give her name. Dried blood matted her red hair, and her green eyes fixed on nothing but the tent entrance. Whenever a male medic came near, her hand crept toward the empty scabbard at her waist.

The report about her striking a medic was missing its beginning. He had grabbed her jaw without a word to force the medicine down. The moment her eyes opened, Karin believed an enemy had pinned her — and the punch came first.

After treating the medic's split lip and Karin's scraped knuckles alike, Marta rewrote the report. From Patient Disturbance to Defensive Reaction Following Unannounced Contact.

There was no punishment for Karin. Instead, every member of the medical staff was made to state their name and their purpose first, from two steps outside her bed.

On my first day, her hand went looking for that empty scabbard too.

"Kang Do-hyun. Royal counselor. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I've come to ask whether I may sit in that chair."

No answer came.

"If there's no answer, I won't sit today. I'll leave the water and go."

Karin's gaze flicked to the water bottle, then returned to the chair.

"Not the door side. The wall side."

The first sentence she ever gave me.

That first day, I set the water bottle down farther than two steps away and walked out. On the second visit I placed the chair and sat for ten minutes. Not until the third did Karin say her name.

She didn't drink the water right away, either — she suspected the unsealed water might have something in it. Only after Erica drank first from the same pitcher, and Karin herself picked out a fresh cup, did it touch her lips.

During those ten minutes on the second visit, I asked nothing at all. I only said when I had come and when I would leave. "One hourglass, starting now. When the sand runs out, I leave first."

When I kept to the sand and rose exactly on time, Karin stared at the hourglass as though it had done something impossible. That I hadn't stretched the minutes to pull more words out of her became the first thread of trust.

On the third visit I didn't ask for her name. When I simply gave mine again, Karin answered first. "Karin."

"I heard it."

"Aren't you going to write it down?"

"Am I allowed to?"

Only after her permission came did the first line of Erica's chart receive a name.

"Why do you keep coming? You have plenty of other patients."

"Not because you're a patient. Because yesterday, I said I'd come back."

The judgment that a person who keeps his word is safe wasn't built by suggestion. It was built by repetition. So I left a mark on the chair leg every day — so that Karin could later confirm with her own eyes how far she had come.

And the marks measured more than distance. How wide the door stood, how long each session ran, how many people were in the room, whether a weapon was visible. If anxiety ever spiked and the chair slipped half a step back, that went into the record too, un-erased. The line moving backward, and then forward again, was as much Karin's history as any progress.

Half a step on day sixteen might have looked like nothing. Set against the empty scabbard of the first day, it was the longest distance Karin had ever crossed on her own.

That evening, a soldier from Karin's own tent came by to greet her now that she was up and around. At first Karin just clutched her blanket — but the soldier never once touched on the war, cursing only the mess hall's wretched soup, and little by little Karin drifted into ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the conversation.

Before visiting, the soldier had sent her a note. Three questions, written down:

Karin marked Ten minutes and No war talk. The question of letting anyone in she deliberated over until the very end, and then circled — a small, careful circle.

Even after coming inside, the soldier stayed by the entrance, never once approaching Karin's cot.

"Want to eat together tomorrow?"

Karin didn't answer right away. A long while later, she nodded once. The count of safe people had grown from two — Erica and me — by exactly one more.

At lunch the next day, Karin was already waiting at the promised seat. Her chair faced the entrance, but sat a handspan closer to the table than the day before. When her comrade set down the soup, Karin didn't reach for war stories — she broke the bread in half first.

When the ten minutes were up, the comrade rose to leave.

"Send a note again next time," Karin said. "And on any day when the war talk is allowed, you mark it first."

The definition of a safe person was quietly changing — no longer someone who could read your heart unasked, but someone who asked, and waited for the answer.

Day seventeen. The chair: one and a half steps.

Karin named her squad members one at a time. Raoul. Jess. Mina. Owen. After the last name, her breath caught.

Under each name, Erica left a blank line — a space not for how they died, but for something remembered from when they were alive.

Raoul picked the carrots out of his soup. Jess sang only when it rained. Mina polished her blade faster than anyone in the squad. Owen always checked a retreat order twice.

Four people came back, one by one, out of the single line that read Squad Annihilated. Karin's voice broke at Owen's entry — but she didn't tear the paper.

"I heard the retreat order. I pretended I didn't. I thought if I went back in, I could still save them."

"And that's why you were left behind?"

"No. I went back in, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and the squad commander lashed me onto a horse and sent me out of there. That person never came back."

I didn't rush to tell her it wasn't her fault. Spoken too early, those words slide right off a survivor.

"Do you remember the last thing they said to you?"

Karin's hands released the blanket.

"Survive, and report."

"Then you're still carrying out that order."

For the first time, her green eyes settled on my face — and stayed.

"What difference does a report make?"

"The next unit can learn from what a survivor saw."

"Then I'd have to write down my bad calls, too."

"Write what you remember separately from the command's records. Memory is not a verdict."

We brought in a tactical map. Karin marked the direction the enemy had appeared from, the spot where she'd heard the retreat signal, the point where the commander had tied her to the horse. When her hands began to shake partway through, she covered the map.

The report she finished over three sittings contained no sentence like if only I had been faster. In their place were times, distances, a hill no one had seen, a messenger line gone dead.

The guilt hadn't vanished. But on a map that guilt alone had once been left to explain, other causes finally had room to exist.

Day eighteen. Karin sat in a chair outside her bed — one step of distance. I called Erica over and had her run the same grounding questions herself.

"Three things you can see right now."

"The lamp. The water bottle. That man's shoes."

"Two things you can hear."

"A cart outside the tent. Doctor Erica's pen."

"One thing you can touch."

Karin hesitated a moment, then reached out and rested two fingers on the back of my hand.

"The hand of someone who won't run."

The instant we made contact, I felt [Memory Reading] strain to open. Red earth, the flank of a horse, the image of someone binding Karin's waist with rope — it bled in from the edges.

I shut the ability. What I had been permitted today was contact for the present senses. Not memory.

"Your memory nearly opened just now. I didn't look."

Her fingers went stiff.

"You only look if I permit it. Right?"

"Yes. Today, contact only."

"Then keep it closed."

"I will."

Karin didn't take her hand away right away. More than the mere fact that I had the ability, it was the confirmation that even able to open it, I had chosen not to — that became her anchor now.

Erica's pen had stopped moving. I didn't turn my hand to grip hers. Karin had been the one to reach out first, so I let her be the first to let go.

Thirty seconds later, Karin withdrew her hand. The record did not read Therapist Contact. It read Karin Chose Thirty Seconds of Contact.

That ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠evening, Erica put her notes from the session she had led in order.

"I believe I can take over from here. Even after you return to the capital, Teacher."

"I may have come all this way just to hear that."

Karin read the record for herself. "When Doctor Erica takes over, where does the chair go?"

"I'll start half a step farther back than where I sat today."

"Why farther back?"

"Because you haven't chosen your distance from me yet, Karin."

Karin considered for a moment, then pointed at the same seat Erica had used today. "Today, here. Tomorrow I'll ask again."

The distance for the very first session of the handover — Karin had set it herself.

Day nineteen. The day before departure.

Karin was out at the training yard from the morning, sword in hand. Three swings in, her hand trembled and the sword fell. I didn't pick it up for her. I stood at her side instead.

The sound of the blade striking the stone floor rang out loud across the yard.

Clang.

Karin folded in on herself where she stood. Her green eyes had left the training yard for somewhere else entirely — somewhere back at the outpost. I didn't reach out a hand.

"Three things you can see."

There was no answer.

Erica pulled the tent flap open and pointed to the flag beyond the training ground. Karin swallowed twice, then found her voice. "The red flag. The wooden fence. The fallen sword."

"Two things you can hear."

"A horse whinnying. The sound of your pen."

"One thing you can touch."

Karin closed her bare hand around a fistful of dirt.

"Dry dirt."

This time she came back to the present without my hand. It was the first proof that the procedure would hold even when the healer changed.

"Once more. Today's goal isn't doing it well. It's picking it up again."

Karin spat out a curse and picked up the sword. The fourth swing was a wreck — but it went all the way through.

There was no fifth. Karin slid the sword back into its scabbard and marked the Picked It Up Again column on today's chart herself.

"When you go to the capital, are you taking this chart with you?"

"The original stays with you, Karin. I'm taking only a copy, with the names struck out."

"Why?"

"Because even if I report my results to the queen, I have no right to haul off your memories like trophies."

Karin folded the original and slipped it into her own pack. The owner of the treatment record was now beyond question.

The handover terms were completed before departure as well:

Reading the last line, Karin gave a short snort.

"You can't even manage that much?"

"I can't. If I'm not here, I can't read the hearts that are here, either."

"Good."

She wasn't smiling, but the tension at the corner of her mouth gave a little.

The sun had gone down by the time I returned to my barracks — and there at my door stood a head of red hair. Karin, dressed in a thin training uniform instead of armor, the morning's fallen sword in her hand.

"You leave tomorrow, I heard."

"At dawn."

Karin leaned the sword against the wall. And then she closed the distance — not two steps, but one, then half a step, until at last she stood within reach of my hand.

"That distance isn't on today's chart."

"That's why I came in person."

"Why bring the sword?"

"To leave it outside the door. If I carried it in, I'd end up watching it the whole time, too."

Karin had stood the weapon she leaned on outside and come in without it. No one had disarmed her — she had chosen the place to set it down, for the sake of feeling safe.

"Tonight, don't just sit there without saying anything."

And Karin took my hand first.