The Woman Who Gathered Her Dead Husband's Body Stood Beside Me
Day two at the knight order. Eight in the morning.
Forty men of the Third Platoon stood assembled on the training grounds. Armor on, swords at their hips, eyes turning up toward me.
Absurdly perfect. Seven parts distrust, two parts curiosity, one part expectation—roughly that ratio.
I stood at the front of the grounds in my black dress uniform, the only man among the knights without armor.
"Good morning. I am Kang Do-hyun, Royal Psychologist. Starting today, we will be training your minds."
A low murmur ran through the ranks.
"A psychologist? One of those mind-readers?"
"He didn't even bring a sword."
"What kind of training does he think he's going to put us through?"
Exactly the reactions I'd expected. My strategy was a simple one: show them.
"First, a question. Is there anyone here who feels afraid when fighting the demons?"
Silence. Naturally, not a single hand went up. A knight's pride would never permit him to admit to fear—that was the code of manhood in military culture, where showing fear was proof of weakness.
"No one, then. Good."
I smiled.
"Then I'd like each of you to come stand before me, one at a time, and meet my eyes for just three seconds."
The knights approached in order, expressions bewildered.
The first. Late twenties, brown hair, solid build. Our eyes met. Three seconds. I didn't use Memory Retrieval. Pure observation, nothing more.
"Next."
The second. Early thirties, blond, a scar under one eye. Three seconds.
"Next."
The third. The fourth. The fifth. All forty passed before me.
Then I called the first knight back.
"...Your name?"
"Berndt."
"Berndt. Do you sleep well at night?"
Berndt's expression shifted, ever so slightly. His eyes flickered for an instant. Bingo.
"Well... I sleep fine."
"You started having nightmares about four months ago, didn't you? A demon ambush. A dream where a comrade dies beside you."
Berndt's face went white.
"H-how did you..."
The knights stirred.
"It shows."
I explained—the things anyone could read without Memory Retrieval.
"The dark circles under your eyes mean sleep deprivation. The knight order keeps a rigid schedule, so if you're not sleeping, it isn't that you won't—it's that you dread it. Because the moment you fall asleep, the nightmares come. And that habit of yours, where your left hand keeps drifting to your sword hilt? That's a safety-check behavior even you don't notice. A self-soothing signal: 'I have a weapon, therefore I'm safe.' A textbook symptom of trauma."
Berndt's eyes went wide.
"Everything you just said... it's all true."
The knights' gazes changed. The tone of the murmuring shifted from suspicion to astonishment.
"Fear is nothing to be ashamed of."
I looked around at the knights.
"Fear is a warning signal your brain sends out. A message: 'Danger—be careful.' When a knight feels fear, it doesn't mean he's weak. It means his mind is working exactly as it should."
"But what if you're afraid in the middle of a battle..." one of the knights said.
"You don't need to erase fear. You only need to master it."
I began teaching them breathing techniques—diaphragmatic breathing, and the four-seven-eight method.
"Breathe in for four seconds, hold for seven, exhale for eight. This activates the vagus nerve, letting you regulate the fight-or-flight response."
The knights followed along, awkwardly. The sight of forty armored men sitting with their eyes closed and breathing was a slightly strange one, but they threw themselves into it so earnestly that I could tell they were feeling the effect.
"Now picture a combat scenario. Close your eyes. The demons are right in front of you."
Their breathing turned ragged. Heart rates climbing. The fight-or-flight response beginning.
"There—your hearts are racing right now, aren't they? That's normal. In exactly this state, we do the four-seven-eight breath."
In for four. Hold for seven. Out for eight.
"...Oh."
The knights' expressions changed. They had felt their own heart rates actually settle.
"Do this for thirty seconds before a battle, and your hands will tremble less, your field of vision will widen. You're not erasing the fear—you're riding on top of it."
"It actually works..."
"Just from breathing?"
The atmosphere had flipped completely. A first session that had begun with distrust at seven parts ended with expectation at seven.
After the training ended, Berndt came up to me. His eyes were red.
"Thank you, Counselor."
"The nightmares... I couldn't tell any of the others. I've been suffering through it alone all this time."
"Let's set up a private session sometime."
"Yes. Please do."
The knights dispersed in twos and threes, and off to one side stood someone with her arms crossed.
Helga.
She had watched from beginning to end. Her silver hair glittered in the morning sun. Her expression was as stony as ever, but the crease between her brows was fainter than the day we'd first met.
...Silver hair in the sunlight is so fucking hot it hurts. That one fractional softening of her stone-cold face, and my gut pulls all on its own. Inside the dress uniform, things are quietly going rigid. Hold it. Clamp down, hard. There are forty armored men standing right here, you dumbass.
Zing. My cock twitched, once.
"Instructor Sital, what did you think?"
"...Not bad."
The first positive assessment I'd ever gotten out of Helga. Not 'good,' just 'not bad'—but a huge advance over yesterday's 'a man who can't even swing a sword.'
"How did you read Berndt's condition in three seconds?"
"Observation. The human body can't hide what the mind is doing."
Helga looked at me for two seconds. Then she turned her gaze away and walked off.
Fucking prickly, that woman. Christ, is one compliment really that precious to her? Not that I'm in any position to go begging for one.
"...What a strange man."
It drifted over faintly from behind me—so quiet I couldn't tell whether it was Helga's voice or just the wind.
Afternoon. The records room beside the training grounds.
I summoned Lebrant.
"Adjutant Lebrant, I'll need the order's personnel records. To design a training program, I have to know each platoon member's combat experience, injury history, that sort of thing."
"Of course, Counselor. I'll have them ready at once."
Lebrant was courteous. Too courteous. He managed his image beautifully—the textbook likeable type.
While he went to fetch the records, I observed him again. His gaze was natural; he never avoided my eyes. The mark of a practiced liar. His hands moved a touch too fast as he passed the documents over—possibly an unconscious urge to skip past one particular page. And when he smiled, only his mouth smiled. His eyes didn't. There were no true laugh lines at their corners. Not a real smile.
Fake. This man's courtesy was a performance.
"Here you are."
"Thank you. Ah—Adjutant Lebrant."
"Yes?"
"When you have a moment later, could you walk me through the order's patrol routes? I'd like to get a feel for the training terrain."
"Of course."
Lebrant smiled. His eyes, once again, did not.
I carried the records back to the instructors' office, shut the door, and called up again the memory fragments I'd caught with Memory Retrieval. A black seal. A demon crest. 'On the full moon of next month...' 'The knight order's deployment...'
If Lebrant was corresponding with the demons, the physical evidence existed somewhere. Letters. Seals. A crest. But searching his quarters now would tip him off—and the moment a spy goes on alert, the evidence starts disappearing.
So, another way. A trap.
Feed out false information. To Lebrant alone. If he passed it along to the demons, their reaction would confirm him as the spy. Dangle the bait and watch for the bite.
The problem was that verification takes time. The demons would need days to react to the intel. To wrap this up inside two weeks, I'd need a second confirmation running in parallel. I had to use Memory Retrieval more deeply—not half a second, but two or three. The longer the contact, the likelier he'd notice, so I needed a setting where lingering eye contact felt natural. A drinking session.
I opened the personnel file to Lebrant's page. Lebrant Hermann. Thirty-two years old. Eight years of service. Performance: excellent. Twelve deployments. Injury history: one minor graze to the left forearm.
It was the spotlessness that bothered me. No mistakes, no debts, no family strife anywhere in the record. It read less like a man's life and more like a cover document—too straight, too neat.
The mess hall, evening.
I carried my tray to the officers' table. The seat across from mine was empty again today.
Clack.
Helga set her tray down.
"Sitting here again, I see."
"There was nowhere else."
Empty seats were strewn all around us. It had been the same yesterday, and it was the same excuse today.
"...I heard about your husband."
I'd brought it up. Carefully.
Helga's fork stopped.
"...From whom."
"The knights."
"Idle gossip."
Helga's voice had dropped a register. But she wasn't angry. It was defense.
Silence stretched. Five seconds. Ten. I waited. The first rule of clinical psychology: the tolerable silence. Fifteen seconds.
"...His name was Arnon."
Helga spoke first.
"My husband. Arnon Sital. He died two years ago. A demon raid. Shielding me."
"..."
"He was a fool. I'm the instructor, aren't I. A man weaker than me tried to shield me."
Her voice was flat. Far too flat. The voice of someone long practiced at crushing feeling down.
"I heard you recovered the body yourself."
"...I did. From head to toe. I didn't leave a single piece of him behind."
Helga's violet eyes caught the candlelight. The dam holding back two years of emotion sat just beneath the surface.
"It must have been agony."
"I'm a knight."
"Knights are human too."
"..."
Helga looked at me. Her violet eyes wavered, just for an instant. Three-tenths of a second. Then they came back. Expressionless.
"Just eat your meal."
Helga silently cut into her meat. I silently spooned up my soup. This silence was warmer than yesterday's.
The silence between Helga and me was warmer than the one before. Instead of tallying up a trust meter, I simply waited for her to choose her next words.
Day three at the knight order.
Morning training, Second Platoon. The same pattern as yesterday—eye contact, observation, analysis, breathing instruction—but today I went one step further: group counseling.
"Pair up, two to a pair. Tell each other the hardest moment you've ever faced in battle."
The knights grew awkward. Men aren't used to sharing feelings with each other.
"There's one rule. While your partner is speaking, offer no advice and no counsel. Just listen."
Listening. That alone heals. In front of someone who truly hears them, people come apart—and that coming apart is the recovery itself.
Thirty minutes later, the knights' faces had changed. The awkwardness was gone; earnest conversation flowed all across the yard.
It was going fucking beautifully. One crack, and I'd broken straight through that macho-bullshit culture. Sure, at the end of the day I'm still a bastard who uses people's hearts as tools—but at least something good leaks out through this particular crack.
"I was scared too, that time."
"You too, brother? I thought I was the only one..."
"Two years I couldn't tell a soul."
The emotions hidden beneath armor were coming out into the open. Helga observed again today, standing at the corner of the training grounds with her arms crossed. But her expression was different. Not yesterday's appraising look—today it was a look that wanted to understand. And as she watched the knights speak to one another, something like longing flickered through her eyes. Had she and Arnon ever talked like this?
When the training ended, Helga came over to me.
"...The knights are changing."
"This is only the beginning."
"Impressive, for a beginning."
There it was—a compliment, from Helga's own mouth. From 'not bad' to 'impressive.' Two rungs in two days.
"Would you care to try it yourself, Instructor? The partner counseling."
"What?"
"If you only order the knights to do it, it loses its force. When the instructor goes first, the effect is far greater."
Helga's eyes narrowed.
"You're telling me to talk about my feelings?"
"One hard moment is all. It doesn't have to be about combat."
"...I'll think about it."
That was not a refusal. In Helga's language, 'I'll think about it' is a yes.
Lunch. Berndt came and sat down beside me.
"Counselor, I didn't have the nightmare last night."
"Did you do the breathing?"
"Yes. Before bed. I still dreamed, but I didn't wake up in the middle of it."
Results after a single day. The sleep benefits of the four-seven-eight method are well documented—it calms the autonomic nervous system and activates the parasympathetic response, raising the quality of sleep.
"That's a good sign. Keep it up."
"Thank you. Truly."
When Berndt went back to the yard wearing a changed face, the other knights began asking about counseling sessions of their own. And from a distance, Lebrant watched that scene for a long, long while.
Afternoon. I met with Lebrant again.
"Adjutant Lebrant, might I have that briefing on the patrol routes?"
"Of course."
We spread the map out. While Lebrant explained the routes, I let the false intelligence slip out, casual as anything.
"A supply convoy is coming from the royal capital next week. By the eastern road. I'll be riding along myself, to train the escort detail."
The eastern road. A lie. The real supply route ran west—I had reported to the queen in advance and arranged for the convoy to take the western road.
If Lebrant passed this information to the demons, they would strike the eastern road. Pre-position an ambush force there, and the spy is confirmed.
"The eastern road? Isn't that rather dangerous?"
"The decision came down from the palace. What say do I have in it?"
Lebrant nodded. His face was calm—but for an instant, a tenth of a second, his eyes flicked down and to the left. Down and left... an internal dialogue. He was calculating something.
He'd swallowed it. Whether or not he'd taken the bait, the information was delivered. Now all I had to do was wait. And I had a feeling the waiting would burn.
Night.
I was writing reports in the instructors' office when boots sounded in the corridor. Clack, clack, clack. A measured rhythm. Helga's stride.
I looked out the window. Helga was leaving the barracks, walking toward the outer wall. Night patrol. I checked the time. Ten o'clock at night.
I hesitated, then grabbed my coat.
I climbed the stairs to the wall. Wind was blowing; the night air bit cold. Helga stood atop the ramparts, silver hair streaming in the wind. The moonlight caught those silver strands so that she might have been wearing a shining helm.
...Fuck, silver hair rippling in moonlight is so goddamn hot. The night air is this cold, and only my gut smolders with heat. My coat was about to pitch a tent all on its own, so I held my step back a beat. Control yourself. You climbed up here to hear about her dead husband and you're walking around hard? Pathetic. What a piece of shit I am.
Ngh. My cock jumped, once.
"...What did you come up here for?"
Helga said it without turning around. She'd known it was me from the footsteps alone.
"Mind if I walk with you?"
Three seconds of silence. The night wind snapped the banners along the wall.
"...Do as you like."
I took my place beside Helga, and we walked the top of the wall, side by side. Moonlight lay across the plains. Far off, in the direction of demon territory, not a single light showed.
Helga's shoulders had come down half a notch from yesterday. A sign her guard was loosening. The body lowers its walls before the heart does.
"...The moon is huge tonight."
"...It is."
The invitation to walk the wall together had first come from Helga. Pulling on her gauntlets, she added:
"If you're confident you won't run away when I talk about my husband, then follow me."
It wasn't the door of the instructors' office that had opened first—it was the door to a story that had been shut for two years.