Chapter 1
Chapter 1
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 1
Chapter Title: Where It All Began
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Let's end it where everything began.
Beth's inner thoughts hadn't even finished with a period when a hasty thud echoed through the dilapidated cabin.
It was the dead of night, shrouded in darkness. Who could possibly come calling at this hour?
"Beth."
At the sound of her name called once more, Beth squeezed her eyes shut. Her jet-black lashes, stark against her pale skin, began to tremble pitifully, as if battered by a winter gust.
It's just the wind. Nothing but the wind. Her lips murmured the meaningless vow, trembling as much as her lashes.
"Beth."
Please don't call my name.
Words she could never voice knotted up in her chest. No coherent thought could emerge from the tangled mess within her heart.
Beth simply wished the man outside would leave—or that the winter wind would blow fiercer to drown out his voice. Failing that, she hoped her ears would go deaf, silencing everything.
Even though her wishes had never once come true in his presence. Foolishly so.
"Beth, I'm hurt."
His voice seeped through the gaps in the weathered plank door, untouched by human hands for ages.
You always get what you want in the end.
Beth redefined the man anew. To stand her ground against him with just a single door between them. A sigh-like chuckle escaped her dry lips.
Her legs, which had seemed rooted forever, stiffened as they moved toward the door.
Toward that low, tender voice calling "Beth" so affectionately. Ever so slowly.
Unable to bring herself to open it, she merely gripped the doorknob and rested her small head against the wood. From the plank's fresh scar where his voice had slipped through moments ago came only the winter's whine. Perhaps she'd mistaken the wind for his voice. He had always resembled winter, after all.
Beth readjusted her grip on the doorknob, her knuckles whitening.
With a creepy creak, the door swung open to reveal a man Beth had never forgotten, nor could ever forget.
Dever Cliff.
His deep ash-gray hair and matching eyes. Fierce yet melancholic gaze. Firmly set lips. Sharply defined features. No different from the last time she'd seen him. If anything, he seemed a bit gaunter.
But Beth had no desire to know what days he'd endured since she left, or how time had ravaged him. That was why she averted her eyes from Dever's insistent stare.
"It really hurts."
In the edge of her downcast gaze, his hand appeared, dripping crimson blood. She didn't want to see it. Yet that hand, marred by scars and streaked with blood, grasped hers.
Her fragile, almost pallid hand grew stained alongside his, but Beth didn't flinch.
She saw, yet didn't see; heard, yet didn't hear.
"Beth, please."
That drove Dever mad.
Dever's knees buckled, crashing onto the worn floor.
His arms around her waist were stubbornly forceful, but the breaths escaping between them trembled like a child's desperate plea for love.
Droplets of blood fell irregularly in his stead, weeping. Beth watched them cleverly seep into the delicate cracks of the old wooden floor.
That poor floor will bear bloodstains forever now.
Beth slowly began stroking the hair of the man whose face was buried in her waist. As the cool strands wound around her slender fingers only to scatter, his trembling shoulders gradually stilled.
I have to say it.
Her endless-seeming caress halted.
In that instant, Dever's loosened arms tightened fiercely around her waist once more.
A fierce gust burst through the half-closed door, and Beth's wind-kissed lips parted slowly.
"Divorce me."
The words she had to say.
"Please."
In a voice as sweet as his.
"Come on, hurry up!"
Startled by the coachman's urging, Beth looked up from the death benefit certificate in her hands.
True to his gruff appearance, the coachman had no patience for dawdling passengers.
He eyed Beth suspiciously as she clambered aboard, then double-checked the paper noting her destination—the one she'd given him along with the fare before entering the records office.
With a snort and a sniff, he cracked the whip expertly. Hooves clattered in rhythm as the once-blue sky began to shift hues.
Cold wind carrying the scent of winter whipped unfiltered across Beth's face on the roofless cart. Her long hair whipped about wildly, but she didn't care. If anything, it was perfect for scattering her cluttered thoughts.
A natural smile curved her lips. It had been ages since she'd gone out. Nothing grand, just reissuing a war death benefit certificate, but Beth felt an unprecedented lightness.
As planned, that evening she would transfer to Madam Molly's frontline military hospital. Exactly one year since arriving at the rear hospital.
She could still picture the rear hospital staff shaking their heads in disbelief. None understood her heart—not even that her sole regret was not going to the front sooner.
Her fingers idly scratched the edge of the thin paper in her pocket. It promised twice the amount from her rear hospital days, in exchange for heading to the front.
She couldn't die for a death benefit, but who knew what the future held.
As gloomy thoughts crept in, Beth tried to focus on the sunset sky reddening and the fields eagerly drinking in its glow.
At the ladies' hospital, there'd be Aines, and Dixie too.
"You look like a nurse. Whatever possessed you to go to that hellhole? Got a big family to feed?"
The coachman's gruff words cut through her drifting thoughts. He'd only wielded the whip until now.
It was the usual question for nurses.
Nexus was a land of frequent wars, prosperous from them, and it honored military merits greatly. The death compensation—unattainable for commoners—and half a soldier's pay exceeding a capital year's salary proved it.
The coachman probably hoped to pass the long road hearing a passenger's tragic tale.
But Beth clamped her lips shut, rolling only her eyes.
In her opposite pocket—sans the certificate—her fingers touched a pencil stub and a sheaf of stiff paper. Should she take them out? As she hesitated, the impatient coachman fired another question.
"I've driven all over Nexus, so I can guess a lady's hometown from one word. You ain't from around here. From Merdin way over there? Lots come from there."
After a long wait with no reply, the coachman tilted his head. Thinking her asleep, he glanced back to find his passenger blinking with an ambiguous smile. No intent to tease or ignore him.
Huh. What's so hard about a single answer? Grumbling, he faced forward again when a thought flickered.
What if she can't speak?
Come to think of it, it was odd. She'd handed over the destination note wordlessly from the start, and despite her gentle looks, hadn't uttered a peep.
About to probe further, his thick lips sealed. What good would asking do? Smacking his lips in frustration, he focused on driving.
The cart halted at the forest path leading to the rear hospital.
"You're a nurse, so you know no carts beyond here."
Beth offered a brief smile—her apology for silence—and stepped onto the path where early dusk was falling, unaware of the coachman's pitying gaze trailing her.
Fallen leaves rustled. Twigs swayed in the wind. Wagon wheels faded into the distance. The sounds Beth cherished tickled her ears.
When the war ends.
In rare peace, Beth habitually imagined postwar life. The happiest future she could envision. Days of savoring pure joy without worry.
Her chest ached from prolonged reverie, eyes threatening tears. She jerked her head up. Then her lips stiffened.
Far off, before the rear hospital, a soldier stood—scanning about as he unlocked the medicine storeroom. A key no one but the director or authorized nurses could hold.
Several armed soldiers followed his gesture, filing orderly into the hospital. Sensing wrongness, Beth moved to flee when a thunderous explosion shook the ground.
Smoke billowed from the hospital windows in an instant.
Indiscernible shouts or screams blurred her sense of reality, as were allies firing mercilessly at the surging wounded.
Allies?
Squinting for a better look, Beth's eyes widened. Her hand clamped over her soundless mouth, trembling.
Kovah Army.
She couldn't mistake them. Dark-skinned with heavy brows, distinct from Nexus. Even in Nexus uniforms, faces couldn't be hidden. How had enemies reached the rear hospital?
Before her shock subsided, headlights pierced the path. Beth crouched into roadside brush.
Her heart raced with the nearing engine roar, but her raised eyes stayed fixed.
Through the speeding military vehicle's window gleamed Hospital Director Chever. He laughed casually with the Kovah soldier beside him, as if long expecting this—as natural as could be.
"Kill all the Nexus scum!"
Beth instinctively crawled deeper into shadow. I have to survive, echoed in her mind.
She plunged blindly ahead until blocked, then plugged her ears and shut her eyes, praying this hell ended soon.
She lost track of time.
When she came to, eerie silence enveloped the forest.
Creeping back cautiously, corpses strewn on leaves proclaimed death everywhere. A ghostly wind like the wail of the dead brushed her back.
Beth frantically stripped a soldier's uniform. Warmth nearly brought tears, but weeping was a luxury. She shed her torn nurse garb, donned the stiff uniform, and ran. Knowing no pursuit, yet unable to stop.
Entering the smoke-filled hospital, she stuffed pockets with dropped painkillers, alcohol swabs, syringes—whatever she found.
Save them. Save them.
Who, she didn't know.
Muttering unknowingly, Beth's eyes burned red.
Escaping rising smoke, she caught her breath. At the road's end where the cart stopped, enemy mines glinted moonlit.
Beth turned to the opposite path.
The road to the front.
A path to death, yet ironically her only path to life.
Beth twisted her long hair up tightly under her helmet once more.
There was but one road she could take.