My Beloved, Whom I Desire to Kill - 314

On the battlefield, trusting your allies can cost you your life.

They had trusted the report that all enemy troops inside the dam had been neutralized. Yet, while descending to the sluice gate control room, a soldier disguised as an ally burst out from below and unleashed a rifle burst.

The narrow staircase, where the only cover was the body of a fallen comrade and ricocheting bullets flew from all directions, was nothing less than a slide into hell.

It was a deadly slope for the enemy, too. As the soldier in the lead was riddled with bullets and tumbled down, Edwin dropped to the floor, hunkered down behind the next man, and drew the pistol from his waist. He cursed the search party under his breath for creating a situation where they had to use their weapons at all.

BANG!

The pistol’s crack coincided with the cessation of the rifle’s barrage. Hearing the body of the single-shot enemy soldier slide and crash down the steps, Edwin was grateful.

Grateful that luck was still on his side.

A bullet must have flown at his head right then. The mark that had deflected death was now a deep dent in the helmet.

So this is what it feels like.

He understood the feelings of those who cherished and boasted about a coin or a Bible that had been pierced by a bullet. Edwin stroked the helmet that had saved his life, as if to praise it.

He then smiled fondly, a surge of affection washing over him because this rough, unstylish military cap brought to mind the most beautiful person in the world.

He raised his head. The sight of the soldiers sprawled out in exhaustion on both sides of the long, curving tunnel, intermittently lit by bare bulbs, was familiar. Perhaps it was the place itself that made him think of Giselle.

A faded siren blared, retrieved from Edwin’s distant memory.

During his first war, he had been assigned to capture and defend this very dam. It was during his stay here that the event occurred.

Late one night, when everyone but the sentries was asleep, the air raid siren went off from the dam’s watchtower. As Edwin snapped awake and rose from his cot, he heard a little girl’s crying from the next room—she had woken up, too.

Ever since he had taught her what the siren meant, Giselle would immediately burst into tears out of sheer terror whenever the alarm sounded.

Edwin swiftly dressed and gathered his necessary items before stepping into the corridor. From the wide-open building exit, the chaotic clamor of the siren, the shouts of the anti-aircraft gunners, and the thudding of running boots poured in.

—Everyone evacuate to the dam immediately!

After giving the order to his subordinates to move out, he entered the adjacent room, which was opposite the escape route.

He saw the dark room, furnished simply with two cots, a desk, and two chairs. Neither the nurse inside nor Edwin entering the room wasted time with pleasantries.

While the nurse gathered her own and the child’s belongings, Edwin put on his steel helmet and knelt down before the little girl, who was curled up and trembling on the edge of the bed.

—Natalia, we’re going somewhere safe now.

The moment Giselle realized Edwin had arrived, she instantly wrapped her arms around his neck. By then, it was a reflex ingrained in her, like a soldier who had repeated the same drill hundreds of times.

He wrapped her small body, clad only in pajamas and a sweater, in his officer’s jacket like a blanket, and picked her up. The nurse had left a pair of boots at her feet, but Giselle had been too terrified to put them on, so Edwin carried them in his free hand as he hurried out into the corridor.

Now, only the siren was wailing ceaselessly. As soon as he held her, the girl’s loud crying subsided into soft sobs.

She was still scared; the trembling hadn’t stopped. He was running down the stairs, trying to comfort her, when they reached the exit. That’s when the trembling turned into a frantic struggle.

—No! We can’t go out, Ajussi!

Giselle was deathly afraid of going anywhere with a view of the sky once the air raid siren sounded. But the office building next to the dam had no bunker.

She normally understood that they had to go to the dam, which was a bunker in itself, and that they had to go outside to get there. But gripped by fear, the child began to throw a tantrum that, ironically, might hasten their deaths.

He had expected this, which was why he had covered her head with his jacket so she couldn’t see or hear, yet somehow she had sensed they were outside.

Only then did he notice her toes, curled up as if grasping at thin air, at the end of her struggling little legs. She had felt it with her bare skin.

—Stop it. If I fall while carrying you, you’ll get hurt too.

Careful not to stumble in the dark, Edwin tried to reassure her while rushing toward the dam entrance as fast as he could with the child in his arms.

—It’s okay. It hasn’t arrived yet. There’s nothing in the sky, see?

But the Edwin of that time was a novice at parenting. He didn’t realize that his attempt to sound calm would feel like a reckless dismissal to a child who was already all too familiar with air raids.

—It’ll just zoom out and kill us all, sniffle…

It was agonizing when her sobbing, which had just stopped, flared up again.

—Natalia, won’t you trust your Ajussi?

He didn’t have the presence of mind to think of the right words to calm her, so what he blurted out was essentially an adult pleading with a child to show him some mercy.

The feeling he got when Giselle immediately stopped her crying and struggling at his pathetic appeal was utterly strange.

On the battlefield, soldiers sometimes pay with their lives for trusting their own side.

Although Edwin’s accomplishments are now widely known, so his leadership is rarely questioned, back then, his unit was full of people, both above and below him in rank, who distrusted a young Major with disproportionately short service time for his high rank.

Can’t you just trust me?

He had wanted to ask this every time he was met with distrust. But in the world of men, a frank appeal was a symbol of weakness. Who would trust an ineffective commander?

Because of this, the words he had suppressed and swallowed finally slipped out to a child by mistake. Yet, far from doubting him for making such a vulnerable plea, Giselle had simply nodded quietly and settled obediently into his arms.

—I trust you, Ajussi.

Of course, their very first encounter had been purely distrustful. She only began to trust Edwin after he offered basic kindness—food, a place to sleep, and safety.

But wasn’t what he called kindness merely a fundamental human duty, one where his help felt like a form of arrogance? Compared to the competence he had shown his comrades, what he had shown this little girl was pathetically trivial.

Then why did this child trust me so completely?

His chest would swell with emotion, only to sink instantly. He felt a profound pity for an orphan who had no choice but to trust a stranger just to survive. The weight of that faith pressed down on his heart.

I will become the man this child believes in, the one who ensures she never regrets her unconditional trust.

His life had been guided by that resolution, like a landmark.

Should I have proposed with this story?

The thought fleetingly crossed his mind, but quickly shifted. There was a moment when that trust had become poison to Giselle. The vow he made—that he would never again make her regret believing in him—was not a proposal, but a penance.

Moreover, if he had proposed that way, he would have become an untrustworthy man, breaking his promise within a day.

I won’t be able to return to Giselle tonight.

It seemed he was destined to be trapped here until dawn. Edwin stopped listening to the noise seeping through the tightly shut door and gave instructions to an officer sitting nearby.

Soon, soldiers who were able to move gathered supplies from various parts of the dam. Two of them piled crates in the empty space next to Edwin, covered them with blankets, and began making makeshift beds.

The familiar scene plunged Edwin back into old memories.

Back then, this tunnel was designated as a bunker, and supplies for the night—such as crates, and winter gear—were always stored in a warehouse at the end of the corridor.

When he carried Giselle into the tunnel, a long line of makeshift beds, created by soldiers lining up crates against one wall and covering them with blankets, would already be waiting.

He remembered carrying Giselle there that night, too, and only setting her down once he reached an empty crate. He couldn’t let her walk on the cold, dirty floor with bare feet.

He took the socks out of the boots he was carrying, put them on the child’s still-shaking feet, laced up the boots, ensuring they were neither too loose nor too tight, and double-knotted the laces so they wouldn’t come undone.

It was child-rearing, a task he thought he would never have in his life.

In the army, «child-rearing» was just a sardonic term they used when dealing with a clumsy recruit or a difficult subordinate. Edwin was probably the first and last person to actually raise a child in the military, especially in the field.

If he himself found it reckless in hindsight, what must others who watched him have thought? He’d once been told by a general from another unit that it was foolish enough to keep a dog or a cat on the front line, but raising a child was sheer madness.

He didn’t disagree that it was crazy. It was the most sensible insane thing Edwin had ever done in his life.

Where is the woman who no longer needs me to tie her shoelaces, and what is she doing now?

Asure: Well, if you’ve already read it, Libenia’s new novel (currently being released) indirectly brings together characters from this novel and the names of cities from ‘Try Begging’