My Beloved, Whom I Desire to Kill - 319

It was a man.

—There was one more female officer at the position. What happened to her?

He grabbed the medics and asked, but they all shook their heads. They hadn’t seen her. There were no fragments of an unknown body, either.

That meant Giselle was still out there, somewhere on that mountaintop. Unable to walk out from her hiding spot. She was alive. Waiting to be saved. In a state where she couldn’t even raise her voice.

Edwin groaned, praying that her injuries were merely severe. What a cruel prayer.

The thought that he had been safely dozing while Giselle was struggling in fear and pain at the crossroads of life and death made bile rise in his throat, mixed with the smell of blood. He felt utterly pathetic for being so late in going to find her.

Please, please, just wait for me.

Edwin immediately dispatched the medical team to the position. This time, he went with them. His heart, seated in the passenger seat, lurched violently like the car rattling as it sped up the mountain road.

This is the price for barely making it out alive, just to see you again.

Why were you there? Why did you man the anti-aircraft gun? I told you not to. Why won’t you listen to me?

Giselle Bishop, always doing as she pleased. The woman who constantly drove Edwin Eccleston mad, and the reason for living that he would never find again in his life.

Giselle, I can’t be without you. So please, just be alive, no matter what state you’re in.

He never wanted to see her face in eternal sleep. From that moment on, he would no longer be able to feel gratitude for being alive. Edwin’s life would stop at that time.

Edwin meticulously scanned the dirt road and the forest bathed by the headlights. Sadly, the luck of Giselle running out unharmed did not happen. He didn’t even see a trace of anyone fallen.

He looked up the slope and the tip of the gun barrel, sharply silhouetted against the dark blue sky, came into view. They were close to the position.

What fate awaits me there?

He squeezed his eyes shut to steel himself, and in the instant he opened them, a small light twinkled in the forest as the headlights swept past it while the car took a curve.

A golden light.

It was an artificial gleam that shouldn’t be found in the forest.

—Stop.

It was so small and passed so quickly that he couldn’t be sure he’d seen it clearly, yet Edwin couldn’t deny the intuition that it was an object he knew. He leaped out of the car the moment it stopped.

He swept the flashlight across the forest. The light twinkled once more. He approached, illuminating the spot with a long beam, and finally saw it: a four-leaf clover necklace caught on a bush.

Giselle is here.

—Shine the headlights this way!

Two beams of yellow light pierced the darkness of the forest. Because the slope was steep, they couldn’t illuminate the distant hillside.

—Giselle!

—Lieutenant Bishop!

With a flashlight in one hand and a pole or branch in the other, they began searching the hillside. Every time Edwin poked the stick into the thick, unresponsive undergrowth, he contradictorily hoped for nothing to catch.

—Quiet, everyone!

He thought he had heard a familiar voice. He strained his ears in the quiet forest, but only the indifferent hooting of an owl echoed.

Was it auditory hallucination? He clenched the four-leaf clover in his hand, as if blaming it, when…

—Here… here…

Giselle’s voice spread thinly in the darkness, then scattered. It was to the left. Edwin and the medics immediately headed in the direction of the sound.

Giselle is alive.

That she was able to speak—could there be any greater blessing amid this misfortune? His cruel prayer had been answered. Why she couldn’t get out on her own no longer mattered.

The heart that had been racing toward her stopped the moment his flashlight illuminated a gruesome sight. Giselle was lying face down and reversed on the slope. She was pinned underneath a tree trunk that had split open and fallen.

—Giselle!

He immediately rushed to her, took off the loosened helmet from her turned head, and bent down to meet her eyes. Her fearfully trembling gaze fixed on Edwin at that moment. Her eyes widened, and tears began to form.

—I’m not seeing things, am I?

Misunderstanding that she was seeing a hallucination of Edwin in her final moments, Giselle’s entire body trembled violently.

—No. Can you feel my hand?

He wanted to embrace her, but he couldn’t.

—Can you move your arms and legs? Tell me if there’s any pain or if you’ve lost sensation anywhere.

—I-I think I’m bleeding.

—Where?

—I don’t know. I can’t see it, so I can’t stop the bleeding.

—It’s alright. We’ll find it and treat it for you.

While the medics checked the injury, all the comfort Edwin could offer was stroking Giselle’s head and holding her hand.

Thankfully, her limbs were all intact. He had assumed she was hit by shrapnel, as her uniform was torn in several places, but those were just scrapes from tumbling down the slope. Edwin was taking a deep breath of relief when he froze.

Then where is that metallic smell of blood coming from…?

His flashlight beam scanned down Giselle’s body and stopped as if frozen beneath the tree splinter that was wedged across her thigh. One leg of her uniform pants was completely soaked dark red. Below it, the moss, which should have been green, was submerged in a crimson pool.

It was Giselle’s blood.

—I often dream that I find you lying in a pool of blood after you enlisted. But in the nightmare, it’s your own blood.

Edwin’s nightmare had become reality.

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A piece of mortar shrapnel was lodged in the side of her left thigh. It was the size and thickness of the lighter Giselle used to carry.

The shrapnel hadn’t severed Giselle’s life, but it instantly severed Edwin’s composure. Only because she wasn’t dead yet.

—There’s a possibility a major blood vessel has been grazed.

Although the vessel was clamped shut by the embedded shrapnel and compressed by the fallen tree, delaying the hemorrhage, the amount of blood Giselle had lost while their rescue was delayed was not insignificant.

As soon as the medics finished staunching the bleeding and providing emergency care, they urgently transported the patient down the mountain.

There’s a doctor down there. She’ll be fine.

Edwin clung tightly to the hand of Giselle, who was lying in the back of the rattling ambulance, speaking words completely contrary to the ominous thoughts slicing through his mind like shrapnel.

Her hands were cold and clammy. Her face was pale, and her lips, which were breathlessly panting even though she lay still, were definitely turning blue.

—You mustn’t fall asleep.

He slapped Giselle’s cheek, waking her from behind her fragile eyelids. Her seemingly good condition on the mountain, when she could still speak coherently, was thanks to her head being lower than her body. Now, she was constantly slipping out of consciousness.

—This is why I told you to stay put at the base. Why won’t you listen?

He spoke to keep her awake, but the only words that came to mind were reprimands. The moment the reproaches spilled out, he hated himself fiercely. He was the root cause of Giselle’s situation, so who was he to blame?

Just as he clenched his eyes shut against the heat of regret, the small hand in his grasp wriggled. Giselle squeezed out the strength to return his grasp and faintly pulled up the corner of her lips.

—I’m glad I didn’t listen to you.

—What part of this mess is ‘glad’?

The woman who was always bursting with energy, despite being hurt or frustrated, now whispered precariously, her voice weak and near breaking, as if this was all the strength she could muster.

—I was the one who hit the last bomber.

Can’t you see the expression on my face?

Even as she looked up at him, rigid with shock as if he had been struck by the shell Giselle had fired, she managed a weak, proud smile.

—I saved you.

She gazed endlessly at the man she had rescued, her eyes pleading for praise. The admiration and gratitude he had so readily and sincerely offered to the other wounded soldiers just moments ago now tasted foul.

I never wanted to live at the cost of your life.

—…You did well. You saved me.

But Edwin chose the lie that would make Giselle happy. He did so because he had a premonition that if this was their last conversation, he would forever regret his honesty.

The statement that she would be fine once they saw a doctor was less a deception and more a desperate hope.

That hope was crushed when the military doctor delivered the terrible news: due to the high number of casualties, all blood stores were depleted, making a transfusion impossible. Edwin immediately rolled up his arm, ready to give all his own blood to Giselle, but even that was complicated here.

—The only option is evacuation to the base. What is your decision, Colonel?

The military doctor awaited his resolve. The closest civilian hospital would likely be nothing more than a small clinic. Even if they left immediately, the base was over two hours away.

A minimum of two hours. She might die on the way. Even if she lived, the long period with the tourniquet might mean losing her leg. But staying here guaranteed certain death.

Since there was ultimately only one answer, wasn’t the question moot? He was about to nod his head, bowed under the weight of despair, when a voice clearly cut through the indistinct noise of chaotic thoughts overlapping in his mind.

‘Leave her to me.’