The Diary of A Young Girl
By Ymir Fritz
Entry #6
"Commander Magath!" Viktor shouted. The female warrior and Magath's subordinate grouped around Viktor, hurrying him out, but the boy did not yield. "Let me go of me!" He shouted over the girl's shoulder, "Commander Magath, sir! Please. You have to stop this attack." Dieter and the guard rushed in, restrained Viktor, and pressured him to the ground.
"Commander Magath. I'm from Camp Barnsil, and I have orders for you stop this attack and to request the aid of the Armored and the Cart! Your soldiers are walking into a trap."
"Who the hell is this?" The seasoned Commander asked as he covered his map, protecting confidential information.
"I'm…not sure, Commander." Reiner replied.
Commander Magath waved the soldiers restraining Viktor away, putting his hands behind his back and leveling his chest. He addressed Viktor with a firm tone, unwavering. "Is this this how you address a commanding officer, Eldian? Crying like an infant with handcuffs behind your back? Where is the poise? Where is the composition?"
Viktor huffed. "Do you remember Heinrich Steiner, sir?"
"Are you asking questions of me?" Magath rubbed the back of his grey and white hair; a combination of pepper and salt. "Hmph, I have no recollection of that name."
"That's the boy whose home you and Reiner came into one day and recruited. He's now in No Man's Land because he tried running against the charge to get something to you. He has a torn letter in his hands, but he got trampled like cattle went over him." Viktor coughed, "Please, you need to stop this attack. It says it all on the letter."
"Do you have a copy of this letter?"
"What was that?" Viktor's temporarily stunted hearing was still present.
Magath raised his voice further, "Do you have a copy of this letter?"
"No, sir. That's what I'm trying to tell you. He has it."
"Then there is nothing I can do to even come close to telling my captains to discontinue this attack."
Viktor's desperation increased velocity with some phlegm dripping from his nose. He pleaded, "Reiner, please say something. You saw us having the letter before."
Frudo, one of Magath's subordinates, eyed the handcuffs and interrupted, "Commander, this must have been one of the privates that allowed that one titan to kill dozens of our men. Him and that friend took too long to use a titan rifle before Reiner arrived."
Viktor kneeled, lowering his head. "My friend got turned into that…I just didn't have the strength to finish him off myself." His eyes pointed at Reiner; Viktor had intended Kurt's titan form to eat the warrior somehow so he could survive for at least thirteen more years.
Magath moved closer to Viktor and kicked him in the chin with his muddied boot, "Do you think emotions will get you anywhere in this military? We lost some lives because your emotions got in the way of those who were still useful to us." Magath then lowered his torso, lifting Viktor's chin with his thumb and forefinger, and looked closely. The boy's face dribbled with sweat and snot, making it difficult to tell them apart. "I remember you now. You're one of the boys from that basement I visited."
Viktor blinked, likely not hearing every word Magath spat, but he read the resignation of hostility in Magath's face, which signaled some recognition. "You told Heinrich to choose two other people he trusts to join him. So, he chose me and Kurt, the boy who got turned into a titan." He sobbed.
Magath scoffed, raising himself. "It was my fault for even allowing you three to be recruited, but it wasn't even my idea, to begin with." He sighed with a tinge of regret, but it evaporated. "Stand up, private. I don't need tears in your eyes."
Viktor sniffed and took a deep breath, trying not to allow the mourning that had not been completed to start.
"Now, Reiner." Magath turned to the warrior. "Did this Heinrich really have a letter?"
"Yes, commander."
"Good, but this one said you visited Heinrich's house with me. Why did you say you didn't know who he is?"
"I…" Reiner stuttered, and Magath observed keenly, like a preying eagle. "I wasn't sure if I recognized him, sir, but there was some familiarity."
Magath's glare hung for a second longer than considered friendly. Reiner had been on thin ice since his return, and it appeared military officials had not warmed up to him even in the months that passed. "If you knew about this letter when they arrived, why did you not inform me of it?"
"I didn't know it was about something this important, sir, and one of the patrol soldiers said he would take care of it. I was also occupied with the coming mission."
Magath sent his junior officer, Major Frudo, with Viktor to find Heinrich on No Man's Land. Viktor's word would hold no value, so Magath asked Frudo to be the one to tell the captains to pause the second wave to find the letter. Neither of those officials had the keys to Viktor's handcuffs, so they had to find a security officer that would have a universal key.
Frudo stuck the key into Viktor's cuffs, twisted it, and a click followed; it was a sound more pleasurable than it should have been. The boy then embraced his wrists, massaging the slight pain away.
The two made their way to the lanky captain, but as they noticed the Marleyan infantry and Eldian infantry already in their ready positions, they increased their speed. They deftly stepped around the chunks of rubble and soil clumps that dried in the sun's omnipotent stare due to their separation from a larger mass. Some of this rubble was the culprit to the splattering of natural human cranberry juice, orienting the blood into paint dots with the uniqueness of snowflakes. Each splatter had a personality with some curving, pooling, and dripping.
The lanky captain raised his arm and set his whistle in his mouth.
"Stop!" Viktor shouted.
The whistle slipped from the captain's lips, "H-How'd you get back here?"
The disgruntled captain obeyed Frudo's demands as he described the situation. He put his arm down and ordered the infantry to be alert, but they could rest for a few more moments. The foot soldiers groaned, not because they were excited, which still could have been the case, but because the anticipation was more tortuous than a bullet in an artery.
Viktor stretched his arms, likely feeling great relief, but it must have tapered off as he remembered he needed to find Heinrich. He climbed up the slight slope into No Man's Land and followed an identical trajectory that Heinrich first followed. He then scanned the area. There was an apparent abundance of craters and corpses that he hoped Heinrich did not become intertwined with.
"Dammit, how hard is it to find someone in bandages?" he asked.
-X-X-X-X-X-
I floated to Heinrich to perform the lines required of me. I could not have revealed the position to Viktor even if I wanted to. It would be cheating if I could.
"Heinrich, why are you sleeping?" I asked stupidly, continuing to play my character of the idiotic imaginary friend.
"Shut up." He groaned, "Everything hurts. I can barely move." He did not seem shell-shocked. His eyes sharply opened from their docile state. "I need to find that letter." Heinrich's hands failed to bloom from their rest. "Where do I find that letter?" he asked.
"How the hell would I know?" I knew.
His hand trembled like it used all its might to stay shut, but on the contrary, it was very relaxed, for the veins on the wrist were shallow. Heinrich must have been trying incredibly hard to stimulate some life from his fingers, but their sleep was impervious to his brain signals. They needed someone else to come to open them.
"Heinrich." The name rang through No Man's Land. The ever-stupid Viktor had not realized that it is never permissible to be loud in that strip of land unless it was from a bullet. He could call for the ire of an explosive shell again.
Viktor kept calling.
"Heinrich."
"Heinrich."
"Heinrich."
Heinrich mumbled, "There comes my favorite idiot."
The patter of Viktor's boots increased as he jetted to Heinrich's side. Viktor crouched and shook the boy like he was a nearly empty salt shaker without consideration for the pain his friemdwould have been feeling.
"Ow!" Heinrich, simply reacted.
Viktor's face remained steady at the sign of life, and he swiftly inserted the universal handcuff key into Heinrich's cuffs, removing those metal rungs of restraints. He then went straight for his friend's left hand, unfurling the fingers to hopefully find a few shreds of the letter inside.
"Stop holding my hand. You're weird," Heinrich mumbled. "Where did you even get that key?"
"What did you say?" Viktor lowered his ear to his friend's head.
"I said. Stop holding my hand. You're weird."
Viktor cracked a grin, "I would never do it again even if someone paid me to." His grin cracked even further when he found about half a letter's worth of shreds inside, a little sweaty but intact regardless. He pulled them out and stuffed them gently in an available pocket. The grin fell and shattered when unfurling the right hand where the other remnants should have been, but there were none.
"Heinrich, where are the rest of the pieces?"
"Huh?"
"Where are the rest of the damn pieces? Of the letter?"
The shock of the thought of any fraction of the letter missing shook Heinrich, waking some motor function, helping him lift his torso like a mechanical metal bridge being folded with abundant creaking.
Viktor rolled Heinrich over and found two letter pieces; one containing the Camp Barnsil Captain's name, and the other holding fragmented sentences without a clear meaning. They needed the greater context of the letter to make sense.
Viktor commented, "There should be two to three more, but I'm not sure how many pieces it got ripped into in the first place."
Heinrich attempted to twist his back but groaned instead. He then patted the dense ground and scraped it as if to make sure life was not being teased to him and to gain confidence that he was experiencing the authentic one again. Yet, the relief that he was still alive was rained over when he continued searching for the letter pieces.
Viktor looked back over to the second wave of men. "They're so anxious. We have to do this faster." He put his hands on his knees as he got up, and his head darted about as he decided where to search next.
I stepped back, fazing through a few loaded guns, and examined the duo from a nice framing and viewing angle. The deadened war scenery was barren in visual stimuli like mother nature had been murdered in the rapid minutes of the first charge. During their runs, the first wave's soldiers inhaled the already weak vibrancy in biodiversity and weak saturation of colors into a desolate canvas-it was an exodus from joy-a flight away from stability. The vortex of bomb shells that once crowded the No Man's Land air used their superior whistling to retire the birds from their chirps. All that was left were the tendrils of life like bugs and insects.
At least in olden times, when war passed fields like fires, I could see the sun, grass, flowers, and animals thriving without care that the parasitic people kept dropping like cow dung. In the year 851, I feared looking at the sun because I worry it might not be there. I worry. Ridiculous. I know it will always be there, but I still feel that lack of surety prickle me.
This war scenery acted as the set of this drama, with Heinrich and Viktor performing as co-leads. I greatly amused myself on the point that each scene of each memory of each Eldian who was crushed by the rumbling was a twisted form of entertainment to me—it was not amusing; a better word would be fascinating. I had occasionally watched plays after I accepted my place as King Fritz's concubine, but seeing someone's complete life from birth to death, with all the humdrum, mundane moments, and stimulating moments intact, differed profoundly. Real life would shift between drama, suspense, mystery, and comedy, but my ability to observe it all accentuated my unnatural presence.
I did not need some popcorn to occupy the seats of my teeth, as the voyeuristic pleasures and pains were enough for me to chew and savor.
Some of the clean-up crew members returned to pick up the stray corpses they could not retrieve in their initial passing promptly following the end of the first wave's charge. As their sleeves creased and straightened with their arms, I could imagine blotches of death's musk lingering as a cruel cologne; I could not smell it, but I presumed it that way. They also acted like home-trained morticians, with their shoulders quivering from all the husks they were paid to handle.
If only Viktor or someone else could have asked a handful of these clean-up members earlier to retrieve Heinrich, Viktor would not have had to run to Magath so early. The clean-up people's job was to collect the corpses inching to become fertilizer, so it would not matter to folks if they were killed in No Man's Land while doing their job, unlike regular infantry whose lives mattered more. Once again, more idiocy followed when a time called for something better, but there was nothing better—Viktor and Heinrich were all this mission had.
After a minute of searching, Viktor and Heinrich found six of seven pieces, which meant only one was yet to be found. Viktor counted again and complained, darting back to his calf as the stab wound was still tender. "Where is that last one? We have everything else, but just this tiny little thing—"
Heinrich then labored to reach his boots to stop a line of ants from crossing over. He caught a corner of off-white paper at the tip of his right boot and pulled it out. It had a sharp edge, meaning it could be a corner of a paper or possibly a letter. It read:
"Dear Commander Magath,"
Heinrich and Viktor wasted no time with the retrieved letter and crawled back into the front-line trench to find Frudo, Magath's subordinate. Frudo was astounded as he had never expected the letter to be real, which Heinrich and Viktor exclaimed in celebration. But that outburst was hindered by their descent into reality. The boys grimaced and grumbled as they attempted to follow Frudo into Magath's cut and cover. Unfortunately, wounds do not simply wither into the crisp wind when success has been achieved.
Frudo shoved the curtain aside that hid the cut and cover entrance. "Commander Magath! The private—" He turned back to Viktor and whispered, "What's your name, private?"
"Dassler, sir. Viktor Dassler."
He cleared his throat, "Private Dassler has received all pieces of the letter from…" He looked back to Heinrich. "What's your name, private?"
"Steiner, sir. Heinrich Steiner."
"We have—"
"I know his name." Commander Magath had enough of the formalities with the situation at hand. "Give me the damn letter."
Frudo rushed the pieces of the letter over to Magath, Reiner, and the female warrior huddling around the map on a table. Magath swiftly plucked out the pieces, scattered them over the map, and commented, "The ink is slightly blurred, but it's still readable." He got to work re-forming the letter, not with the contagious joy of youth enjoying a puzzle, but with the studious logic of a man who had seen enough bullets for his imagination to be shot out of commission.
As Frudo rushed to his commander's side, Viktor and Heinrich were left by the entrance with the first quiet moment they had experienced since they had escaped from the security officer after beating him senseless. It was compact, and I could only imagine the buzzing their minds were doing to make sense of their entire situation; or maybe, their minds were avoiding that since if they did, their whole bodies would buzz and their brittle popsicle tendons would snap instantly.
Their faces did not admit this tension. An old man's blood-flecked glaring stood in place of the youth that once sat tamely Heinrich's eyes, and his face was lethargic, drooping in the chin. His gaze lingered on Reiner who was across the miniature room, avoiding acknowledgment of their presence with a back that appeared broad, but much like a drum, it was grand yet hollow.
Viktor peered at Heinrich with almost the same intensity as a boy lecherously staring at an attractive female whose eyes reached entirely right in their sockets. He must have been questioning how Heinrich could find the nerve to run perpendicularly to the progressing first wave, like contradicting the flow of a gushing river but hoping for the best. The required resolve was something Viktor thought he would have for himself but could not summon at that crucial moment. However, Heinrich was the one who had it when it mattered.
Did Heinrich gain something, but Viktor lose something after Kurt's passing? Did the impulsive resolve that once occupied Viktor's nerves get magically transferred through the Paths to his friend in a ripe moment of desperation? I do not believe the Paths function in that way.
A baton had been handed off from friend to friend—a personality trait—an ambition—like everything they would do on that day onward would be an unsterile, surgical dissection of what they knew about themselves. The great irony being the friends had already been dissected enough that day by the world.
Magath read the letter out loud after he finished piecing the puzzle together. His voice gained fervor with each word as the direness of the situation emanated from each letter. His eyes scanned the torn page like a typewriter carriage moving left and right, "Dear Commander Magath,..."
"...If you are receiving this letter, it means the young privates who I've sent to give you this message have arrived safely…"
"...The recent numbers of the Mid-East Allied Forces we have gathered in our region are too good to be true. It appears they have retreated, when in fact, I imagine they are planning something. You may have noticed, sir, of this supposed decrease in numbers and are planning to storm their front line from your front line to end this quickly…"
"...But I implore you, do not make this mistake. I am afraid the Mid-East commanders have called in a majority of their men to those front lines you are about to charge into for the goal of decimating Marley's greatest weapons, two of which you have at your disposal. It's a trap. They are attempting to end this war as swiftly as possible…"
"...There is no doubt the MEs will come charging from their trenches if you have not charged first already. They will knock out your men, capture the titans, and come destroy my men. With this, I propose a strategy. Camp Barnsil is short on infantry so at least half your men here at our trenches would serve us well. The remaining could be scattered between your current station, and the multiple ME stations scattered from your position to mine…"
"...These privates are both combat medics, so they should serve to fix any wounds of the people they may have allowed to get injured if they arrive too late…"
Magath finished the final statements of the letter and scrunched his forehead for an uncomfortable set of seconds. Everyone waited for a response.
Frudo cut the air with his shuddering, "Sir, are we-"
Magath slammed his fist onto the map and took a sliced breath, "Very well, we know what we need to do now. Frudo, tell the Captain leading the second wave to cease the attack permanently. But if anything, it's just postponed for a different area."
"Commander, these boys could have forged it! We would have no idea."
Magath picked up a corner piece, "This stamp on the corner is not something any private would be able to come by. Neither is it something taught in basic training. It is simply an authenticity measure for communication between upper ranks like myself."
Frudo nodded hesitantly and rushed off to pass on the order. Reiner and the female warrior remained by Magath's side.
"You may approach," Magath ordered the boys.
Heinrich and Viktor weakly marched through the seemingly delicate rays of light that mocked them through the gaps above the sandbags making up a wall. They saluted the best they could with bandages on their arms, covering gas burns, and red rings stayed as shadows on the wrists where their old cuffs once were.
"At ease…" Magath said as he faced Heinrich, scowling at the Mid-East uniform he was still wearing but lifted it moments after. "Your skin was clear when I first met you and your parents, or as clear as skin a kid your age can have. But look at you now. I wish I had a mirror on me." He eyed Heinrich up and down, "You're like an old man that's been folded into a kid. War does that to a boy, I'll admit. Leaving your innocence chaste was never an option." I could not find a hit of remorse on this antiquated man. His comments to Heinrich were out of pocket for him, alien to his usual administrative and authoritative speech.
Reiner watched from the side as Heinrich spoke in a reedy tone, thin but tense. "Sir, I still don't understand. With all due respect, why did you recruit me? I'm not meant to be a soldier. Neither is Viktor."
"I'm well aware you two aren't fit to be soldiers, but the army cannot recruit only people perfect for the role since then we would only have one barracks filled. So, those people you see dying aren't necessarily what we need…they are just what we have."
"If you didn't recruit me, sir, I wouldn't have had to choose two people, and I wouldn't have dragged my friend Kurt into this. He's…" Heinrich could not finish the sentence as he hid a whimper.
"I will reiterate why I recruited you." He paused as if to recall, "It was an opportunity to improve your status after what how you helped Reiner. You attempted to save him from that deranged lunatic that attempted to assassinate him."
"But that's not the truth!" Heinrich shouted and coughed like it was too painful. "I was the one to shoot him. I was tricked into it by the so called journalist. He was just a criminal all along."
Magath imposed a smoldering glare upon Reiner. Reiner took a step back and called for help with his eyes when looking at the female warrior. She did not respond. "Was this all one of your lies too, Braun? All the lies you've been giving us for the past few months."
Reiner stepped back again, "Yes, sir. I lied about this, but I didn't lie about anything else, I swear! I just lied since I didn't want Heinrich to get into trouble. What happened wasn't his fault."
Magath pulled away from Reiner, and shook his head. "You just lied again."
"What was that, sir?"
"You weren't the person to notify me of what Steiner did, and you are well aware of that. Someone in Section F of the internment zone came to me about it first and suggested I bring the boy into the military as a chance to increase his family status, as a gift." He scoffed, "But it seems this fellow lied first, and you went along with it when I first brought it up to you."
Reiner shoulders slumped as he turned his attention to the map, and his lips stayed pursed. "That's correct, sir. But I have no clue who that 'fellow' would be."
Magath faced the boys again and muttered, "This is pathetic. We have a battle coming up. I don't want to deal with this drama." He brushed past them, "After the battle is finished and we destroy these sons of bitches, both of you will be discharged from the military. We can't have anyone here who allows dozens of men to be murdered by a titan when they had a weapon to defeat it."
Viktor and Heinrich were silent for reasons beyond Magath.
"You're dismissed. Get out of my sight." Magath ordered. "Don't think about becoming Honorary Marleyans ever again."
The duo paced slowly out of the cut and cover. Viktor's bottom lip quivered as his leg wound must have still throbbed, and Heinrich's face was still spread out by one of Magath's comments.
Heinrich stammered, "It's Mr. K's fault."
"What?" Viktor asked, loosening his grimace.
"The homeless man I trusted for so long pushed me into the military."
-X-X-X-X-X-
The sudden cease of the attack ignited disarray and sparks of chatter among every rank of men from trench engineers to admirals. Heinrich and Viktor ignored the hustling and bustling of these people and made their way back to the small room the patrolling soldier had brought them into following their first treatment at the medical tents. They pushed through the room's poorly constructed door and were greeted by the two chairs the patrolling soldier once sat on placidly. That man had been brutally bruised on the ground by the two friends, but his noxious presence was no longer available to restrain them.
A restraint to play a more significant impact was in a satchel in the corner of the room. This object watched the boys and the patrolling soldier struggle like I did, but it looked through the crosses of threads the satchel was formed from.
It was Mr. Kruger's journal.
Heinrich lifted the satchel and moved a flap, revealing the contents, and the journal stood emboldened even in the damp lighting among some miscellaneous items. Heinrich did not dare touch it directly, "I'll never read this thing."
"I don't know if you remember this, but I read a bit of that before we found that handcart yesterday."
"Don't tell me what you've seen," Heinrich shoved the statement into his friend's face. "I don't want to know right now."
"Come on-"
"Don't tell me what you've seen." Heinrich insisted.
"I don't get it. What makes you think some homeless man could have gotten you here? How would he even have contacted Commander Magath?"
"He's not just 'some homeless man.'" Heinrich was surprised how he was still supporting the snake. "He was the only one aside from the gang that I told about the event with Reiner. There's no way our gang would make this happen."
"Whatever it is, it can wait."
Heinrich raised an eyebrow.
"My calf wound." He whispered, "The one you gave me, got provoked again. And who knows what else is wrong with you now."
Heinrich shook his shoulder to make sure nothing was wounded there that he was unaware of, and he set his satchel on it as he and Viktor left the little room. The chairs would be the only occupants for a while.
A plethora of stretchers jammed the trench pathways like fatty pork clogging veins. They carried wounded men, and combat medics did their damndest to push them through all the cluttered noise, adding their own noise, "Move out the way!" like reckless drivers on the street. Those still confused by this abrupt switch of plans crouched against the trench wall, looking up at those that knew what they were doing. This clueless group pecked their heads around like pigeons, but there were so many of them that their bayonets looked like tall rusty grass with wooden roots. Of course, there were also a set of folks with limbs missing and calling for a parent that likely already passed away.
Looking like strays once more, Heinrich and Viktor kept their chins down and guided themselves through the clashing orders, thoughts, and pitiful remarks. The everchanging folds of their uniforms continued to catch the dust flowing as freely as a pandemic. It was all over-stimulation.
If the two friends had escaped from that patrolling soldier earlier, they could have prevented the first wave from heading out and receiving the bludgeoning damage. I am confident that thought was echoing in their minds.
One poor lad was dragged down the trench ledge with blood coating his hair like a dye that could not permeate the strands. It dripped off his temples. A limping soldier pulling him down took a few seconds to catch his breath, but Viktor and Heinrich unintentionally caught his attention.
"Hey!" The young man with bloodied hands called Viktor, "You're a medic right? Put a bandage around his head!"
Heinrich spoke, "Both of us are wounded too. We have to get to the medical tents."
"But, he needs immediate help!" The young man was about to rip a piece off his undershirt until his face pinched in recognition and morphed into fury. "Wait, you're those two from earlier that killed that titan. I saw how you both hesitated and let all those guys get eaten…"
Viktor and Heinrich no longer had the energy to defend themselves.
"Both of you are definitely going to hell. But, you have to pay back for those lives. You have a debt to us."
"We didn't ask for this debt," Viktor mumbled.
The friends looked at the bleeding soldier as a stretcher came behind them and nearly knocked them off balance. The young limping soldier tore a piece off from his undershirt as a makeshift bandage despite there being sufficient medics to provide a fresh plaster.
Before either Heinrich or Viktor could get to help this emergency patient, they began to get recognized by others for their failure, but not for their success in completing the mission. Many said the same bitter line, "You guys are those kids, aren't you?" As always, someone's success is quickly forgotten, but their failure is an eternal stain.
Before the friends could even help themselves properly, they were forced to servitude. Soldiers pulled them between depleting bodies, compelled to complete basic procedures as angst welled their minds, drowning them with one unsettling sight after another. It was a horror carnival where failed throwing knife games were presented simultaneously. I could see the will to keep moving on fall off like a drape from those boys' face as despondency was now their only option; their chests caved in as their shoulders dragged, and they could only take shallow breaths.
While the duo was approaching their limit, one patient had a severe laceration on his arm that revealed the bone. Viktor's eyelids shut upon sight of this, and he fell to the side, fainting. Heinrich smacked his friend's face hoping it would invigorate some reaction, but it was fruitless, and when he looked back at the patient with an open bone, he fainted too.
-X-X-X-X-X-
The next memory began with Heinrich and Viktor on beds in the medical tents. The environments under the tents mirrored the frantic nature of the trench paths themselves with comments like, "Move it!", "Coming through!", "You're able to stand? Go over there." But it also resembled a congested street intersection with people converging at a point.
The pleas of people in pain would be unnerving to anyone at first listen, but after a minute, you realize you cannot do anything to stop it, and it becomes a cynical ambiance. Heinrich's solution to this was to put cotton balls in his ears and some in his nose to deaden the rank stench of naked flesh and surrounding sounds. It was times like these I appreciate not being able to smell.
A nurse with a bubbly face scuttled to Viktor and Heinrich with a clipboard. She said promptly, "You two should be in a decent enough state now." She waited until the boys got off their beds to say, "Now go see what those surgeons need help with over there."
The nurse turned away to aid another patient until Heinrich said slowly, "Ma'am…can we take a break, please?"
"A break? Now? Are you kidding me?"
"No…this is our first time dealing with a large number of people like this. We're fresh from training."
A needy patient pulled at the nurse's arm, but she tried to ward it off, "Do as you please. I'm not wasting time arguing, but be back in a few minutes."
Heinrich and Viktor nodded while putting on their helmets and left the nurse. They picked at their new bandages, some covering new parts of their body parts than before. They pushed through the aisles with physicians around them doing their hardest to get these patients to deceive death, and they employed all the trickery they could with their contaminated scissors to succeed with that.
They then found a few trees nearby, about ten meters away, and paced towards them. When arriving at the roots of one of the trees, Heinrich squeezed the red rings on his wrists leftover from his cuffs, and Viktor scraped the treebark like his fingernails were testing the nuances of this habitat's foliage. Viktor sighed and sat down on one of the roots before looking over his shoulder at a man with rolled-up sleeves.
"You probably don't want to sit down there. Who knows how many people peed there?" Heinrich said, letting his arms fall to the side.
Viktor answered while watching a soldier digging something nearby, "For some reason, I just don't care." He sighed again, "Dammit, Heinrich what the hell do we do now?"
"Keep doing what they tell us to do."
"Who's they?"
"You know who I mean."
Viktor tilted his head to the side knowingly as he sifted through a patch of the ground under his pants. It looked like he was mining for grass. Heinrich leaned his head back and looked through the fingers of the tree at the body of the sky. The clouds were receding, retreating much like the Marleyan military did for a delayed success.
I would do a similar thing in the Paths. I would sit on the infinite sand like it was my magic carpet and stake my focus into the vast desert of black that masked my realm in an eternal night. It would not happen too often since I would get a relentless number of orders; sculpting was my mission.
"Why is it so sunny?" Viktor asked, dreamy.
Heinrich pulled down that dream, "It doesn't matter what battles go on down here. It would make no difference to the weather."
Viktor leveled his head, and a hair strand leaned on his forehead. A gust of wind reached over to set it back in its place like a caring mother. A small glimmer of the sun expanded on a thin layer of natural oils coating his nose and forehead. He asked, "Do you think that nurse would get angry at us if we don't go back there?"
"Maybe, but it's not like she'll run over and yell at us for it. She's too busy."
"Good." Viktor said bluntly, "I haven't had a chance to mourn yet." On command, Viktor Dassler, the boy with unnecessary comments and brashness warranting trouble, allowed the floodgates held shut for too long by his duties and continuous struggles to burst open. His face squeezed, and his sobs hiccuped like the humidity was too thick for his pain to flow undisturbed. He cried with the force comparable to a drunkard who vomited all his drinks. It was a dirty form of crying that highlighted the purest grief.
Heinrich observed his friend, not attempting to put his arm around him or provide any source of comfort, and reciprocated this grief. He whimpered, and his face squeezed, but one thing had been missing: the tears. The absent tears almost felt like a mockery of sadness. It was similar to when someone has blown their nose so excessively that nothing is left to come out.
Viktor's eyebrows furrowed over his bloodshot eyes, "Why aren't you crying? It was because you were too kind to some of those enemies that it came back to hurt us. Do you not have any regret? Do you feel nothing?"
Heinrich was taken aback, "Shut up! Of course, I feel horrible. Do you think I'm some kind of monster?!"
"If you had been more of a monster to some of those enemies maybe that would helped Kurt stay alive." Viktor sobbed again as he profusely rubbed his eyes with his sleeve.
Heinrich looked at his palms as if questioning himself and his motives, and he did not respond to Viktor's statement. He only watched the man with rolled-up sleeves nearby scooping soil out of the ground with a shovel. It was near rhythmic in fashion, and Heinrich could not help but get engrossed in the tempo of stabbing the ground, shoving the shovel head in further, and lifting the dirt away.
The man with the shovel answered the question Heinrich was too broken to ask. "I'm going to bury someone. My friend. Well, he wasn't really a friend he was just in basic training with me a few years ago, so I thought I should give him some respect." He summoned some phlegm from the back of his throat and spat in a different direction, "Usually the clean up people bury soldiers exactly where they died when a battle is over. But there's no time for that, so I'm going to do it here."
The ambiance of frantic people in the medical tents reached its lowest point, like there was a short break before another wave of wounded came in. Heinrich asked softly, "Could I borrow that shovel?"
He shrugged, "I don't see why not. You have someone gone, as well, huh?"
"You could say that. But we don't have his body."
The man threw the shovel to Heinrich's side, and Heinrich observed the rusted metal for an elongated moment, like his thoughts were buffering. He stood up, picked the shovel up, and stabbed the ground near Viktor's feet and the tree roots.
The stubborn soil gave away grain by grain, and Heinrich dug a pit that got deeper and broader progressively like an unkempt mouth in the ground.
"What are you doing?" Viktor asked, getting up.
Heinrich neglected the question and continued constructing the mouth without care for including lips, teeth, and gums. It was just a serviceable space and nothing more.
Instead of tears falling from his eyes, beads of sweat rose on Heinrich's forehead. He set the shovel down and opened his satchel to tear out an empty page from Mr. Kruger's journal. He ripped the piece of paper into little pieces, like snowflakes, like freckles, and dropped each piece into the small pit he dug out.
Heinrich took the war helmet off Viktor's head and took his own off as well. He dropped them into the small pit, and they landed on top of the freckles like weighted feathers-they had mass but landed gently. This gathering of items was a union of three friends who could only share one battle, but they had many more decent memories in the plagued hometown that seemed greener and greener the longer they were away from it.
Heinrich tapped dirt back into the pit with the shovel and stuck a dead branch into the resettled soil. He returned the shovel to the man with rolled-up sleeves and stepped away to see the grave and the tree in view together. Like a parent protecting a child, this tree spread its finger-like branches over the grave and waved them with the breeze. It was a regular tree; it did not connect Eldians to other Eldians but connected to nature.
Viktor waited eagerly for an answer about this display, but his patience wore thin. "What the hell is this, Heinrich? Why did you put my helmet in there?"
"We died on these trenches today, Viktor, with Kurt."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
Heinrich ignored the question and watched a corpse get carried to the dug-out pit where the man with rolled-up sleeves was. Some people lowered the body cautiously into the hole. Heinrich returned his focus and said quietly, like a hum, "We died on these trenches today, so everything after today is extra. We are no longer ourselves even if we answer to the same names."
The friends looked over their shoulders as the shovel man covered the corpse with soil and tapped the top to an even platform. The corners of the man's mouth lifted as the boys disappeared into the medical tent to pay the debt they owed.