“Well, I guess we’re out of things to talk about. Time to get back to work.”

As sudden as how he came to my side and started a serious talk, Lapidoth stands up, stretches his unharmed arm to relieve his stress as he announces his intention to go away.

“You’re leaving?”

I ask as I stay immobile on my makeshift bed.

“You want me to warm your bed for the night? Your kindness makes me want to puke.”

The man replies, which of course only helps to annoy me further.

“Of course not! I’m just wondering why you keep pushing yourself even when you were also wounded by Origen.”

There’s no way his injuries would stop with a mere broken arm, I saw him vomiting blood after he took Origen’s attack. There’s still some trace of blood left in the mouth of his helmet. Yet, he still insists on doing his own things. In a sense, that stubbornness of his isn’t too different from mine, yet he dared to lecture me on that…

“Unlike you brats, us adults still have a job to do. It doesn’t matter if I lose an arm or a leg, if I have a mission, I must finish it. That’s what duty is.”

Lapidoth strikes his healthy arm onto his chest armor as if to demonstrate his determination. While he may look “smart”, he too seems to be a fool of his own unique brand different than mine.

“I’m not heading away to die. In case you’re wondering.”

Lapidoth suddenly replies. I can hear a silent chuckle from beneath his helmet, as if he finds my concern amusing.

“I’m going to Headmaster Nilrem’s place. If it concerns the barrier’s core, then I must report this to her at once. She’s the one in charge of it in the first place.”

That…makes sense. Find the core, find Origen. Lapidoth can also ask the Headmaster for reinforcements to deal with the intruders. I doubt Nilrem will do anything to obstruct the removal of Origen’s ambition, unless she’s still as unpredictable as always. A sound enough plan.

“I see…”

I reply. I shouldn’t bother him any longer. However, there’s still one unanswered question left that won’t stop lingering in my heart, and only him can provide it.

“Before you leave, can I ask you a personal question?”

“Depends on how personal. Make it quick.”

He seems understandably annoyed.

“You…are acquainted with teacher Bjarni, aren’t you? I just know you for a day, but the way you talked about him doesn’t make him a stranger in your eyes.”

Was it why Bjarni entrusted him to save me from the brink of death? Was is why he was the one to come here and delivered me the news of my teacher’s death? This isn’t something important in the grand scale of things, but I want to satisfy this curiosity of mine. Maybe their relationship will shred some truth from the enigma that accompanied me since the start of this war, maybe that is what I truly want to know.

“Geez. Of all the time, you pick right when I’m starting to leave.”

He seems annoyed, but doesn’t show any signs that he’ll refuse my request.

“We’re not friends for a start, though we aren’t familiar enough to be called acquaintances. The only reason why we even know each other was through his daughter. A junior young soldier, desperately wanted to prove herself strong enough to protect her hot-headed father who’s always away from home. A headstrong woman, very much alike to her brute of a father, haha.”

Lapidoth silently laughs as he continue telling his story.

“You see, she and I were assigned under a team on the frontline. I’m her senior, so it’s naturally I have to look out to my juniors like her. She’s strong, but a bit brash and hot-headed like Bjarni with an equally foul mouth. I was mostly there to keep her in check. Our relationship was good, but nothing special, I think. Then, one day, Bjarni showed up when he was tasked to survey the frontline. Naturally, he came to visit his daughter. She introduced me to the guy, and of course I introduced myself, would be rude if I didn’t. And suddenly, he patted me on the shoulder and brazenly said “I approve of you. Marry my daughter. I allow it, maggot!””

“What!?”

I almost shout out loud from the sudden surprise. Sure, I don’t know Bjarni for a long time either, but for him to just pat a guy’s shoulder and tell him to marry his own daughter is still a bit too much for me to stomach…Though come to think of it, if he really trust this guy that much, then for him to act like that wasn’t very out of character for a straightforward guy like Bjarni.

“So…did you accept?”

Men struggle to get married back in my place, and this guy got offered one like a meal put on a silver plate.

“Do I look like a married man to you?”

Lapidoth chuckles as he replies. Of course, he just had to refuse such an offer. What did I expect? Though, Bjarni’s daughter…I don’t want to imagine her as Bjarni with a dress.

“I turned down the offer, though his daughter put even more effort than me to turn down her father’s proposal. It was a rather amusing sight back then. We didn’t meet much afterward, but when there was a chance, he always came to me and asked about things on the frontline and about his daughter’s life. I guess he trusted me because his daughter trusted me, enough to entrust me with this, I think.”

Lapidoth reaches his hand to the inner part of his armor and takes out a piece of paper. It is neatly folded, despite the battles Lapidoth fought up until now.

“What is that piece of paper?”

I ask.

“A letter, hastily written by Bjarni for his daughter.”

A letter…but that’s…

“He wrote this yesterday, back when we were still in the middle of preparing for this siege. The man couldn’t even find a proper envelope nor a trusty mail officer for delivering. Then I bumped into him. He certainly didn’t look forward to die, but even so, the man had his own anxiety of things to come. He was afraid he couldn’t make the delivery himself, and I was his remaining hope. And you know the rest.”

“…”

I fall silent. I shouldn’t have asked. It’s too painful just to listen to his story. Bjarni was an old man, but life still had many things in store for him. I’m sure he would like to teach us maggots many things, and watch his daughter in a wedding dress, and of course, having fun with his future grandkids. But that won’t happen, he’s gone, thanks to this war and my foolishness…

“…”

Lapidoth silently puts the letter back inside his armor, the safest place that he knows.

“I will deliver this letter without fail to honor his wish. Which is why I must go right now, before all is lost thanks to the effort of a stubborn paladin. But, there’s still a tiny random titbit that I feel like telling. Before I received the letter, I asked the man “Why a letter?”. The man answered with a warm smile on his face as he replied “An advice from a stupid student of mine”.”

That’s…

“He had a lot of stupid students, I think. But whoever they are, I just want to thank them for giving him a bit of hope. That’s all I have to say.”

Silently, Lapidoth finally leaves the place to embark on his mission, to complete his duty, to fulfill Bjarni’s wish. And so, I continue to remain here, under a warm sheet, lying and resting comfortably in the middle of a war. I find myself weeping a little. A small drop of tear flows from my eyes, not enough to be called crying, but it’s almost there.

I can’t remember the last time I cried. I don’t want to look weak, so I never cry. No matter the hardship I endured, I didn’t cry, not even once. I always tell myself that I can do this, I can get through this no matter what it is, so that I won’t cry. It eventually goes on long enough to the point I think I can no longer shed any tears.

Yet why now? Why can’t I hold all these tears flowing from my eyes, even though I don’t want to cry?

Maybe just this one occasion. Just this one time only. Just put my face under a pillow and be done with it.

That’s what I do before I tire myself to sleep.

…

By the time I wake up, my body feels lighter. My wounds seem to have miraculously closed. I get out of my comfy makeshift bed with no difficulty, as if the mortal wound I suffered was but a fleeting dream.

Silence and darkness engulf the entire makeshift hospital. The candles are no longer lit. The groaning of pain is replaced by the snoring of tired soldiers and wounded men. Not just in the place either, the war outside seems to have stopped, even for a brief moment. The calm before the storm, I guess.

I wonder if silence is the thing waking me up from my sleep. Either way, I’m awake now, I can’t just lie down the bed and pretend everything that happened up until this point never existed.

“There we go…”

I stand up after neatly folding my bed sheet, something I was taught as a proper gentleman. My body still aches a little, but that is irrelevant as I’m almost at my full strength, though that doesn’t matter much. The next question is: What should I do next? I’m nearly recovered, but what good can I be when I can’t do anything to change our fate?

Either way, I can’t just stay here and stand idly. Aside from the clothes on my body, I don’t have anything else in my disposal. The least I should do right now is to reclaim my own equipment.

I don’t see any working nurses or doctors. They seem to be resting elswhere. The lack of shift workers seem to indicate their own lack of manpower to properly treat the wounded. But with how soundly the wounded soldiers are sleeping, I guess they have earned their well-deserved rest. Which is why it’ll be rude to wake one of them up and ask about my stuff.

I guess there’s only one person I can rely on, so I take my steps and search for him, only to quickly find him sitting idly near the entrance, playing a game of something similar to my world’s chess by himself, with his dreadful dog sleeping near his bonely legs.

“Oh, you are awake. Mister Akuma.”

Says the skeleton shopkeeper as I approach him. That however doesn’t distract him from having an intense chess game with himself. As always, I don’t see his jawbone moving, yet somehow I can still hear his “voice” speaking to me.

“I’m glad to see you have recovered. But your recovery rate still confuses me. A normal man should still be on his death bed if he suffered the same wound as yours. But here you are, wandering the place, as healthy as ever. Perhaps that has something to do with being Lady Deborah’s familiar.”

He sure is well-informed. Though with how notorious I tried to be lately, I guess me being Deborah’s familiar is common knowledge as of now.

“Maybe. I don’t know either.”

But that’s probably the most accurate assumption I can make. I know I am a normal human, no matter what I tried to say otherwise. The only explanation is because of Deborah and my link to the girl.

“Anyway, you don’t feel sleepy, Mister Shopkeeper?”

I ask as a way to open a new conversation.

“Sleep is for the living. The dead need no sleep, only eternal rest. But I don’t feel like resting just yet. Haha. My bones are still moving, after all.”

The skeleton man calmly laughs as he pat the head of his sleeping dog. I guess the dead have their own way of doing thing.

“I see. Then maybe you can help me. I’m searching for my equipment. Do you have any idea where they are?”

“Oh, about that. We gave your items to the one who brought you here, Mister Lapidoth. This storage is already packed with food, medicine and wounded people. He said he took your items to a classroom on the upper floor of this building.”

“Which classroom, if I may ask?”

I reply.

“He didn’t say which, I’m afraid.”

Of course he didn’t. What did I expect?

“I’m afraid you have to search for it by yourself. I still need to stay here and keep watch on things.”

“It’s alright. Thank you anyway.”

I nod and walk away, leaving the skeleton man to continue his game of chess.

I try to think of this situation as a chance to regain the feel of my body. Even if I can be qualified as healthy as of now, it’s not like I can completely function like normal within minutes after recovering. I can walk, but if I run I may find myself off balance and stumble on to the ground. ‘Just take it easy’, I tell myself. Unlike me, my equipment can’t grow legs and run away by themselves, but who I am to judge in a world with magic?

I take my steps through the stair and get myself on the upper floor. There are many rooms available, but there are only four qualified as classrooms, one of which is the place used by my alchemy class. The other are vacant rooms used as placeholders, but there is one that serves as a practical training room for alchemy students, equipped with a very big cauldron to boot for large quantity potion making, but that is irrelevant.

Either way, just to be sure, I need to check all four classrooms. ‘This certainly will take sometimes’…is my thought before I open the door of the first classroom.

The first classroom is packed with people, wounded people. All the chairs and desks had been thrown aside to the corner of the class in order to make space for those who need them. It’s another makeshift hospital, but on a smaller scale. Nothing too different than the hospital below, with the same sleeping wounded men, and their resting caretakers. The next classroom is the same, almost identical to the one prior to it. I guess even that huge storage isn’t enough for the wounded.

The last however is something else. There are the same cleared up chairs and desks, also with people sleeping inside, but they are neither alive nor simply resting, all of them have their face covered by a white sheet, with no one here to take care of them. They are the ones who didn’t make it through the night, and succumbed to their wounds, but with how the living are struggling to keep the wounded alive, the best they could do for the dead is to let them rest here for the time being.

I guess these guys are still luckier than most. I doubt even the guys fighting outside have the luxury to properly arrange the dead like this.

Either way, I can’t find my items in all three classrooms. It will be rude to intrude the sleeping place of the living and dead, and I doubt that Lapidoth was enough of a jerk to do just that. That leaves the final classroom, my own classroom.

When I slide the door to get inside, all I can see is a mess of a classroom. The spare chairs and desks that can’t be contained in the other classrooms had been tossed into this place, along with every other useless stuff that got in the way. And inside of those mess lies a single wooden box conveniently placed on a desk near the corner of the room. My desk and Kardia’s, to be exact. And surprise surprise, all the items I brought with me before I was wounded are all here, untouched and untampered. My gun, my drugs, my makeshift grenades, my smoke bombs, and my sole remaining RG bomb. All of them are covered by a piece of cloth, which is the cloak Kardia made for me. It can still be worn, but parts of it were torn by Origen’s shield, on the chest in particular. I immediately try it once again, and not counting the fashionability of wearing a tattered cloak, this cloak is still fine as it is, for the time being. I guess that’s all of it.

Still, to think that he would put my stuff here…I guess that’s the best course of action after all. It’s not like I need these so badly that they must be by my side all the time. And if someone let their curiosity take the better of them, considering I have a literal bomb in my stuff, “troublesome” won’t be a strong enough word to describe what may happen in a place full of wounded soldiers.

But, no time for chit chat with myself, come back to papa, my creations!

After a bit while, I finally finish arming myself, though there’s not much left enough for me to say I am well-equipped. I have only four magazines left to use, counting the one currently inside my gun. Maybe four are already enough, but who can predict the future? I certainly can’t, I didn’t predict my failure when facing Origen either. I was a foolish boy who thought with guts I can make recklessness become courage, and look at what it costed me?

“Never again…”

I mutter to myself. I don’t know how strong my resolve actually is, but I’m sure as hell will make it stronger than iron.

Without hesitant, I walk out of the classroom and think about the steps I should take afterward.

But I don’t have to think for long.

“What’s this…smell?”

As I stroll the hallway, a strange smell passes by my nose. A burnt smell…accompanied by a thick trail of dark smoke coming from the stairs.

“No no no no no!”

I rush down the stairs as fast as my feet can allow, yet somehow the feeling inside my heart want to drag them down from running to that place. Maybe because my head can’t imagine what’s happening down there…No, it will be truer to say I can already imagine what’s happening there…my heart just don’t want to believe it.

But I can’t avert my eyes from the truth before me.

In the lower floor, there is a light shining through the dark smoke as if dawn has arrived, but that light isn’t radiant like the morning sun. It is fiery like fire, as its true form is a huge flame engulfing the whole makeshift hospital. The flame is like a fire dragon consuming everything in its path, leaving nothing behind, no screams, no running man on fire, nothing.

And I can’t do nothing but stand on my knees and watch in despair as the huge flame burns away everything it has yet to touch.