A faint prickling sensation made me instinctively raise a hand to touch it. When I lowered my head, my hand was covered in crimson.
"I'm wounded?"
I froze for a moment, then reached out again to make sure. The instant I touched it, I sliced my hand open. A moment later, pain throbbed across my forehead too. I reached up, grasped the hard, cold shard, and yanked it out.
"Chhk~"
Blood trickled down my forehead and seeped into my left eye. Everything in that eye turned crimson.
I also saw the hard shard in my hand. It was a piece of glass, apparently from a gas mask's lens.
I shook my head, spraying blood onto the ground, then stood up and looked at the burly man not far away. He'd run out of bullets and was frantically reloading. Suddenly, I realized something was wrong with where he was standing...
"Burly Man... Burly Man! Burly Man! Watch your step! The ground!"
Gunfire and the beating of insect wings filled the air around us, with stones occasionally crashing down. My shouts could barely reach his ears. I called out three or four times before he finally noticed me and turned to look. His eyes were filled with frantic joy.
It seemed that even after only two short months as comrades, he'd developed that kind of deep comradeship with me...
But now, I felt like something was wrong.
"Burly Man! Watch your step! The ground!"
I shouted, grabbed the Type 92 that had fallen nearby, and rushed over. The whole squad was dead. Only the two of us were left. We couldn't both die! At least one of us had to carry everyone's dog tags and put up a tombstone for the others! We'd agreed on that long before setting out. I didn't