Back then, Delstad had been caught between fear and indecision, while the comrade on his back kept telling him to put him down and run.
Faced with a choice between life and death, between holding on and abandoning his comrade, Delstad had wrestled with his conscience.
As time passed, their pursuers drew closer, and his strength dwindled.
Delstad had neither the selflessness to sacrifice himself for another nor the courage to turn and fight to the death. He lacked the will to keep going, too. So he had set his comrade down in a dense thicket and fled deeper into the Dense Forest without looking back.
Even now, he remembered the look in that comrade's eyes. He could no longer clearly recall his face, only those bright eyes. There had been no resentment in them, only the resolve of a man ready to die.
Countless times, waking from dreams in the dead of night, Delstad had closed his eyes and seen nothing but that gaze he would remember for the rest of his life.
After he had gone some distance, a rapid burst of gunfire had sounded behind him. A dozen seconds later, it had stopped abruptly. There had been no sound after that...
Now fate was playing its cruel trick again, forcing him to face a similar choice. Did he live like a coward, as he had last time, or face himself and be a hero for once? Even if that choice went against everything he believed himself to be?
"Damn it, what's there to hesitate about? I'm Delstad. I'm no fool, and I've never been some bleeding heart." He kept telling himself that, but those steady, resolute eyes lingered in his mind. He could neither drive them away nor make peace with what he had done.
The sounds