I might be heading onto the battlefield tomorrow, and you're still lecturing me about manners and civility?
The next moment, I might be reduced to a pile of minced meat at their hands. By your thinking, should I still say, "Hello, thanks for your hard work," right now?
Long familiarity with life and death had taught these people to take everything in stride.
Most of them felt nothing even when someone cursed their ancestors to their faces...
Go on, curse away. See if I don't cleave you to death with one swing of my axe!
They were unlike some people in the interior who flew into a rage over a single sarcastic remark.
Here, they had long since grown calm and unruffled, ignoring it all, intent only on killing!
Just as now, joining forces and standing shoulder to shoulder with mortal enemies to accomplish a goal felt somewhat incongruous, but they felt no resistance to it whatsoever.
Everyone understood that they were carrying out this mission solely because of military orders.
Once this mission was complete, they would go back outside and hack at one another. Their positions would remain utterly different, still opposed and irreconcilable!
So taking this opportunity to share a drink with someone they were about to kill, or someone about to kill them, was a peculiar feeling in its own right: this really was a fucking rare experience!
Many people would say, "There's a sea of blood and hatred between you, yet you can still drink and laugh together?"
That question actually had no place here. On a real battlefield, there was no such thing as hatred.
There was only life and death.
Living or dying really did not matter.
It did not matter if you hacked me to death. One day, someone would hack you