Aftereffects

Kelante not only locked the door, but also took off his heavy camouflage jacket, revealing a tight black training shirt. Firm, taut muscles covered his entire torso, their perfect contours outlined beneath the black fabric.

He also drew the curtains, plunging the rather cramped classroom into gloom. Even in the darkness, his angular face had the elegant contours of someone favored by God.

The atmosphere was somewhat intimate, and the room was a little stifling. Song Zhi tugged at her collar.

Tall and imposing, Kelante stood in front of the curtains and looked at Song Zhi from the shadows, yet he could easily take control of the situation. "Sit down."

Song Zhi inched forward cautiously and sat up straight on the black leather sofa to one side, doing her utmost to play the good student.

Kelante found a black remote control and pressed a button. A white screen descended from the ceiling, and he operated a laptop with focused attention.

DVD footage appeared on the screen.

So we're watching a recording...

And he locked the door... Was that really necessary?

The cushion beside her sank as Kelante sat down next to Song Zhi. He had also made two cups of coffee.

"I think you need to understand what war is first. Although you went through a nuclear explosion in Zone C, and even the riots that followed, none of that was real war. Zone C is a relatively peaceful area. You can't see the true nature of war there!"

Kelante looked at Song Zhi through the darkness, at her eyes in particular. She had a pair of bright eyes. They had never seen the ravages of war, which was why they were still as bright as ever.

"If you can't bear to watch it all, please tell me. I'll turn it off."

After a deafening gunshot, the footage began in earnest.

Song Zhi looked at the screen. This was not a movie, but a recording. Several mercenaries in gray camouflage were making their way through a ruined town. She recognized Lu Yu and Hill, but she did not know the others.

It was an unnamed town, surrounded by darkness and scarred by shelling. Devastation stretched as far as the eye could see, a wasteland.

Song Zhi looked at Kelante, a question in her eyes.

"Bas, an oil town in the eastern Middle East," Kelante explained, but he did not reveal much more.

Song Zhi could only turn her attention back to the footage. She watched Lu Yu and Hill closely, perhaps because they were the only two people she knew in the team on screen.

They advanced warily, holding formation, as though searching for something or standing guard. A child suddenly appeared ahead. The child's belly was unusually large, the child's eyes vacant and movements slow and mechanical. Like a doll, the child approached slowly.

Then someone shouted, "Stop! Halt!"

"Stop! Halt!"

"Stop! Halt!"

The three warnings were a disclaimer. The voice was hoarse and tinged with panic, as well as a trace of reluctance that seemed somewhat out of place.

"Three, two, one. Shoot to kill!" The cold command sounded like an AI voice, devoid of warmth or inflection.

A bullet shot out and struck the child squarely between the eyebrows. A small explosion followed, blowing the child's little body apart in an instant.

Blood and flesh flew everywhere, and a bloody mist coated the lens.

Song Zhi's hands trembled as she clapped them tightly over her mouth.

Kelante was a veteran who had been through countless battles. The instant the "human bomb" exploded, the muscles in his arm reflexively tensed, and his right hand reached instinctively toward the outside of his thigh. He carried a handgun.

The horrific explosion did not slow the squad's advance. They quickly adjusted their formation and pushed deeper toward the center of town.

More and more civilians with vacant eyes emerged from the ruins: adults, children, women, elderly people...

The explosions grew more frequent, and the damage they caused became ever more devastating. The bloody mist on the lens grew thicker and thicker!

There were casualties too. Other sounds arose among the previously silent assault squad: low curses from someone who could not bear the merciless slaughter.

The cursing came intermittently. Spent casings fell to the ground with cold, crisp clinks. Cover one another in turns, chamber rounds and change magazines, aim and shoot to kill, clear the bombs, advance in sequence. The commands in the footage were cold and rigid.

"No! Don't... please... turn it off..."

Song Zhi was sobbing too hard to speak. She buried her face in the crook of her arm as her stomach cramped and acid churned violently, but she could not throw up.

She closed her eyes, but her mind was full of those vacant-eyed civilians blown into bloody mist, especially the children...

Kelante turned off the footage and gently reached for Song Zhi's back. The moment his palm touched her, she instinctively pulled away. His hand met empty air, and he froze.

"From a victim's perspective, those civilians who died were innocent. If you were the one who fired the bullets at them, how would you live with yourself? Would you become numb? Cold-blooded? But if you didn't fire those bullets at them, you would be the one who died..."

"During this operation, Lu nearly lost a leg in an explosion, Hill was shot, and every other member was killed."

"No one wants to fire that shot, especially at a child... But that's war. War isn't about right or wrong. There's only life and death. People who love peace take up guns, young people see no doves of peace, and children's mothers can only weep at their graves."

"Song, soldiers are the people in this world least willing to start a war, because their flesh and blood are closest to the bullets."

Kelante's voice was low and forceful, every word striking Song Zhi's heart like a hammer. She slowly raised her head, her eyes red, but she fought to keep the tears from falling again. She looked at Kelante, her once-bright eyes now filled with a tangle of emotions-fear, grief, confusion...

Kelante sighed softly, stood up, and walked to the window. He pulled aside a corner of the curtain, letting a faint ray of light into the dim classroom. "Do you still remember the first person you killed?"

He turned around and looked at Song Zhi, his gaze deep. "We pick up guns not because we like killing, but because we don't want to be killed."

Song Zhi fell silent.

She remembered the first person she had killed: a man who had tried to kill her and steal her supplies...

The man had fierce eyes and a savage face, like a vicious wolf. She had been terrified, her body trembling beyond her control, but to survive, she had pulled the trigger without hesitation.

In that moment, time had seemed to freeze. A flicker of astonishment had crossed the man's eyes before he fell straight to the ground. Blood had splashed onto her, warm and sticky. The sensation had made her feel sick and frightened to this day, until she later grew numb.

She had told herself that the man deserved to die!

But had he really deserved to die?

He had wanted to kill Song Zhi because he wanted to survive too.

If he had not died, she would have been the one to die!

Song Zhi's red, swollen eyes could shed no more tears. Kelante had easily broken through her psychological defenses. Back then, she had been no different from the mercenaries in the footage. She and they had all pulled the trigger to survive.

"I want to go back..."

The car was quiet on the way back. Neither of them spoke. Silence was avoidance, a way for the soul to deceive itself and briefly escape reality.

After returning to the apartment, Song Zhi locked herself in her room and skipped dinner. She lay on the bed and pulled the covers over her head, only poking it out when the stuffiness made it hard to breathe.

Time passed second by second. She was sleepy, but she did not dare close her eyes. Those bloody images assailed her nerves, sickening and sticky.

She got up, opened the door, and walked out.

The lights were off outside. In the dim lounge, a single crimson point glowed on and off beside the half-open window. Kelante leaned by the window, concealed in the shadows, a half-burned cigarette between his fingers. A bottle of red wine sat on the windowsill, and dark liquid lay in a wineglass.

He simply leaned there in silence, lost in unknown thoughts. Only when he heard a sound did he raise his head and look at Song Zhi. His voice was a little hoarse and low as he said, "Would you like a glass of red wine? Having one when you can't sleep isn't a bad idea."

With that, he held the cigarette between his lips, took a stemmed glass, and poured Song Zhi half a glass of red wine.