Translator: Hello readers, Hailey here. I am back with this novel. This will be the second novel after “Since When Were You the Villian.” I know this novel seems a risky one, but believe me, it’s a good read. Give it a go. Also, readers coming from “Since when were you the villain?” hello there, it is nice having you here too. If you have previously read SWWYV, let me know.
It feels like I have some kind of connection with them.
And let’s continue this journey of NSRA till the end.
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Chapter 1
“Let’s end this where it all began.”
Before Beth could even finish her thoughts, a sudden thud echoed through the old cabin.
At this hour, when everything was shrouded in darkness, who could be visiting?
“Beth.”
Hearing her name again, Beth clenched her eyes shut. Her dark eyelashes, stark against her pale skin, began to tremble as if struck by a winter wind.
It’s just the wind. It’s just the sound of the wind. She muttered meaningless assurances to herself, but her lips trembled as much as her lashes.
“Beth.”
Please don’t call my name.
Words she couldn’t convey welled up inside her. Tangled emotions made it impossible for any coherent thoughts to emerge.
Beth wished for the man outside to leave or for the winter wind to blow harder and drown out his voice. If that wasn’t possible, she wished she could go deaf and hear nothing at all.
Even though her wishes had never been granted in front of this man. How foolish of her.
“Beth, I’m hurt.”
The man’s voice seeped through the cracks of the weathered wooden door, untouched by human hands for a long time.
You always get what you want.
Beth redefined her thoughts about the man. To think that she could stand with a man like this, with only a door between them. A sigh-like laugh escaped her dry lips.
Her legs, which felt like they were stuck in place, stiffly moved towards the door.
Towards the gentle voice calling ‘Beth’. Very slowly.
She hesitated to open the door, instead resting her small head against it while gripping the doorknob.
From the cracks in the wood where the man’s voice had come through, she only heard the howling of the wind.
Perhaps she had mistaken the winter sound for his voice. After all, the man always reminded her of winter.
Beth tightened her grip on the doorknob until her knuckles turned white.
With a creaking, eerie sound, the door opened to reveal the man Beth could never forget, standing there.
Debert Cliff.
Grey hair and eyes that seemed both fierce and melancholic. His tightly set lips. His sharply defined features. He looked exactly the same as the last time she saw him.
Perhaps a bit more thinner.
But Beth didn’t care what kind of days he had gone through after she left, nor how time had worn him down. She lowered her gaze to avoid his persistent stare for that reason.
“It really hurts.”
At the edge of her lowered gaze, she saw his hand dripping with red blood. Though she didn’t want to see it, his hand, marred with scars and dripping with blood, reached for hers.
Even as his pale, almost ghostly, hand stained hers with blood, Beth didn’t move.
The woman was looking but not seeing, hearing but not listening.
“Beth, please.”
That drove Debert mad.
Debert’s knees gave way as he fell to the worn floor.
His arms wrapped around her waist with a desperate stubbornness, but his breath was trembling with a longing like a child craving love.
The irregular drops of blood falling seemed to cry for him. And as they seeped into the cracks of the old wooden floor, Beth watched the cunning scene unfold.
The floor would bear the bloodstains forever.
Beth slowly began to stroke the hair of the man, burying his face in her waist. As his cold hair tangled and released from her thin fingers repeatedly, the trembling of his shoulders gradually calmed down.
I have to say it.
Beth’s hand, which seemed endless in its motion, stopped.
At that moment, Debert’s arms tightened around her waist again.
As the wind burst through the half-open door, carrying the chill with it, Beth’s lips slowly parted.
“Please divorce me.” (T/L: What they are married?! Can’t wait to know what happened.
Because she has something to say.
“Please.”
With a voice as sweet as his.
* * *
“Hurry up and get in!”
Beth, who was looking down at the death certificate, was startled and raised her head at the coachman’s urging.
The rough-looking coachman, true to his appearance, had no patience for dawdling customers.
He eyed Beth with disapproval for a moment as she climbed into the carriage.
The coachman checked the paper with the destination written on it again, which Beth had given him along with the carriage fare before she entered the registry office.
The coachman sniffed and blew his nose once, then familiarly cracked his whip. As the horse’s footsteps clattered, the once-blue sky began to change colour.
The cold wind, now quite wintery, blew unfiltered over the roofless carriage, hitting Beth’s face. Her long hair blew here and there, but that was okay. It was the perfect way to clear her dizzy head.
A natural smile appeared on her lips. It had been a long time since she had gone out. Although it was just to reissue a death certificate for the war, Beth felt an unprecedented sense of relief.
If all went according to plan, tonight, Beth would be transferred to Mrs. Molly’s military hospital at the front line. It had been exactly one year since she arrived at the rear hospital.
She could still picture the faces of those at the rear hospital who had shaken their heads, unable to understand her decision. None of them knew what was in Beth’s heart. They didn’t know that not going to the front earlier was her only regret.
She lightly scratched the corner of the thin paper in her pocket. This paper bore an amount twice as much as she had received at the rear hospital as compensation for going to the front.
She can’t die because of the death penalty, but I don’t know what will happen in the future.
The more depressing thoughts crept in, the more Beth tried to focus on the reddening sky and the fields absorbing that colour.
When she gets to Mrs. Molly’s hospital, Ines and Dixie will be there.
“You look like a nurse. Why would you go to such a rough place? Do you have many family members?”
The coachman’s gruff voice interrupted Beth’s train of thought.
It was a common question directed at nurses.
Nexus was a country frequently at war, and it had prospered through war, valuing military achievements highly.
The death compensation, which was unaffordable for commoners, and the half-yearly soldier’s salary, which was more than a year’s wages in the capital, attested to this.
The coachman probably intended to pass the time on the long journey by listening to the customer’s unfortunate story.
But Beth kept her mouth shut, only rolling her eyes.
In the opposite pocket from the certificate, she felt a finger-length piece of pencil and a stiff stack of papers. While debating whether to take them out or not, the impatient coachman asked another question.
“I’ve worked as a coachman all over Nexus, so I can tell your hometown from a single word. You don’t seem like a local; did you come from Merdin? Many people come from there.”
When no answer came after a long wait, the coachman tilted his head. He glanced back quickly, thinking she might be asleep, only to see his passenger blinking with an ambiguous smile. Her face showed no sign of intending to tease or ignore him.
‘Geez. What’s so hard about answering a question?’
The coachman grumbled and focused back on the reins.
Perhaps she can’t speak?
Thinking back, it was strange.
From the beginning, she had handed him the paper with the destination without saying a word, and now she was just quietly blinking despite her gentle appearance.
The coachman, lips pursed as if to ask something more, closed them again.
‘What good would it do to ask?’
He concentrated on steering the horse, unable to shake his curiosity.
The carriage stopped in front of the forest path leading to the rear hospital.
“As a nurse, you probably know you can’t go any further.”
Beth gave a brief smile, apologising for not answering earlier, and started walking down the path as darkness began to settle. She was unaware of the coachman’s pitying gaze following her.
The sound of leaves crunching, branches swaying in the wind, the distant wheels of the departing carriage. These were the sounds Beth loved.
When the war ends.
In the rare peace, Beth habitually imagined the post-war days. The happiest future she could think of. The day she would live without any worries, savouring happiness.
She shook her head to prevent tears from welling up in her eyes, and her smile stiffened.
In the distance, she saw a soldier in front of the rear hospital.
More precisely, a soldier opens the medicine storage room door while looking around. Holding the storage key, which only the head doctor and authorised nurses could have.
Following his gestures, several soldiers carrying guns entered the hospital in an orderly manner. Feeling something was wrong, Beth was about to step forward when a deafening explosion shook the ground.
Smoke rose from the hospital windows in an instant.
The chaos of indistinguishable screams and shouts and the sight of soldiers mercilessly shooting at the fleeing wounded soldiers blurred Beth’s sense of reality.
Our soldiers?
Beth squinted to get a clearer view, her eyes widening. She covered her mouth with trembling hands.
It’s the Kovach Army.
She couldn’t help but notice. Their tanned skin and thick eyebrows are distinct from Nexus. Even in Nexus uniforms, they couldn’t hide their faces. But how did the enemy get to the rear hospital?
Before Beth’s confusion could subside, a headlight flashed into view at the corner of the road. Beth quickly crouched down in the bushes on the side of the road.
Her heart pounded in sync with the approaching engine sound, but she didn’t lower her gaze.
Through the car window of the passing military vehicle, she saw Hospital Director Chebur. He seemed relaxed, even joking with the Kovach soldier next to him, as if he had known about this all along.
“Kill all the Nexus bastards!”
Beth instinctively crawled deeper into the darkness. The thought of survival pounded in her head.
She ran headlong into the place without knowing where she was going, and when she reached a dead end, she covered her ears and closed her eyes. She prayed that this hell would end soon.
Time was immeasurable.
When she regained her senses, an eerie silence surrounded the forest.
As she looked around and climbed back up, the fallen leaves covered the bodies that spoke of death all around. A chilling wind, like the voice of the dead, brushed past Beth’s back with a hiss.
Beth hastily stripped the uniform of one of the corpses. The remaining warmth almost brought her to tears, but there was no time for such luxury. She took off her torn nurse’s uniform and squeezed into the stiff military uniform. And she ran. Even though she knew no one was chasing her, she couldn’t stop her legs from running.
She entered the hospital building, filled with smoke, and grabbed whatever the enemy had dropped—painkillers, alcohol wipes, syringes—and stuffed them into her pockets.
She must save them. She must save them.
Who exactly she was trying to save, she didn’t know. The words she repeated to herself over and over were incomprehensible, and her eyes were red with tears.
Escaping the rising smoke, Beth paused to catch her breath. At the end of the road where the carriage had stopped previously, the minefields set by the enemy were shining in the moonlight. (T/L: No way!. There were mines where the carriage stopped.)
Beth turned her head in the opposite direction of the path she had come.
The road leading to the front lines.
The road to death is, but ironically, the only path to survival at this moment.
Beth once again tied up her long hair and tucked it securely into the military cap.
There was only one way to go.
