He tensed up now at the possibility that another living being other than himself was alive in this god forsaken land. He held his breath and took a careful step backward, worried that the other party would notice him. When he decided to run away, the seemingly vulnerable crying got louder just as the rainfall got heavier.

He stopped. Hesitantly, he turned around and stared into the direction of the crying again. It sounded as if it was coming from a child. He walked forward slowly when he was fairly certain now that the crying belonged to a child who was likely alone. When he got closer to the source of the sound, he noticed a strange patch of straws and leaves underneath the wooden steps, not far away from where he stood. As he got in front of the strange patch, he was now confident the child was under the patch. Although, he was surprised that he never noticed a pit there before.  

He hesitated for a moment, deliberating if he should remove the patch. “What if a monster reaches out and tears off my limbs?” He quickly shook his head at this silly thought. He should know better by now that there was no such thing as monsters that would come out of nowhere. After all, he learned that, since having to survive on his own for the past two years, the most fearful creature of all was mankind.

Although, deciding not to take any chances, he looked around for something that would move the leaves without using his bare hands. He dragged a lighter sword from the open path. It was mostly washed clean and shiny from the rainwater with exception of a stubborn brownish-red stain around the guard.

He went back to the patch and started moving the straws and leaves aside. When an open space was formed, the crying stopped and hiccups followed, as if the child was curious about the sudden ray of light seeping through the increasingly unbearable darkness. He sneaked a glance into the pit and saw a girl, seemingly no older than five years, stared back at him dumbfoundedly. Then, as if the girl suddenly remembered that he was a stranger, a big frown on her face was starting to form and she looked as if she was about to cry again.

Panicked, he wanted to tell her not to cry, but held back hesitatingly – he had not spoken a word for such a long time, so long that the villagers, when they were alive, had thought that he was a mute. He was not confident if he could form the sound properly. Then, the girl’s new crying session snapped away his thoughts. “S-stop!” he ordered, his voice a bit shaky. His own voice sounded foreign to him. Did he always sound like this?

As if his word was magic casted upon her, she stopped but continued sobbing pitifully. She watched him with her innocent but inquisitive eyes, as if waiting for him to break away first from their unexpected staring contest.

Now that she stopped crying, he dropped the sword and began moving the rest of the leaves away with his bare hands. He took at a proper look at her when most of the leaves were out of the way. With the exception of her messy hair, tangled with a few leaves and dirt, her vibrantly silky pink dress gave a clue that she must be a young miss from a wealthy family. He wondered how did she ended up in a dirty ditch of a poor village such as this one, and in the middle of war too. What happened to her parents? Did they abandon her or did they die? Was she now an orphan just like him?

Anxious by the returning silence, the girl’s sobbing got louder again.

“W-what’s your name?” he asked her, desperate to put an end to her crying.

Unfortunately, she began a full-on crying session again in oppose to his desired outcome. However, through the crying, messy sobbing, and hiccups, she answered him, “Yun-er…ma—” she caught herself, remembering that her mama had always lectured her to call her mother in front of others. She did not yet understand that mama was not a respectful way to address one’s mother, especially in a house of noble lineage, but nonetheless, it was an endearing address that her mother favoured in private. “My mother,” she continued, “calls me Yun’er…”

By the way she responded, he did not think abandonment was a possibility. Perhaps her parents indeed died? However, he was not aware of any wealthy family passing by recently. From the corpses he passed by so far today, he did not see any expensive looking clothes other than what this little girl was wearing. Turning his attention back to her, he tried to give her smile to hopefully make her feel less anxious. He told her, “Alright, Yun’er, I will get you out. But I would need you to be an obedient girl and listen to me, is this alright?”

The girl nodded.

When he finally managed to get her out of the pit, he suddenly covered her eyes with his hand protectively, hoping to shield her from the macabre scene. To keep her from struggling, he told her not to open her eyes yet.

“Why?” she asked. When she finally calmed down and stopped crying, her voice was as soft as cotton and seemingly as sweet as candy.

“B-because…” he didn’t want to tell her that everyone was dead in the village besides the two of them. Oddly enough, he did not want her to witness something so cruel at such a young age. Perhaps, it was to compensate for what he had to go through when he was not much older than her current age. Then, he gave her an answer equivalent to ‘because I said so’, “Because it is not for a child to see.”

“But you’re also a child,” she said pointedly, clearly rejecting his explanation.

The corner of his mouth twitched, not very amused at her retort. “I’m older than you, so it’s different,” he refused to let her win this – what appeared to be the start of a petty argument.

He could feel her cheeks inflated with air, as if arguing back silently that this was unfair. He took a peek at the side of her face and saw that she was definitely heating up red. He grinned, showing a bit of the tiger-like tooth on one side. He had to hold himself back from poking at her round and chubby face. He wondered if his younger brother would have been this cute too if he had survived.

“I don’t even know your name,” she huffed.

“My name is Wa—” he paused, catching himself in time. “Talu. But you should be calling me Talu gege or Gege.” (Note 1)

Her eyebrows furrowed under his hand.

After guiding her back to the kitchen of the first house that he visited today, all the while covering her eyes tightly with one hand, he finally let go of her.

She looked around the kitchen curiously.

Nervously, he took a sweet potato from the flat basket and put it in her hands.

“What is this?” she asked as she stared at the sweet potato in her hands with a slight frown.

“It’s food,” he responded, thinking that a little sheltered miss like her had probably never seen this kind of food before. “You need to eat.”

She looked to him with hesitation in her eyes. “How do I eat this?”

Seeing that she was at least not rejecting the food, he felt relieved. He smiled and took the sweet potato from her hand. “Here, let me show you.”

Note 1: Gege or Ge means older brother. It is a way to address either one’s older, or can also be used to address someone casually in the similar age group who is older.