Baekhyun takes a sharp inhale, and leans back on a destroyed piece of wall. The putrid smell of smoke, mud and blood almost burns through his nostrils. 

His feet are cold, they have been for days, and a part of his uniform is still ripped. 

The grip on his assault rifle tightens. 

The dirt under his nails digs deeper, like the soot on his face. Like the empty container of ammunition. 

The battlefield is swept in silence now that the crossfire has ceased, and Baekhyun is tempted to convince himself that this is the end of today’s ambush, but he knows better. There’s no telling when a Theian soldier might appear suddenly from behind the thick wall of dust that surrounds him. 

With a pained grunt, he gets up on his feet, preparing to seek out any survivors from his unit and to hopefully find the colonel, Zhang Yixing–wherever he is. 

He gets to take one step before he hears shuffling from behind a large piece of debris. 

Baekhyun immediately falls to his knees, eyes burning as he attempts to find the person responsible for the sound.

There’s another shuffle which he tries to identify, but it’s not until he looks up that Baekhyun realizes the Theian soldier is kneeling right in front of him. He too, is holding an assault rifle in his hands, and the wide gaze in his eyes tells him he’s as surprised as he is. 

Everything after that seems to happen in slow-motion. The Theian soldier raises his rifle and aims it at him. Baekhyun has barely time to react before the latter pulls the trigger. 

Nothing happens. 

The rifle is empty of ammunition. So is his, but he has managed to store a small knife and a handgun inside his jacket which he silently thanks his past self for. 

The soldier freezes, and Baekhyun sees in the wake of his twisted features how realization slowly dawns upon him. He knows this marks the end of his fate, and that Baekhyun is the very harbinger of it. 

One would think Baekhyun has a choice.

Apparently so does the Theian soldier, since they’re both out of ammunition. He puts the rifle down and raises his arms, slowly and shakily. His eyes are glossy, he’s as dirty and muddy as Baekhyun himself is. He’s just as exhausted, and he probably longs for the ambush to be over just as much as he does. 

“I don’t want to kill you,” he confesses, looking him straight in the eyes. 

Baekhyun swallows thickly, reaching into his jacket. “I know.” 

“You’re out of ammunition too,” he notes, nicking his head towards the empty container. 

He looks back at the Theian soldiers and nods. “I am.” 

“So if you let me go, I will spare one of your soldiers in return,” his voice is shaky and uncertain. The soldier knows he’s gambling with death, and that once the russian roulette stops there’s only one outcome. The one Baekhyun has decided. 

His brain is numbed, and his thoughts are as if detached from his own body. “Okay.” 

The latter nods slowly, before he starts turning around with the intention to run away. The soldier's boots sink into the mud as he sprints, back facing Baekhyun when he too sprints in the Theian’s direction, pulling out his handgun, feeling its extreme weight with his hand. 

The truth is that there is no choice. Not now, not ever. 

Not in war. 

You can be the hunter, or you can be the hunted.

What tells him that the soldier will actually spare a life? That Baekhyun’s act of mercy will not come back to bite him?

In the battlefield one either kills, or is killed. 

There’s no thinking involved, not one single thought present in his head when he aims the gun at the soldier’s leg and pulls the trigger. It hits where intended and the gun recoils violently, causing Baekhyun to stumble back. The sound that follows is deafening. It’s loud, it’s so loud that the world seems to turn quiet in the magnificence of its rumble.

The Theian soldier falls down on the mud, screaming in pain. 

He approaches the soldier. The male is lying face down on the mud, and Baekhyun grabs his helmet, shoving his face in the dirt so deep his gurgled scream gets muffled. He pushes it down further and further and further. He pushes it down until he knows his mouth is filled with mud and his lungs bear no space for air. Baekhyun restrains the male’s flailing arms, and when he’s made sure that his enemy is weak enough, he lets go and instead aims the handgun on his helmet. 

These are all just conditioned reflexes by now. 

There is no other choice. 

There never was. 

A tremendous, addicting amount of adrenaline surges inside him as he pulls the trigger once again. 

The Theian’s soldier's head bobs violently when the helmet explodes, and the same deafening sound worsens the ringing in his ear, but he barely feels it in the sheer rush he’s in. The restraining stops, and the man turns completely rigid as the liquid in the shade of deep crimson taints the wet soil of the mud. 

In the tail of his eye, Baekhyun notices something golden that has cascaded from within the enemy’s pocket. He takes it briefly, discovering that it is a small locket. He manages to click it open, and his heart locks in his throat. 

It’s a picture of a soldier, a woman and a child. The Theian’s soldier’s wife and baby, he’s sure they must be. The picture is in black and white, it is crinkled and consumed, but the solemn smile on the family’s faces is something he knows is bound to haunt him for the rest of his life. Baekhyun takes out the picture carefully and flips it around. At the corner of the paper, there is a small name written with blotchy ink. 

The soldier’s name. 

The name of the man he just killed. 

And because of him, his child will grow up without a father. That woman will age without a husband. 

But there is no room for guilt. Not now at least. 

Not on the battlefield. 

**********************

Lee Yuri. 

It was a name Baekhyun had been used to hearing a lot over the course of his childhood. In the small village of Lalia, a dispersed small piece of civilization located by the border of Maila, everyone knew a little bit of each other. Amidst the soft running sounds of the forest creak and the featherlight breeze that brought along leaves in the shade of crimson with it, he grew familiar with her. 

But he was never going to forget the day where he actually met her. Especially not the evergreen colors of the lonely elm tree in the middle of that meadow a bit outside his village. 

He had earlier gone into a fight with some of the village boys. Obviously, he had been vastly outnumbered and he returned home to his parents and sisters crying. His father had dismissed him, telling him that real men didn’t cry, they held things in and toughened up. 

So Baekhyun did what was most fit to do. He stopped crying at home, and ran towards the forest, where he could cry in peace. Baekhyun only stopped when a large meadow came into sight. It was only a few meters outside the village, and in the middle of it there stood a lone elm tree. It hadn’t bloomed, but its large crown was draped with green, majestic leaves that offered a kind shade. They were small and yet to grow, just like he was at that time. Innocent and unknowing to the withering of the world as he hid under its wake, letting upset tears fall down his soot-stained cheeks. 

Lee Yuri had been there, curiously eyeing him as she hid behind its bole. She had then stepped out and Baekhyun in response tried furiously to wipe his tears. But it was too late, she had already seen him in that puny state. 

Yet she reassured him, insisting to go back to her home and patch his wound up so they could play together later, and that it was okay to cry. He tried to object, but very much like him, Yuri was extremely stubborn, so Baekhyun ended up helplessly caving in to her request. 

And for a few years after that, they had become inseparable. 

But people changed, and so did the elm tree. So did the village of Lalia. They had been inseparable, but it didn’t mean they were always going to be. 

For some time, they had begun to drift apart. As they got older—the fruitful age of twelve to be precise—it was only natural that Yuri, now beginning to get conscious about her social environment, spent more time with the girls of the village than with him. And it was like that for Baekhyun too with the village boys. 

They stayed strangers, their encounters by the elm trees stopped and that small period of their childhood was forgotten along the attempt to adapt to their surroundings. 

Until they reached the age of sixteen. Or well, when Baekhyun’s father passed away. 

He hadn’t been the best at showing affection. Perhaps neither of them had ever really spoken truthfully to each other, or expressed their affection, which made the wound dig deeper. He was gone so suddenly, so pointlessly. 

His father had also told him to not cry in front of others. Be a man, he said. 

So he didn’t. Not when they lowered his coffin below the ground, nor when his mother clinged on him, wailing. He looked up at that moment, seeing the men’s emotionless gazes casted on the soil in front of them. 

And then he felt his throat close up. 

Why was he any less of a man if he cied? 

Why did his father’s friends and family, look so brutally disinvolved? Was this what it meant to be a man? 

If so, then he didn’t want to be one. 

Truth was, he was suffocating. Baekhyun needed to let everything out in a way or another, because the pain of getting left behind was getting too overwhelming. 

That’s what led to his decision of leaving the funeral, sneaking past the villagers as he ran to the now forgotten meadow, and to the large elm tree in its center. 

Unlike his first meeting there, the tree was now swelling with small, coral buds. 

Just like Baekhyun. 

Afraid to bloom, afraid to face his own feelings and accept his life as it was, for he had yet to sprout. 

He stopped under the tree and crouched down, feeling tears finally stream down his face as he struggled to catch his breath. He wasn’t running anymore, yet it was shortening by the minute. And he was cold too, despite the fact that they were in the middle of spring. What was happening to him? Why did he feel like his heart was going to beat out of his chest? Why couldn’t he breathe?

Baekhyun remained like that for a couple of minutes, until he heard shuffling in the tall, narrow grass. He immediately froze, and attempted therefore to wipe his tears and stabilize his breathing, but he was still feeling too disoriented to calm down properly. 

Then he heard the shuffling again, which caused his self awareness to kick in, allowing him to straighten up. ”Who’s there?” his voice was but a mere murmur of tremor. 

And then she stepped out of the shadows. 

Lee Yuri. 

He had seen her around through the years, but he had never really looked at her until that moment. Her eyes were rounder, more intense than he remembered them. Her body was fuller, every youthful curve hidden delicately beneath the fabric of her black dress. She had also grown more tall, and her jawline was more beautifully accentuated than he remembered. 

His gazing came to a halt, and he looked down at his feet, trying to make sense out of the situation in the hellfire of his obfuscated mind. 

”I saw you running away at the funeral, and I more or less figured where you would be, so…” Yuri trailed off in an attempt to explain herself. 

It had been years since they last spoke, let alone in a situation like this. 

”Just—Just go,” he managed to stutter. But Yuri being…Yuri, stood firm on her ground, shaking her head avidly. ”Leave Yuri. I-I must look horribly pathetic right now,” Baekhyun furiously wiped his tears. 

But she persisted, and eventually placed her soft hand on his shoulder, slowly turning him around to face her. He couldn’t look at her. If he did, he was sure he was going to break down completely. 

”Baekhyun,” she murmured softly. ”It doesn’t matter.” 

His breath kicked out of his lungs when Yuri carefully traced her hand from his shoulder to his back, pulling him in an embrace. Her other hand flew to his hair, caressing it softly. ”You can cry here. You can cry here with me all you want.”

Maybe it was her warm, soothing voice. Maybe it was the embrace. Maybe it was the elm tree, which shade was like a veil of protection for them against the unknown boundary of the outside world. Whatever it was, it melted him, until Baekhyun found himself clinging on the wool of her dress as he cried desperately on her shoulder for minutes. Or maybe hours too. No matter how much time passed, she remained standing there with him, tangling her fingers in his brown locks, brushing them down in an innocent yet crucial exchange of comfort. 

And from that moment on, s