> "If you find this letter, I was already gone.
But maybe… not forgotten."
The sky above the ridge was black, smeared with smoke.
Gunfire had stopped hours ago, but silence was never peace — it was the kind of silence that screamed in your ears.
Han Tae-Jun lay on his back, one arm over his chest, the other dragging uselessly by his side. He didn't know how long it had been. Time had folded into itself, becoming a slow, stinging blur of blood, dirt, and shaking breath.
He could still hear it. The ambush. The shouting. The sound of his unit retreating without him.
He had been left behind.
---
The pain in his leg was dull now — not from healing, but from numbness. Infection, maybe. He didn't know. He didn't care.
With trembling fingers, he pulled the small black notebook from his chest pocket. The cover was cracked, soaked in blood and rain.
He uncapped his pen. Half-dried ink. Still usable.
He began to write.
> Dear Jae-min,
I know you'll never read this. But I still need to tell you.
I wasn't scared. Not really. I was angry. Angry that you ran. That they all ran.
And yet, if you came back now... I'd still forgive you.
Because no one wants to die alone.
His fingers cramped. He dropped the pen, gasping as a spasm shook through his ribs. He cursed, quietly.
Then—
A sound.
Crunching.
Boots.
Approaching from the treeline.
Not fast. Not loud. But deliberate.
He held his breath.
He reached for the rifle beside him.
Still thirty bullets.
But no strength to lift it.
The footsteps stopped.
A shadow emerged — too clean to be one of his own. A different uniform. Foreign. Enemy.
Tae-Jun's eyes met the stranger's.
The boy didn't raise his gun.
Instead, he knelt down…
and picked up the notebook.