Kian wiped the sweat beading on his forehead on the sleeves of his before it dripped on his patient. The bright orange surgical light burned his eyes, but he forced them to stay open despite the sting of the scathing heat, the scratches of dirt left in his eyelashes, and the exhaustion weighing on his lids. This was the third major operation he had done since dawn, and the wounded still poured into the medical wing like water from a broken dam.

Cries and whimpers of pain joined the cacophony of electric whirs of tools and monotonic beeps of medical equipment standing guard around the room. Kian kept his head down. Focus on the problem at hand. Think of nothing else. Especially that thought gnawing at the back of his head. If he wasn't careful, it could creep into his daily life after wrecking his entire sleeping schedule.

The rest of the operation flew by. Perhaps he has mastered the art of hyperfixation. He hadn't even noticed his hunger went past his normal lunch time and now sat in his gut as a dull, ignorable ache. He wiped the last of his sweat from the ends of his hair with a towel he got from the staff room. The water from the bottle he used for the last three days tasted like nothing, rushing down his throat at an unhurried pace.

A set of footsteps rounded the corner of the corridor, and he came face to face with a colleague. The older man was two years Kian's senior, but after working together in the camp for a year, it seemed as if he aged five more. Kian wasn't spared from such comments from the other nurses, and it took everything in him to bite back a retort that they weren't any different. The war was a hungry beast let loose in a fruitful field. Youth was one of the things it preyed on.

"Lucero, someone's looking for you," Sir Harvey said, jerking his chin towards the direction he came from.

Kian blinked and snuck a peek beyond the galvanized white corner. He raised an eyebrow when he found no one. "What for?" he asked. "What did they need?"

The older man shrugged, his lab coat riding higher than his hips showing me how much he had grown vertically...or laterally. "Didn't say," he replied. He put out a hand level with his eyebrow. "A man in his thirties, this high. His hair is in dire need for a wash, curly...or was it wavy? I seriously can't with all these terms, and I'm a doctor. Anyway, he mentioned you by name at the checkpoint. Made a scene with it too. Thought you should know."

Kian's gut tightened, the hunch of who it might me becoming more solid the farther Time crawled. Hadn't he made it clear he did not want a sight of that smug face near any camps he worked on? What part of "stay away from me" did that guy not understand?

"Thanks for telling me, sir," he answered, ducking his head at his senior who flashed him a clueless look. He looked down to see the plastic bottle in his hand reduced to a crumpled mess. The poor cap held on for dear life as it came close to bursting from the bottle's lip.

He didn't even know he clenched his fist that hard.

His combat boots clambered down the steps out of the med cube, bringing him down into solid ground once more. After spending a long time inside the insulated and sound-proofed cubes, the absence of steps echoing against hollow floors sent a pang of unease down his spine. It was too quiet. Too...empty.

The rest of the Molino camp bled out before him, and he took expert twists and turns until the familiar black-and-yellow barriers of the checkpoint came into view. It reminded him of when he helped Lola get back on her feet after she collapsed of a complication due to COPD. Maian had been alive to watch him work. Now...

He shook his head, steeling his nerves. If that guy really showed his face in front of Kian, he couldn't be certain of holding back. It took everything to not take a swing at the dude's punchable face, especially during the funeral when the news felt unreal. But now that the full story was out there, all Kian could do was put some distance between them.

As if Fate couldn't be cruel enough, a familiar face whipped from a fixed spot in the horizon. Sir Harvey was right. Messy clumps of greasy curls framed his face, bouncing against his shoulders when he spotted Kian and started waving like a shipwrecked sailor. When Kian closed the distance between them, the checkpoint guards let his visitor inside after a nod from him. He stepped back as a tall man with a fully-bearded face approached him.

Raizen Estrella.

"Good thing I was able to track you here," the sleazy journalist said, rummaging around his bag in search of his interview implements. "Man, you sure made it hard. I'd give you that, but—"

"What are you doing here?" Kian interjected, his patience for the blabbering man wavering to a thin thread. It was about to snap. "I remember specifically asking you to never contact us again."

Raizen bobbed his head, his eyes flitting to every direction except on Kian's face. "I know, I know. But I have a promise to keep, and I better not disappoint her any more than I have."

Something snapped in Kian, and the next thing he knew, the guards' hands flew to the rifles hanging from their shoulders. His hands gripped Raizen's collar, and even though the journalist was taller, his eyes dripped with fear at something he found in Kian's face.

"Don't you dare mention her with that mouth," Kian hissed, the memories, the anger, and the regret flowing out of the rim once more. Hadn't he agreed with himself he wouldn't lose it every time her name was mentioned anywhere near him? What was he doing now? "You simply had no right after what you've done."

While they lowered Maian's body to the ground, Kian had the pleasure of meeting a washed-up man who handed him a small booklet. That man had been Raizen, and the book had been Maian's poems published by a faceless international entity. Back then, Raizen had been distraught by his own grief, so much that he betrayed every detail of the activities he and Maian had been doing behind everyone's backs.

Despite the severe cases of surveillance and controlling the flow of information, Maian pushed to have her poems about the ongoing war out to the public in a place where even the highest person of their invaders' country couldn't touch it. And the force behind her decision, the weight pressing on her back, had been none other than Raizen. He had the nerve to show up after his poorly-thought course of action cost him a life, and Maian had been too...naive to listen to his proposals filled with false hope.

Maian's mother, the woman who once called her daughter a bitch for getting her father killed, cried madly, blaming Raizen. If he hadn't coerced Maian to submit her poems, she might still be alive now. It was easier to blame someone who kept taking it all, and Kian was no exception. After Maian's burial, they agreed—rather vehemently with threats and slaps involved—to never see each other again for Maian's sake.

And yet, here they were again.

Kian closed his eyes, tamping down the irrepressible rage crawling up his throat. He couldn't afford to kill someone, not when he was knee-deep into saving them from the horrors of this war. With a slight shove, his fingers unfurled from Raizen's collar, leaving the journalist to massage his neck in thought. For once, no smug words bled off Raizen's lips.

"You're angry at me, and I get that," Raizen said. "This will truly be the last time you will see me because I came to give you the last thing Maian entrusted to me. She told me to give it to you if something happened. Sorry it took so long, though. The coverage on the Visayan front went forever."

What could Maian have entrusted to this man that wasn't lost already?

Raizen fished a small maroon notebook from his reporter's bag, almost the same thing that Maian always carried with her, and handed it to Kian. The leather on the cover peeled off in small chunks, leaving the felt-like surface underneath. It was thick, but only the upper half had frayed pages. When Kian took it with a tentative grip, the label fastened with cheap clear tape bore something he didn't imagine he'd see again.

It was Maian's handwriting, the looping letters and the lazy scrawl close to being cursive but was really not, and his name greeted him from beneath the ink she used.

"What is this?" Kian waved the notebook in Raizen's general direction. "Why do you have it?"

The journalist sighed, hands muddling his already-unkempt hair. "I don't know, okay? She handed it to me one day and told me to hold on to it in case they get to her," he said. "And well, with your name on the cover, I figured she'd have wanted you to have it."

Kian frowned. "You didn't read it?"

Raizen's eyes widened, as if he couldn't believe he was asked such a question. "No, of course not! I'm not a creep," he said. "That's clearly some important shit to her, and probably important for you too."

He put his arms up in surrender. "I'm just a messenger, buddy."

Messenger, his ass. Did he say the same thing to Maian when he led her to her grave? And buddy? Someone truly begged to be punched.

Instead, Kian tucked the notebook under his arm. "Get out of here," he said, nodding at the checkpoint guards again who watched and listened to their entire conversation with the intrigue of a child to morning news. "Keep your promise. Don't show up in front of me again."

Raizen tucked his hands into his pockets and stalked towards the space in the barrier widening for him. When the barriers clicked shut, instead of walking off, he paused and looked Kian in the eye. "For what it's worth," he said, his voice quiet as the wind ruffling their hair and clothes. "Maian knew what she was getting into. She used every bargaining power she had to get her family to safety, and publishing her poems had been the catalyst. If not for the collection, Tita and Lola wouldn't be granted asylum overseas."

A small, sardonic chuckle escaped from his lips. "She might have preferred me to not say that, but she didn't foresee you lumping all your anger at me, did she?"

Before Kian understood what that meant, Raizen raised a hand over his shoulder and gave a flickering wave. Within seconds, the journalist was nothing but a mere dot in the horizon whence he came. Kian lingered by the checkpoint even though the phone in his coat vibrated like a tasered cat.

With heavy footsteps, he made his way back to the med cube until he was reminded of the notebook under his arm. He passed by the artillery tents when he stopped mid-stride and stared at the notebook's cover once more. His name shone against the harsh glare of the afternoon sun. He didn't want to open it, to find whatever secrets Maian buried inside for him to find. The answers should rest with the dead.

But when he thought about it, Maian had been the best person she could possibly be in the months leading to her death. It was as if she was living on borrowed time, that she knew what was bound to come and was merely enjoying her life because it was limited.

What was she thinking during those months, weeks, and days as she prepared for what was to come? Kian was no stranger to demons haunting his every step, and like him, Maian might have found salvation from them when they were together. She didn't want to ruin those memories by bringing her worries to the table. That was such a Maian thing to do.

Tears pricked at the corner of his eyes, but he blinked them away. With the last of his courage, he wrenched the notebook open and read. And read. And read. It was the story of Maian's life, or at least, the months leading towards the end. He found himself reflected back to him through her eyes as he relived some of the memories inscribed in both on paper and in his mind. Things might have been a bit different from how he remembered it, but the essence was the same.

And when he reached the last page after a hurried dinner, the truth leaped out at Kian. Raizen was right. It was Maian's choice to go through with it, and the last memory she had of Kian in the notebook was when she told him to suck it up and run away with her. By then, his vision had been reduced into a hazy veil. Each blink burned.

If he hadn't told her of his cowardice, if he was inclined to go with her as she pleaded, would she still be here? Would Kian have saved her if only he had chosen to save himself first?

You can't save others if you cannot save yourself. Maian had never spoken an absolute truth before, but here they were, the more uncomfortable truth revealing itself.

It wasn't Raizen who killed Maian.

It was Kian.

He moved to close the notebook when a piece of folded paper slid off the sides. It fluttered towards the ground before resting by his foot. With a lethargic grip, he swallowed a breath against the dread climbing up his throat. He set the notebook in the pantry table and flipped the note open.

His eyes roamed through the bare words Maian ever left him. When he reached the end, sobs wracked his shoulders, and he had to grip the table's edges to steady himself. Her words brought him back to that day when he received word of a body arriving at camp after being salvaged from the battlefield. And there she was, a bullet to her head, lying lifeless before he could even reach her. They said it was a swift blow. She didn't feel a thing.

But something else felt all that pain back then. His heart bore the weight of losing her to Fate's cruel turns until it broke. And now, even though he hasn't truly glued the pieces back together, he felt it break anew. Sometimes, the truth was as brutal as the lies told to hide it.

And all the pieces of his heart still beat, and they beat for the same person.

Kian stared at the words penned by someone who saved him even for a briefest of time. Contrary to the last thing she asked him to do, he wouldn't forget her. He couldn't. Not when her words were bound to outlive the generation she left too early. And she was wrong. One could still save others even when they couldn't save themselves.

They just needed to speak.