Inside the stuffy tent, the smell of dried blood and sweat saturated the air. Kenji, kneeling over a bloodied soldier, worked with almost mechanical precision. His fingers ran quickly, stitching up the man’s abdomen as he lay screaming in agony, a hemorrhage threatening to consume his life. The scars of war were etched not only in the mutilated bodies around him, but in the chaotic environment that seemed to suck out any hope.
The wounded kept arriving. One after another, they were carried like sacks of meat, each with a different horror story: severed arms, burns that ate through the skin to the bone, arrows lodged in vital organs. For Kenji, this was a reality so far removed from his previous life that it seemed like an eternal nightmare. He, a simple medical student who had been studying calmly in Okinawa just a few days ago, was now immersed in a medieval scenario of suffering and death.
The people's clothing, the rusty armor and coarse linen garments, were a constant reminder that he was no longer in modern Japan. The behavior, the primitive weapons, the lack of hygiene—all of it painted a picture of a world where life was disposable, where war was the lifeblood of existence.
Kenji didn't know how or why he had been brought to this place. All he knew was that here, he was the last hope for many. Even without modern equipment, without anesthesia, without antibiotics, he couldn't stop. If he faltered, more lives would be lost. So, between the sight of grotesque wounds and the desperate screams, Kenji stitched his flesh and fought to maintain the little sanity he had left.
The only question that echoed in his mind, as he wiped the blood from his hands, was: "Why me?"
Fabrizio Baldo
The day had been long, like every other in this endless war. General Fabrizio Baldo, a burly man with a scarred face and a gaze hardened by time, walked through the military camp. His gray cloak swayed in the evening breeze as he surveyed the rows of worn tents and exhausted soldiers. The war with the neighboring kingdom was draining not only their strength, but their resources as well. Healing potions were in short supply, and the once-valued magical healers seemed helpless against the tide of wounded.
Then there was him, the foreigner. A man of such peculiar appearance that, at first, many in the army considered him a freak or even a bad omen. Yellowish skin, slanted eyes as if drawn by an exotic artist, short hair and unfamiliar features – never had Fabrizio seen anyone with such strangeness. And yet, there he was, inside the makeshift tent, saving lives in ways the general could not understand.
Fabrizio’s approach was marked by a mixture of curiosity and skepticism. He stopped at the entrance to the tent and watched. The man, whom the soldiers called only “the doctor,” moved with an almost supernatural calm. His hand held a thin needle and thread, stitching up the belly of a wounded soldier as if mending a torn piece of cloth. Beside him, strange tools gleamed in the torchlight—tweezers, sharp blades, and what looked like a vial of steaming liquid.
Fabrizio didn’t understand how it worked. He was a man of war, not of healing. In his mind, open wounds were treated with compresses, prayers, or, for the more fortunate, healing magic. But magic didn’t always save. He had seen men die with spells glowing on their skin—spells that didn’t stop their last breath. But this doctor’s work was different. He didn’t summon lights, he didn’t whisper words of power. He just stitched, cleaned, and applied a foul-smelling substance that made the wounded scream but survive.
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“What land did he come from?” the general wondered. No one knew. The stranger had simply appeared in a war-torn village, and now he was here, under his command, treating wounds that no magical healer would dare touch.
Fabrizio entered the tent, the sound of his heavy footsteps catching the doctor’s attention. The man looked up and inclined his head briefly, but then returned to his work, as if the general’s presence was irrelevant.
“So this is how you work your magic?” Fabrizio asked, crossing his arms as he watched the doctor stitch up the wounded man.
“It’s not magic,” the man replied in a firm but tired voice. “It’s knowledge.”
The general narrowed his eyes, not understanding the difference. To him, anything that brought a man back to life after a mortal blow was as mysterious as a wizard’s spells. But right now, he didn’t care about explanations. He needed results, and this man—strange, silent, and different—was delivering what no one else could.
“Keep saving my men,” Fabrizio ordered. “I don’t know what you are, but for now, you’re all we have.”
And with that, the general turned and walked out of the tent, the cold night wind touching his hardened face. The stranger was a mystery, but in war, Fabrizio knew that sometimes you had to trust in mysteries to survive.
Kenji
As night fell, Kenji felt the weight of the day on his shoulders like an invisible chain that seemed to drag him to the ground. His tent, small and stuffy, was permeated by the smell of dried blood and alcohol. He had saved many that day, but others, despite all his efforts, did not survive. The sound of the wails and the lifeless faces of those who died under his care remained engraved in his mind, like a constant echo.
With his rudimentary tools—a worn-out scalpel, alcohol for disinfecting, improvised needles and thread for sutures, and a crude saw for amputations—Kenji fought death with everything he had. He did his best, but deep down, the feeling of inadequacy consumed him. “I did what I could,” he thought as he washed his hands, shaking with exhaustion, “but it wasn’t enough.”
The army he had been forced to serve in was overwhelmed. The magical healers, as rare as they were valuable, were also at the limit of their strength, each one treating more patients than they could handle. However, Kenji never had the opportunity to meet them. His routine was a frantic race between trying to save lives and dealing with the bodies that could not resist.
By the end of the day, after treating the last survivors, Kenji found himself performing autopsies on the dead—not out of curiosity, but out of necessity. He needed to better understand the wounds, the internal damage, the causes of death, in the hopes of improving his methods and saving more lives in the future. It was a cold and lonely task, but it was also his only escape from the chaos.
When the last oil lamp was extinguished, Kenji finally closed the tent. He looked up at the starry sky, a sight as beautiful as it was ironic, considering the hell around him. He wasn’t from here, he didn’t belong in this brutal medieval world that scared him with each new dawn. He had been recruited into this army only because he had nowhere else to go.
In Okinawa, he was a dedicated medical student, surrounded by books and technology that allowed him to dream of a bright future. Here, he was just a foreigner lost in a war zone, armed with primitive tools and haunted by faces he could not save.
Kenji took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment, trying to push away the fatigue and fear that threatened to consume him. Tomorrow, the war would continue, the wounded would not stop arriving, and he would have to face it all again. "Gambare!!!," he muttered to himself, before going into his cabin to try to find a few hours of sleep. The future seemed bleak, but he had no choice but to move forward. After all, in this cruel world, he was one of the few hopes left.