When I woke up, I still had the keen pain on my back, but it seemed to have gotten worse know that I was out of the water. I looked around the room I was in. It was nighttime, but it had a cozy feeling. For the first time in my life, I had slept on a bed. A tear of joy streamed down my cheek and unto the pillow; if I could stay this way for the rest of my life, I’d be in heaven. I lifted my hand to wipe away the tear, feeling a respirator covering my mouth and nose. I did not know how long I had been unconscious, and it frightened me to know that I was leisurely sleeping in an enemy’s territory. I took off the respirator and set it on the floor gently, without making any sounds. I sat up on the bed and began to cough as I strained my eyes to analyze my surroundings.
As I was about to get out of the bed, the door that was next to the bed opened slowly, allowing light to pierce the darkness. Two people walked in: a middle-aged man with a white coat and a small black suitcase along with the person who had taken me out of the water in front of the man with the white coat. They had been looking down as to not trip over an object. They saw me from the corner of their eyes and vaulted in astonishment when they saw me beginning to stand up from the bed.
“Miss, you shouldn’t get up in that condition you’re in,” the middle-aged man said to me and then walked forward to face the other man and told him, “reach into my bag and take out a small bottle labeled C-16, please.”
“Is this the one?”
The doctor grabbed the bottle, inspected it, and then nodded in agreement. He reached into a pocket on his coat and took out a syringe. I flinched and began to run towards the door, but the man who had taken me out of the water grabbed me by the arm and pulled me towards him. He placed his other arm around my shoulders and held me down as the doctor approached me with the syringe that had been filled with a transparent liquid. I struggled to brake free, but the more I moved, the harder the man’s grip was. The doctor leaned down and injected the substance in my arm.
“There…that wasn’t so bad, now was it?”
I ignored the doctor. The doctor placed his hand on my forehead and said, “Your fever also seems to have gone down considerably. You shouldn’t move around with those broken ribs of yours. How are you feeling?”
I ignored his question and stared at him blankly. I made the man who was still holding me let go by slapping his hand that was on my shoulder while my vision was still positioned on the doctor’s eyes; I walked back to the bed and placed myself underneath the blankets. The doctor had streaks of sweat stream down the side of his face. He’s scared to death of me. I giggled in amusement at the sight of the doctor.
The man who saved me was the first to realize his expression was blank, but the doctor had already left the room by this time (ran away with his tail in between his legs, actually), and said, “I am General Ciel S. Powell of JJ17D-Platoon, Section 52, may I ask for your name, young miss?”
I shook my head in disagreement. General Powell walked to the side of the bed I was in and sat next to me and said with the softest voice he had probably ever spoken in a while, “May I know your name?”
I got irritated by his kindness; it felt like he was trying to be kind to destroy me from the inside and then decimate the outside. I sat up swiftly so that my face was a few inches away from him. “You may not know my name, Mr. General Ciel S. Powell,” I then paused and continued, “I never asked to be saved: why did you do it?”
“A gentleman must never leave a lady to be in such a manner.”
“You are a gentleman? You, who took countless lives for power and territory, call yourself a gentleman?”
He smiled, “I have never taken a life, and neither have my subordinates.”
“When you were shooting missiles from your ship, one of your missiles hit a soldier and that soldier died.”
He commenced to laugh as though I had just made the greatest joke of all times. “That was my ex-subordinates who had turned against me right when we were going to make 2QX, Section 1 surrender and began to shoot the missiles; what he did or why he did it has no relation to me.”
His words resounded in my mind: hideous, expletory echoes. “If someone works as your subordinate, you should take responsibility for what he or she does.”
With that said, I rendered him speechless. I peered into his eyes, and I noticed what might have been anger over one’s self. This type of person, I knew, is the type who does not like to be wrong; the type who if is told he is incorrect, he would use violence to silence the person who corrected him, but if he knew what he just said was wrong because someone allowed him the awareness of it, he would most definitely abuse himself physically. And I, unconsciously, began to think I would be the one to blame if he were to hurt himself: I detested the thought of it for I hated the fact that I was the one who caused the pain and suffering. At that very moment, Fear began to reveal itself upon me. My emotions were changed almost immediately, causing alarm to the man.
I said in a whisper, as a tear of fright ran down my face and my body trembled, “…don’t do it…”
He definitely heard me and had understood what I had meant. He tentatively stared into my eyes that were currently covered with dark brown eye contacts. He opened his mouth to utter something, but no words were said. I waited until the moment he was ready to speak his mind. After a few minutes, he spoke, completely changing the topic, “You really will not tell me your name?”
Expecting this inquire, I ignored that question once again by turning my head to the side, avoiding eye contact. I noticed him smile from the corner of my eye after he had said, “Then, don’t interpret the way I call you in a rude way. I’ll be calling you Yue from now on, if you won’t tell me your name.”
I became interested in his purpose for calling me in such a way: “Why ‘Moon’?”
He stood up, placed his hands on his hips as he looked to the side towards the window, and replied in a melancholic and distant tone, “What is a sky without a moon?” Those, to my surprise, were words of the past.