Your Eternal Lies - Chapter 76

After Epilogue: Remember Our Names (3)

* * *

Talas always took key forces before an invasion. A handful of senior pilots went over to Talas for higher salaries and treatment. The top line was empty.

Ian Kerner moved rooms. From the cadet dormitory to the official military unit and back to the officers’ quarters. And eventually to the Air Force Commander’s Office.

Suddenly he became a twenty-year-old commander.

Everyone said the Empire was doomed. The war seemed hopeless. Cadets scrambled to apply for asylum and fled to their villas in small towns to avoid conscription. The school became quiet.

In the end, it was either the geek, the woman, or both who remained… Anyway, there were only people who couldn’t leave this place. As always.

The military and government did not see them as people. They had no long-term vision or plans for the future. They were in a hurry to get the benefit in front of their eyes and clean up the rubble that had fallen at their feet. Wasn’t that the result of this war?

Nevertheless, the military needed pilots.

Ian stared at the orders delivered. The point was that since the remaining number was small, they would squeeze out more pilots and sacrifice them.

Ian knew that it was the only thing the Empire could do in this situation. He shouldn’t have refused the order. But as he looked at the three remaining members of his squadron in the empty school, he thought.

That he must tell them the truth. Before he went into battle as a full-fledged commander, when he was still a human and not a soldier. When he was their senior, not their boss.

“Run away before it is too late. If you stay, you’ll die.”

“…”

“You don’t have to sacrifice your lives. Neither the school nor the state has done anything for you.”

But they didn’t pack up. All three members of the squadron, gathered in the locker room in khaki military uniforms, refused his orders.

“If Ian Kerner runs away, a commander will have run away. But if I run away, female cadets will have run away. My merits will not be recorded, but my mistakes will not be forgotten. I will be an obstacle to the other female cadets. I will never run away.”

“…I can’t run away either.”

“I’m not going either. I have nowhere to go.”

They kept their word. They didn’t run away. They were discharged from the sky after shooting down an enemy plane near Malona. They boarded a plane to defend a country that had never protected them before.

First Illeria Lev, then Lucy Watkins. The squadron was quickly filled with younger, more clumsy cadets. There were also cadets who died on sortie day. Some endured months, and the luckier ones endured years.

Of all the members of his squadron who died, Ian couldn’t forget his first squadron members. It was because they were the members he led when he was younger and clumsy, but more than anything… He couldn’t forget their words.

-We will not run away.

Their names were not recorded on the monument built after the war. All protests from him were dismissed. The state seemed to be trying hard not to remember them.

Violet Mihak died last. She was unable to get out of the crashed plane and disappeared into the water. Ian remembered that day. She didn’t even have a family to deliver her belongings to. He opened the locker of his last dead squad mate.

Uniforms, boots, guns, and a book.

That was all of Violet Mihak’s belongings. It was too shabby to even call it a keepsake.

<Rosen Walker’s Prison Break>

Ian flipped through the first page of the book, which had turned yellow. A photo of Rosen Walker, which was taken by a newspaper and published in a book, fell out.

A soldier fighting a war needed something to look at. Whether it was a family member, a lover, or even a picture of a favorite actor.

‘What was Violet Mihak thinking when she carried the picture of Rosen Walker?’

‘What did Rosen Walker mean to Violet?’

He pulled out the pendant he always carried with him from under his shirt. Rosen Walker was there too. In the photo, Rosen was smoking a cigarette with a crooked smile. She seemed to be laughing at the world.

He stared blankly at Rosen Walker’s picture.

And he picked up a cigarette for the first time in his life. Not knowing which end to put to the mouth, he waved his hand for a moment. Soon after finding the right direction, he lit a cigarette. Ian inhaled the acrid smoke slowly.

He stroked the picture of Rosen Walker attached to the dead flight crew member’s watch and leaned his head against it.

He had no fuel left. He couldn’t embrace the flame and rise into the sky. So he had to look at it now.

Cigarette smoke billowed up. He smoked a pack of cigarettes without leaving the spot as he let out a cough. There was a taste of iron in his mouth. It was hot, wet smoke like a hot engine.

* * *

Rosen swung her legs, staring at the photo for a while, then said with a depressed expression.

“I want to go see them. The graves of your squadron.”

“There is no grave for a pilot who died in the sky. Most of the remains could not be recovered.”

“…Still, isn’t there a monument at least?”

Ian shook his head. There was a huge memorial built at the end of the war in the Imperial Capital, but less than half of the names inscribed on it belonged to those who truly gave their lives for the Empire.

Rosen cursed.

“A world full of sh!t.”

“I agree.”

Rosen took out a piece of paper from between the books on the bookshelf and picked up a pen.

[Rosen Walker]

Ian laughed. Rosen could now write quite a few words, not just her own name.

Her handwriting was much more neat and tidy than his handwriting, which often flew off the paper if he was a little careless. Ian felt a warm tingle in his chest. He realized that it was a feeling that people called ‘being touched’. He quietly tucked Rosen’s hair behind her ear.

“Obviously, I learned to write first, but I don’t know how you write better than I do.”

“It’s all about talent.”

Rosen put the paper in a glass bottle and corked it up.

Rosen took his hand and went out to the white sandy beach. People on the island were afraid of the sea surrounding Primrose, calling it the ‘black sea’, but in fact, it was the most beautiful sea Ian had ever seen in his life. A clear sea where coral reefs were clearly visible. Each time the sunlight changed its color, the sea changed its color.

The deserted beach was their favorite playground. They played in the water and packed lunches to go on picnics. Sometimes they just spent time staring at the sea aimlessly.

The sunset was setting over the horizon. They put the glass bottle with Rosen’s name in it where the waves hit the sand and waited until the high tide held the bottle and the low tide took it away. Rosen looked at the glass bottle being washed away and grabbed him by the sleeve of his shirt.

“Will they like it?”

“I’m sure they will like it. They wanted to get your autograph when they were alive.”

“…I know this is stupid, but I wanted to do something like this.”

Memorials are for the living, not the dead. But even so, can we say that commemoration is meaningless? It wasn’t. A ritual for the living to remember the dead, and through the process, they can be remembered.

Rosen started writing again with her finger on the sandy beach. Ian recognized them and smiled. They were the names of his squadron members.

[Ilereea, Looci and Veyeolet.]

“You misspelled it.”

“I know. I tried to fix it. I was confused for a moment.”

Rosen gave him a hard push as he reached out his hand to correct the spelling. He burst into laughter and had to sit down on the sand.

“And what if I misspell something? It’s the thought that counts.”

“Yes. You are right.”

“…What are you thinking now? Your expression got serious again.”

Rosen grabbed his face after he had been silent for a moment, and questioned him. His doctor told him he needed to think less or express what he was thinking. So, Ian tried not to make a hard face and said what came to his mind.

“I was anxious thinking that those kids would be forgotten forever. But I don’t think so. Because now you will remember them. I thought it was a relief.”

“…”

“And they remembered you.”

Ian thought as he watched the sea colored by the sunset. There was a saying that a dead pilot could become a bird or a dolphin. Of course, they were just superstitions invented by those who had suffered too many deaths to comfort themselves, but…

Ian wished that their souls were truly free and were staying somewhere in this area.

In this place, there is an island of witches, those who help them, and Rosen Walker who remembers their names.

***