9th Grade Civil Servant In Another World Chapter 168 - Richard

Ever since the thug stomped the puppy to death, his life had always been a complete mess.

“Please save me… Please…!”

The young man sprawled in the snow squirmed like a worm and cried out. His leg, bleeding profusely, trembled with convulsions.

Corpses sprawled in a pool of fresh red blood. The young man was gradually being sucked into that swamp.

“Stay right there!”

Someone jumped toward the young man, into the pool.

“Deputy Commander! Stop that foolish act!”

A familiar voice rang out. A man had jumped into the pool and the young man reached out to him.

Bang!

With ear-splitting noise, the young man’s hand exploded.

“Huuk, ahh, ahhhhh!”

Agonized wailing. His heart skipped a beat. Strength entered his hand gripping the surgical instrument.

“Medic, medic…!”

The man supporting the young man turned his reddened face urgently and shouted.

“Commander, a medic…!”

Blood poured like a waterfall from the young man’s wound. The man tore his clothes to tie up his hand and leg.

No one stepped forward.

The commander shook his head, and the army gradually retreated following his orders.

“Mom…”

The moment the light went out in the young man’s eyes, everything distorted.

“Huh!”

Richard Enke woke with a choking sound.

“Haa…”

It was a nightmare.

Helplessness washed over him like a wave.

He sprawled his body on the bed and turned his head at an angle to look at the small window.

Dim light seeped through the curtain gaps, faintly illuminating the room’s interior.

It was a barracks built next to the temporary medical ward. Military doctors were each assigned a room. The furniture consisted of a single bed, a small table and chair, and metal drawers.

However, considering that regular soldiers lived crammed together in trenches or poor barracks, it was outrageous luxury.

Looking at his pocket watch, it was still 5 AM. Having slept only two hours, his eyes were stiff and stinging.

Days when surgical schedules piled up left no time even for catnaps. Still, it had been a rare opportunity to close his eyes on a bed, but he had stupidly wasted it.

It was all because of that damn dream. No, should he say it was because of the sniper he first encountered while advancing toward the border area?

When the sniper was hunting sacrificial lambs.

Richard had been pushed around among the confused soldiers. When he came to his senses, a fallen private was just a few setin in front of him.

Deputy Commander Eisler desperately called for a medic, but he didn’t move. No, he couldn’t move.

Getting close would mean certain death, obviously.

He felt no emotion then.

But when he slept, he always dreamed.

Why.

He roughly washed his face, put on his gown properly, and headed to the medical ward. As if surgery was in its final stages, a senior military doctor was concentrating intensely with dark circles under his eyes.

“Long live our Great Supreme Leader!”

The medics, with faces as dark as the senior doctor’s, saluted. Richard finished his hygiene inspection and joined the surgery.

“Oh, you’re here. Perfect timing. Hold these intestines for me.”

He took on surgical assistance without complaint. After a moment, the patient with the bullet removed was wheeled out unconscious from anesthesia, and the senior doctor removed his mask with a tired expression.

“Good work. I’m going to sleep.”

“You worked hard.”

“But what’s wrong with your face?”

“…?”

Richard reflexively felt his face.

“Are you sleeping properly? Even if the schedule is irregular and it’s hard, try to get some sleep somehow. Didn’t you see in school? People with insomnia drop like flies. Compared to when you were a fourth-year, your face is half gone.”

“Thank you for your concern.”

Richard smiled gently.

The eastern front was full of doctors who had been doing well at major hospitals or making money running private practices before being drafted.

And whether they drafted the best personnel first, nearly half were from Lüdelheim Comprehensive University.

He couldn’t count how many seniors, juniors, and classmates he’d seen here. Even medical students who hadn’t graduated were being dragged in.

Richard quietly changed gloves and prepared for the next surgery.

In this operating room, he was king.

Whether to save someone or let them die was all decided at his fingertips.

But with great power comes great responsibility.

Richard performed surgery on an average of 50 patients per day. Most were seriously wounded, and over half died during surgery or were disposed of as beyond recovery.

He had no complaints about the harsh extraction of labor. No, he felt no thoughts at all.

He was a doctor.

It was natural work for someone standing in this position.

He was just so, so tired.

Was it during his several-patient-of-the-day examination?

“Doctor, we’re out of blood.”

“Go around to the neighboring wards and get any remaining stock.”

“They all said there’s none.”

Richard looked at the pale-faced young man. He had lost too much blood. He would certainly die from excessive blood loss.

The nurse’s face had turned as pale as the young man’s. Richard briefly stared at the empty blood transfusion pack, then calmly finished the suturing. After applying medicine, he sent the patient to the recovery room.

“Let’s take a break.”

Richard sat heavily in a chair while removing his blood-soaked gown.

His whole body ached and his head hurt. His eyes were probably bloodshot red too.

‘Taking a tiny amount of canil dissolved in water makes a good sleeping pill.’

Should he resort to that?

But right now he didn’t even have the strength to go get canil-containing painkillers.

If he could just close his eyes and never open them again. If only he could…

Before he knew it, he was standing on the battlefield.

***

“Please save me!”

As always, Richard quietly gazed at the pleading private.

Normally he would have struggled desperately to wake from the dream. Even then, he wouldn’t have been able to wake up. But now he was too exhausted, too wanting to sleep a little more, so he only watched.

Then the surrounding people disappeared one by one. Commander Lucas, Deputy Commander Rudolf Eisler, the dead corpses, the soldiers in terrified chaos—all gone.

“Mom…”

His body moved. Richard approached the private who was muttering pitifully.

“Why do you keep appearing?”

When he asked in a cracked voice, the blood-covered private scattered like smoke. A platinum-haired boy remained in the pool of blood.

“Because you want it.”

“You say I want it?”

The boy nodded. He held a pure white puppy in his arms.

He had kept a puppy as a child.

The cotton-soft white and fluffy puppy went out for a walk one day and was kicked to death by a thug.

Richard, who had charged at them crying, was beaten mercilessly, and the next day a policeman who claimed to be the thug’s father came and left a puppy his dog had birthed.

The new puppy lived healthily for 11 years, then died on the day Richard was accepted to medical school.

“I don’t want it.”

The puppy squirming in the boy’s arms. Richard stared blankly at that tiny life and muttered.

The boy smiled.

Such a gentle, kind-looking smile.

“You want to know.”

“Know what?”

“Why they beg for life like that.”

The boy whispered with his blood-covered face.

That night.

The new puppy whimpered and cried. Richard rolled around in bed, patting the puppy under the covers.

And while applying medicine to its wounds, he resolved.

Since he was weak, he would survive like a weak person.

Without being bothersome to anyone, doing his best in his position, creating no resentment, meeting everyone’s expectations…

“You survived cowardly too.”

“Is that wrong?”

Richard confronted the boy.

Everyone lived that way. At least all Schufaben people did.

Wearing masks even at drinking parties in case there were informants, only saying pleasant things instead of complaints, not getting involved in troublesome matters like politics.

Cutting off contact with dangerous places to avoid Ossel’s minions. Pretending not to see when someone was taken away. There was no way to help anyway.

That was this country’s, this society’s virtue. Richard had simply practiced that virtue a little more than others.

“No, you were right. But then why don’t you realize? The reason other soldiers struggle.”

Why do they so desperately crave life?

Even with gunshot wounds and severed limbs, what drives them to want to live?

Simple survival instinct?

If not that, is life truly that beautiful? So brilliant that it’s worth living even with serious physical defects?

“I, I…”

Richard covered his face.

“I want to live.”

“Yeah.”

“But… it seems like it would be okay not to live. I…”

“Yeah, you have no reason to live.”

Life is not brilliant.

The world is cruel.

To survive, he acted according to everyone’s expectations and loved no one.

He became a perfect, shallow human.

So that if anyone looked into him, they would find nothing but a warm smile.

“Actually.”

Richard looked down at his pure white hands. Cracks gradually appeared and they began to crumble.

“I didn’t really want to live.”

Looking at spoiled brats who acted selfishly relying on their parents’ power, at a teacher who came out half-crippled after being dragged to Ossel, at thugs who stomped puppies to death, he realized.

This place was hell.

If he had truly wanted to protect his life.

He wouldn’t have chosen such a death-adjacent profession. He wouldn’t have entered the White Raven Order following Erika’s lead. He wouldn’t have docilely followed conscription orders without using underhanded means to escape.

“I just…”

Cracks spread along the blood vessels in his arms. With cracking sounds, fragments fell off.

“I just didn’t want to die.”

The most minimal survival instinct.

That was all Richard possessed.

“So I was curious. Whether life was that valuable. Why they wanted to survive so desperately…”

The private who was shot by the sniper wailed. Please save me, please someone help me.

Deputy Commander Eisler, who went to save him, was the same. He desperately tried to save the private.

Battlefield soldiers ran and rolled until exhausted to dodge bullets. They crowded together in miserable trenches, desperately trying to hide from bombardments.

The unlucky ones who were injured and brought in screamed at Richard. Please save me, I don’t want to die, they clung to him.

Watching them, Richard thought.

“What makes them stand up? If it were me, if I had to wander the battlefield with a gun, at some point I would just…”

“Space out and close my eyes.”

The boy continued while stroking the puppy.

“Because struggling so desperately to survive is a bit bothersome.”

“Yes.”

“Because you’ve lived enough already.”

“Yes.”

“Because there’s no more reason for you to keep living.”

“…Yes.”

“Then.”

The boy put the puppy down in the pool of blood and approached him.

“How about dying now?”

He smiled cleanly and kindly.

“You’re tired.”

Finally, cracks reached Richard’s face. He crumbled into a handful of ash.

***

“Ah.”

He opened his eyes with a start—he was in the medical ward.

He must have dozed off sitting in the chair. Only 10 minutes had passed since he said they should rest, and the nurses and medics were all sitting on the floor or leaning against walls, nodding off.

He stretched and quietly left the medical ward.

The sun hadn’t set yet. Warm, gentle spring energy enveloped his whole body.

Richard walked a little, then felt grass being crushed under his feet and looked down.

Weeds kept sprouting no matter how often they were pulled. Even though they had roughly leveled the ground and pushed them aside to build barracks, they showed tenacious vitality and grew everywhere when it rained.

Sitting on the wooden steps leading to the barracks, Richard discovered it. A single flower red as blood.

About the size of a pinky fingertip? A tiny wildflower with small petals swayed in the breeze.

When he turned his eyes, such wildflowers weren’t just one or two. Weeds and wildflowers filled the path in front of the medical ward, the shadowed gaps between buildings, and even the cracks between worn bricks.

Richard’s expressionless, dry face slightly crumpled. And a thin mist began to form in his bloodshot eyes.

Tears flowed pathetically without sound. No sound came from his mouth either. It wasn’t particularly sad.

Just tears flowed. For no reason at all.

How long had he been standing like that?

“Oh, there, medic! Medic!”

A cheerfully forced voice called out.

After wiping away the dried tears, he turned around to see a petite woman with long brown hair bouncing as she trotted over.

“You remember me, right? I’m Sophia Kohl who interviewed you the day before yesterday!”

“Ah, yes. Hello.”

“I couldn’t properly greet you then! Are you busy right now?”

“No, it’s rest time.”

“Ah! Perfect!”

Sophia smiled brightly and handed him what looked like a note torn from her notebook.

“I wanted to apologize for last time and treat you to a meal. Also, if you could do a brief follow-up interview, that would be great. This is my lodging address, so please visit when you have time.”

Richard blankly took the note.

Sophia Kohl.

Richard remembered her.

Since he worked at the medical ward near headquarters. He had also seen Sophia, who frequented the headquarters area, several times.

Among the reporters, she was the youngest and most lively, and he had noticed her gradually becoming more and more haggard.

He remembered her exhausted gaze that she couldn’t quite hide behind her smile during the last interview.

Richard put the note in his pocket and spoke quietly.

“Reporter. There’s something I’d like to tell you.”

It was an impulsive statement that surprised even himself. Sophia blinked her round eyes.

***

As always, it was a battlefield.

As bullets rained down and tens of thousands of screams echoed, Sophia stood there.

She held a voice amplifier and slowly opened her mouth.

“Everyone, are you living well?”

Her clear voice trembled out.