Chapter Text
Nie Huifei is tired of fighting. Day in and day out, he sees nothing but blood. He can’t remember the last time his nails didn’t have rust caked beneath them, when the sticky sensation of unclean clothing didn’t cling to his arms.
Nie Huifei is so tired.
His comrade—He Jiashun, if he remembers correctly, but only the gods knew all the names of every fucking soldier in their broken barrack, and Nie Huifei was certainly no god—stares at him with unseeing eyes, those hands of his that used to paint wonderful artworks for Nie Huaisang’s circle now lying on his chest.
A brief touch confirms what everyone around him couldn’t care less about.
Nie Huifei doesn’t think he has the breath to send his soul off with a prayer, but he shuts He Jiashun’s eyes like they’ll finally see their owner to the next life.
For a strange moment, Nie Huifei is almost jealous. Whatever life he earns next, whether it’s been dirtied by his actions in this war that he never provoked, can only be better than his current one.
Boots whisper across the battlefield, and his sword kisses another enemy’s throat. It slides back into its sheath without a sound, the only sound he can hear for miles and miles across this field, stacked with bodies and trampled grass.
Whatever flowers used to bathe in the sun have long been ripped from their beds, just like the children he’s grown apathetic enough to barely mourn.
(That’s a lie. He mourns them all the same, with a knife shaking in his hand and a gentle ghost talking him out of something he doesn’t think he’ll regret now. Isn’t he meant to exorcise ghosts? Hadn’t he once thought it his duty, his only duty?)