Return to Me

The officer was not the first to lose an arm, nor was he the only patient she was responsible for tending. But when he arrived at the hospital, she was drawn to him.

Dangerously injured, he usually slept. When he did wake, she sometimes observed a fleeting glow beneath his irises as he watched her.

“What’s your name?”

“Rin.”

It annoyed her that she had offered it so immediately.

“How goes the war?”

“Badly.”

He looked sour. “You visit often.”

“Don’t read anything into it,” she answered, snappishly. “I feel as though I owe you something. A debt.”

“A debt?” His teeth were very white but too pointed to be attractive.

“I will not let you die!”

He snorted indifferently. She turned to leave.

“Flowers—“

His voice stopped her.

“You smell… like flowers.”

“Nonsense. We’re not allowed to wear perfume--

“And there are no flowers these days,” she finished.

Still, the next day she stopped to purchase flowers from a woman outside the barracks. Wrapped in old paper, the wilted bunches were stained with newspaper ink. The surgeon, a bossy and toadish, but harmless man, was bowing to the patient when she arrived.

“Do I know you, young sir?” Dr. Jaken-ushi asked, squinting through his glasses.

Rin’s hands trembled. She felt an inexplicable sense of reunion. If she could have, she would have reached out and hugged them both.

Instead, she looked deep into the officer’s suddenly uncertain, gold-tinged eyes and—for the first time in two years—smiled like a child.