Please Forget Me - Chapter 221

‧₊˚ ☁️⋅♡𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ☾.

The holes torn open by the dogs had been blocked with boards, firewood, and crates, and the spot where the corpse had lain was covered with a filthy blanket I’d never seen before.

“Let’s go over there.”

Killian came to me holding an empty tin can fixed with a candle and took my hand. Like a prince escorting a princess, he led me to a corner of the cabin where crates and logs were piled to form a wall, almost like a small fortress.

He sat me down on a clean blanket spread on the floor and checked for injuries, then smiled with great satisfaction. Meanwhile, I still couldn’t shake the chills from the recent events.

“Dana…”

But when he felt my trembling, the smile vanished from his face.

“It’s okay. It’s all over now. It’s just the two of us. If anyone else gives us trouble, I’ll chase them off. Trust me. You just saw it.”

Yes, I did. Too clearly…

I nodded, and he proudly began rummaging through his bag again.

“My love, you must be hungry.”

He pulled out crackers and a canteen and offered them to me. For his sake, pretending everything was fine, I tried to act normal—but I simply couldn’t swallow food, not even water.

“Want to try some salami and cheese?”

“…No.”

Even when he pulled out other things and offered them, I refused to eat. Killian then tried to reason with me.

“Thinking about tomorrow, even if you don’t feel like it, you have to eat well and rest.”

How could I eat anything here?

In a place where wild dogs chew on humans.

The thin walls barely kept out the sounds of flesh being torn and bones gnawed, echoing from outside. Had the dogs we chased away returned? Was Killian unaffected by those noises?

“If I start smelling like food, maybe then you’ll get hungry too.”

Sitting beside me, Killian scooped a generous spoonful of bright red strawberry jam onto a cracker and playfully waved it in front of my nose before popping it into his own mouth.

To eat calmly while hearing beasts devour humans…

I couldn’t tell if he was pretending to be unaffected or genuinely was.

“Dana…”

Even after eating half the crackers, when I showed no appetite, his calmness finally broke. Killian lifted me onto his lap and held me protectively.

“If you’re not hungry, close your eyes. When you wake up, you’ll be able to shake off what happened as a bad nightmare.”

“I wish it were a nightmare. Then I could just wake up.”

My nightmare was still endless. Beyond the thin walls, the sounds of beasts eating people mixed eerily with the gunfire and explosions.

I used to think the people living in the rear—the ones we hid with—were gradually turning into beasts and demons because of the war. I couldn’t help but mock that from the front lines.

At least in the rear, beasts didn’t eat people, and people didn’t kill strangers without cause.

“Dana, it’s disappointing and sad, but this is the world we live in. God gave us a world full of harsh trials and a duty to live fulfilling the missions given, despite it all.”

Yes, the world has always been cruel. That’s how the order of things is supposed to be.

I came to accept that beasts eating people was part of the natural order. But I could hardly accept that people killing people was also natural law.

What decides the countless lives and deaths where gunfire and explosions ring out? God’s will? Or perhaps fate is just the result of chance.

Thinking that way made life feel endlessly futile. Still, I preferred believing fate—random chance—determined life and death, rather than believing in a god.

While those who started the war hid safely in underground bunkers, listening only to the most beautiful violin melodies, those who gained nothing from the war ran headfirst into guns and knives, hearing the screams of beloved comrades dying and forcing themselves to listen to the last breaths of enemies they had never even met.

What profound meaning or grand plan could there be in such a disillusioning world’s law?

I wanted to believe there was no god rather than be disappointed by one.

‘Somehow, I feel like I’ve thought this before.’

Not only did I remember frequently having the same thoughts, but faint memories of the situations that caused these thoughts began to flicker before my eyes.