But his body this adult man's body didn't stop.Its muscles moved with instincts he didn't recognize, with reflexes he possessed without ever having learned them.
He blocked, punched, kicked, and endured as if he had done this all his life.
Even though he had never hit anyone in his short life.
He felt the man's fist hit his ribs, and pain exploded on his side.
He felt his knee hit the man's thigh, and the man winced.
They grappled, falling into a pile of corpses, squeezing the cold flesh beneath them.
Voltase felt the bones of the corpses under his back poking through his uniform like dull knives.
Finally, after one of Voltase's kicks hit the man's chin and sent him stumbling backward until he sat down on a pile of corpses, their fight stopped.
Not because one of them surrendered.
But because there was another sound.
The sound of footsteps.
Many footsteps.
Clear, regular, and approaching.
Voltase and the man simultaneously turned toward the source of the sound.
Beyond the corpse field, among the bare black tree trunks dead trees, leafless, barkless, just wooden skeletons rising to the sky like fossilized fingers of the dead, with branches spreading in all directions like broken ribs. three figures moved closer.
They walked in a spread formation like hunters encircling prey.
The distance between them was about three meters.
They moved with measured steps, not hurried.
Their uniforms were ash the color of thick the color of gunpowder dust floating in the air after shots, or ash left after fire dies.
The fabric looked thicker, newer than Voltase's uniform.
Its collar was stiff.
Metal buttons gleamed dully under the dim light.
On their right shoulders were different patches. perhaps different symbols, perhaps different unit insignias, but Voltase couldn't see them clearly from this distance.
Their trousers were tucked into tall boots glistening from wetness, wetness from blood and mud.
Those boots looked better maintained than Voltase's boots, with soles still showing clear patterns and buckles still shiny.
On their heads, no helmets. just cloth caps fitting tightly to their skulls, with short brims in front protecting their eyes from light and rain.
They carried rifles.
The same rifles the pale green man had used earlier, wooden stock, long barrel, box magazine in front of the trigger.
But their rifles looked better maintained, with wood still glossy in some places and metal without rust.
Voltase could see that those rifles had just been cleaned. perhaps a few hours ago, perhaps a day ago, with the sheen of oil still visible on the metal surfaces.
Their eyes were sharp, cold, and without doubt.
They weren't surprised to see two survivors in the middle of a sea of corpses.
They didn't wonder why these two men were still alive.
They just saw targets.
Two targets to be eliminated.
The pale green man moved first, with quick, practiced movements. practiced by years of experience, by countless battles.
He darted toward the pile of corpses where his rifle had fallen.
He crouched low, his body shrinking behind the wall of flesh, and his hands groped among the rotting bodies to find his weapon.
He didn't care about the corpses beneath him.
He stepped on them, pushed them, moved them with practical, emotionless movements.
Voltase didn't follow.
He knew the distance was too far, he wouldn't reach the rifle before the gray men shot him.
Instead, his hand reflexively reached into his uniform's pocket. he hadn't noticed until that moment.
His long, sturdy fingers touched something hard, cold, and elongated.
He pulled it out.
A knife.
A long bayonet with gleaming steel blade about thirty centimeters long.
One side sharp as a razor.
The other side serrated at the base. deep, sharp serrations designed to tear flesh when pulled out.
Its handle was made of the same wood as the rifle's stock. dark, worn, with deep grip grooves carved by the previous owner's fingers.
At the base of the blade was a locking mechanism, grooves and metal protrusions. designed to attach to the end of the rifle's barrel, turning the long-range weapon into a deadly close combat weapon.
The knife was heavy, balanced, and very sharp.
Voltase could see a faint reflection of his face. the face of an unfamiliar adult man, on the gleaming steel surface.
Unfamiliar eyes staring back at him from the metal surface.
Dark eyes, tired eyes, eyes full of fear he was trying to hide.
Where did this come from?
he thought.
But the question was drowned out by the sound of gunfire.
Bang!
The first shot was fired.
Not from Voltase.
From the pale green man.
The man had found his rifle.
He knelt behind the pile of corpses, the wooden stock pressed to his shoulder, and his cheek against the base of the barrel to aim.
Despite his unstable position. one leg bent beneath him, having to balance on moving flesh, his aim was precise.
One of the three gray men fell backward.
A hole gaped in his chest, right in the middle, where his heart should have been.
Blood spurted into the air in a black, glistening spray under the dim light.
For a moment, Voltase saw a red flash.
The body fell with a dull thud, rolled into another pile of corpses, becoming part of that sea.
His rifle slipped from his hand and fell into the mud with a wet plop.
But the other two were still standing.
They didn't seem surprised to see their comrade fall.
No expression on their faces.
Just pure focus.
They returned fire.
Two shots almost simultaneous, separated only by fractions of a second.
Bullets whizzed through the air with sharp sounds that shattered the silence.
Bang!
One bullet hit the pile of corpses near Voltase, exploding flesh and bone fragments into the air.
Warm blood spatter hit Voltase's face, and he felt small pieces of flesh sticking to his cheek, sticky and cold.
The other bullet hit the ground near the pale green man, splashing bloody mud onto his uniform.
Voltase ran.
Not toward the enemy, but sideways, seeking shelter behind a taller pile of corpses.
His large, powerful body felt strange while running.
He wasn't used to his stride length, to the wide swing of his arms, to the shifting weight of his body from one foot to the other.
But survival instinct was stronger than his confusion.
He knelt behind the pile of corpses, pressing his back against the cold, damp wall of flesh, trying to catch his breath.
His chest rose and fell rapidly, his large lungs inhaling air thick with the stench of rot.
Beside him, about five meters to the right, the pale green man fired again.
Bang!
One of the gray men fell, kneeling, but not dead.
The pale green man's bullet hit his right shoulder, tearing through the gray uniform and the flesh beneath.
Blood spurted from the wound, and the gray man screamed a short, stifled cry.
But he still raised his rifle to return fire.
Voltase looked at the knife in his hand.
The bayonet.
He could attach it to a rifle, but he didn't have one.
So all he could do was use it as a dagger as a close-combat weapon.
If the green man dies, I'm alone, Voltase thought.
The pure feeling of aloneness. with no one to look for him, no one to mourn him, gave him a strange courage.
He didn't care if he died here.
No one would miss him.
But he didn't want to die in vain.
He didn't want to die without fighting back.
With a scream emerging from his chest. a deep, hoarse scream, the voice of an adult man that wasn't his, Voltase leaped from behind the pile of corpses.
He was a ghost.
A corpse rising from the grave.
The corpses that had covered him shifted and fell aside.
From that pile, his tall figure emerged with the knife raised in his hand, the steel blade gleaming under the dim light.
He thrust.
The bayonet pierced the man's right arm. right between the elbow and shoulder, where the deltoid muscle attaches to the humerus bone.
He felt the elastic resistance of flesh.
Skin stretching then tearing.
Muscle separating under the steel's pressure.
Warm blood spurted from the wound, splashing Voltase's face, blinding his eyes.
The taste of metal returned to his mouth. the man's blood, or perhaps his own from his split lip.
The man screamed.
His voice was high and piercing.
Not a war cry, but a pure scream of pain emerging from the depths of his body.
His rifle fell into the mud with a wet plop.
But the man didn't give up.
With his still-intact left hand, he grabbed Voltase's collar and pulled him down with tremendous strength. the strength of a man who knew that if he lost, he would die.
Voltase lost his balance.
Their bodies grappled on top of the corpses. falling, rolling, exchanging punches and kicks on the piles of cold flesh and broken bones.
Voltase felt the man's teeth biting his arm.
He felt the man's nails scratching his face, gouging the skin beneath his eyes.
Blood flowed between them, mixing with the blood of the corpses beneath them.
Voltase couldn't tell whose was whose.
Beside them, the fight between the pale green man and the last gray man still continued.
Two figures wrestled in the darkness, hitting and pushing each other.
Sometimes one of them fell, but they quickly got up.
The sound of fists hitting flesh, the sound of gasping breaths, and the sound of boots stepping on scattered bones became a never-ending background of chaos.
Voltase finally managed to push his opponent down.
He sat on the man's chest, his knee pressing down on the wounded shoulder, making the man grimace in pain.
With his other hand, he held the knife and raised it high. the steel blade gleaming with fresh blood dripping from its tip.
He prepared for the final stab to the man's neck.
But at that moment, he heard another gunshot.
Not from the fight beside him.
From the pale green man's fight.
Voltase turned.
He saw the pale green man jerk.
His whole body stiffened.
His back arched backward like a bow pulled too tight by a giant's hand.
On his forehead, right in the middle, a small gaping hole appeared. lack inside, with red, glistening edges.
Blood flowed from that hole, thin and bright red. flowing slowly downward past his thick eyebrows, past the bridge of his straight nose, and dripping onto his half open lips.
His dark, spirited eyes were now empty and dull, like cracked glass that had lost all reflection.
He fell backward into the pile of corpses, the shocked expression never leaving his face.
His mouth remained open as if he had wanted to say something but hadn't had time. a word trapped between life and death that would never be spoken.
The pale green man was dead.
Voltase froze.
He stared at the fallen body.
For a moment, he felt a strange sense of loss. loss for someone who, minutes ago, had tried to kill him.
They were enemies, but they were also both survivors, both trapped in this place, both not knowing why they were here.
Now Voltase was alone again.
As always.
The last attacker. the ash man who had shot the green man dead now aimed his rifle at Voltase.
Time seemed to slow down.
Voltase saw the rifle's muzzle.
The gaping black hole at the end of the barrel, surrounded by dimly gleaming metal.
He saw the attacker's finger on the trigger.
The muscles in that finger tensed as he began to pull the trigger back.
Then, heat.
The heat in his chest was extraordinary.
Like a hot iron pressed against bare skin. Igniting inside his chest and beginning to burn from within.
There was no real pain at first just heat.
Heat spreading from a point on the left side of his chest, spreading to the entire left side of his body, to his shoulder, to his arm, to his back.
Then, numbness.
A strange numbness that made him unable to feel anything on the left side of his body.
And then, after that numbness, a dull, deep pain.
A pain that felt like his entire insides were being crushed by an invisible giant's hand.
Voltase fell.
He felt his body the tall, powerful adult man's body. become simultaneously light and heavy.
Light because his legs no longer supported him.
Heavy because gravity pulled him down with tremendous force.
He fell backward into the pile of corpses.
His head hit something hard. perhaps another corpse's skull, perhaps a broken femur, perhaps a stone covered in flesh.
For a moment, his vision blurred, full of white spots dancing at the edges of his field of view.
He lay on cold, wet ground. more precisely, on cold, wet flesh.
His back pressed against other cold, stiff, motionless bodies.
He felt the contour of a corpse's ribs beneath his back, a prominent spine, and hollows between those bones.
Every time he breathed, the corpses beneath him moved slightly, shifting under his weight.
He stared at the starless black sky.
Through the thin drizzle that had begun to fall. wet mist hanging in the air, not heavy rain.bhe saw white spots created by his oxygen-deprived brain.
Spots that moved slowly, dancing at the edges of his vision like dying fireflies in winter.
Blood flowed from his chest.
He felt it warm and stickybpooling beneath his back, seeping through the faded blue uniform now turning blackish-red on the left side.
The thick wool fabric absorbed the blood like a sponge, becoming heavier, wetter, clinging to his skin like a damp shroud.
He felt the blood flowing down his back, into the ground beneath him, mixing with the blood of other corpses that had died earlier.
Each breath produced a horrible gurgling sound from his chest. the sound of air bubbles passing through fluid in his lungs.
He knew there was blood in his lungs.
He could feel it pooling there, heavy and warm, filling cavities that should have held only air.
Every time he inhaled, he felt the fluid move up and down, creating that horrible sound he heard clearly in his own ears.
The attacker stood above him.
Voltase saw his tall silhouette above, against the black sky backdrop.
The man's face wasn't clearly visible. just a dark shadow with two faintly glinting eyes like two burning coals in the darkness.
The man stared at him with empty, emotionless eyes.
The eyes of a killer who had seen death too often, who was no longer surprised or disturbed by it.
He turned his rifle, examining Voltase as if Voltase were just another piece of ordinary meat that would soon rot with the rest.
Then, without a word, he turned and walked away.
His footsteps faded.
Squelch... squelch... squelch...
The sound of boots on bloody mud, growing fainter, farther away, until finally it was swallowed by darkness and silence.
Voltase was alone.
He couldn't move.
He tried to move his fingers his long, sturdy fingers, belonging to an adult man.
But they wouldn't obey.
They felt heavy, like lead poured into molds.
He tried to raise his hand, but his arm felt nailed to the ground by an invisible force, by gravity that had suddenly become a hundred times heavier.
He tried to turn his head, but his neck was stiff.
Every time he tried, pain exploded in his chest and made him lose his breath.
The blood continued to flow.
Not spurting. his large blood vessels were probably already sealed by clots.
But in a steady, warm stream, seeping through the wool fabric, pooling beneath his back, spreading into the ground.
The ground absorbed his blood like dry earth absorbs rain.
Ravenously.
Never enough.
Never satisfied.
Each breath produced a horrible gurgling sound from his chest. air bubbles passing through fluid in his lungs.
He heard it in his own ears.
The sound reminded him of something.
Of a drink being sucked through a straw when it was almost empty.
Of water moving through a leaking pipe.
Blood in his lungs made each breath a struggle, a dull, deep pain spreading through his entire chest.
This is it, he thought with a strange, pitiful clarity.
Clarity that came when the body was too weak to feel panic, when the brain was beginning to lose oxygen and only thinking about simple, basic things.
This is the end.
I'm dying here.
In the middle of a place I don't even know the name of.
In a uniform that isn't mine.
Inside a body that isn't mine.
He stared at the black sky.
The light drizzle continued, drops falling into his open eyes.
Cold, fresh drops contrasting with the heat in his chest.
He blinked, and the water mixed with his tears. he hadn't realized were flowing.
He thought of his dormitory room.
The bed too big for his small body.
The cracks in the wooden ceiling twenty three main branches, forty-three small branches.
The window always fogged by rain, its glass blurry and misty.
The phone that always showed 21:49 AM when he played the running game, when he tried to escape the reality that he had no one.
No one will come looking for you, he thought. That fact felt very real in these final moments.
His foster parents wouldn't come. They never came.
His teachers wouldn't care.
They didn't even know his name properly.
He would just be a name on a report, a note about a child who disappeared from the dormitory.
In a few weeks, no one would remember his face.
No one would remember he had ever existed.
He wanted to cry, but his tears had already fallen, and he had no strength to cry more.
Perhaps because this body this adult man's body didn't know how to cry like a child.
Or perhaps because he was too weak, too close to death, to feel anything but deep exhaustion.
He remembered the first time he was brought to this boarding school.
His foster parents a polite but cold couple placed his suitcase on the floor.
A small suitcase with used clothes and a few books.
They stood at the doorway.
The husband said,
"You'll be fine here. It's a good school."
The wife smiled a smile that didn't reach her eyes and said,
"We'll call."
They never called.
They turned and walked away.
Voltase stood at the doorway, watching their backs disappear down the long, dark hallway.
He realized at that moment that he had never truly been part of that family.
He was just an object moved from one warehouse to another.
And this warehouse was the last.
You were never part of anyone, he thought, and the words echoed in his head like distant church bells.
You were just a child moved from one place to another.
And now you're dying here, inside another person's body, in a place that isn't even the real world.
You're dying alone. Just like you always feared.
The drizzle continued. Water drops fell on his face, on his open eyes, on his pale lips. They tasted cold and salty like sea water. But there was no sea here.
Just flesh.
Blood And death.
He heard distant sounds.
Perhaps sounds of another fight in another part of this field.
Perhaps footsteps.
Or gunshots.
But those sounds grew fainter, more distant, like a radio running out of battery and beginning to die.
Darkness at the edges of his vision slowly crept inward, consuming everything he saw.
The black sky began to disappear, replaced by thickening mist.
The dancing white spots began to vanish one by one like stars fading at dawn.
Please, he thought, not knowing who he was asking. a God he never believed in, a universe that never cared, anyone who might hear him.
Please, let me go. Let me die quickly. Don't let me suffer longer.
Don't let me feel this longer.
And the darkness swallowed him completely.
01:24 AM.
Red numbers glowed on the phone screen lying on the wooden floor. fallen from the table when Voltase moved in his sleep, when his small body thrashed unconsciously.
Voltase opened his eyes.
The first thing he saw was the faded white wooden ceiling with hairline cracks spreading from the corner near the lamp.
Twenty three main branches. Forty three small branches. He knew, remembered, had counted them thousands of times.
He pressed his palm to his chest.
His hand, small hand.
Short, somewhat chubby fingers, with short clean nails, no dirt beneath them.
Not the long, sturdy adult hand with a callus at the thumb.
Not the hand that had held the bayonet.
This was his hand.
Twelve year old Voltase's hand.
His chest still hurt.
He felt burning heat on his left side, where the bullet had pierced him, where blood had flowed.
But when he pressed it, there was no wound.
No blood.
Just his intact skin beneath the blue and white striped flannel pajamas.
His breath came in gasps.
His small chest rose and fell rapidly, each breath feeling like hard work, as if his lungs were still filled with blood that wasn't there.
He heard his own heartbeat.
Thump-thump.
Thump-thump.
Beating like a war drum in his narrow ribcage, too fast, too loud.
And then, he smelled it.
The smell was still there.
The fishy smell, the rusty iron smell, the rotting flesh smell.
Still clinging to his nostrils, still settled on his palate, still tasting like a layer of copper on his tongue.
He felt it with every breath.
Even though he knew logically that in his cold, damp dormitory room, there were no corpses.
Just dusty air and the chemical smell of laundry soap.
The smell came from within. from his memory, from his mind, from a soul contaminated by that place.
He covered his nose with his small palm, but the smell didn't go away.
It remained.
Still disturbing and reminding him.
Voltase curled up in the middle of the bed, too big for him.
He hugged his pillow tightly. the faded, dormitory. soap smelling pillow, trying to feel something warm and safe.
But the pillow only smelled of soap.
No warmth inside.
No embrace waiting for him.
No one would come to hold him.
He bit his lower lip. a lip that still hurt, even though in the real world he had never been hit.
An intact lip, unbroken, not bleeding.
But he felt the pain.
A ghost of the punch he had received in the dream.
Pain real in his mind even if not real in his body.
Tears began to flow.
Tears of a child who didn't understand why he had to experience all this.
Tears of a boy who had no one to hold him, no home to return to, no parent who would ask,
"Are you okay, son?"
Why me?
he thought, and his sobs were caught in his throat, producing a soft, pitiful choking sound.
Why do I have to dream this?
Why do I have to die inside the dream?
Why do I have to feel that pain?
He remembered the bullet's sensation. The heat spreading in his chest. Blood flowing from the wound, the metallic taste in his mouth.
The gurgling sound in his lungs.
All of it felt so real.
Even now, after returning to his own body, he still felt traces of that pain in his chest.
Like a ghost that wouldn't leave, wound that would never heal. Something that had attached itself to his soul and would never let go.
He reached for his phone from the floor.
His movements were slow because his hands were still shaking.
The screen was still on, showing 01:24 AM and some notifications. messages from the class group about assignments, app advertisements, and notifications from the game he had played earlier.
No messages from anyone.
No one looking for him.
No one who cared.
Voltase stared at the empty screen.
His small, trembling fingers moved to the search app.
Still gasping, he typed,
"Dream of becoming an adult, fighting on a battlefield, getting shot, feeling chest pain after waking up."
Search results appeared. articles about dreams, psychological theories about trauma, forums about recurring nightmares.
Nothing matched.
Nothing explained why his chest hurt.
Why he still smelled blood.
Why he felt like he had just lost something he never had.
He scrolled down, reading comments from strangers, but nothing helped.
He turned off the phone screen.
The room went dark again.
Outside, the rain continued with its long, melancholic whispers.
tick... tick,
tick... tick...
just like before he fell asleep.
The church bells in the distance didn't ring. It was past midnight.
The world was sleeping, and Voltase was alone in the darkness.
He lay back down on the bed. His eyes stared at the ceiling.
Twenty three main branches. Forty three small branches. He counted them again to calm himself.
But his mind kept drifting elsewhere.
To the corpse field. the pale green man shot dead in the forehead.
the ash man standing over him with empty eyes.
bayonet that had felt so real in his hand.
For the adult man's body he had left there, now probably rotting with the others.
Will that body rot?
He thought.
Or will it wake up again with someone else inside?
maybe I'll go back there.
Maybe I'll wake up in that body again, another time.
He didn't know.
Not knowing was more frightening than anything he had seen in that dream.
If I sleep again, he thought with horror, will I go back there?
Will I wake up in that body again?
And die again?
But his eyes were heavy.
His small, tired body was giving in to exhaustion, even though his mind was still spinning.
The rain outside grew softer, as if it too was falling asleep.
The wind died down.
Silence began to creep in.
Slowly, very slowly, his eyelids began to close.
Before he fell completely asleep, one last thought crossed his mind.
I don't want to go back there, feel that pain again.
Just want to be myself. even though don't know who that is, even though I don't know why I exist in this world.
But in the silent darkness of the room, amid the fading rain, he heard a whisper.
Not a sound coming from his ears.
A sound rising from the depths of his own mind, from the darkest place.
You'll go back.
Because there, you can be something.
There, you're not weak.
even if you die there, you die with others.
Here, you're nobody and never been anything.
Voltase didn't want to hear that whisper.
He pressed his head into the pillow, trying to block the sound.
But the whisper kept repeating, softly, like a mantra he couldn't stop, like a song that kept echoing in his head.
Slowly, his consciousness faded.
He fell back into sleep dark, empty, silent sleep.
Without dreams.
Just perfect silence.
But within that silence, in the deepest corner of his mind, Voltase knew this wasn't the end.
This was just a pause.
A pause like the gap between two train cars on the same track.
Someday perhaps tonight, perhaps tomorrow night, perhaps a night when he wasn't ready. he would return to that place, to the adult man's body that wasn't his, to die again.
Again and again
Until he understood why he was there.
Found what that place wanted from him.
Discovered who owned that body, and why that body had chosen him.
But for tonight, he rested.
No one was looking for him.
No one cared.
And for the first time, Voltase Watt felt that indifference was a gift. because if no one cared, then no one would lose him when he died inside his dreams.
In his small chest, traces of heat still remained.
The shadow of a bullet still burning.
Reminding him that somewhere, in another world, a body that wasn't his was rotting among a sea of corpses.
And someday, he would return there.
Someday, he would feel the bullet's sensation in his chest again.
Tonight, he fell asleep in silence.
But that silence felt like death.
And within that silence, a whisper kept repeating, softly and endlessly.
You'll go back.
You'll go back.
You'll go back.
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