The Military Chef of a Ruined World

What on earth is going on here?

I came for a simple visit, but the patient before me is trembling in fear at the sight of me.

The doctor beside me is looking at me with an expression that clearly says, “What did you do?”

I can’t help but feel bewildered.

“Hold on,” Lance Corporal Sa Uijun says, grasping my shoulder. “I’ll try to calm her down. Can you step outside for a moment?”

“O-Oh, okay.”

I find myself gently nudged out of the hospital room. A few minutes later, Lance Corporal Sa Uijun emerged, exhaling deeply.

“I managed to calm her down for now.”

“That’s a relief.”

“Understood.”

Before going back in, I decided to ask Lance Corporal Sa Uijun something I’ve been curious about.

“About that patient…”@@novelbin@@

“Yes?”

“Was her hair always that color?”

“Oh, no, it wasn’t.”

During those brief moments I had seen her, her hair had been a striking white, quite unusual for a typical Korean. I couldn’t fathom she’d dyed her hair.

“I can’t say for sure, but I have a hunch,” Sa Uijun murmured while scratching his cheek.

“It seems she experienced immense pain recently, really overwhelming suffering.”

“…What?”

“It appears that her hair turned white due to the stress from that agony. The bodies of awakened individuals don’t respond to trauma like ordinary humans, so I can’t pinpoint the exact reasons.” ṙÃɴỘ฿Ě𝙨

Stress from such extreme pain caused her hair to go white.

“To have suffered to the point of that happening… Honestly, I can’t even imagine the kind of pain that entails.”

“Cough.”

If Lance Corporal Sa Uijun’s words are true, then it means:

‘This is my fault, isn’t it?’

It all crosses my mind.

She literally experienced a separation of blood, bones, and flesh while still alive.

Moreover, because she had eaten a dish inspired by calm mental state, she could not even faint comfortably.

In the end, things turned out well, but the degree of pain she experienced was significant.

“From her trembling earlier, what on earth happened to her? Was she tortured by monsters? I have heard of soldiers experiencing PTSD, but hers seems particularly intense.”

“Hmm. Well.”

I had considered it a consequence of the sins committed against humanity, but seeing the results before my eyes gave me pangs of guilt.

Feeling a slight remorse, I returned to the patient’s room.

Sitting down carefully in a chair to avoid startling her:

“Thank you.”

She said quietly, starting to nod gently despite still trembling.

Having just learned that her hair turned white due to the pain I had caused, I didn’t understand what she was thanking me for.

“Thanks for almost killing you?”

Is she mocking me?

“Honestly, I thought I would never return to being human again.”

“Oh, well…”

Scratching my head, I mumbled back.

“To be honest, it was a gamble. It wasn’t really done to benefit you.”

I genuinely didn’t have any special feelings towards her.

“I just thought it might work.”

Had it failed, she would have experienced untold agony before finally dying.

It wasn’t a position that warranted gratitude.

“There are many other things to be thankful for.”

“Hmm?”

“I should ideally be the one to liberate this city. But you soldiers did it instead.”

Her brow furrowed slightly at my mention of the police.

“Are you referring to the police issue that you mentioned earlier?”

“Yes.”

It was troubling when I heard it before, and it still is now.

‘Is it really worth obsessing over?’

She wasn’t a police officer with decades of experience; she had just started her career.

Yet, she seemed overly devoted to her duties, bordering on the obsessive.

‘…Could this be a type of PTSD?’

Looking back on it, this may very well be another ailment spawned from the Dooms Day.

Despite being a police officer, she must have struggled to watch people die around her, leading to some sort of overwhelming guilt that took root in her heart.