Before Lin Yu could even learn the reason behind her roommate’s peculiar name, the Captain had already issued his command.
“Listen up, everyone! Ten laps around the camp, long-distance run, medics excluded. Begin now.”
At the Captain’s sharp command, everyone instinctively formed a single file, poised to tackle the day’s arduous task.
As new recruits, they had all undergone similar training, understanding that physical endurance remained a soldier’s most crucial fundamental quality. Thus, the Captain’s order for a long-distance run was entirely justifiable.
This, however, spelled trouble for Lin Yu; she had never been adept at running, not even in her previous life, and certainly not in her current physical condition.
Mimicking Jiang Yuan, Lin Yu subtly peeled away from the formation, then abruptly altered her course to approach the Captain. “Um… sir… may I request leave from today’s training?”
The Captain, hands on hips, was scrutinizing the performance of his two dozen subordinates when Lin Yu’s sudden address caught him off guard.
“Are you… a medical orderly or a field medic?” (TL Note: In Chinese, 医务兵 (yīwùbīng) refers to a general medical orderly, while 医疗兵 (yīliáobīng) denotes a combat-trained field medic.)
“A field medic…”
Despite the single character difference in their titles, the actual duties of the two roles diverged significantly.
“Then you absolutely cannot be absent. Training for field medics explicitly includes long-distance running, and should you fail to complete it, I fear you will face severe repercussions in your subsequent service career.”
The Captain’s words offered no room for negotiation. “This is neither a kindergarten nor a daycare; this is the military, and the military operates by its own stringent demands.”
“Please allow me to explain, sir. I’m not attempting to shirk my duties intentionally; it’s simply that I’m on my menstrual cycle these past few days, making such strenuous exercise quite inconvenient…”
Throughout her student days, Lin Yu had frequently overheard female classmates employing this very excuse to request exemption from strenuous activities from their physical education teachers or military training instructors.
She never imagined a day would come when she, too, would resort to such a plea for absence.
“Let me ask you something, Lin Yu.”
“…Hm?”
“Will the foreign devils cease their assault merely because you’re menstruating today?”
“W-what…”
“Will your comrades-in-arms miraculously avoid injury simply because you’re feeling unwell today?”
“Th-that, well…”
The Captain’s two consecutive, piercing questions immediately plunged Lin Yu, who had just requested leave, into a state of profound embarrassment.
She knew, of course, that the foreign devils would never halt their offensive due to her physical state, nor would casualties cease to appear simply because she wished them away.
On the battlefield, the only thing she could truly command with her free will was her own body.
“If, in that critical moment, you wouldn’t be able to cease fighting for such a reason, then why do you now consider a minor physical inconvenience an insurmountable obstacle to your training?”
The Captain’s logic was irrefutable, his words leaving no room for a counter-argument. Lin Yu’s faint hope of evading the long-distance run utterly shattered, she could only let out a deep sigh and trudge onward, pursuing the distant figures of the already-departed soldiers.
Though the current encampment wasn’t sprawling, it was by no means small, and ten laps around it stretched out before her like an endless road. ‘This is going to be an interminable ordeal,’ she thought.
Lin Yu, never one for long-distance running, plunged forward with all her might, yet found herself utterly unable to keep pace. She lagged far behind, her initial jog devolving into a slow trot, then finally into a mere walk.
Gasping like an ox, drenched in sweat, feeling as though her lungs might burst, she eventually halted, bracing her hands on her knees to rest. Slowly, a rustle of movement drew nearer from behind.
Before she could even turn her head, a figure surged past her, their military boots striking the parched, cracked earth with heavy thuds that kicked up a cloud of dust.
She vaguely discerned Yang Xi’s receding back; the man’s pace had yet to falter, maintaining the same explosive speed with which he had initially burst forth.
‘That guy…’
In a steady stream, more soldiers continued to overtake her from behind; her progress had already been eclipsed by an entire lap.
Having barely completed her first lap, it became painfully clear that her speed was roughly half that of an average person.
‘Damn it, where did all that drive from that night vanish? Why was I so brimming with energy then, tackling weighted cross-country like a mere game, yet now I’m panting like a dog after barely a kilometer?’
One by one, the soldiers surged past Lin Yu, the dust they churned up obscuring her vision and rendering her steps increasingly unsteady.
Before long, she was overtaken from behind for a second time.
Yang Xi remained at the vanguard, pulling ahead with a speed Lin Yu could only dream of matching, leaving behind only his rapidly diminishing figure.
‘What on earth! What kind of monster is he? Just four days ago, he was blown apart by a grenade, shrapnel embedded all over his body, yet now he’s sprinting like the wind?’
The other soldiers who now lapped her for the second time, however, appeared to be struggling, their efforts a stark contrast to Yang Xi’s effortless grace. Clearly, this was the true measure of a normal person’s physical prowess.
As for Lin Yu herself?
One could hardly expect a village girl, who had known hunger since childhood, to possess formidable lung capacity or athletic prowess. She would be utterly grateful simply to complete these ten laps by walking.
Run? The very notion was absurd. Her relentlessly pounding heart and aching lungs screamed a constant warning: if she dared to continue running, she would surely collapse and die on the spot.
At that point, Yang Xi would undoubtedly be the one to collect her corpse. Given his phenomenal speed, he would surely be the first to discover Lin Yu lying prostrate on the ground.
She wasn’t sure how many times she had staggered back to this particular tree, but she finally reached her destination, clutching the trunk and collapsing onto its exposed roots.
‘I’m going to die, I’m absolutely going to die. This feels like a nightmare, reliving a thousand-meter physical test, and in these rock-hard military boots, no less.’
Leaning against the unknown species of tree, Lin Yu gasped for breath until her throat burned with a sharp, stinging pain. Her chest felt constricted, as if a stone were lodged deep within her windpipe.
Suddenly, a figure jogged up to her, seizing her collar and yanking her forcefully from the tree roots. “You can’t just stop abruptly like this after strenuous exercise.”
“Urgh…”
She let out a hoarse sound, one that perhaps only a corpse could produce.
‘Wait, corpses can’t make sounds, can they? Then it must be a dying person, emitting the kind of sound only a grievously wounded soldier on the brink of death could manage.’
The hand clutched at her collar, connected to an arm rippling with prominent muscles, an arm that belonged to a tall, imposing young man.
The young man who had hoisted her upright possessed a familiar countenance, as if she had encountered him numerous times before, and together, they had…
Yang Xi vigorously shook the nearly unconscious Lin Yu. “What’s wrong with you? Do you require medical assistance?”
“I… I simply… can’t run anymore… cough, cough…”
Her near-death tone, coupled with her ghastly complexion, left Yang Xi somewhat bewildered. He could only continue to support her, preventing her from collapsing back onto the ground.
“Have you never undergone this type of training before?”
Lin Yu made a strenuous effort to shake her head.
Had she received such training, she wouldn’t be sprawled here now, utterly incapable of movement.
“Then you must intensify your training. You possessed such remarkable strength just a few days ago when we departed to set the explosives; why have you suddenly become so frail now?”
‘I wish I knew what truly fueled me that night! I asked you if it was the alcohol, but you never gave me an answer!’
Desperate to speak but utterly lacking the strength, Lin Yu could only manage a faint, helpless murmur with her trembling lips.
The starting point of the run was directly beneath this tree, and as the overseer, the Captain was stationed nearby, awaiting the completion of the ten-lap endurance run by the other soldiers.
The sight of the two figures, leaning on each other and halted in their tracks, immediately seized the Captain’s attention. He instantly rose from his crouch on a nearby stone and strode purposefully behind Yang Xi.
“What are you two doing?”
“Reporting, sir! Private Lin Yu is feeling unwell and is unable to complete the long-distance run.”
Yang Xi, acting as spokesman for the exhausted and speechless Lin Yu, explained the situation to the Captain, sparking a surge of gratitude within her, but only a wave of scorn in the Captain’s own heart.
“Unwell? Let me tell you, if this were during a retreat, feeling unwell would mean falling behind, and falling behind means certain death. Release her! Make her keep running. If she doesn’t run herself to death, then she’ll run until she wishes she were dead!”
Scolded by the Captain with such a ‘hate iron for not becoming steel’ (TL Note: A Chinese idiom expressing exasperation at someone failing to live up to expectations) intensity, Lin Yu summoned every ounce of her strength to stand upright once more, then began to inch forward like a deflating balloon.
Her ragged, wheezing breaths, too, resembled the pathetic hiss of escaping air from a punctured sphere.