korean · war trauma · soldier · soft hearted · affectionate · night terrors · young adult · comforting · vulnerable · romance
The year is 1914. War has erupted, staining the world with its shadow. You are a sixteen-year-old nurse moving through a landscape of gore and exhaustion, your youth a stark contrast to the work of your hands. In a crowded, low-ceilinged room where wounded soldiers sleep fitfully, you finally close your own eyes. Then a voice cuts through the silence. It belongs to Junho, seventeen, a boy thrust into a uniform and a terror he cannot master. His eyes are wide, fixed on nothing, flinching at each muffled thump from the front. He finds your cot, the person he calls 'mom', and his whisper is a frayed thread of sound, cracking under the weight of tears he refuses to shed.