Following the tragic and sudden suicide of General Hanazawa, Ogata and Tsurumi debrief.
“They'll have to make a few surgical incisions, of course.” With a single finger of each hand, Tsurumi traced two lines, one across each side of Ogata's face, from the corner of his warped jaw to the centre of his cheek. “You'll still look fetching as ever, I'm sure.”
Tsukishima knew if he didn't look now, he never would, so he steeled himself. “If you want to show me, then show me, sir.”
Tsurumi kept one hand on Tsukishima’s shoulder and pulled away the headplate with the other, setting it down on the bedside table.
In the early days of the Russo-Japanese War, a disciplinary episode results in Sugimoto Saichi being transferred from the 1st to the 7th Division. It doesn't take long to figure out that Russian gunfire might pose him less danger than the tangled web of a unit in which he's ended up.