It felt like an eternity while it was happening, but in terms of actual time spent the battle at Mukden was only a blip in Sugimoto’s life. They fought for a week, more or less. It was a mess of long days and sleepless nights, living off of dried fish and hard biscuits and sips of brackish water. On what was maybe the fifth day of continuous combat, Sugimoto saw a guy who’d bunked across from him at Asahikawa fall over and pass out on his feet from fatigue. When it ended they once more marched into a city, but even more than at Port Arthur, there was nothing even close to jubilance. The 27th Regiment of the 7th Division, in particular, was a ragged bunch, with its First and Second Lieutenants and its chief Sergeant all on stretchers. The unit entered Mukden like the twitching body of a headless snake.

The following days crawled by, in comparison. The first one, no one in the unit did anything but sleep like the dead on the dirt floor of what used to be a house. The next day, Corporal Tamai made them turn out in proper uniform at morning muster and dispensed some temporary orders to go dig around the battlefield for supplies. They would come back around for a second pass later, when the usual command structure was back in place and they knew what they ought to be doing, to gather up the dead and look for identifiers to be sent home to families. This was just to make ends meet for the time being. They had to eat somehow, and ammo was in short supply, too. The tricky thing was to avoid the mines that still lay buried in no man’s land—Sugimoto watched a guy from the 1st get blown up right in front of him that way days after the battle was won. It wasn’t anyone he recognized.

It was tiring, bending over and rooting through the pockets of the corpses to look for unused rations and other flotsam. The motions of it were more like sowing seeds than fighting. No adrenaline to make it any easier, just slow, backbreaking toil, with your burden getting heavier as you went instead of lighter.

Ogata stuck fairly close to him as they went. He kept his hood up, so Sugimoto couldn’t see much of his face unless Ogata turned around to look right at him.

Sugimoto felt like he should ask—something. What, exactly, he had no idea. Any expression of concern would get Ogata sneering in his face, and Sugimoto didn’t really feel the need to extend it, anyway. But it was clear that, whether he would admit it or not, Ogata was rattled. He’d been acting odd since 203 Hill, but ever since Sugimoto had delivered the news that his brother had been shot, Ogata had seemed constantly distracted.

They’d been at it long enough for the sun to start creeping downwards when Sugimoto ventured, “Have you seen the Second Lieutenant?”

“Why would I have seen him?”

“I know visits are limited, but I thought you might have been let in anyway.” Sugimoto ran the back of his hand across his brow to clear some of the sweat and dust.

Ogata nudged a Russian soldier’s jacket open with the toe of his boot. “I haven’t. Why do you ask? Has there been any change?”

“No, but I heard he still might turn around.”

“From a wound like that? They’re just giving a soft answer.”

Sugimoto shrugged. “That's what they're saying. I bet you could shoot me in the head right now and it wouldn't keep me down, either.”

“You’re different from him, though.” Ogata crouched down to rifle through the pockets of one of the corpses by his feet. A Japanese lance-corporal, by the uniform. Ogata unhooked a nearly-full ammo pouch from the man’s belt and tossed it up for Sugimoto to catch, which his arm did without his having to think about it. Before Sugimoto could ask what he meant, Ogata added, with his eyes still on the ground, “What did he look like?”

Sugimoto frowned. “What do you mean?”

“When he was shot, did you see his face?”

Sugimoto had. Hanazawa had looked almost serene. Like he’d expected it, or had a moment to prepare himself, which was more than most of them got. Sugimoto hadn’t caught Hanazawa as he fell because he’d wanted a commendation or anything else out of it. In a moment like that there was no time to think about how the guy who just got shot in front of you was a general’s kid. It was just a reflex. If he thought of anything, it was the way Hanazawa had looked when a stray dog had nuzzled his hand: like he was happy to be alive, and the world was offering him a gift.

The funny thing was that Hanazawa was more willing to die for honour and love of country than any of them. Maybe Sugimoto had robbed him of that. Now Hanazawa was mouldering in a field hospital bed somewhere with a bullet lodged in his brain that would never come out, even if he woke. Maybe letting him fall and have his noble death would’ve been the merciful thing to do.

“No,” he said, “he was looking the other way.”

-

They weren’t free. That wasn't how the army worked, even when things were half-fallen apart. But for a few minutes at a time, in the setting sun, with the blade’s edge of spring passing over his face on the breeze, Sugimoto felt closer to it than he had in a long while.

When it came to shaving, they could go for a few days without any officers coming down on them for it, but it was pushing into weeks and Sugimoto was starting to look a stranger to himself when he caught his reflection in the surfaces of puddles. His head was the main thing; he still never got any more than wispy bits of nothing on his face. Between the scars and the ratty grown-out crew cut, he looked like a distant cousin his parents would’ve warned him to stay away from. They usually all sheared their own heads at the same time, passing around water in bowls, but seeing as most of the 7th’s command were still bedridden such routines of protocol had fallen by the wayside.

When Sugimoto was younger, his mother had trimmed his hair with scissors every few months. It was straight when he was little, but as he got older it grew in curlier and more unruly and she’d scold him about it as if it was his fault it came in like that. He used to try to get out of it for as long as he could because she’d pull too hard, but when Sugimoto looked back on it he thought she probably just didn’t know her own strength.

Ogata squinted at his reflection in a woman’s tiny compact mirror someone in the unit had salvaged. He pulled at the skin of his face to get the surface smooth enough to bring the razor across cleanly. All this to keep up the outline of his fussy little beard.

Sugimoto had finished shaving earlier, and he sat on an empty crate holding a cup of tea between his palms, balanced on his knee. The steam rose up and landed on his newly smooth face to condense there like droplets of warm breath. “I wonder if we’re going to get some young buck officer assigned to replace Tsurumi.”

Ogata didn’t turn his head, but Sugimoto could see his eyes flick over to him. “Tsurumi won’t be replaced. You can bet on that.”

“Why not? From the sounds of things, he got hit pretty bad.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure. Wait and see, Sugimoto. He may surprise you.” Ogata gave his cheek one last stroke with the razor blade and then rinsed it, wiped it dry, and tucked it back in a pocket. He turned to where Sugimoto sat and said, “Pass me your gun.”

Sugimoto’s brows twisted together. He hadn’t made it this far by being trusting, especially of people who ought not to be trusted, but there were tons of guys around them and Ogata had had many better opportunities to attack him, if for some reason he wanted to do so. After a moment, Sugimoto handed it to him stock-first. Ogata turned the rifle over in his hands, looked at it from all sides, and then clucked his tongue. “You ought to take better care of your things, Sugimoto.”

“It passed inspection. Sorry it doesn’t meet yours.”

Ogata didn’t reply. Instead, he rummaged through the pockets of the utility belt on his waist to retrieve the standard-issue gun maintenance kit they all carried. He crouched on the ground by Sugimoto’s feet. More smoothly than Sugimoto could’ve managed on his best day, he removed the bolt from its chamber and disassembled it, all the fiddly little interior workings lined up on his thigh in a row as not to lose any. Sugimoto tried not to let his interest show on his face as Ogata cleaned the pieces with oil and cloth and put them back together with nimble fingers.

It was too damn creepy, seeing Ogata act nice. He kept waiting for Ogata to ask him for a favour or something, but Ogata never did. When he finished, Ogata passed Sugimoto his gun back. “Maybe you’ll remember you can fire it now and again, instead of just bludgeoning people.”

Sugimoto almost began a retort when he spotted Sergeant Tsukishima limping over to them against the backdrop of the setting sun. Tsukishima had only gotten off bed rest that morning for the shrapnel wound he’d taken when he and Tsurumi were shelled. He still looked like the kind of man nothing but a moving train could push over, but he’d lost enough weight during his recovery for his uniform to hang a little loose around the collar. He nodded at them both, and then said, “The First Lieutenant wants to speak with you.” Ogata shifted as if about to get to his feet when Tsukishima added, “Private First Class Sugimoto, that is.”

Sugimoto’s eyebrows lifted. “He’s awake?”

Tsukishima nodded. The dark circles under his eyes were even more pronounced than they had been before. “Has been for about a day now. Still on bed rest, but not for long. Even so, it’s best we hurry. He’s in and out.”

Unease curled in his chest, but there was nothing to do but follow Tsukishima away. Sugimoto could feel Ogata’s eyes on the back of his head as he went.

-

Tsurumi always stood out in a crowd. Sugimoto didn’t like him, never had, but Tsurumi knew what he was doing, which is more than Sugimoto could say for some officers he had served under. Tsurumi had held his head high even leading a skeleton crew of a unit into hell, day after day. And look where it’d got him.

The first thing he noticed when he was ushered into Tsurumi’s tent was the gauze. From within layers of bandages, Tsurumi’s eyes could only be seen by the way they reflected the dim light. The room smelled like antiseptic and that heavy, sweet smell of a place where dying had been done. Tsurumi was sitting up on his own, however, though it was taking a toll on him. He was clutching the edge of the folding desk by his bedside with a white-knuckled hand. When he spoke, his speech was slower than Sugimoto was used to from him. Morphine, probably. If it was morphine, Tsurumi was holding himself together well: when he spoke, it was lucid.

“Sugimoto, is that you?”

“Yes.” Sugimoto came closer into the room and stepped into the pool of light cast by the bedside oil lamp. He took his cap off. It felt like the kind of thing to do at someone’s bedside, deathbed or not. He was at a loss for what to say, but Tsurumi seemed content to wait for him, so Sugimoto coughed into his sleeve and added, “I’m surprised to see you up so soon, sir. That blast looked bad.”

Tsurumi tilted his head a little. “Oh, I’m not so badly off. I’m missing a part of my frontal lobe, and I’ve been told I’ll be surprised by the state of my face when they unwrap me, but I’m content with my lot, all things considered. You well know, Sugimoto, that a scar can settle in quite dashingly, given time to heal.”

Sugimoto took a seat on the mat next to the cot. It was then he noticed Tsurumi’s sabre was leaning against the wall of the tent. The sword had been left out of its sheath. The blade was so nicked it looked like a saw. A threat, or maybe just a reminder.

Tsurumi took in a laboured breath. “I’ll get to the point, as I don’t want to keep you long. Did you see what happened when Second Lieutenant Hanazawa was shot? You must have, if you were so close by.”

Why did everyone keep asking about him? Over the last six months Sugimoto had seen more guys shot, or shot them himself, than he could count. What was so different about Hanazawa, that Sugimoto was supposed to have something to say about it?

Sugimoto shrugged a shoulder. “There was a lot going on around us. He got unlucky. With the flag, he’s a perfect target.”

“Is it true that you helped bring him back to safety?”

“Yes.”

“Your bravery is truly commendable. We knew that already, of course, but it bears repeating.” Tsurumi smoothed a crease out of the blankets spread across his knees. “In honour of your service, I’d like to give you a promotion. No one in the unit could deserve it more than you. It will have to wait until we’re back on home soil, which I suspect will be shortly. Once we land, there will be a chance to set our house in order. It would be my pleasure to see you raised to Superior Private Sugimoto.”

“Thank you, sir,” Sugimoto replied mechanically, but his mind was whirling. What Ogata had said on the train ride from Port Arthur came back to him. I don’t think Tsurumi will let you go, anyway. He likes you too much.

At the time, it had been easy not to think it was anything more than Ogata trying to fuck with his head, but, as if reading his mind, Tsurumi remarked, “Superior Private Ogata has had quite a lot to say about you.”

Sugimoto’s heartbeat sped up in his chest. “He has?”

He thought he saw the corners of Tsurumi’s eyes crinkle. “Oh, certainly. I like to keep up with what’s going on with the troops, and he’s been very forthcoming.”

“Is that right.” Wasn’t that a kick in the teeth.

“I asked him to help me make sure you adjusted to life in the 7th, and I’m glad it seems to have been a success.” Sugimoto had suspected as much when he first arrived at Asahikawa, but to hear it spelled out so plainly—it shouldn’t have felt like a betrayal, but it did. As if smelling blood, Tsurumi seized upon Sugimoto’s confusion to go on: “I remember when I first heard about what happened to your family, when I wrote to your former superiors. Is it true that you volunteered for service after they’d passed away?”

“Yes.” Sugimoto clenched the fabric of his trousers over his knees to try and keep his composure.

“Do you regret it?”

Sugimoto was silent for long seconds before replying, “I don’t know what else I would’ve done.”

“When the war is over and you finish your term, what do you have to go home to, Sugimoto?”

Sugimoto said nothing, and Tsurumi smiled. He reached out a spindly hand to grasp Sugimoto’s shoulder. His grip was strong enough for Sugimoto to really take note, even though Tsurumi’s fingers were like skin and bone. “You don’t have to tell me now. Perhaps it’s just something to think on. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get my bandages changed, and you’ll pardon me if I’m still somewhat shy.”

-

By the time he returned from the medical tents to the 7th’s billets, lights-out had already been called. It was March now, no longer midwinter, but the nights were still damn cold. Sugimoto burrowed the bottom of his face into his coat and covered his ears with his hands to try and keep the numbness from setting in. It wasn’t much use; he felt shot through with a cold fire. What kind, he couldn’t exactly place, but the hours slid by one after another and he didn’t feel any less like he was going to burn up.

Eventually, he reached over the scant inches between them and nudged Ogata’s calf with his foot. When Ogata’s eyes flew open, Sugimoto silently got to his feet and made his way outside, where he waited just past the doorway. After a few minutes had gone by, Ogata joined him.

They didn’t go far; Sugimoto wasn’t sure what the night patrols were like here. As soon as he spotted a shadowy overhang on the side of a storage shed, he fisted a hand in Ogata’s cloak and pulled him inside the patch of darkness. Ogata laughed under his breath and raised his own hands to clutch at Sugimoto’s upper arms. What he said, however, wasn’t what Sugimoto expected at all.

“How did Tsurumi look?”

Sugimoto blinked. The cold fire was still running through him; it was a good part anger, he realized. “No idea. He’s all wrapped up, so probably bad.”

“So what did he want you for, anyway?” Ogata’s tongue flitted out to lick his bottom lip.

“Why do you want to know?”

“I told you he liked you. You should watch out around him.”

His fist tightened in the cloak, drawing it tighter around Ogata’s neck. “Is that what you do?”

“What?”

“You watch out around him? You want me to believe he tells every private in the unit about his secret gold plans?”

Ogata looked like he was about to laugh out loud. “Are you jealous?”

Sugimoto took the bait, even as he knew that’s what it was: “Have you ever slept with him?”

“You are jealous. No, Private First Class Sugimoto, I think you pay too much attention to latrine rumours.” The feigned ease of Ogata’s words was offset by the rigid grip of his fingers on Sugimoto’s sleeve.

“I don’t give a shit if you have.” Sugimoto surprised himself as he said it by finding that it was true. “But don’t pretend I don’t know you’re on different terms with him than the rest of us.”

“Is this why you dragged me out here? To interrogate me? I was hoping it was because you wanted to fuck.”

“You’re a son of a bitch, you know that?” The venom of Sugimoto’s words was undercut by the fact that his heartbeat was quickening just from being huddled together so close in the darkness.

Ogata exhaled, put-upon. “Come on. Let’s get what we came for and then go back to our beds and sleep, for once.”

“I sleep fine,” Sugimoto said, but he was already shifting away from suspicion into feeling keen. His dick was getting used to this, which was maybe the worst thing to happen to him since they'd got here. He was tired, too; tired of fighting, tired of laying awake or gasping through bad dreams. It was easier to surrender to the things he wanted, even if he knew they’d do him no good.

“I hear you at night.” Ogata narrowed his eyes and smirked in his nasty, mirthless way. “You don't sleep much at all.”

Oh, so he wanted it that way. Maybe another time, but not tonight. Even so, this was the Ogata he knew: mean and hungry. He found himself glad for it, if only because it felt like solid ground. Sugimoto leaned in closer, so he could see the exhilarated flicker of Ogata’s eyelids when he growled, “Are you going to keep talking all night, or are you going to follow through?”

“I'm a man of my word,” Ogata murmured, “Don't worry about that.”

Sugimoto was running hot. His body thought it knew what it was in for. Desire was like hunger, but hunger he knew how to manage. It was familiar. A reminder he was still alive. But just to be wanting all the time, like this, made him feel like he was going insane. He’d grown up scoffing at all the people in folktales who did crazy things for love or lust. Duty he understood, but this—instead of working it out of his system, he’d just tricked himself into thinking he could have it all the time. He couldn’t muster up the energy to feel ashamed about it. It was just need, like he needed water and a couple hours to shut his eyes at night.

There wasn’t enough room for them both in their hiding place to begin with, so they had to slot their legs together, more crowded than teeth in a mouth. Sugimoto wondered briefly if it would always be like this with them: never enough time to do the things the most luridly ambitious parts of his mind dreamt up at night. Ogata still lurched between forcefulness and passivity—he’d be knocking their knees together one moment and then backing off the next, making Sugimoto chase him. Sugimoto wondered, too, if Ogata’s constant running hot and cold came from a lack of experience. Not in the mechanics of it, but everything else. The frequency. The way that every time they came apart, Ogata had to know he’d given another little piece of himself away. Maybe Sugimoto was wrong and he’d had all kinds of steady things before, but he didn’t think so. Sometimes Ogata looked at him like a greedy little boy trying to get his hands on something he’d never had but knew he wanted bad.

They had to be quick about it. Sugimoto unbuttoned Ogata’s trousers only as far as he needed to get inside. Ogata didn’t even bother, just shoved his hand down past Sugimoto’s waistband. Taking anything off was a luxury they didn’t have. It was too bad; Ogata was small and not built for close-quarters fighting, but he was sturdy and well-muscled in a way that, even though it felt good pressed up close, was nice to look at, too, when Sugimoto got the chance to see it.

They ended up taking each other in one grip, their fingers laced together while Ogata’s incisors chewed away at Sugimoto’s bottom lip in a way that would stick around the next day. In payback, Sugimoto dug the fingernails of his spare hand into the tender flesh at the corner of Ogata’s thigh and hip; for his trouble he got an angry hiss and a shove of Ogata’s chest against his own.

When they were positioned like this, Sugimoto could hurt him really badly, if he wanted to. Every vulnerable place Ogata had was exposed. Sugimoto would’ve been able to overpower him any day of the week. He wasn’t surprised by the matter-of-fact way his mind offered these observations up, but by the hot rasp the thought of it pulled out of his gut.

Neither of them lasted long. A flash in the pan too confident to be called fumbling. Afterwards, when they cleaned themselves off and slunk away, leaving a few minutes’ interval between their re-entrances for plausible deniability’s sake, he tried not to think about the image that had been in his mind when he came: Ogata, below him, beaten and bloodied and eyes glinting wildly.

It felt like someone’s victory, but not his, and doubly so when Ogata was proven right: even when they made their way back, Sugimoto didn’t sleep a bit.

-

“I had it made out of enamel. What do you think, does it suit me?”

The whole of the 27th had been called to the makeshift headquarters Tsurumi had established not long after he’d called Sugimoto to his bedside. A hundred and fifty-odd men crammed into one tiny room to watch their commanding officer unfurl himself from his cocoon and don a plate that covered almost half of his face. Not all, by any stretch of the imagination; everything between Tsurumi’s eyes and nose was pure scar tissue, not quite finished healing. It hurt just to look at.

Tsurumi himself was utterly unselfconscious. He glanced around the whole room, letting his men see his battle scars from every angle. Before Mukden, Tsurumi had started to look haggard. Now he was alight with a strange current that animated his limbs and his face as he spoke. Sugimoto couldn’t tell if he’d always been so expressive, or if every gesture just looked bigger now that his face was monstrous.

“Now that I’ve taken all that off, it feels so much easier to speak freely. I have news from central command. The war is coming to a close, and I know we have been waiting to hear if further deployments were ahead. Well, I have just been informed that I may tell you, officially, that the 7th is being recalled to Hokkaido.”

Everyone had always listened when he spoke—he had that quality, and whatever else the 7th was like, it didn’t have a discipline problem—but now it was as if a ritual was taking place. Sugimoto could have heard a pin drop.

“It has been a difficult war. No division has fought more bravely, or more deserved a long peace. However, the time for vigilance is not over. As we prepare to return home, I would encourage you not to forget what you’ve seen here, and what we were asked to do.”

As if anyone could. Sugimoto glanced around; everyone seemed transfixed by the sight of Tsurumi, so familiar yet so changed. On Sugimoto’s left side, Tanigaki’s mouth was drawn in a firm line. The air hummed with energy barely contained. Sugimoto looked in the other direction, and on the other side of the room Ogata caught his gaze. Instead of awe, his eyes seemed to say, told you so.

-

Some of the guys had told ghost stories on the transport ship on the way to the front, all those months ago. There wasn’t any more of that on the way back, or any singing. A couple of them gambled at cards for cigarettes, but Sugimoto didn’t feel compelled to join. He’d never been a very good liar. He did watch, though, as the players dealt and squabbled over their hands and the peacocks on the cigarette cases preened their feathers, even as the cheap mass-produced ink had smudged on the surface of the cardboard.

It was cramped, of course, in the belly of the ship, and Ogata sat next to him with his knees splayed outwards. The sides of their thighs were pressed against each other. There were two dozen men in earshot, and no one would think twice of it, but the casual touch felt like an incitement, like a slow-burning coal hidden in a fire you thought you had put out.

Every time they came into contact they went in with a little more knowledge of each other, but none of it ever added up to anything that made sense. There wasn’t much to do on board, and it was dark belowdecks, and Sugimoto had been thinking weird thoughts about holding Ogata down by the scruff of the neck and seeing how long it’d take to get him to stop thrashing and lean into it. Everything was a struggle one way or another with him, and the physical kind was easier, more satisfying. Sugimoto preferred it to the strange half-conversations and denials. He wanted Ogata on his back on the floor of someplace, or in a bed, even, imagine that. Sugimoto’s imagination failed him in the finer details, but he wanted sounds they wouldn’t have to muffle. It was the first time he realized he’d started, at some point down the line, to imagine living a different sort of life than this. No uniforms, and no fucking with their mouths covered and backs to the wall.

It was kind of exciting, the idea of the two of them, out of here, even as it seemed unrealistic. Wherever here was—Sugimoto didn’t mean Manchuria, or not just that, because when they got back to Hokkaido it would be more of the same, being cooped up at Asahikawa like a bunch of farm animals. Maybe Ogata would lighten up a bit, if there weren’t orders involved and superior officers breathing down their necks. Sugimoto wasn’t so stupid as to think he’d ever be pleasant, but anyone would become more tolerable out in the open air without a bunch of rich guys telling them what to do.

If he was smart, he would’ve shaken sense back into himself, but the fantasy stuck around for Sugimoto to poke at from time to time. Three days at sea could feel very long indeed.