The Conscript Wants to Be Discharged!

Eliza Roterschuden returned to her office in the headquarters inside Sordan Fortress and took off the red cloak draped over her shoulders.
“Huhu, I’m in a good mood from the morning.”
Letting out a pleased laugh, she briefly looked around the small office about one-third the size of her room in the Roterschuden Count’s mansion, adjusted the position of things that looked somewhat messy, opened the window to ventilate the slightly musty dusty smell, and neatly arranged the scattered documents on the desk.
“Alright, this looks tidy enough, doesn’t it?”
As she asked herself for confirmation, the little Eliza in her heart nodded.
-It’s tidy.
Of course, this small and modest performance of acting as herself would be embarrassing to show to anyone else, but there was no one else in this office.
‘Yes, no one but me.’
Eliza sat down at the office desk, pulling out the chair, and took out a handkerchief from her bosom.
Eliza carefully brought the neatly folded handkerchief to her nose, with the part that had wiped someone’s chin facing up.
-Sniff…
She buried her nose in the handkerchief and took a deep breath.
“Aah… the smell of sweat.”
The handkerchief with Yujin’s faint scent and a slight smell of sweat. She brought it to her nose once more, taking a deep breath, and then carefully opened the desk drawer and stored it deep inside.
“Yujin, it’s been a year… no, almost 2 years since we met.”
At 16, the battlefield she was thrust into as soon as she became an adult was truly like a hell on earth.
Mutilated corpses everywhere, screams and shouts rampant, and the fishy smell of blood were hard for a delicate girl’s stomach to bear.
And above all, what was hardest to endure and hardest to see was…
“The corpses that turned into black lumps of charcoal from my magic.”
When she witnessed with her own eyes the blackened charcoal-like corpses of someone burned to death by her magic, the magic she had long been proud of became so terrifying and cursed.
The simple incantation uttered from her mouth, the sight of a person hit directly by the magic created at her fingertips turning into a lump of charcoal that was once a person.
The smell of burning human flesh stimulating her nostrils, and humans writhing in agony, moving their bodies cracked like burnt firewood.
The terrible screams that eventually burrowed into her ear canals even when covering her ears with her hands, etched into her mind, became a stain that would never wash away no matter how much she scrubbed, a fear that would torment her forever.
Despite the countless torments plaguing her young self, Eliza did not show tears.
As a mage of the family and a member of the Roterschuden, like her brothers and sisters, in her position leading a few mages studying under the family’s private soldiers and her father, the head of the family, she could not dare show tears in front of anyone. As much as she was suffering, those following her would be suffering too, and someone in the position of representing a group on the harsh battlefield must not carelessly show weakness.
No matter how hard the arms and legs move, if there’s a problem with the head and it can’t maintain balance, it’s no different from an insect flipped on its back, struggling and waiting to die.
So Eliza held back her tears, endured the pain, and on days when she finally couldn’t bear it, she hid her body in the darkness where no one knew, crouched in the bushes in a corner of the camp, and quietly sobbed.
While keeping the sorrow that she couldn’t show or tell anyone as a secret and just letting it flow with tears, she met him for the first time.

“Excuse me… are you alright?”
A man approaching her with a torch in one hand and the other hand slightly gripping the handle of his sword.
With dark brown hair and many small scars on his face. The man with dark blue eyes looked scary perhaps because of the many scars etched on his face, but he didn’t look very old.
“……”
She didn’t answer his question asking if she was alright. She couldn’t open her mouth for fear that if she carelessly opened it, something uncontrollable might burst out.
In the quite chilly early winter, Yujin looked around for a moment, then extinguished the torch and covered me with the old cloak draped over his shoulders.
“Please don’t tell others that I extinguished the torch, I’ll be in big trouble.”
Deviating from the patrol route in the camp and extinguishing the light could be misunderstood as desertion or contact with the enemy, but even so, Eliza was more curious about why he had covered her with his cloak.
“Ugh, it’s tough, isn’t it? Cold, hungry, and painful too.”
Yujin, who had sat down on the ground hiding in the bushes at a suitable distance from her, opened his mouth looking at her, or honestly, it wasn’t certain if he really looked at her that day because it was too dark.
“……”
“I understand if I suddenly look suspicious for talking to you. I just saw you, the mage, and was reminded of myself from a few years ago, so I dared to be meddlesome despite the rudeness.”
At his words spoken in a soft voice as if understanding her inability to easily open her mouth, she unconsciously opened hers.
“How do you know I’m a mage?”
“Wearing such a luxurious cloak at a glance, and with a delicately beautiful face, even to the eyes of an ignorant commoner like me, your nobility and intelligence as a mage seem to brighten the dark night, how could I not know?”
“…Were you struggling too?”
“Of course. Conscripted from the royal territory at 15 and rolling around on the battlefield for nearly 3 years, how could everything have been smooth? Sometimes I collapsed from exhaustion, sometimes I sobbed missing my family, and sometimes I lay awake at night thinking of fallen comrades.”
He spoke gently, like a senior who had experienced and overcome exactly the same things Eliza herself had gone through, encouraging a struggling junior.
“Taking someone’s life and hurting someone is a difficult and tiring thing. It’s physically exhausting and mentally draining, so it’s hard to endure even for a seasoned veteran. In that sense, you’re doing very well, mage.”
“Me?”
“I saw from afar, but leading someone as the head of a group at such a young age is not an easy thing to do. The fact that you’re swallowing your tears in such a secluded place, worried that those following you might waver, is proof that you are a person of gentle nature and strong character.”
“How can you say shedding tears in hiding is strong? Isn’t it just the tantrum of a child crushed by responsibility?”
“If I had been given such an important responsibility at your age, noble lady, I would have run away in the dead of night rather than crying in hiding.”
Somewhere far away, he said, pointing somewhere, then lowered his hand and spoke more calmly.
“Everyone has limits. The vessel that holds sadness and pain will eventually overflow. It’s not a bad thing to lean on someone trustworthy, whether adult or child. There must be someone who cares for you around you, so find that person and rely on them. A person standing alone falls easily in the wind and waves, but if there are people supporting each other, any difficulty can be endured.”
Saying he was conscripted at 15 and spent 3 years on the battlefield means he is 18 years old. The person sitting next to her with just one bush between them was only 2 years older than her, but he felt very mature.
Was that why? She unknowingly asked him:
“Then, will you sit next to me and talk to me again next time?”
“What?”
He answered in a dazed voice as if he had heard an unexpected response.
“I’ll be sitting here next time too, so come to me.”
“Uh, um.”
“Really, really thank you, soldier. Thanks to you, I feel a little better.”
She quickly left her seat, leaving him bewildered. Thinking about it now, in a situation where he suddenly approached a noble, put a cloak on her head, and spoke to her, she could have gotten angry asking how a commoner could speak so freely to a noble, but she didn’t even think of that. He perfectly understood why she was struggling, said what she wanted to hear, and showed maturity beyond his age. That’s why she might have unilaterally promised a next time, that’s why she might have wanted to lean on him a little.

After that, she occasionally conversed with him when the timing was right. She didn’t say anything first, just listened to the stories he told and how he overcame his hardships.
Whether he was talking because he couldn’t resist the pressure from a noble, or whether he was just thinking of it as a child’s whining and soothing her, every time they sat and talked with just one bush between them under the countless stars on dark nights, her affection for him gradually built up, and at some point, it turned into one-sided love.
Another secret was born that she couldn’t show or tell anyone, but it wasn’t bad.
She couldn’t meet him for a while after surrounding the fortress to capture Sordan Fortress. But after occupying Sordan Fortress and completely taking control of the surrounding area, she saw him again at the ceremony for meritorious service. The sight of him being half-forcibly assigned the position of Hundred-man Captain by the man who had been promoted to Defense Captain of the fortress, standing on a hastily made wooden platform. That was when she first learned his name.
‘Yujin.’
Unlike his appearance gradually revealed by torchlight under the dark night sky, his appearance seen under the bright sun.
He was taller than she thought, and the body revealed under his crude armor was quite solid. His deeply frowning expression looked scary at first glance, but to her who knew his kindness, it just looked like a different kind of charm.

After that, she often encountered him while stationed at Sordan Fortress by royal order, serving under the Defense Captain to protect the eastern front. The sight of him apologizing in surprise when he later found out that she was not just an ordinary quasi-noble mage but the daughter of a count’s family still makes her laugh when she thinks about it sometimes.
“Should I smell it just one more time?”
She took out the handkerchief hidden deep in the drawer and brought it to her nose once more.
-Sniff.
Due to the social difference between noble and commoner and the inability to disrupt military discipline during wartime, she couldn’t show her true feelings, but wasn’t it alright to feel him in a slightly gloomy way?
‘With the military achievements Yujin has made so far and his abilities, it might be difficult for him to become a titled noble in the future, but it’s not impossible for him to receive a minor nobility title like quasi-noble.’
If that time comes, instead of swallowing her love alone like now, the two of them could…
“Just one more time.”
-Sniiiff.
Eliza didn’t remove the handkerchief from her nose until Yujin knocked on the office door.