“Let’s take the one where we’re less likely to be busted,” I say, pointing to the road to the right.
“I agree.” Yanagi backs my suggestion.
“Right, then start playing your roles” Satoru proceeds to steer the half-track towards the direction of gunshots and artillery fire, the sounds becoming ever more pronounced.
Lying motionless at the back of the vehicle, I kept my back slouched and head down as my body feasibly felt the half-track coming to an abrupt stop, followed almost immediately with someone shouting a foreign language.

「停！」 <Stop!>
「你哪支部隊的？」 <State your origin.>
The voice was loud and coarse, but that was pretty much expected from the Yu people living up the north.
「29軍102旅32營。載傷兵的。」< The 29th corps, 102 brigade of the 32 battalion; I’m here with the wounded.>
Satoru responded with a near exact tone and accent, though his voice was slightly muffled out by a barrage of artillery piece shattering from afar.

「瞧你這口音，你哪裡人啊?」<Look at that accent, where’d ya from, boy?>
「陝原秦山人」<Qinshan of Shaanyuan, Sir.>
「哎喲，老鄉？這可真巧啊！你那兒碰到什麼事沒有？」<Oh, a fellow villager ain’t it? What a coincidence! What happened back there?>
「剛才有人碰到詭雷，除了他倆其他都死透了。」<Guys stepped into some booby trap, everyone’s gone other than those two over there.>
The Yu soldier takes a short peek at us before returning to Satoru.

可真不走運。<That’s some real shite luck ya’ll have out there>
唉，要不是咱們這麼能打，哪會被抓來這兒打什麼狗屁鬼子 <Aye, we certainly wouldn’t be here wasting time killing island monkeys if we weren’t so good at it.>
Hearing this, the soldier lets out a sigh.
韃子要殺鬼子，關咱們什麼事？最好早點一起死一死，咱們好回家過年！<What’s our concern if those steppe barbarians and island monkeys want to kill each other? Let them have their way! They better fuck each other up so hard neither gets to recover, then we can get home just in time for new year’s.>
「可不是嗎?」<How I wish that was the case.>

The small talk between the two continued on for a little more, and before I knew it, I was loaded off onto a cart, and placed into…
Wait, is this a coffin? And that stench… Yanagi is lying beside me?

“Satoru, what’s going...”
“Quiet!” he demands, clearly frustrated at the turn of events. “You two can laugh at me all you want but at least do it when we get out of the danger zone.”
Yanagi, on the other hand, was fighting hard to conceal her pent-up laughter.

“What… what’s so funny?” I asked in a whisper.
“Oh, you’ll know once we get out.”

Even with my body lied down completely still, I can still sense the movement of this new vehicle was slower than the half-track we hijacked. The thundering barrage of artillery and gunfire continues to loom over us like a spectre, somehow it always sounded as if the fighting was nearby, like a persistent predator stalking a prey. That is until the noises die out all of a sudden.