(Lu Zhengyan, captain of the border special operations unit, x Wen Xu, a nurse with the unit’s medical team)
(Military fiction x bittersweet ending x angst)
The border wind was always laden with sand, as if it meant to bury every tender attachment in the wilderness. Before leading his team on a top-secret counterterrorism mission, Lu Zhengyan gripped Wen Xu’s hand outside the field hospital tent. He pressed a copper whistle into her palm. “Wait for me. We’ll have the wedding when spring comes.” Wen Xu looked at the bloodstains still on his camouflage uniform and could only nod. She knew that a soldier’s promises always held the words “just in case.”
On the seventh day of the mission, communications suddenly went dead. Wen Xu stood by the radio, polishing the copper whistle until it shone. Lin Xi told her the fighting on the front line was fierce, but the familiar whistle never came. Half a month later, Zhao Tingzhou returned with Chen Ye. Chen Ye had lost a leg, and he carried a bloodstained medal and an unsent letter in his arms. Lu Zhengyan had written the letter. Blood had blurred the handwriting, but the last line read, “If I don’t return, don’t wait.”
Wen Xu didn’t cry. She kept taking the copper whistle with her on her rounds every day, until, three months later, during a rescue operation, she took a stray bullet meant for an injured herder. As she lay dying, she brought out the copper whistle and blew. Amid the wind, she seemed to hear Lu Zhengyan’s voice again: “Wen Xu, don’t be afraid.”
Later, someone saw two gravestones standing side by side in the military cemetery. Lu Zhengyan’s name was carved on the one to the left, Wen Xu’s on the right. Between them lay the copper whistle, never to be blown again.
