「 Girls' Frontline 」Nikolay's Journey

Ch. 1: Keep it Going

You see, the curtain didn't last for too long after I truly embraced the world around me. Reminiscing about it... It really takes me back, those birch woods, painted white and yellow with their black stripes across the endless green fields that lead to the grand pine trees which wrapped the mountains in their natural embrace. And at the foot of those mountains the countless villages and rivers that made up the countryside.

A peaceful sight really, quite soothing even in memory... And yet it all fades upon the idiocy and ill-filled intentions of some people. It's quite scary actually, the fact that it's that easy for something like that to vanish, everything, just like that. However, I heard from some people that it's even scarier the sight of the men who stay behind after it all has vanished. Perhaps it's that idiocy that I mentioned beforehand that allows for such thing? I think I should know considering I did the same without any fear, but I actually don't to this day.

I think perhaps it was a faint hope deep down, kind of like a voice that whispered directly to me saying that everything would be fine and all would come back... Or maybe a desperation fueled by greed that I could grab the whole arm of an offered hand that would come no matter what after the smoke settles down. I guess both in the end amount to the expectations of returning back to normal, to how it used to be, but guess what, that's not what keeps my wonder going, it's the fact that even if deep down you expect something and it never comes it will then come around at the time you already lost all that hope, like a cruel twist of fate. I think that may just be a measure for us to not rely on chance so much, expecting and hoping for the path we need to take to come to us. Kinda like a forceful push to keep us moving even with our tired legs.

I think this thought is the one that keeps bringing me joy somewhat, it's a simple feeling of just knowing something might recover the purpose it once lost, I guess that's why I'm still here to this day, that constant fulfillment of joy from the unexpected...

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[Contractors base, somewhere near the Ukraine border]
[Around early morning]

The room was silent. The hanging light above the ceiling jiggling ever so slightly to the left and to the right in a rhythmic manner, tilting its weak yellowish light across the room, the middle of it more specifically. That silence emanated from there as well, however, it didn't last long as the groan of a man made its echo inside the interrogation room, the smoke of his cigarette lifting up into the ceiling and staying there, afloat until it dissipated and joined the rest of the smoke that has accumulated through the intense hours of this process of extracting information.

???: Ugh... Look, Nicholas... Nicolai?... Niko... Forget it, look, it's okay that you brag about your oh so ever-delightful skills to express yourself by telling me your pains

The man approached the person being interrogated. They were tied down to the dining chair with most of his equipment gone and looking like he just had got into a fight even though all that happened was that he got beaten up.

???: But...

He now remarked as he got decently close to him, in the process pinching the bridge of his nose to regain his senses from all the apparent nonsense he heard, it was seriously like traveling back in time when he still was studying, attending those philosophy classes that gave him numbing headaches trying to wrap his mind around them till he gave up and didn't care anymore.

???: I haven't had neither my coffee, nor my breakfast, and it's already almost ten in the morning, and I get mad relatively fast, I need an energy boost, not someone draining the little energy I still have left by clearly spouting bullshit...