Heavy Rain

Just weeks through the time travel, I started to feel like everything was real, I found a bronze mirror to look at my face and it's my assumtion was true because this face wasn't my face, unlike my tanned skin, this face is pale white and has no scratch on it, it's so soft... I wonder what kind of skincare they used.

I honestly thought the reason why I was able to accept this easily was all because of granny. Granny has been nothing but kind and understanding to me. She reminded me of my late grandma who's always sitting at the sofa watching her old chinese movies. Which I thought was also why I could adapt faster.

Granny was an expert in medicine as well as poison. She treated wounded soldiers in the camp and she also created poisons and experimenting with them. Let me tell you something, the amount of wooden drawers to keep her herbs in her tent is too overwhelming for me to even know what herb was in which drawers.

She thought me some basics medicine needed to survive in this place and she gave me a new name "Tang Xue". 'Tang' from the super deep voice man who was the head general in this camp, 'Tang Xuan' and 'Xue' from granny's name, 'Ning Xue'.

2 weeks into my time travel, more than half of the soldiers went to the war zone under the emperor's order.

As the sun started to come down, it rained and I have a very bad feeling about this so I went to see Granny. Everyone has went inside their own tents now. Granny told me she was making a new medicine to improve the soldiers' health so I guessed she must be working on it now. With a fragile umbrella and a bamboo hat to shelter me in the rain, I went to her tent and went in.

"It's raining hard outside, why aren't you in your tent? Are you sick?" She walked over to me and helped me place the wet umbrella and took off the wet bamboo hat.

"I'm not sick, Granny. I just feel safer around you, especially since it's raining hard right now." I took the wet hat from her hand and placed it on a simple stand which looked more like a thick stick rather than a stand.

"Come on and look at this new medicine I just finished making." I took a stool from the corner of the tent and placed it nect to the table that was filled with boxes of herbs and some powders I didn't recognize.

Granny started to explain everything that was on the top of the table and let me see the new medicine she made.

The sun was gone by the time granny's done explaining everything. I went to lit the candles around the tent and when suddenly her tent was ripped off by something or... Someone.

The last of the six candles in the tent hasn't been lit up yet but the assasins have raced to come to spill some blood, more like, granny's and my blood.

One of the assasins broke the candle in my hand and held a knife to my throat, with granny's poison, I poisoned the assasin, after just 5 seconds he was already lying on the ground groaning about the pain in his legs.

I quickly went to granny who's great enough to held on her own but I just have this instinct that I have to be right next to her. With the last assasin on the ground, granny went to call the soldiers to put these assasins behind the cells for informations.

When I was just about to offer to help, a black shadow went toward her with a shining sword in his hand pointing toward her.

I ran as fast as I could but before my hand was fast enough to take out some poisons, the sword landed on my stomach first and... guess who blacked out twice in two weeks.

So months went by with me being treated by granny with her nagging me to take poisons and medicine everywhere I go as well as something about me not exercising enough to keep me healthy and something about morning jogging with the soldiers around the camp and all those things about me needing some 'healthy lifestyle' and not just staying inside her tent studying medicine and poisons and not socializing with anyone else other than herself. Well, I'm still not going out.

But you know granny, she maybe kind but she's hella stubborn. She brought me out and walked around the camp every morning and told me stories about this kingdom, the Qin Kingdom. She said that we are right now in a war with Chu Kingdom and the reason for this life taking event was because of territory.

And there were also lots of thoughts going through in my mind as months went on.  Thoughts like "What if this body belongs to someone with special identity?" "What happen to this body that she went near a war camp?" "If I am occupying her body, then where is she? Did she passed or did we maybe exchanged souls or what?" Well if the owner of this body actually went to mine, well this suck for her.

I walked around the camp and went to the back where we have an empty land for soldiers to practice and some other works I have no idea about. I looked at the vast land in front of me and the stomps of the soldiers catched my attention.

There were thousands of them, jogging circling the camp. Some of them greeted granny as they passed us and she gladly returned their greetings. It sadden me to see all these young happy soldiers were going to go war and I might not see some of them again when they come back.

I also somehow earned Tang Xuan's trust when I took the stab for granny by that assasin from Chu. The assasin from Chu said he got a mission directly from the commander in Chu to infiltrate the camp when Tang Xuan wasn't in the camp.

I knew that he placed Granny as a very important person and the reason of that really surprise me. Granny is someone who had accompanied Tang Xuan's father who was a general to wars and now him.

And right now, that cold hearted general was standing right here front of me.

"Are you recovering well?" He asked the soldiers to continue their jogging while he stopped and talked to me and granny.

"Yes, it got better due to granny's treatment."

Afterwards he shot a glance at my body, which was wounded when they found me by the river bank. His eyes flicker and I see something I've never expect, gentleness.

I am so stupefy that I don't realize I was holding my breath until he walks away.

I was glad that I fake my memory lost or else, I would have to face his cold and stoic face while being interrogate by him which was definitely not in my bucket list, not that time travel was ever in my list.

"Tang Xue! Come sit here with us. Your favorite chicken is ready!" Han Jing was one of the soldiers inder Tang Xuan and he's also the third person I talked to in this camp. I joined him with the other soldiers and ate the chicken they've prepared for me. It was honestly so heart warming that they accepted my presence around them without any pressure.

The first time we talked was weeks ago when when granny brought me out one day and she left being summoned by the general, I walked around the camp by my own and saw soldiers forming a circle while cooking some fishes on the fire in front of them. They were talking happily about their parents, their wives and their kids which were left alone in their houses. I approached them and asked

"Mind if I join?" I asked looking at the soldier who was holding a fish whose name was Han Jing.

He glanced at me and took a cloth and put it on the ground beside him before patting it and said "Yeah, make yourself comfortable."

"Tang Xue, is it?" The soldier across me asked.

"Yes."

"Where are you from?"

"I... Don't know..." I said softly.

They went silent until a cheerful soldier asked me questions which were followed by others and we sat there talking to each other about ourselves and about the capital city of Qin until the sun set and granny came and brought me back to my tent.

***

Today was another day of the battle. Granny brought me along to say bye to them. I saw all the soldiers line up in an orderly manner with their spears and swords, it was super overwhelming with the thousands of soldiers standing so orderly without making any noise.

"We are going now, take care." Tang Xuan said as he approached us riding his horse.

"Be well, come back here alive." Granny said while softly patting the horse he was riding as if asking the horse to take care of the boy she had raised ever since he was a baby.

He looked at me and nodded to me, which I nodded back of course before ordering all the soldiers to go forward. The lined up soldiers quickly move and they were gone with the sound of their lively steps.

As I look at granny's turned back, I could feel her utmost concern and sadness. Who would be happy if someone so close to them could be death or heavily wounded at anytime without any news?

I wish I could console or reassure her saying that it would all be fine and nothing's going to happen to him but we both know that those were just empty words. No one knew how this battle will turn out, no one knew how many more soldiers were going to lose their short lives in this battle. No one.