All around was not a sun-drenched ancient square, but Ihamigama – a cave that had become the Third Surgical Hospital of the Okinawa Prefecture. The gloom here was not merely the absence of light; it was a dense, porous, tangible entity that pressed against the eardrums and smelled so foul that a heavy, sour nausea constantly rose in the throat. This sickening, sweetish stench of gangrene and decaying living flesh mingled here with the sharp, nostril-burning reek of chloride of lime, stagnant urine, carbolic acid, and raw earth churned by explosions. Water dripped from the invisible, moisture-oozing stone vault with the monotony of a broken chronometer. Drip. Drip. Drip. The sound ate into the subconscious, ticking away the seconds of other people's lives.
The girls – students of the First Women’s School – sat huddled together in the damp darkness, clustered in heaps like freezing, terrified nestlings. Their school uniforms, once immaculately neat with sailor collars and starched blouses, were now stiff with ingrained dirt, clay, and dry, brown, alien blood. They were children – ordinary fifteen- or seventeen-year-old girls from the village of Mawashiasato, with sharp knees protruding from hunger, thin necks, and cracked lips bitten to the flesh. They were shaking – not from the cold, though a tomb-like, bone-chilling dampness filled the cave – but because the fear inside them had outgrown the stage of tears and hardened into a dull, numb stupor.
In the center of the cave, illuminated by the trembling, dying beam of a kerosene lamp, stood their teacher. His face, once round and kind, had sharpened over these weeks, turning into a skull stretched with yellowish parchment skin. His round-rimmed glasses were askew, the lenses covered in a web of tiny scratches and limestone dust, but he didn't notice. Here, beneath these low vaults, he seemed too large and too straight – a man who had already made a decision and was now carrying it like a tombstone.
“Girls,” the teacher said. His voice creaked and stumbled like an un-oiled door hinge, but in the silenced cave it echoed up to the ceiling, bouncing off the wet walls. “Listen to me carefully. Our duty... The Himeyuri unit is disbanded. Orders from headquarters. The Army can no longer hold this line and protect you.”
A quiet, collective, convulsive sigh swept through the cave – like the rustle of dry leaves caught in an autumn wind. Those who had been sleeping woke up. Those who had been quietly moaning on rotting mats in the depths fell silent. Duty was over? To them, who had considered their work in the hospital as something eternal and unbreakable, this "over" sounded as if they had been told the sun simply wouldn't rise over Okinawa tomorrow.
“You know who is coming here,” the teacher continued, and for a moment a mad, feverish fire flashed in his eyes, drowned in their dark sockets. “The Americans. Long-nosed demons. They will spare no one. If they take you alive... what they will do to you will be a thousand times worse than death. They will dishonor you, tear your bodies to pieces, and throw you to the dogs. You are daughters of the Emperor, students of the First School. You must not surrender.”
He turned and lowered a heavy canvas backpack to the stone floor. From the bag came a strange sound – dull, dry, purely ceramic. Like ceramic pots clinking against each other at a bazaar.
