It was two years later that Sato-san put the question to me. The two of us had been hiding for two whole bloody years, terrified every single moment while moving about in the marshes along the river, where I caught small, skimpy meals to support us. We couldn’t turn back to our unit, because Cesaru had probably reported us as leak, and we imagined all kinds of humiliations for discredited and dishonoured deserters.