Chapter 253
Veterans' memories
Autumn of 1945.
Hiroshima, Japan.
Ichiro Yamada stood on a pile of ruins, leaning on a cane. His left leg had been wounded by shrapnel in an earlier battle and hadn't healed yet. The air was filled with an indescribable smell of burning, mixed with the scent of rain and dust, sticking to one's skin.
Three months ago, he was on the battlefield in Manchuria, listening to the radio's enthusiastic propaganda about the "decisive battle on the mainland." But now, he was left with only fatigue and confusion.
He witnessed that day with his own eyes.
Not a bomb, not a shell.
It is light.
A white light, ten thousand times brighter than the sun, erupted without warning from a single point in the sky. He was helping out at a makeshift hospital a few kilometers from downtown Hiroshima when he was instantly engulfed by the light.
There was no expected loud bang, only a strange, soul-piercing hum. Then, a massive heat wave swept over him, knocking him to the ground.
When he opened his eyes again, the world had turned into a sea of fire. The sky was a strange dark red, and countless black ashes floated in the air, like a silent funeral.
Later, he heard that the same thing had happened in Nagasaki.
The government's announcement was vague, sometimes referring to a "new type of bomb" and sometimes to "anomalies in weather." But Ichiro Yamada knew it was definitely not something that could be easily manufactured by humans.
He had seen shattered tanks and collapsed houses, but he had never seen anything like this—everything completely vaporized and melted, leaving only twisted metal and a charred earth. Even stranger, near the epicenter of the explosion, not even a single intact body was found.
Moreover, there was no sign of any aircraft.
That light was like a divine punishment that descended directly from the void.
"Yamada-kun, what are you looking at?" a voice sounded behind him.
Yamada turned around and saw Sato from the same village. One of his eyes was blind and he had a hideous scar on his face.
"Nothing," Yamada said, shaking his head, his voice hoarse. "Just wondering what that was."
Sato was silent for a moment, a mixture of fear and awe on his face. "I heard from a reporter from Tokyo that it might not have been done by the Americans," he said.
"Oh?" Yamada was a little surprised.
"He said it was the revenge of 'ghostly spirits,'" Sato lowered his voice, as if afraid of being overheard. "It was Nanjing, the vengeful spirits of the Chinese we killed, transformed into light, coming to claim our lives."
Yamada's heart sank.
Nanjing……
That name, like a needle, pierced the darkest, most feared corner of his heart. Although he had not participated in the atrocities, he had heard of the lurid rumors and the photos that were paraded as "war achievements."
He looked at the dead ruins in front of him and remembered Sato's words.
If that was really the revenge of the vengeful spirit... then it would be too terrifying.
There was no roar of bombs, no roar of planes, only pure, overwhelming destruction.
Many years later, Yamada Ichiro grew old. Before his death, he told his grandson about this memory and speculation.
"That's not an atomic bomb," the old man said, a trace of fear flashing in his cloudy eyes. "That's... a light from hell. It's the blood debt we owe, and we must pay it back."
History books, however, have always had a vague account of the disasters at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Official records refer to them as "special bombings," but all accounts of the details of the bombings and the types of aircraft that dropped the bombs are vague and even contradictory.
Some speculated that it was a failure of a secret weapon experiment, while others said it was the intervention of alien civilization.
Only a very few people, when they wake up in the middle of the night, will vaguely recall the legend - about two avengers from the future who used their lives to put a bloody end to a heinous crime.
Their story was not recorded in history books, but it turned into an eternal legend of justice and revenge, whispering and echoing in the shadows of history.
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