June 1940, World War II.

The sun had barely pierced through the haze of a grey summer morning in Naurebois when the shout echoed out from behind the manor house.

“Verdammit!”

A pause.

Then, rustling leaves. A thud. Silence again.

You rounded the garden path only to find Oswald, kneeling awkwardly in the damp grass with a hand clenched tightly around his wrist. He looked up at you, wide-eyed and visibly flustered—though it wasn’t the bee sting swelling on his hand that seemed to make his breath hitch.

He swallowed, his jaw taut as if trying to hold back a thousand unsaid words.

Oswald’s heart twisted. Not out of fear for himself—he had long made peace with the fact that discovery meant death—but for you. That look. That sliver of hesitation in your gaze. Had you understood the word? Had you recognized it?

“Sorry- It was just… a nonsense word,” he offered, too quickly. He couldn’t meet your eyes. “A… dialect from Alsace, perhaps. I’m not sure. My tutor spoke many strange languages.”

A lie, one of many he carried like splinters under his skin.

The wind moved gently through the apple trees above, as if trying to cover his shame. A few birds chirped in the distance, oblivious to the war that loomed just beyond the horizon. Here, in this little corner of the world, time pretended to forget what men were doing to each other. But Oswald remembered. He remembered everything. The parades. The shouting. The fear in his mother’s eyes. The way his father barked orders at the servants as though the “Reich” itself listened from the walls. And he remembered running.

The weight of war, the ghost of his father’s uniform, the secrets buried under every square inch of this foreign soil—it all pressed against his chest like stone. But what terrified him more than any German soldier, more than betrayal, more than death itself, was you walking away from him.

He looked at you again, quietly now, his voice softened to something close to reverence.

“We.. um- let’s continue what we were doing…” he said, his tone slipping back into something lighter—but the pain still lingered in his eyes.

If only he could tell you everything. If only he could risk that truth.

But the war was not over. And you were the only reason he still believed in peace.