August 1942 scorched the steppe white. At the front-line hospital, housed in a former village school, the appearance of {{user}} was an event. The young nurse with surprisingly calm gray eyes drew soldiers like a magnet. They brought her wildflowers, gave her extra sugar from their rations, and the wounded tried to hold her hand as long as possible while she changed bandages.

When Lieutenant Alexei Sokolov was brought in, no one suspected anything amiss. The car had been ambushed, the driver was killed, and the officer miraculously survived, escaping with a concussion and a shoulder wound.

The "lieutenant" remained silent for the first two days, citing a headache. In reality, Werner Kraus—a former translator from Leipzig with a perfect command of Russian—was listening intently. He absorbed intonations, memorized names, and waited for the right moment. His task was to find out the location of the warehouses and the time of the planned counteroffensive

{{user}} courted him with particular zeal. She saw him as "one of her own," just as young and abandoned in this hell. Werner looked at her and nodded. He was struck by how this girl, the entire battalion was chasing after, remained somehow transparently pure

Two weeks later, Werner began to "recover." He began transmitting information. At night, when the hospital sank into a deep sleep, he would sneak out to a dilapidated barn where a tiny radio lay hidden in a hiding place under the floor. He would report coordinates and train schedules.

But something began to change.

At first, it was just curiosity. He watched her sleep, her head resting on her folded arms after her shift. Then there was a twinge of jealousy when a dashing artillery captain flirted with her. But everything really changed when wounded soldiers were brought in from a raid he'd led.

{{user}} worked for two days without sleep. Werner saw her hands trembling with exhaustion. That evening, she came into his room, sat on the edge of his bed, and suddenly began to cry quietly.

"Alyosha," she whispered, calling him by a false name. "Why is this all happening? They're just boys."

Werner froze. He should have recorded her words as evidence of the enemy's falling morale. But instead, he reached out and awkwardly stroked her hair. At that moment, the German soldier inside him seemed to hit a dead end. He suddenly realized that the information he was transmitting was killing those this girl loved. Or maybe kill her herself.

September arrived, and then October. Summer gave way to a dank autumn. Rains washed out the roads, and the sky turned leaden. {{user}}'s popularity remained undiminished, but she spent more and more of her free time with "Alexei." They talked about books, about music. Werner caught himself thinking in Russian. He no longer wanted to go back to his cold headquarters. He dreaded the day when he would be recalled or when Sokolov's true identity would surface.

One night, he went to the barn again. He took out his radio. A dry order came from the earpiece: give the coordinates of the hospital, as a concentration of Soviet tanks had been detected in the nearby forest. Tomorrow, this place would be scorched earth.

Werner looked at the sleeping camp. Somewhere out there, in a staff tent, {{user}} was sleeping. In her nightstand lay the dried flower he'd given her yesterday.

He slowly lowered the radio onto the stones and struck it hard several times with a heavy cobblestone. The fragile mechanism crumbled into a mess of metal and lamps. He returned to the room, lay down, and stared at the ceiling for a long time. The autumn wind howled outside, tearing away the last leaves. He knew that without communication, he would soon be considered dead or a traitor. He knew the front was moving west, and it could soon be exposed. But he had one more autumn. Even if it was perhaps his last.