NS released my wrist and turned back toward the square.
Mr. Kim caught his shoulder.
"If you go against this crowd, it will put you on the ground."
"June is back there."
"I know."
"Then let go."
Mr. Kim did.
NS disappeared into the bodies moving toward us.
Kitty still held my sleeve. Her fingers shook against my arm.
"Go," she said.
I looked at her.
"What?"
"He cannot find her alone."
The eastern corridor narrowed every time someone fell. NC and Jihye were already guiding Bunny and Cherry through the opening. Shinso and KM held the old man's wheelchair above the broken curb.
Kitty pushed my shoulder.
"I said go. Bring both of them back."
There was no accusation in her face.
That made it harder to leave her.
"Stay with Mr. Kim."
"Do not waste time giving me the instruction I just gave you."
Another volley struck the police vehicles.
I went back.
Moving with the crowd had been difficult.
Moving against it was almost impossible.
People hit my shoulders from both directions. A torn banner wrapped around my leg. I stepped over lost shoes, broken signs, and a phone whose screen still displayed an unanswered call from MOM.
NS stood several meters ahead, shouting June's name.
"White shirt!" I called. "Look for the bag."
"I know what she is wearing."
"Then find her faster."
He turned on me with rage already in his eyes.
For one dangerous second, Congress Square disappeared from between us. We were back beneath the Octagon lights, bruised and proud and convinced there was only room for one of us to stand.
A bullet struck the road beside NS.
The moment ended.
I grabbed the back of his jacket and pulled him behind a damaged patrol car.
"You can hate me after we find her."
"I don't have time to hate you right now."
"Good."
"Do not make me regret saying that."
We moved again.
June had not been carried far.
The force of the crowd had knocked her beside the patrol vehicle where the young policewoman had protected two children. The officer now lay against the rear wheel with one hand pressed beneath her shoulder.
Blood passed between her fingers.
June knelt beside her.
"Keep pressure here," she said, placing the officer's hand higher. "Not on your neck. Here."
"You need to leave."
"So do you."
"My arm does not work."
"Then I will be your arm."
The policewoman tried to laugh. It became a breathless cough.
"That sounded better before you said it."
"I know. I am under pressure."
June took the folded raincoat from her mother's bag and pressed it against the wound. She looked toward the eastern lane.
The crowd hid the opening.
"Can you stand?"
"Can you carry me?"
June looked at the officer's body armor and then at her own arms.
"Probably not well."
"Then stop being brave and go."
"I am not being brave."
The officer's eyes began losing focus.
June pressed harder.
"I just don't want to remember leaving you here."
NS heard June before he saw her.
"Stay awake. Tell me your name."
He climbed over the fallen barrier.
"June!"
Her head lifted.
The relief on her face lasted less than a second.
"Help me move her."
NS dropped beside the policewoman.
"Are you hurt?"
"She is."
"I asked about you."
"And I answered about the person bleeding."
"That is not an answer."
"It is the only one you are getting until we lift her."
I reached them and crouched beside the officer's legs.
"On three," I said.
NS looked at my bandaged hand.
"You cannot carry her."
"Neither can June. Pick a better option while we count."
He moved behind the officer and locked his arms beneath hers. I lifted her knees with my good arm and supported the weight against my chest.
June kept the raincoat pressed to the wound.
"One," she said.
"What happened to three?" NS asked.
"We do not have time for three."
We lifted.
The policewoman cried out. My ribs answered with pain of their own.
"Sorry," I said.
"Stop apologizing and move," June told me.
It sounded like every laboratory we had survived together.
For three steps, I almost believed we were carrying equipment after class.
Then the rifles started again.
The red-band unit had left the Congress steps.
They advanced behind black shields while firing toward the eastern medical lane. Fallen flowers disappeared beneath their boots. Soldiers kicked bags and phones aside as they crossed the square.
One stopped beside a wounded man who raised both empty hands.
"Please."
The soldier looked down at him.
Then he fired once and continued walking.
The shot changed something inside the people who witnessed it.
Fear remained.
The belief that obedience might save them did not.
Citizens pulled strangers behind cars. Shopkeepers at the eastern edge raised their metal shutters just high enough for people to crawl beneath. Police officers abandoned equipment so their hands would be free to carry the wounded.
No one waited for permission anymore.
The national police commander ordered two patrol trucks into the lane. One driver accelerated toward the military transport while the other followed close behind.
The first truck struck the blockade again.
The gap widened another half meter.
The second patrol truck stopped sideways behind it, shielding the exit from the soldiers.
"Move!" the commander shouted. "Everyone east!"
For the first time, the crowd had a direction that was not a trap.
We carried the policewoman toward it.
June walked backward, both hands pressed to the wound. NS took most of the officer's upper weight. I tried not to let my knees reveal how little strength remained in my injured side.
"Almost there," June told the officer.
"You don't know that."
"Neither do you, so my version wins."
The officer's mouth moved beneath her blood-stained mask.
"My name is Lin."
"Lin," June repeated. "Stay with me."
"You asked before."
"I am asking again."
"Officer Lin."
"Good. Tell me where you work."
A round struck the patrol truck ahead.
NS turned his body over June's.
His grip failed.
The officer's shoulders dropped several inches before I caught more of her weight. Pain tore through my wrist.
"NS!"
He remained standing.
Then blood appeared along the outside of his upper arm.
June saw it.
"You were hit."
"Grazed."
"You don't know that."
"I can move my arm."
"That does not prove anything."
"Can you two continue this after the bullets stop?" I asked.
June glared at me.
"Lift."
We lifted.
The four of us reached the police corridor together.
Kitty saw June first.
She ducked beneath a cracked shield, ran through the corridor, and took the officer's legs from me without asking.
"Where are you hurt?" she asked June.
"I'm not. NS is."
Kitty looked toward him.
The sleeve of his expensive jacket had torn open. The wound beneath it was narrow, but blood ran toward his elbow.
"You call that a graze?"
"Yes."
"Of course you do."
Kitty pulled the white flower from her backpack. She tore away the ribbon that had held it and wrapped the cloth above the wound.
June supported his arm while Kitty tied it.
Neither girl looked at me.
I was grateful.
"Can we leave the relationship symbolism until later?" Cherry called from the checkpoint.
Bunny pulled her through the gap.
"That is your first joke since the shooting."
"It was medically necessary."
Mr. Kim took Officer Lin's upper body from NS.
"Head count while moving."
"XH," NC called.
"Here."
"NS."
"Here."
"June."
"Here."
"Kitty."
"Here."
The names continued until every answer came except Anna's.
Jihye reminded us that she had gone with the wounded teenager.
"Then she is ahead of us," Mr. Kim said. "We do not turn back again."
This time, none of us argued.
At 10:09, the first civilian truck reached Yandong General Hospital.
It had once delivered vegetables. Now six wounded people lay across the metal floor between broken crates.
HS ran beside it as the driver entered the emergency bay.
"Walking wounded to the left. Anyone unconscious stays on the vehicle until a team reaches you. Do not pull anyone down by the arms."
His voice sounded calm.
His hands did not.
The second vehicle carried the teenager from Congress Square.
Anna knelt beside him, still pressing both hands against the cloth at his side. Blood covered her fingers to the wrists.
"HS!"
He recognized her only after she said his name.
"Are you injured?"
"No. He is. He was talking before, but he stopped."
HS climbed onto the vehicle and checked the teenager's breathing.
"He is still breathing. Keep pressure."
"I have been pressing."
"Then you are the reason he arrived breathing."
A clinical team lifted the teenager onto a stretcher.
Anna tried to follow.
HS caught her elbow.
"Where are the others?"
"The square. They were behind me."
"All of them?"
"Yes."
HS looked toward the line of incoming cars, carts, motorcycles, and trucks.
Every face belonged to somebody else's friend.
None belonged to his.
At 10:14, VT received the first casualty estimate.
The military liaison stood behind him in the telecommunications office and read from a handwritten page.
"Thirty-one confirmed dead inside the square. Possibly more beneath the western crowd. National Police losses are not included. Hospitals report over one hundred incoming injuries."
"How many military fatalities?" VT asked.
"One confirmed. Three wounded."
"Cause?"
"Police gunfire."
The liaison did not mention that the police had fired only after MALT's soldiers shot one of their officers.
He did not need to.
VT looked at the state broadcaster waiting on another screen.
"Report the attack on security forces."
"And the civilian number?"
"Unverified."
"Sir, we just verified thirty-one."
"You received an estimate from an active security operation. A death becomes verified when an authorized office records a name, examines a body, and issues a document. Has that happened?"
"No."
"Then there are no verified civilian deaths."
The analyst who had questioned the earlier video edit stopped typing.
"Hospitals will verify them," she said.
VT turned his chair toward her.
"Send an emergency directive. No hospital, clinic, morgue, or municipal office may issue a protest-related death record without military review."
"Families will know."
"Families know one person. The country sees a number. We control the number."
He dictated the broadcast line slowly enough for everyone to type it correctly.
"No peaceful civilians were targeted. No civilian deaths have been verified. Reports claiming otherwise are fabricated by armed extremists."
The state broadcaster repeated it.
VT watched the sentence appear beneath footage of police sidearms and a broken bottle.
The dead had lost their lives in Congress Square.
Before the ambulances reached the hospital, he began taking away the fact that they had died there.
We found shelter inside a pharmacy two streets east of Congress Square.
The owner had locked the front entrance and opened the stockroom to the wounded. Shelves of cold medicine and vitamins stood beside people lying on flattened cardboard boxes.
Officer Lin was placed on a narrow table. June remained with her while a retired surgeon examined the wound. Kitty cleaned NS's arm with bottled water. NC counted our group for the fourth time.
Outside, gunfire continued in shorter bursts.
Nobody knew how many people remained inside the square.
Nobody knew where Congresswoman Thiri Win had been taken.
Nobody knew whether Private Ko Ren was alive behind the Congress doors.
At 10:21, the pharmacy owner found a battery radio beneath the counter.
MALT's emergency broadcast repeated through static.
"Security forces have restored order after armed extremists attacked Congress and national officers. Authorities confirm that proportionate force was used. No peaceful civilians were targeted. No civilian deaths have been verified. Citizens are warned not to share fabricated casualty reports."
The owner turned the volume higher.
We listened again.
No civilian deaths have been verified.
Kitty sat on the floor beside the doorway.
She was trying to wash the old man's blood from her hands with the last water in her bottle.
Across from her, June's mother's raincoat lay red on the treatment table.
NS's torn sleeve rested near my shoe.
Outside, strangers continued carrying bodies away from Congress Square.
The radio told us none of them were dead.