The enemy

The story follows frontline soldiers during a warped, mechanized conflict in which enemy casualties arrive inert on trucks, erasing the distinction of wounded and intensifying moral distress. A weary sergeant and a younger officer face propaganda, censored language, and unsettling small details—branded cigarettes with lipstick tips, rules forbidding certain pronoun use—that amplify anxiety and guilt about killing. Through tense scenes and quiet moments, the narrative probes psychological erosion, bureaucratic normalization of violence, and the difficulty of preserving human feeling amid a war that feels both novel and disturbingly conventional.