31 December 1941 — The Battle of Kampar actually begin
The rain had started to fall, not heavily, but enough to make the earth damp, the air thick. Smoke already tainted the horizon. Aman had just slipped back into the British camp, his chest heaving with exhaustion, his legs muddy, scratched, and bruised from the jungle. His eyes darted around, searching for one thing Mei Lian.
He found her near the edge of the camp, sitting beside a stack of supplies under a tattered tarp. Her arms were tied loosely a precaution, they had said. Her eyes widened when she saw him, relief washing over her face.
"Mei Lian!" Aman dropped beside her, immediately pulling out his knife to cut the ropes. Her wrists were red, trembling.
"They didn't hurt you, right? Did Carter do anything?"
She shook her head slowly. "He just kept talking…... rambling. Said I was leverage. Said you'd come back if I was still here."
Aman helped her stand. "We're not staying. Not here. Not with him."
With the chaos starting to stir around the camp orders being shouted, trenches being manned, machine guns rolled into position no one noticed as Aman and Mei Lian slipped away, deeper into the jungle. Not too far. Just enough to be out of immediate sight, tucked into an abandoned rubber shed partially collapsed under time and weather.
They stayed there, silent at first. Mei Lian trembled, tears quietly streaming down her cheeks. Aman put an arm around her, pulling her close.
"It's okay... we'll be fine. Just stay quiet. We'll wait for the night."
He wanted to believe his own words. That they'd be fine. That they'd somehow slip past the chaos and reach Singapore. That his sisters were still there, safe. But when he looked toward the distant thunder of artillery toward Kampar he knew they were standing on the edge of something monstrous.
Then it began.
The real fighting.
It started with the sharp bark of British artillery opening fire. Then the reply Japanese mortars and field guns. The ground shook. Trees shattered. Distant screams bled into the night.
Aman couldn't help it. He left Mei Lian safely hidden and crawled up a slope just enough to watch the madness unfold.
What he saw would never leave him.
The Japanese came out of the trees like a swarm of locusts. Dozens. Hundreds. No formation. No cover. Just raw, screaming insanity.
"Tenno Heika Banzai!"
The cry echoed over and over shrill, manic, euphoric. The first time Aman heard it, he didn't know what it meant. But he understood enough by the way they charged. They ran straight into machine gun fire. Into death.
Some were strapped with grenades to their chests no guns. Just their bodies and madness. Aman watched in horror as a group of them bloodied, screaming, limbs already torn rushed toward a British artillery emplacement. The gunners tried to adjust aim, but it was too late. A man dove forward, pulled the pins on his grenades, and flung himself under the cannon.
The explosion tore through the night.
Aman's mouth hung open.
"They're… lunatics," he whispered. "Not just soldiers. Maniacs."
Behind the line, Carter stood tall too tall, too exposed barking commands, his face streaked with mud and sweat. He was now in charge of one of the machine gun squads holding a narrow trench on the northern slope. From the jungle, the Japanese kept charging. Carter didn't flinch. If anything, he laughed. Loudly. Almost joyfully. His machine gunners hesitated when reloading.
"Don't stop!" Carter screamed. "Mow them down! All of them! They won't stop you don't stop! You guys stop... We all be food to Japanese they eat you!"
Aman could see it in his eyes, even from this distance the man was gone. Whatever part of Carter had once been a soldier, a leader, or even human... it was shattered.
As the battle raged, Aman crawled back down the slope and returned to Mei Lian. She was curled up, hands over her ears, sobbing quietly.
"It's them, isn't it?" she asked.
He nodded. "They're..… they're not right. They're not scared to die. I saw them run into the guns. Some don't even carry weapons. Just grenades strapped to their chests. Like they want to die."
Mei Lian looked up. "Why?"
Aman shook his head. "They scream 'Tenno Heika Banzai.' I think it's about their Emperor. Like he's… a god to them.... You i don't know how they can convince people to die like that ... Their casualties were higher than British but if they keep doing this... The British can't keep holding them back and ... Malaya is their"
He didn't know how to process it. The fear, the confusion, the bloodlust he saw. He had witnessed war already in Jitra, had run through gunfire, had watched his village burn. But this? This was something else.
This was madness.
Still, they waited. Hours passed. The screams continued. Explosions echoed like thunderclaps. The sky lit up with tracer rounds and burning trees.
At some point, Aman dozed off not from comfort, but exhaustion. When he woke, it was dawn, or something close to it. A sick orange glow hovered over the horizon. He peeked again toward Kampar and saw the British lines holding barely.
Bodies littered the slopes.
Japanese and British, mixed in death but seemly some British machine gun operator some even not dying they were horrified how much they kill now by mumbling "Stop... Stop... Stop..." Repeatedly
The line had bent, but it had not broken.
Aman helped Mei Lian to her feet. "We're leaving now. They'll come again. More of them. But we're not staying for that."
Mei Lian's voice was shaky. "Do you think… we'll make it?"
Aman hesitated.
"I don't know," he admitted. "But I'm not letting them get you."
He looked back once more at the hellscape that Kampar had become. And then they disappeared into the jungle once more.
Still together.
Still breathing.
But forever changed.
Aman head just one thing keep himself alive with Mei Lian....
....
"Those kid wanna leave huh? ... Interesting they alive... Still alive and breathing with hope.... Ahhhh whatever i do to them seem not broken them.... Ehhhh i should do it? Or not? Hehe impressive they manage to evade entire IJA and manage keep convince those Brits.... Our old allied in shatter.... I gonna search you two" said the Japanese officer watching fron afar with binocular.