Ross

I always believed I knew my battalion well. Weakness, to me, was something easy to identify—and to crush.

When Sergeant Almeida asked to bring his daughter to the barracks, I thought it was ridiculous. Still, I allowed it. I didn't imagine it would change anything.

She arrived quietly, her posture rigid, her gaze too fixed on an outsider. The soldiers noticed immediately. Laughter, provocations, veiled shoves. I watched… and encouraged her.

"This is no place for you," he said, making no attempt to hide his contempt.

She never answered. She never complained. She just kept going.

That irritated me more than if she cried.

Days passed, and the battalion made sure to remind her that she didn't belong there. They knocked over what she was carrying, hid things, laughed. I saw it all. And I did nothing.

Actually, I did worse.

He would call her out for the smallest mistakes, demand more than he did from the soldiers themselves, give her pointless tasks just to test how much she could endure. And she… endured.
Everyone began to see it as a sign of weakness, and the torments grew progressively worse.