Chapter Text
Seulgi tried to move, but all she could manage was the faint twitch of her fingers. Her face was streaked with dirt, her body coated in dust and mud. Grit and half-dried blood filled her mouth. The air reeked of gunpowder, mixed with the metallic tang of blood, the life-filled scent of damp soil, and the earthy hint of grass. Seulgi was on her back. She knew that because she could see the sky above, vast and endless.
Her body was numb. The bleeding seemed to have stopped, and she told herself she might not die from blood loss. But she had no idea how many wounds she had. The pain had sunk so deeply into her bones that she no longer recognized her own body.
The sky was fading into darkness. No signs of life remained. The last moans had already gone quiet. All around Seulgi were corpses. Fever burned through her wounds until she no longer knew whether she was alive or already dead. She was desperately thirsty. The blood in her mouth had dried, leaving only grains of sand against her tongue. Seulgi wished for rain, but everything was bone-dry. If she didn’t die of blood loss, she thought, she would die from the fever, or from dehydration, or perhaps a flock of scavenger birds would pick at the dead and finish her off. Or maybe an enemy sniper would stumble across her, see she was still alive, and grant her a merciful shot. Maybe that was truly mercy, after all.
Her thoughts blurred. Seulgi knew she was delirious. Still, she longed for that bullet, more than anything else, to end this half-dead misery.
Footsteps approached, growing louder. Seulgi heard them clearly because she was pressed against the ground. They might have been an illusion, her mind was slipping, but it didn’t matter. Real or not, she didn’t care. If a hallucination could trick her into hope, she would take it.
Come here. I’m still alive. Yes, I’m not crying out. Yes, I’m lying here like I’m gone. But I’m alive, I swear. Help me. Hurry. Shoot. End this for me. Please.
‘Someone’s still alive!’
Her eyelids were too heavy to open, but Seulgi understood the words. She felt two people lift her onto a stretcher.
Damn it. Either give me water, or fucking kill me.
Seulgi didn’t know if they sensed her desperate wish, but moments later, cool water spilled down her throat. Never in her life had water tasted so precious. Of course, she had always known water was necessary, but never until now had she worshiped it. She swallowed greedily, letting it wash away the gritty mix of sand and blood from her mouth.
When Seulgi awoke again, she was in the base hospital, her wounds carefully bandaged. They told her there had been seventeen bodies where they found her: four from her side, thirteen from the enemy. She was the only one who survived. That was how the officer put it. To her, it meant seventeen dead and one left alive.
It had been nearly a year since Seulgi had been deployed here. Her unit guarded the city’s most critical zone, Highway 1. Rocket City was only a nickname, but it captured the place well enough. She had counted two hundred and forty rocket attacks in less than a year, each one destroying homes and stealing lives from civilians and soldiers alike. And yet, what she remembered most were the mountains. They always stood silent behind the smoke and fire, watching everything. In return, Seulgi remained silent too, staring back at them. Neither side spoke.
Life here was simple: complete the mission and survive. Completing the mission was easy. Surviving was not. The last time, Seulgi’s five-person squad had been ambushed. Four of her comrades died. She had prepared herself for loss, or so she thought, but she wasn’t ready.
On the battlefield, where the line between life and death was razor-thin, patriotism and lofty ideals of peace vanished. Seulgi forgot all the cliché propagandas. In those moments, she fought only for her squad. One mistake, and everyone could die. Like them, she fought for her life and for the friends beside her. That was why it was unbearable to accept that they were all gone while she alone remained.
The doctors examined her wounds, and her superiors ordered her discharge. Seulgi would leave Rocket City and return home. She didn’t care for their official reports. She wanted to stay. From the beginning, she had chosen this posting. She had trained her body and sharpened her combat and tactical skills, and she had thrown herself into studying the history, geography, and politics of the region just for the chance to be assigned here. And she had succeeded.
Life on the front lines was not joyful, but Seulgi was content. She had grown addicted to danger. The harsher the conditions, the more alive she felt. Standing on the edge of life and death, she finally understood what it meant to want to live. That didn’t mean recklessness. She never fought alone. No reckless gamble was worth her comrades’ lives. She carved that lesson into her heart. Yet this time, painfully, even without rashness, even with perfect coordination, she still lost them all.
Seulgi went to her commander and asked to remain. The answer didn’t change. She was sent home with a worthless medal. Her body had healed, but scars still marked her skin. Maybe they would never fade. At least they were hidden, so at a glance no one could tell she had just returned from a battlefield. On her flight home, her compartment carried wounded soldiers like her. Behind them, in the cargo bay, lay the less fortunate, sealed in coffins draped with flags.
Seulgi kept her eyes shut for almost the entire journey, just waiting for it to end. In the end, she thought, war has no good or bad, no winners or losers, no heroes, no patriots. Only the living and the dead. No one is more glorious than anyone else. Some are simply more fortunate. To survive. To return to the loved ones who wait for you.