The sun hadn't risen yet, but the base was already alive. A sharp whistle cut through the crisp morning air, and Kang Joon-seo, now used to the rhythm of military life, was already buttoning up his jacket in the dim light of the barracks. His fingers moved with muscle memory—quick, practiced, efficient. He didn't need a clock to know it was 0545 hours.
He stretched stiff muscles before joining the lineup outside. The sky was still dark, the cold biting at exposed skin, but Joon-seo's face was stoic. He stood at attention beside soldiers twice his size, blending in, yet always apart.
"Morning, kid," Private Lee Ji-ho whispered with a grin as he passed. "Race you to the track?"
Joon-seo gave a rare smile, a slight curve of the lips. "You'll lose."
Ji-ho chuckled. "Cocky little punk."
Staff Sergeant Tae-joon's voice broke through the early banter. "Warm-up! Now! If I see one of you slacking, you're scrubbing latrines until sundown!"
The unit moved in unison. Push-ups. Sit-ups. Sprints. Tae-joon didn't ease up just because Joon-seo was a child. If anything, he pushed harder. Yet there was a quiet respect in his eyes, especially when Joon-seo refused to quit.
After the drills, Ji-ho tossed Joon-seo a small carton of chocolate milk from the mess hall. "Don't tell Tae-joon," he winked.
Joon-seo sipped it slowly. For a moment, he looked like any normal kid.
His school days were different. At the academy, he was an oddity—quiet, overly mature, and always seated by the window. His teachers often spoke to him with hesitant sympathy, unsure how to approach a boy who looked at the world like a soldier on patrol.
Classmates didn't know what to make of him. He wasn't bullied—something in his eyes warned against it—but neither was he embraced. He kept to himself, his notebooks filled with meticulous handwriting and sketches of tactical formations.
But there were moments. Small cracks in the armor.
A girl named Yoon Ah-ri once lent him her eraser after his broke. When he returned it the next day, freshly cleaned and in a small plastic bag, she laughed. "You're weird," she said, but not unkindly.
"Is that bad?" he asked, genuinely curious.
She shook her head. "No. It's kind of cool."
It was the first time in months he felt something stir—a flicker of connection.
Back at the base, his evenings were split between combat training and tactical exercises. Min-jun had taken to quizzing him with increasingly complex war scenarios. "A convoy is ambushed on a mountain pass. What do you do?"
Joon-seo didn't blink. "Use the terrain. Return fire from higher ground. Signal for air support if available."
Min-jun nodded. "You're getting too smart for your age."
"Too smart to be a kid," Ji-ho added later, handing him a book from the base library. It was fiction this time—"The Little Prince."
"You should read something that doesn't involve blowing things up," he said.
That night, Joon-seo read by flashlight under his blanket. The story confused him. A fox who wanted to be tamed? A prince who asked questions without answers?
He didn't understand it, but he liked it.
Before bed, he scribbled something into a small journal Captain Soo-jin had given him—a habit she said might help his memory. He never read what he wrote. But he always wrote something.
Today's entry was short: "I think I laughed. I don't remember why, but it felt warm."
---
Weekends were different. Not lighter—just different.
Instead of classroom lessons, he shadowed technicians in the intelligence wing. He watched men and women analyze satellite images, listen to encrypted radio chatter, and log the movements of suspected targets. His memory was sharp, his focus uncanny. Captain Soo-jin, who occasionally dropped by to check on his progress, once found him correcting a data input error a trained officer had overlooked.
"How did you spot that?" she asked, half-stunned.
"The angle of the drone feed was wrong," he replied without looking up. "Sunlight doesn't fall that way in Gangwon Province at 1500 hours in winter."
There was no pride in his voice. Just fact. Observation.
"You're terrifying sometimes," she said softly.
He didn't answer. He didn't know if it was a compliment.
On Sundays, the base slowed down slightly. The mess hall served slightly better food—steamed dumplings instead of ration stew. Ji-ho always tried to get an extra helping, usually by distracting the cook with a terrible joke. It never worked.
"Hey, Joon-seo," he said once, sliding into the seat across from him. "You ever think about what you'd be doing if... you know... you weren't here?"
Joon-seo stared at his chopsticks. "No. I can't remember anything else."
Ji-ho's smile faltered. "Right... sorry, kid."
"But maybe... drawing," Joon-seo said after a pause.
Ji-ho blinked. "Drawing?"
"I like lines. Shapes. Making something from nothing."
Ji-ho let out a breathy laugh. "Then maybe I'll get you a sketchpad. Better than scribbling war maps on napkins."
That evening, Ji-ho made good on his promise. The sketchpad was cheap and the pencils stubby, but Joon-seo took them like they were sacred. That night, he drew for hours. Not war plans. Just faces. A fox. A tiny prince. A girl laughing.
He wasn't sure if any of it was real.
But it was his.
And for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, Joon-seo felt something close to peace.
Joon-seo wasn't just surviving anymore.
He was growing.
He was becoming.
---