Time passed like the changing of seasons—quiet, certain, unrelenting.
By the time Joon-seo turned ten, the base no longer felt like a cage. It had become his world.
He woke up not to alarm clocks but to instinct. The barracks still creaked with winter wind, and the soldiers still grumbled about early drills, but they no longer looked at him as just a child. He had earned his place.
Physically, he was growing. He could now outrun some of the younger recruits, and Tae-joon even started calling him "Private Shadow," for the way he moved soundlessly during night drills.
Yet for all his strength, Joon-seo's heart remained fragile in ways few could see.
Some nights, he still woke up gasping from dreams he couldn't remember. Flashes of fire. A silhouette screaming his name. The sense of falling. Always falling.
Captain Soo-jin noticed. She began sitting beside him during those late nights, bringing him warm tea instead of questions.
"You don't have to talk," she would say.
And he didn't. But her presence was a quiet comfort.
---
At school, things changed as well.
He was still distant, but students no longer whispered. He wasn't the quiet kid anymore—he was the boy who answered the teacher's questions without hesitation, who could explain both physics and poetry with the same calm tone. Some admired him. Others were intimidated.
Yoon Ah-ri, though, remained the only one who treated him the same.
"You've gotten taller," she said once, poking his arm.
"You've gotten louder," he replied.
She laughed. "That's because you talk less now. Someone has to fill the silence."
Sometimes, on the bus ride back to the base, he'd remember that laugh. He didn't understand why it stuck with him—but it did.
---
By eleven, he had started leading younger cadets through obstacle drills. Min-jun had officially labeled him "special ops candidate material."
But beneath that praise, Joon-seo often questioned his identity. Who was he, really? A soldier? A survivor? Someone's forgotten son?
He didn't ask aloud. But one day, Ji-ho found a page in Joon-seo's sketchpad. A single sentence written in shaky pencil:
"If I never remember who I was, does that mean I'm not real?"
Ji-ho didn't say anything. He simply drew a smiley face under the sentence and wrote, "You're real enough to beat me in push-ups, brat."
That night, Joon-seo added a second sentence:
"Then I'll just make myself into someone I can't forget."
---
There were still small joys—stray cats that wandered near the kitchen, card games with Ji-ho and the guards, nights when the stars were so clear it felt like the sky had cracked open just for him.
Even in the cold structure of the base, those moments felt warm. Human.
---
Years continued to pass.
By the time he was twelve, Joon-seo no longer looked like a child. He had become lean, disciplined, and sharp-eyed. New recruits didn't believe he was the boy from the snowstorm.
But those who had been there—the ones who had found him, carried him, raised him—they knew.
And when he ran laps in silence, or corrected a radio operator's error, or slipped a snack to a scared new cadet, they saw him for what he was.
Not just a survivor.
But a symbol of resilience.
Of growth.
Of something forged in tragedy, but no longer defined by it.
Kang Joon-seo still didn't remember his past.
But he was building a future.
And piece by piece, he was becoming unforgettable.
To Be Continued…