Humans Wait
They used to have a saying for it, in the old days.
After hardship comes happiness.
If you really wait and wait, if you grit your teeth and endure every last scrap of suffering—does the happiness actually come? And if it does, how long are you supposed to wait? How long are you supposed to hold on?
I used to wonder about that as a kid.
I'm struggling right now. I'm in pain right now. Everything is hard, and nothing is easy. The idea that if you just kept enduring that pain, some invisible gauge would fill up until—ta-da!—a completion reward dropped into your lap... I never bought it.
It's just a pretty thing to say.
The kids who bullied me at school always smiled. They always looked like they were having fun. They always looked happy. They didn't seem to have any hardship at all, and yet happiness always found its way to them and them alone.
My suffering was their joy.
So why did none of that ever come looking for me? I lived ten years. I lived twenty. And now I've somehow clawed my way to thirty, and that happiness that was supposed to arrive after the hardship—where the hell did it go?
It's a ridiculous thing to even say. These are the same gloomy, negative thoughts I was still turning over in my head as recently as six months ago.
The radio clicked.
"Oppa."
"Yeah."
I know better now.
"I think we can start. They said they'd help."
"Three days at the earliest. Four at the latest."
"Perfect. There's an event around then that every resident is supposed to attend, so it's the best possible time to cause some chaos."
I know it now. This is a world where happiness doesn't come looking for you, no matter how still you crouch, no matter how long you endure and hold on.
"Good. See you then."
"Okay."
If you want to seize it, if you want to claim it for yourself, you at least need the courage to stand up and reach out with your own two hands. I know that now.
That was what I was thinking as I switched frequencies and spoke.
"Fall in. We're starting the operation."
"Okay. I'll send Ju-cheol and Uncle Young-ho over."
"Roger."
I grabbed the pack I'd prepared in advance, along with the K2 rifle, the M60 revolver, the shotgun, and the taser. I also stashed the steel plates I'd be slipping under my clothes before the operation.
Anyone watching would think we were heading off to war. We weren't actually going out to kill people. Not really. The rubber bullets, taser cartridges, and mountain of handcuffs stuffed in the pack would prove it.
And then the three of us met at Yangcheon Hyanggyo Station and pushed forward at speed.
Honestly, the one I'd been worried about was Choi Young-ho. Invincible Marine or not, the man was pushing fifty. He followed behind me easier and cleaner than I'd expected. If I had to put a number on it, his stamina was definitely better than Lim Ju-cheol's—the Imaginary KATUSA Warrior.
"What the hell even are you?"
"Ack.... I'll work out in my spare time."
A meathead with nothing but bulk. A complete idiot. I couldn't deny it: he still had a long way to go before anyone was calling him an honorary Marine.
Anyway. We moved so fast that we covered the entire stretch to Noryangjin in a single day. By then it was late, and our bodies were wrecked, so we found a place for the three of us to spend the night, finished a half-decent job of weatherproofing it, and buried ourselves in our sleeping bags.
"Hyung-nim."
"What."
The Imaginary KATUSA Warrior, Lim Ju-cheol, called out to me in the quiet. For the record, that bastard is like four years older than I am.
"Doesn't this kind of remind you of your army days?"
"Hey, you son of a bitch. You never even enlisted."
"No, I mean. I, uh. I did go to training camp, though. You know, that, uh, what do you call it? A Type-A tent? Yeah! I remember pitching one of those pretty vividly, actually!"
"..."
This draft-dodging bastard had the gall to start talking about his army days in front of two Marines.
I locked eyes with Marine Choi Young-ho beside me.
"Marine Choi Young-ho."
"Mm. Yeah, I don't think I can let this one slide."
There was fire in his eyes. A hot, flickering Marine-spirit kind of fire, the kind that put heat in your whole body just looking at it.
"Wait, I. Uh... hyung-nims?"
"Army days? Okay. I'll make sure it reminds you."
"Ju-cheol, my boy. You ever tried sleeping on your hands? Sleeping upside down with a bug in your mouth is actually quite a bit of fun."
Wait.
Shit. I haven't done that either.
I gave a slow, worldly nod, like a man who had absolutely done that, and shut my mouth.
Then our eyes met.
"Victory. 827th class."
"VIC!!!!!!!! TO!!!!!!!! RY!!!!!!!! 1218th class, ACK!!!!!!!!!"
Ah, shit. He got me. He got me dead to rights.
"If you both understood that, go to sleep while I'm still asking nicely. I'm tired, and I don't know what the hell this is supposed to be."
"Ack!!"
"Ack!!"
The 827th class's idea of discipline was, as expected, not something you argued with. I crawled straight into my sleeping bag and shut my eyes.
We were up before dawn and moving again, this time toward Cheongdam-dong. A little while later we were heading for Heukseok Station, and the radio in my coat greeted the morning with a low, steady murmur.
I have no idea how they come up with fresh news every single day. Then again, they probably aren't just pulling some leftover scrap off the pile and calling it today's headline when they don't have anything to report. Probably.
Yongsan District Office and Gangnam District Office. They could talk all they wanted about handing that much out every day—those places were a good twenty kilometers from our hideout. I doubted I'd ever be making the trip for a ration.
"What's Assistant Manager Kim Min-seo going to do about it?"
"The food distribution, you mean?"
"Yes."
"I don't imagine she'll be going either. You can hardly leave the guns behind on a walk that long."
That, honestly, was the real issue. The government had already declared over the radio that firearms would not be tolerated, which meant showing up for a ration with a gun on you was going to be a problem. And the second I ran into the murderous bastards holding the roads without a gun on me, I'd just be Type-2 Chinese human meat.
The next item was about the government-designated shelters. On the face of it, the pitch sounded decent enough. Warm heating, safe drinking water, medical services—that part, at least, sounded like something.
"Hmm. Imaginary KATUSA Warrior. What do you make of that?"
"This is the first I'm hearing of it, so I can't say for sure what Min-seo would think, but... probably not positive, right? We might just end up as government-certified slaves."
Assistant Manager Kim Min-seo had been worried his IQ had dropped through the floor, but he was still thinking like a person and talking like a person. That was a relief. Walking around with an empty-headed idiot next to you would just make you anxious too.
After the familiar announcer's closing line came, of course, the national anthem. Last night they'd gone with verse four. Today they were back around to verse one, belting out Until the East Sea's waters and Mount Baekdu all over again.
For all I knew, the only music files these bastards had were verses one through four of the anthem.
And then there was a strange sight.
We were walking the tracks when I caught a mass of human presence far ahead, coming out of Dongjak Station. That stretch used to be empty. The last couple of times through, there'd been almost nobody between here and Dongjak.
"..."
I was walking point, so I raised a clenched fist where the two behind me could see it. One of them stopped on the spot. The other one walked his face straight into my back.
"Ungh. S-sorry...! You stopped so suddenly..."
"I clearly told you to halt."
The Imaginary KATUSA Warrior, Lim Ju-cheol. Obviously.
"Uh... no, you didn't."
"Wow... this draft-dodging bastard."
That's on me, I guess, for not considering he wouldn't even recognize a halt signal.
Anyway. Dongjak Station was packed.
"Hmm. So there usually aren't many people here?"
"No. On both round trips, there was almost nobody from Dongjak Station through Gubanpo Station. You only started seeing crowds around Express Bus Terminal Station."
We closed in carefully and took a look. No firearms, as far as I could tell. There were kids mixed in among them, and the whole group had the look of refugees.
"Looks like they're heading for those designated shelters from the radio."
"This fast? This many?"
"Well, if they just packed light, it's doable. They'll want to get there fast and grab whatever they can."
Dongjak Bridge sat right above the station, as it happened. Cross it and the Yongsan District Office wasn't that far. Better to go up this way than over Banpo Bridge, which had become openly dangerous. So long as they didn't freeze to death on the bridge, anyway.
The crowd poured out of the subway in a noisy mass.
"Shall we get moving again?"
"Yeah. Let's."
I have no idea what their fate will be. I hope they make it, if they can. The same uneasy feeling as always—the kind that comes from guilt.