Special Warfare School
"Find your shoe size here and grab them!"
"Take your underwear!"
"Check your physical training shoes!"
The very first thing we did upon entering the academy was receive our issued gear. In a vast, warehouse-like space, supplies were stacked high in cardboard boxes. We stood in a long line, collecting the designated quantity of each item as we passed. Naturally, I slipped a few extra items into my Inventory. You never knew what might happen, and who knew when I'd get another chance to "shop" like this? It was always better to have a few spare pairs of underwear and socks, right? The same went for combat boots and uniforms.
When I put on my military uniform and looked in the mirror, a clueless-looking kid stared back at me. I guess wearing a uniform didn't automatically make you look badass. The Special Warfare School I was attending had a training period of seventeen weeks, excluding the one-week provisional enrollment period.
Five weeks of basic soldiering, three weeks of airborne training, and nine weeks of officer-qualification training. I had to spend a total of eighteen weeks here. Once I completed the training and was commissioned, I would have to serve a mandatory four years of active duty. Just thinking about it was sweet. It meant that for the next four years, I wouldn't have to worry about a single thing.
The training was tougher than I expected, but it was fine. It wasn't like I was being dragged off to get beaten up alone; we were all suffering together. Besides, the instructors here were true professionals. They knew exactly where it hurt and what was going through our minds. Were they shamans in their past lives or something?
"Raise those legs higher!"
"Twist your torso more!"
"Make sure you jump with conviction!"
They pointed out the exact parts that were killing us with terrifying precision. I know it's wrong, you bastards, because my body is screaming.
"Is it hard?!"
"No, sir!"
"Do you want to go back?!"
"No, sir!"
"Do you want to go home?!"
"No, sir!"
Of course it was hard, and of course I wanted to go home. Even though going home meant no warm meals and no family waiting for me, I still wanted to go. I wanted to sit on a wooden platform and grill some beef. But since I knew that whatever I actually thought was always the wrong answer, I lied through my teeth. The instructor gave me a satisfied smile.
A few trainees couldn't resist the temptation of the "do you want to go home" question and dropped out. They would now either have to reapply to be non-commissioned officers or enlist as regular conscripts.
Today was the day of the Special Forces endurance course. We had to complete a 50-kilometer march, followed by an obstacle course—land navigation, casualty evacuation, individual combat drills, ammo crate carries, and tire flips—all within two and a half hours.
Marching 50 kilometers in full gear was... well, manageable. But if they were going to make us do it, they should have done it during the day. Instead, they made us walk all night for no good reason. More than the physical strain, I was incredibly sleepy. My clothes, completely soaked in sweat, felt disgusting against my skin.
After scarfing down a single MRE, we formed teams and began the endurance course. First was land navigation: reading the map to pinpoint our location, followed by casualty evacuation. The "casualty" weighed a whopping 100 kilograms. Shouldn't this guy lose some weight? Isn't obesity the leading cause of adult diseases?
The team carried the casualty on a stretcher. Sharing the load among several people somehow made it feel even heavier. Next was individual combat drills. It was exactly what it sounded like: rolling around on the dirt. Roll this way, roll that way, crawl under the barbed wire, and before you knew it, you were at the next station.
And then came the ammo crate carry. This was a real pain in the ass. Our bodies were completely drained of energy, yet we had to carry incredibly heavy ammunition cans. These cans were so awkwardly shaped and weighted that you could only move them by gripping the handles. And we had to carry two of them. Unless you held one in each hand, there was physically no other way to transport them.
I was sure I was gripping them tightly, but one of the ammo cans suddenly dropped to the ground with a heavy thud. I looked down at my hands. They were slipping. My fingers refused to listen to my brain. There was absolutely no strength left in them. The other guys were overtaking me, but I couldn't move because my grip had completely failed. I couldn't just leave the ammo cans behind, either.
Every fiber of my being wanted to shove them into my Inventory, but with everyone else groaning and struggling under the weight, I couldn't exactly stroll along like I was taking a leisurely walk in the park. I briefly considered opening the lids to dump the ammunition into my Inventory, but the cans were sealed shut. Left with no choice, I picked them up, took three steps, rested, took two steps, rested, and then just stood there resting.
I was sleep-deprived, my body was damp and sticky with sweat, my hands were so weak I couldn't even form a fist, and the ammo cans were ridiculously heavy. It was the absolute worst. Yet, somehow, I made it to the checkpoint. As long as I kept putting one foot in front of the other, the finish line eventually appeared.
But there was no time to rest. We went straight into the tire flips. We had to flip a tire weighing over 300 kilograms all the way to the finish line. Fortunately, this was a team effort, just like the casualty evacuation. With several of us squeezing out every last drop of our strength, the massive tire actually began to move. Channeling all the stress from the training into the mute rubber, we shoved the tire forward with raw fury.
After flipping it over and over, we suddenly crossed the finish line. We were first.
"Whoooooo!"
"Go Special Forces!"
"We're number one!"
"Yeahhhhh!"
We climbed on top of the giant tire we had just rolled and basked in the joy of victory. I hesitated for a moment, wondering if it was okay for me to join them, but seeing that no one cared, I slipped in among them. It was only thirty centimeters off the ground, but the world atop that tire felt entirely different from where I used to stand. It felt like I had stepped into a normal, ordinary life, which made me feel a bit awkward. But that feeling... the feeling of someone throwing their arm around my shoulder and celebrating together... wasn't entirely unpleasant.
Our basic soldiering training was finally over. I could now call myself a proper soldier. The clueless kid in the mirror was gone. I felt like I could do anything. I was overflowing with confidence.
· · ·
Confidence, my ass. The airborne training was the real deal.
The five weeks of training we had received so far were literally just the basics. Airborne training meant jumping out of airplanes. Through endless repetition, we trained to prevent injuries and land safely on the ground. It was a cycle of infinite loops. We spent the entire day practicing nothing but safe landings.
We practiced on the ground, suspended in the air, on mock towers, wearing VR headsets, and even riding a strange contraption that looked like a giant white elephant. Only after all that were we finally allowed to jump from a real helicopter. How should I describe it? It was terrifying yet exhilarating. A sensation resembling confidence—the feeling that I had actually pulled it off—began to bloom inside me.
After that, we underwent nine weeks of officer-qualification training. Perhaps because the previous phases had been so brutal, this part didn't feel nearly as difficult. Instead, the sheer volume of material we had to memorize, absorb, and study was staggering. Unlike my childhood, where a lack of private tutoring had left me lagging behind from the moment I entered elementary school, everyone started from the exact same baseline here. For once, I didn't fall behind.
But seriously, is it normal to expect kids to already know how to read and write before they even start elementary school? Shouldn't the school be the one teaching that? I didn't know the alphabet back then, and I struggled immensely because of it.
Military life suited me. I slept well, ate well, ran when told to run, and memorized what I was told to memorize. When told to be quiet, I just shut my mouth. No independent thought was required, nor were any personal opinions. All I had to do was walk the neatly paved path laid out before me. It was hard to find a place more comfortable than this.
Perhaps because I was living so comfortably in such a cozy environment, they told me I ranked first in our class. Me? Why? All I did was exactly what I was told.
I once watched a documentary analyzing students who got into Seoul National University. The program researched how to get into SNU and how to maintain top grades once there. The answer was simple: memorize the professors' lectures word for word, without missing a single syllable. The top students recorded the lectures, transcribed them into notes, memorized them verbatim, and wrote them down on their exams. Those were the kids who excelled.
Perhaps I had instinctively mastered the Seoul National University method of learning. If I had received private tutoring as a kid, maybe I could have gone to SNU too.
On commissioning day—the day we shed our trainee labels and officially became Sergeants—everyone had someone who came to celebrate with them. My peers hugged their visiting families, girlfriends, and friends, saluting proudly as they received congratulations. The only ones who had absolutely no visitors were me and my classmate, Seo Dae-hun.
Seo Dae-hun grew up in an orphanage, which was something I actually envied. Back when we weren't close yet, he mentioned he was an orphan. When I told him I was jealous, he threw a punch at me. But as I've said time and time again, if you leave your shoulder wide open like that when you swing, you're never going to hit your target. I slipped his punch and countered with a quick one-two. Then, I educated Dae-hun on who I really was.
I had lived alone. I technically had a father, but I barely ever saw his face. I had starved in a wretched, dilapidated house. My entire life had been that of a pathetic bread shuttle. I couldn't help but feel incredibly envious of kids in orphanages who at least got three meals a day. That was why I envied orphans. Hearing that, Dae-hun looked at me with a gaze of mutual understanding.
That day, we spent hours talking about the things that had happened to us. Things that made you think, There's no way that actually happened, were just daily occurrences for us. It was as if we were competing in the Ultimate Sob Story Championship; our conversation was disastrous, pathetic, and downright sickening. It was miserable, wretched, and incredibly petty.
Still, pouring our hearts out like that made me feel a bit lighter. The knot in my chest—that hard, frozen lump of resentment—felt like it had cracked just a little. It was a strange sensation. Dae-hun must have felt something similar, because he wept for a long time as we talked. A grown-ass man crying like a baby.
Dae-hun's parents had died in a car accident. A 25-ton dump truck had slammed into them at a rural intersection. With no guardians left after their deaths, Dae-hun was sent to an orphanage. He was fifteen at the time. Unfortunately, to qualify for a military exemption as an orphan, one had to spend at least five years in an orphanage, and Dae-hun fell just short of that requirement. But he told me he would have enlisted anyway.
"There are too many suspicious things about my parents' deaths," Dae-hun said. "It's weird how the cops rushed to write it off as a simple traffic accident. I was too young to know any better back then, but looking back, everything about it stinks."
"I joined the Special Forces for one reason and one reason only. To learn how to kill. I'm going to master those techniques, and then I'm going to slaughter every single bastard who had a hand in my parents' deaths."
Was it really okay for him to spill such a dark secret to me? I was someone who had mastered the Seoul National University method of learning; if the authorities asked, I might just tell them the absolute truth. According to Dae-hun, his father had been a mob boss—a fairly prominent figure in the local underworld. After his father's death, the second-in-command of his father's gang and a rival syndicate had merged through a hostile takeover, growing exponentially in size and power. It was incredibly suspicious.
In his heart, he wanted to march right in and tear them all to shreds, but with his current skills, he couldn't even take down a bouncer guarding the front door. He wanted to learn how to fight, but he had no money. Besides, learning at a regular gym was just sports. It wasn't the art of killing. That was why he had joined the Special Forces—to learn how to end lives.
Wow, I was actually jealous. Did he write that in his self-introduction letter? The narrative arc was flawless. I had struggled so much because I had absolutely nothing to write in mine, to the point where I practically wrote a work of fiction. I envied Dae-hun for having such a compelling backstory. And the Special Forces recruiters were incredibly open-minded to accept him. They took in a guy who openly admitted he came to learn how to kill people. The Special Forces really were built different.
We congratulated each other. Dae-hun was the first to speak.
"Congratulations on your commission."
"You too. Congrats."
Even after being commissioned, we continued our training according to the schedule. As the days bled into weeks, I could feel us growing closer. During personal maintenance time after training, right before bed, or while standing guard duty, we talked about everything. We became close enough to share our deepest, most honest thoughts.
Did I finally have a friend? I was curious. I wanted to confirm it. But I never let the question slip past my lips. I might be wrong. In most cases, I usually was. Having never had a friend before, I lacked the confidence to ask.
Whenever I had thought of someone as a friend in the past, they would usually react like this: "Hey, you fucking beggar, just because I hang out with you, do you think we're equals? A friend? Hell no. Don't you dare pretend you know me anywhere, you piece of shit." Usually, those words were accompanied by a swift kick. So I didn't ask. I didn't want to force a truth out of his mouth that might hurt me. I just wanted to keep being close.
Finally, all our training at the Special Warfare School came to an end. Now, our classmates would be assigned to different units and scattered across the country. Both Dae-hun and I had to leave this place.
"Where are you stationed?" Dae-hun asked.
"The International Peace Support Group. What about you?"
"I'm going to the 3rd Airborne Brigade. The Peace Support Group... isn't that the unit that gets deployed overseas?"
"Yeah, but it's not like they just send you out immediately. I heard they're cutting down on deployment numbers these days anyway."
"Still, you'll probably go at least once during your service."
"So what? What's the big deal? We can just stay in touch and meet up. We have phones. Let's coordinate our leaves and grab a drink outside."
"Of course. Definitely."
I left the Special Warfare School. My classmate—the one I still wasn't entirely sure was my friend—left as well. Now, I was heading toward a brand-new destination.