The Harsh Trial of Discharge Day
"Oh God... is this truly the cruel trial You inflict upon a pitiful young man who answered the nation's call in silence for a year and a half...!"
In the end I dropped to my knees on the cluttered floor of my room, clutching the completely dead smartphone and shedding tears of blood.
The furious tent inside my pants refused to subside, surging endlessly toward the sky, and my discharge party—which had been destined to be glamorous and erotic—was now on the brink of a glorious, total shipwreck in this cramped corner of my room, all because of one broken phone.
On the first day of the second act of his life, freshly discharged Private First Class Park Si-woo found himself racing through a struggle more terrible and grueling than any operation he had ever endured, caught between the scorching heat of the blue pill and the icy despair of a dead motherboard.
"Urgh...! Ah, it hurts...!"
A desperate groan finally tore from my lips as I writhed on the floor in despair.
It had gone beyond mere heat and hardness; the swelling pressure was now transforming into a dizzying pain. The power of the blue pill was truly merciless.
Sergeant Park Si-woo Junior, veins bulging from the rush of blood, paid no mind whatsoever to the tragic situation of its owner and throbbed rigidly upward with the single-minded determination to pierce the heavens.
"I-is this really going to burst a blood vessel?! Or necrosis?! I saw it on the news! Articles about middle-aged guys who took ED meds wrong and got rushed to the ER!"
Just imagining it was horrifying. A vigorous young man in his twenties, freshly discharged, being loaded onto a 119 stretcher with a tent pitched in his lower half on the very day of his release! It would be a social death sentence more terrifying than any chemical, biological, or radiological training he had suffered during his service.
The contemptuous stares of the paramedics and the mocking smiles of the ER nurse noonas sent a chill racing down my spine.
"No... I can't die such a dog's death. My honor, my dignity...!"
Panting roughly, I gripped my belt buckle with trembling hands.
If I didn't calm this rampaging Black Flame Dragon right now, a true catastrophe seemed inevitable.
The rapturous night with ace Seol-a noona had already evaporated along with the motherboard. That left only one option. I had no choice but to entrust everything to my most loyal right hand, the companion of countless nights over the past year and a half.
"Sorry, Si-woo... I never thought I'd be consoling you so pathetically on discharge day. But what else can I do? Gotta survive first!"
Scattering solemn tears, I yanked my pants and underwear down to my ankles in one go.
Pop—!
Finally freed from its cramped prison, the Black Flame Dragon revealed its savage majesty to the open air, twitching. Sitting on the floor with my back against the bed, I squeezed my eyes shut and urgently seized my other self. In my mind I desperately gathered the fleeting afterimages of the fishnet-stocking noonas I had glimpsed on the phone screen earlier.
"Yes...! This is it! My hand is now the delicate touch of Gangnam's top ace noona...! I'm lying in a VVIP room right now...!"
Casting a desperate hypnotic spell on myself, I began pumping my right hand up and down at the speed of light.
Slap, slap, slap!
The blatant wet friction of flesh against flesh filled the narrow room. Pain and pleasure mingled strangely, sending electric thrills racing up my spine.
Yeah, finish it in one go and reclaim the peace! Just as I was ramping up the speed and racing toward climax—
Bang—!
"Hey! Park Si-woo! Why the hell did you ask to borrow my phone earlier—"
What came from behind me was a sound more terrifying than a bomb going off: the door flying open without warning.
In that instant every sensation in my body froze as if ice water had been poured down my spine. The BGM of a soap-opera adultery-reveal scene from the living room drama drifted in through the open doorway.
My gaze was still fixed on empty air, and my right hand remained clenched around the Black Flame Dragon's throat.
Military pants pitifully pooled at my ankles. A flushed face beaded with sweat. And... that grotesque, massive tent pole.
"……."
"……."
Three seconds of silence that felt like eternity.
Like a robot, I creakily turned my head toward the doorway. There stood Mom—Hyo-jung—who until moments ago had been absorbed in her drama, frozen like a stone Buddha with a half-eaten dried squid leg still in her hand.
Her pupils shook violently as if hit by an earthquake, then filled with pure horror as they flicked back and forth between my lower half and my face.
"Uh... Mom. It's not what it looks like. Please listen. This is more like a medical emergency treatment..."
I mumbled in a dazed voice, trying to offer some excuse, but the situation had long since crossed the river of no return. Mom's lips trembled, and then she unleashed a lion's roar of fury that shook the entire house.
"You... you crazy bastard!!!! The second you're discharged you drop your pants in broad daylight in your room and do this!!!!"
The squid leg in her hand spun with vicious force and flew straight at my face.
"Aaaaagh!! Mom!! It's a misunderstanding!! It was a struggle for survival!!!!"
Day one of discharge.
Far from any sticky nightlife of the outside world, I was being ruthlessly suppressed right in the middle of my own room—pants still down—by my real mom (remarried, but still twelve years of motherhood) with a broom and back-smashing, writing a black history that would live forever in the annals of my twenties' youth.
"Ow ow ow... Mom, hit softer for real! I'm a patient!"
"Patient? Bullshit wrapped in seaweed! A fresh twenty-something just out of the army with nothing better to do than swallow that crap?!"
And a little later... Hyo-jung stood there, broom in one hand, still fuming. The aftermath of the merciless back-smashing storm had left my back glowing red like a freshly roasted sweet potato.
I pouted in injustice and carefully cupped my still-bursting lower half with both hands, curling up.
"Hey, you think I planned this?! My buddies gave it to me as a discharge gift so we could party hard! I was originally gonna book a high-quality place on my phone and finally work out this pent-up grudge. Who knew the damn phone would fry its entire motherboard at the worst possible timing!"
"Oh, bragging now, you little shit! Phone breaks so you lock the door in the middle of the day and do that alone?! Aigoo, my fate. Husband always on business trips, and the son comes home from the army and acts like a dog in heat...!"
Hyo-jung flung the broom to the floor in disbelief and grabbed the back of her neck. But her sharp scolding barely registered in my ears.
The blue pill's merciless effects showed no sign of fading even under the beating; if anything, the vein-bursting throb had grown even fiercer.
"Urgh... Mom, nagging isn't the issue right now. I really feel like I'm gonna die...!"
"What, what's dying now? Stop exaggerating about the hits earlier!"
"It's not exaggeration! Because of the drug the blood won't leave and the tissue might actually necrotize! It's been hurting so bad it feels like it's gonna explode...! Aaaagh!"
I groaned in agony and rolled around on the floor. The savage tent still standing tall in my lower half hadn't wilted one bit during the broom rampage; instead it continued its private war of independence, surging as if ready to rip through the front of my pants.
At that vivid, threatening silhouette, Hyo-jung's eyes—still blazing with anger—suddenly wavered wide.
"Y-you're not faking it...? It really hurts that much...?"
"It hurts, I told you! If we leave it like this I might become a eunuch forever in my early twenties! It really feels like the blood vessels are gonna snap!"
My desperate scream twisted the air in the small room in a strange way.
Normally she would have smacked my back again for being noisy, but the brutal words "necrosis" and "eunuch," plus the genuine cold sweat draining the color from my face, clearly made her sense something was wrong.
"Th-then what do we do! Sh-should I call an ambulance? Call 119?!"
"Are you crazy?! If I get carried out on a stretcher with my lower half standing at full attention on discharge day, my life is over! Local news might run a headline: 'Discharged Soldier Rushed to Hospital with Tent After Taking Blue Pill'! I'll be a laughingstock for life and kill myself!"
"Then what the hell am I supposed to do! Can't go to the hospital, phone's dead, you can't even take care of it yourself! What do you want from me!"
Hyo-jung's gaze lost its way and darted frantically through empty air. Then, without meaning to, it flicked—just for a second—to the center of me that was still flaunting its vicious presence over the pants.
In that instant her shoulders flinched, and from her white nape all the way to her earlobes she flushed bright red like a perfectly ripe tomato.
"S-so... y-you want me to... wh-what do you want me to do, you crazy bastard...!"
That trembling single sentence.
In that moment, the last circuit of reason that had been suppressed for a year and a half inside the controlled society of the military snapped completely with a soft click.