If I Were a Woman
I was sure I'd be the one they picked.
My fitness scores weren't bad, my shooting was solid, and I'd logged an enormous amount of time rolling around in field exercises, too.
More than anything, I wanted this posting. An overseas joint training deployment — one soldier, selected from the entire division. I'd spent months preparing for it: retraining for the fitness assessment, dragging my marksmanship records back into the top tier. I'd fumbled the interview a little, sure. But still.
It'll be me. That was what I'd thought.
And then I got passed over.
The one who made the cut was Sergeant Park Seoyun — two years less service than me.
"Ha... fuck."
I stared at the computer screen for a long time. The result didn't change.
Twenty-nine years old, an infantry sergeant in the Republic of Korea Army. I'd enlisted at twenty, and just when my discharge was finally in sight, I'd let myself get sweet-talked into "giving command a try" — eight years now with my head buried in the army.
I'd been through every kind of hell in that time. Losing a toenail on a forced march wasn't even a story worth telling anymore. I'd shivered through entire nights on a mountain in the dead of winter, and I'd lost count of the times I'd dug fighting positions in pouring rain and slept soaked through to my underwear. Once, a junior soldier twisted his ankle on a mountain trail, and I carried him down on my back. My spine gave out the next day and I cursed up a storm about it — but if it needed doing, I did it.
In my own field, I didn't want to lose to anyone.
Which was exactly why none of this made sense to me.
"It's not like she's bad at her job."
Just before end of duty, a close friend from my batch had been the one to say it. My eyes stung from a whole day of staring at a monitor.
"Did I say I couldn't do it?"
"That's not what I meant."
"Then what did you mean?"
When I pressed him with that aggressive tone, he sighed.
"You know your face turns to absolute shit every time you talk about this?"
"So?"
"That's probably why you keep getting passed over. Field work alone? Yeah, you're better."
Glaring at me with a face full of grievance, he began folding his fingers down one by one.
"Your fitness is better. Your shooting's better. If I had to take troops up a mountain, I'd follow you in."
"Then that settles it, doesn't it."
"Was this selection for the best mountain goat in the division?"
For a moment, the words jammed in my throat. My friend, apparently possessed now that he'd worked himself up, kept going.
"Sergeant Park's English is better than yours. She writes better reports, gives better briefings — and she won't end up just staring at a screen like you do."
"Was that last part supposed to be a jab?"
"It's the truth, isn't it."
Insufferable bastard. But the fact that he wasn't wrong pissed me off even more.
"And she gets along with people."
"You saying I can't get along with people?"
My friend looked me dead in the eye and smiled.
"Start with the charming way you just talked to me, then ask that again."
"Piss off."
"See?"
I flipped him off, and he waved a hand at me in weary dismissal.
Watching him grin wasn't doing my mood any favors, either.
"So don't go saying stupid things for no reason."
"Saying what, exactly?"
"That Sergeant Park got picked because she's a woman. Do you actually believe that?"
I didn't answer. The silence itself was an affirmative.
"It's not like there's no advantage to being a woman."
"Hey. Are you insane?"
"Did I say anything wrong?"
Our voices had crept a little louder. The truth was, I knew all of it perfectly well.
I'd watched soldiers quietly take a female soldier's pack off her shoulders during the brutal cold-weather training. I'd seen the different fitness test standards. I'd even watched, at unit dinners, the heavy lifting get smoothly steered toward the men. Any one of those things, on its own, might have been nothing. But after eight years of them piling up, a man's thinking didn't stay that simple.
"You're telling me none of that played a part?"
When I asked, my friend stayed quiet for a while. Then he said, shortly:
"Maybe it did. But."
He looked at me and gave me an answer I hadn't expected.
"It's comfortable, isn't it? Believing that's why you lost."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"Because then there's nothing for you to fix. Sergeant Park was good at the things you can't do. You were good at the things she can't."
For a moment, nothing came out of my mouth. My friend left me sitting there and rose from his seat.
"This time, it was a position that needed her, I guess."
"You got a thing for her or something?"
"Unbelievable. Every time I try to talk to you."
Clicking his tongue, he closed the door behind him and left.
Left alone, silence closed in around me, and all I could hear was the low hum of the fluorescent lights.
On the desk lay next week's training plan. The week after that, the month after that — the same routine, the same as it had always been. I didn't hate any of it. If anything, I'd been confident. March the troops out, clean up the mess when something went wrong, handle with my own two hands whatever needed handling. But today, all of it suddenly looked shabby.
Park Seoyun wrote better reports than me. Spoke better English. Talked well in front of the officers, turned out clean paperwork, and even her knack for picking the right words with the right people — that whole art of getting along — beat mine. I knew all of it, too. I'd just been pretending not to.
"Fuck."
I'd believed a soldier only needed to fight well to be a soldier. Reality, though, was that it wasn't everything. Accepting that hadn't been hard. The problem was that accepting it still made me feel like shit.
In the end, I drank. A plastic chair outside a convenience store, two bottles of soju.
That bastard friend of mine — his eye for reading people was dead-on, at least.
I wasn't even drunk; I was just in a fouler mood. Partly to clear my head, I turned on my phone, and the group chat was flooded with messages. Congratulations on Park Seoyun's selection. I skimmed over the screen, wanted to put my fist through something — and instead, slowly tapped the input field.
Because at the very least, I had no intention of giving up on basic social survival too.
"Haaah."
I fired off the message half-heartedly, flipped the phone face-down, and a sigh came out of me all on its own.
It wasn't as if Park Seoyun had stolen my spot. It had never been mine to begin with. The selection board had simply chosen her over me. People skills. Park Seoyun was good at every single thing I'd always written off as a hassle.
And yet, from some corner of my mind, a different thought kept bubbling up.
But still.
There had been moments when being a woman was an advantage. Honestly, thinking that way was easier on me. It meant I hadn't lost out for being lacking.
"... How pathetic."
Saying it out loud only irritated me more, so I picked up a bottle and drank straight from the neck.
"Must be nice. Being a woman."
Anyone who overheard would have cursed me out for it. But just for tonight, I didn't want to hold my tongue.
"If it were me, I'd have been really good at it."
Not that I meant I was better at the job than Park Seoyun. Just — if I could keep everything else. The fitness, the marksmanship, all those years of rolling around in the field, kept exactly as they were, with one condition added on top: being a woman. If that had been the case, then at least there wouldn't have been a day like today. Right?
It was a very convenient hypothesis — the kind a drunk man builds to make himself feel better.
"Fuck."
I got up from the plastic chair. I didn't stagger. My head was clear. And so I said it again, with even more conviction:
"If I were a woman, I'd have been so much better at army life."
That was the last sentence I remember in full from that day.
Suddenly, everything in front of my eyes went white-bright.
Headlights. A horn blaring. Someone screaming curses.
And then — nothing. No memory after that.