Winters arrive differently in Japan.

In Japan, the wind doesn’t howl and thrash like an enraged demon but blows in gentle poufs that turn the tips of his ears and nose pink, rather than the angry red they’re accustomed to being in the colder Korean air.

In Japan, the trees wither and die a dignified death, frozen like stone and waiting for the inevitable thaw of spring, unlike the shriveled remains their brothers are reduced to across the sea, with their gnarled branches like upturned lightning against the paper sky.

In Japan, unlike the harsh Decembers of Junjin’s childhood, snow doesn’t cover the ground like a thick blanket but feathers across the sky like dandelion seeds, like wishes and dreams, before coming to a rest on his cheeks and eyelashes in flurries, melting against his skin at the slightest touch and leaving his face wet as though in tears.

There’s barely any ice, and in all accounts, it’s warmer than what he’s used to, but Junjin wakes each day feeling as though frost has crept into and settled in his bones, forming within him a growing, gnawing pit of unknown cold that gathers in his lungs and makes it difficult for him to breathe.

“Homesickness,” the medic says at the first diagnosis, then proceeds to describe to him in Japanese what he can do to alleviate it.

“Pneumonia,” the military surgeon says after he unwittingly collapses during one of the training courses they’re made to undergo just before the seasons turn for spring in preparation for the upcoming missions, and orders him to be immediately confined and be placed on bedrest for the conceivable future. He doesn’t know much of anything that happens in the next 24 hours, only that he alternates between breathing air and sea, his body seemingly sinking into the bottom of the ocean, and the next time he wakes they’ve propped him up on pillows with an oxygen mask strapped to his face, light-headed and woozy and with the feeling of someone having been brought back from the dead.

“Park Choongjae, you idiot!”

It’s the first time in weeks since Junjin has seen him, and he almost fears it’s a fever dream. But the timbre of Dongwan’s voice is unmistakable, and the way he grasps the edges of the bed is hard enough that Junjin wonders for a second if he would get hit, but nothing comes…apart from a 10-second lecture that nearly renders him deaf.

“What the hell were you thinking? Why didn’t you tell me at least? I found out because there were talks of suddenly cancelling the reconnaissance mission and I had to go to your commanding officer and he told me you’d been sent to hospital! Do you know how worried I was?”

Everything is hot and cold at once and Dongwan speaking in rapid Japanese is making his head hurt and his stomach churn. It is in this moment, most of all, that he does not want to be reminded how far away they are from home.

“Hyung.” Junjin pulls at the mask on his face, succeeds in yanking it down low enough to glare at the older man. “Please. If you’re going…to yell at me…could you at least…do it in Korean?”

The words are an effort and a half to say and after it, Junjin feels so winded it’s almost as if he’d run a mile in 20 seconds rather than lying still. There is fear in Dongwan’s eyes as he helps adjust the mask back over his mouth and Junjin wonders how bad he must have appeared for his hyung to look that chastised all of a sudden.

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” Dongwan says, and his Korean sounds almost strange, the vowels stilting and stumbling like a person emerging into daylight after being trapped in darkness. Per protocol, they rarely speak Korean while on the base apart from the times they can converse in private, but he and Dongwan haven’t been able to have a moment of their own the past few months, and Junjin has never bothered conversing with anyone else. It makes the days go by faster if he doesn’t have to stop and do small talk; it makes the days hurt less knowing he only has himself and his hyung to care about in the entire battalion.

“I didn’t mean to yell.”

Yes, you did, Junjin wants to say, but concentrates instead on getting oxygen back into his shrunken lungs. He knows his hyungs well enough. Dongwan loves fiercely and expresses that love in loud, raucous bursts, in tight hugs and er punches. He’s worried now too; it’s in the way he’s running his fingers through his hair and how his eyes are shining as he speaks.

“You look like absolute , Jin-ah. Hyesung will kill me.”

Junjin manages a smirk. He’s one to talk. Dongwan has gotten so thin his fatigues look as though they’re wearing him rather than the other way around. When he tries to pull the mask down to say so, Dongwan tuts and bats his hand away.

“Nope, stop that. Reserve your strength. I know you agree with me anyway, and it’ll be good to have you shut up and listen for once.” He can’t see it, but Junjin feels as Dongwan smooths out the sheets around him, easing out the wrinkles in broad and making sure he’s not lying on any folds, before pushing back his hair to feel his cheeks and forehead. He’s muttering as he moves: “Pneumonia, for god’s sakes. I know they think you’re Captain Korea or something but if they end up killing you with all this training, I’ll kill them myself…”

His motions are rough but sincere, with battle-worn hands surprising in their gentleness. The gestures remind him of his grandmother, of their days in the dorm, of sharing beds and armchairs and shoulders and sofas, and Junjin averts his gaze, suddenly feeling a flood of emotion that he didn’t know he had been desperately trying to suppress.

“Jin-ah. Are you all right?” Dongwan smooths back his hair again to get a good view of his face. “Yah, what’s wrong?”

Junjin doesn’t answer but grasps his older brother’s elbow with as much strength as he can muster, anchoring himself and trying to pull himself together as memories of the past six months threaten to overwhelm him and drag him down into a panic he doesn’t have enough breath for. Without needing a cue, Dongwan gathers him into an embrace, secures him and draws stars and circles on his back with the edge of his fingernail, and counts up in a slow comforting rhythm.

“It’s all right, it’s all right…” Dongwan says with all the convincing power he has as hyung. “Just hold on to me. Just breathe.”

“Hyung.” Junjin manages to gasp, tears in his eyes. Each breath feels like a knife to his heart and he thinks for a split second that this is my punishment, that I’m still living when so many have died, that I don’t even know where my own father and sister are and whether or not the rest of the hyungs and Andy are all right, and this exactly what I deserve. “Hyung, I can’t…”

“None of that now,” Dongwan commands, his voice cutting like a light in the darkness, his skin warm and familiar. “Just follow my breaths. Inhale. Exhale. You can do it. We’ve done this a million times before. That’s it. You’re all right. You’re all right, Choongjae.”

His chest is on fire and he feels like he’s drowning while he’s on dry land, but Dongwan is there and doesn’t let him go, and slowly the pain subsides until all that’s left is the thundering of their own heartbeats and the whiny gasps of air he manages to squeeze into his lungs, and even though they’re trapped in an isolated base on an unmarked location in a country not their own, for the first time in a long while, home doesn’t feel so far away.

--

He counts in breaths, not days.

He can’t actually tell if Dongwan ever leaves his side because in the few hours that he’s awake, his hyung is always there, reading or doing reports or translating documents at his bedside, pretending not to look concerned whenever he moves in the slightest, scolding him and nagging him at every waking second, force-feeding him bread and meat and obsessively monitoring his water consumption. He’s had pneumonia before but this one is particularly nasty, and the meds they give him are strong enough to knock out a horse. But eventually the oxygen mask comes off and he’s allowed to breathe on his own, although he’s often left to feel as though he can barely lift his own head let alone stand.

“Why are you here? Don’t you have duties to attend to?” Junjin asks as Dongwan helps him to wash up with a warm damp cloth. It’s only been four days since he’s been admitted, apparently, but it already feels like a year.

“Yeah, you.” Dongwan says, matter-of-factly. He dabs at Junjin’s face with a towel. “My commanding officer let me have a few days off.”

“Hyung—”

“It’s fine. They’ve also cancelled the reconnaissance mission so you don’t have to worry.”

At this, Junjin turns to him with alarm. “They couldn’t have!” He was supposed to lead that mission. That mission was important if they were ever to obtain information about North Korea’s movements. That mission was important to end the war.

“Jin-ah, calm down.” Dongwan places a hand on his chest. “There are other people who can lead it anyway. All you have to do is concentrate on getting better.”

It doesn’t sit well with him at all, and something about what Dongwan says nags at the edges of Junjin’s mind. He goes to sleep and wakes with the surprising discovery that his hyung is no longer there, but has left a note that he has to ‘do a bit of work’ and will be back by the afternoon. Junjin wastes no time in requesting the nurse to call for his own commanding officer for him to explain exactly what was going on.

“Sergeant Kim spoke to me and requested to join the mission in your stead.” Captain Miyaki says. “He reported you were still quite unwell and requested a transfer from his own unit. It’s processing now and he’s already undergoing training.”

Junjin is rendered speechless as the words hit him like an oncoming freight train.

“He can’t!” he blurts out. Dongwan wouldn’t survive the trainings let alone the mission, he’s sure of it. The reconnaissance team are comprised of elite soldiers, the most physically able of the entire battalion. Something even he had a difficult time being molded into and what his hyung is entirely not. “Captain Miyaki, I request the transfer be void.”

His commanding officer narrows his eyes at him. “We are losing time here, Lieutenant Park. Your country will be rendered to ashes before the year is out if we don’t manage to infiltrate the enemy within the window of time presented to us. Sergeant Kim has shown he is capable of providing the minimum to keep up with the team to complete the mission. If you yourself are physically unqualified—”

“I will be qualified,” Junjin interrupts, finding newfound strength in the deep-rooted fear of losing his hyung because of his own incapacities, “and I will complete the mission as I have sworn to do. I request the removal of Sergeant Kim from the mission roster.”

“Request denied. The mission is due to take place by next week. There is no time and barely any men, Lieutenant Park.”

“Then I request he be moved to the backup unit leaving the same day. The unit to take over in case…” he gulps but forces the words out, “in case we fail.”

Dongwan will be safe in that unit. Planes disguised as chartered flights will attempt to smuggle them back into the country, and Junjin’s unit will meet up with the bases by the border. They’ve been keeping an eye on the North’s activity for months but information from across the sea is difficult to obtain and process. Being right by enemy lines will give them information to plan out what’s needed to defeat them, to know what’s needed to end all of this.

(Junjin has, of course, long accepted the reality that the chances for survival following this mission are slim, but he isn’t ready to give the same chances to his hyung. Never to his hyung)

“Captain, please. I’m the best in the entire unit and I will not fail this mission. You will need at least three Kim Dongwans to replace me.”

This is something even his commanding officer doesn’t deny, and Captain Miyaki purses his lips in silent agreement.

“I will require the medical clearance in four days.”

“You have my word, sir.”

“Your word is not good enough, Park. Your presence is. Get well soon.”

It’s a command, and it’s enough for Junjin. He sleeps the rest of the morning and afternoon after that, and wakes only to Dongwan’s gentle cajoling, to the scent of warm jjuk that he stirs around with a bowl and blows on before he raises a spoonful of it to Junjin’s mouth.

“You’re eating well for once,” Dongwan praises. There’s no trace on him of fatigue from training all day but Junjin catches it in tiny movements: the way his fingers curl in pain or the minute grimaces that slips through and shadows his smile. “Our little medicinal miracle. I wish I could tell the others but the lines are still dead and I’m sure Hyesung will nag me for it until the end of time. So you’d better make sure you rest up and get back whole and safe, if only to make Hyesung shut up.”

There’s a tinge of sadness in his voice, something that Junjin does not want to hear. Wordlessly, he grips Dongwan’s hand and gives it a firm squeeze.

“I know we don’t talk about this often but…promise me, whatever happens, Jin-ah. You’ll find your way back, okay?”

Junjin doesn’t like making promises that he can’t keep so he only bites his lip. “Only if you’re with me, hyung,” he says, as a compromise. Dongwan shakes his head.

“Yah, none of that. You never know what the future will hold,” he says, and Junjin feels the corner of his mouth twitch.

(Like a reconnaissance mission you signed up for, that we will now both be going on, and I’m sorry you felt you had to do this, hyung, but I’m protecting you the only way I know how and I hope, if we survive, you’ll forgive me for still risking myself but I have a job to do and everyone else to protect…)

“Jin-ah. Whatever happens. Okay?”

But Junjin only smiles.


tbc

Author's Notes
1. This takes place before the battle Ricdy are in, in Eric's chapter. The battle of Gaesong  takes place in the summer, while this happens in the early spring.
2. I have no military knowledge whatsoever, I'm only getting some details for this story from the little that I know from war movies I used to watch with my brothers. 
3. Wanjin are so difficult to write??? This was supposed to be Dongwan's POV but Jin ultimately took it over. 
4. If you haven't read WICF, they will both be setting out but Dongwan's plane will be shot down. 
5. Please leave a comment if you're reading and enjoying! :) It helps the creative process.