“Noona! Please don’t go!” 

Seong Moon rushes out, crashing to his knees around her leg, a trick he learnt from Ji Hyo herself. She sighs, pushing him away gently. Tears are streaming down his face, and her heart aches at the sight. All the more reason to do this then. How could she send this tiny timid face to war? A fourteen year old boy of small stature, who needed his Noona to beat his bullies up for him not too long ago. He confronts and hits school bullies himself these days, but he still has a long way to go before he can even step into a battlefield. 

“Yah,” she scolds him. “You think I’m doing this for you? If I don’t go, they’re going to drag our old Appa away and he’ll never come back.”

Seong Moon tries to wipe his tears away. “Then what about you, Noona? If you go you might never come back either. I don’t want to grow up without you.” 

“I’ll be fine,” she says without a thought, but fear still gathers as a lump in . War is unkind and takes the lives of the capable and innocent. But she can’t let her family be burdened with that. Without their parents to run the house and make a living, her siblings would be doomed. At twenty three years of age, Ji Hyo is neither employable nor capable of running their house. It’s either her, or the downfall of her family. She could come back alive, or she could die and her family would still be able to survive. It’s a more than worthy sacrifice if you think about it. 

“You’ll be even more fine if you stay here,” he begs, “we can think of something else to keep all of us safe.” 

“It’s too dangerous,” she tells him. “If they don’t drag Appa away, they might drag you instead.”

“They should drag me away then! I should be going, not you, Noona! They said one man from each family–“

“Shut up!” She huffs. “How could you be so irresponsible? You really think you have what it takes to survive in a war? I wasn’t going to tell you this, but I don’t plan to go all out fighting in the war either. I’ll get a safe position, or, if things take a turn for the worst, I’ll reveal my identity and seduce a general or whoever the hell is in charge. Got it? I’m not going there to die, your Noona isn’t so stupid!” 

“Really?” 

She exhales at that. “Yeah. So, don’t go trying to stupidly sacrifice yourself. You know our society values men. Umma and Appa need you to carry on the family line or whatever. So go do that, okay? And take care of our younger sister, take care of our parents. If they scold you for letting me leave, let them scold you. Staying back and getting scolded, that’s worse than leaving. You understand? You’re going to suffer worse than me. You can handle it right?” 

He finally nods. “I can handle it. I’ll do all of that.” 

“I’ll beat you if you don’t, understand?” 

He jumps into a hug, wrapping his arms around her neck. “You won’t have to beat me. Please come back.” 

“I will.” 
 

It’s been going sort of uneventfully so far. 

Then again, Ji Hyo has only been in the army for all of twenty minutes, and frankly, shouldn’t she be relieved and glad that she hasn’t gotten close to being found out yet? 

But god, the officer who signed her in was so unobservant. She had panicked at first, and told him her real name, instead of making up a fake one, or going under her father/brother’s name, and he checked the system for her particulars instead of asking her to show him identification, thereby making void all the fake documents she made. Sigh. But perhaps her accidental moment of truth was a blessing in disguise, since she wouldn’t have looked like her father or brother in the pictures kept in the system. The officer in charge was so sloppy in everything else though, and Ji Hyo might have suspected him for purposely signing a woman up for a male-only conscription, if he had not asked her this:

“Isn’t Ji Hyo a girl’s name?” 

“Uh...” she had fidgeted. “My mother thought I was going to be a girl, and she decided on the name Ji Hyo. When I was born, she named me Ji Hyo because she had grown attached to the name.” 

“Ah, I see. Hope you didn’t get made fun of in school.” 

“No, I was strong enough to stand up for myself.”

“That’s good,” he stamped something red on some sheet of paper, and handed her keys, plus some documents. “Head to bunk 9012.”

And so this brings her to the present. She’s walking to her room, where she will definitely have many roommates, according to the other rooms she went past on her way. This worries her slightly. Having to live with other men means she’ll have to keep acting, and keeping up pretenses. God, that sounds exhausting. Also, living with men sounds exhausting in and of itself. She braces herself for a hard time. Should she befriend the men, and reveal her identity once she knows they’re trustworthy? Or would that be even more dangerous? 

9008, 9009, 9010, 9011...

She’s here. Strangely, the door is shut, which she hasn’t noticed for many of the other rooms she walked past. Even more strangely, the door is locked, giving her an ominous feeling. She knocks on the door. 

“Hello? Is anyone here?” 

She hears scattered whispers which prove that people, real people, are in the room. That relieves her slightly. 

“I’m coming in!” 

She slowly inserts her key and turns it, making sure to give whoever is in there time to get ready. She opens the door to a room full of people and steps inside. 

“Noona!” 

Goddamn it. 

“Yah!” She yells, recognizing the voice immediately, and knowing she’s busted. God, that stupid Kwang Soo! He’s a neighborhood dongsaeng who she’s sort of friends with, and he enlisted early because after everyone got the order to send one man from each family, his parents essentially... told him to get lost. It sounds cruel but it’s also really funny. But also cruel. Right now, Ji Hyo is just angry. She starts hitting him with the broom she found close to the door. 

“Ah, it hurts!” he yells out in pain. “Why is no one stopping her? Ji Hyo Noona please!”

“Ji Hyo? Noona? Are you crazy?” She hits him twice as hard for that. “Don’t you know—can’t you tell—how much effort I put in to disguise myself? You’ve just gone and given it all away and I just got here?” 

He finally snatches the broom away from her and throws it across the room, too scared to even try to hit her back. “What kind of disguise are you talking about? Anyone here can tell that you’re a woman!” 

“Hul... you’ve got to be kidding me. Who? Who would tell? No one’s suspected me for a second since I got here until... yah! Get over here!”

He runs away, and points at her chest. “Look, look at that! What’s that? Did you even try to bind? Who wouldn’t be able to tell that those are s?” 

She gasps slightly and covers her chest. “You, you ert!” He was right though, she didn’t really bind her chest that much, as it had hurt, and she didn’t think her s were all that big anyway. She thought she’d be able to pass them off as pecs. “I’m really not going to let you off this time!” 

“Hyung!” He shrieks for help, tripping as he attempts to run away again and now crawls on the ground. “Jae Suk Hyung!” 

She freezes. “What did you say? Jae Suk Oppa is here?” 

Jae Suk, as you might suspect, is a neighborhood Oppa that Ji Hyo’s close to as well. He actually took care of her when she was young, and she remembers pestering him to buy her snacks as a giggly child. She was the oldest child, and for many years, she was also the only child, so Jae Suk is like a real older brother to her. Someone she has a lot of respect for and truly loves. She loves Kwang Soo too, but given how she’s his Noona and he’s a mess, it’s really more of a tough love situation. She was angry with him for exposing her, but now that she knows Jae Suk Oppa is here too, she actually feels safe. Surely nothing too bad could happen to her if she has two allies around. 

“Ah... why did you have to tell her I was here?” Jae Suk emerges from one of the bunk beds behind Ji Hyo. She had failed to notice him before because she was too preoccupied with disciplining her good-for-nothing dongsaeng. “I was having so much fun seeing her hit you.” 

Ji Hyo breaks into a smile. 

“Ah, Hyung! How could you say that? I’m in so much pain!” 

“What are you talking about?” Ji Hyo argues. “I barely made a dent on you.” 

“Dent? What dent? This Noona is out of her mind, seriously! What sort of person wants to dent someone?” 

“Ji Hyo-yah,” Jae Suk says, completely ignoring Kwang Soo to tap her on her shoulder. “You don’t have to worry so much. Truth is, you’re not the first woman pretending to be a man we have in here.” 

“Oh?” 

A small figure crawls out from behind one of the bunk beds. “Hello,” she greets. “My name is Jeon So Min.”

“We’ve been trying to hide her identity from the others for a while now,” Jae Suk continues to explain. “She’s even worse at pretending to be a man than you are, so don’t worry.” 

“How did they find out about you?” she carefully asks So Min. 

“I was simply too beautiful and feminine to pass for a man,” she explains, only to have the others scoff at her. 

“What nonsense are you talking about?” An unfamiliar voice next to So Min speaks up. “You wore a very obviously fake mustache the first day you showed up and we all knew.” 

“Se Chan-ah, why are you doing this to me?” So Min pokes at him, pouting, and he can’t help but laugh. “Why are you being like this?” 

“What’s all this noise?” 

Ji Hyo hears a groan and sees an older man stretch on the top bunk next to the door, where Jae Suk had been earlier. He isn’t incredibly old, per se, but he definitely seems much older than everyone else in the room. 

“Hyung, you’re just waking up now?” Jae Suk teases him with a smile that stretches to his eyes. “Ji Hyo is here now, Ji Hyo.” 

“Oh, Ji Hyo?” He sits up now, putting on glasses that have no lenses in them. This confuses her. Why wear glasses if they don’t help you see? Must be a vanity thing. “Our pretty dongsaeng, Ji Hyo?”

“What?” she looks over at Jae Suk, who’s clearly close to the man. “Why does he sound like he knows me? I’ve never met him before.” 

“Yah, are you really going to be like this? Ji Hyo-yah, it’s me! Suk Jin Oppa. Do you really not recognize me?” 

She looks at Jae Suk again. “Did you tell him about me or something?”

Jae Suk can’t help but crack up at this, and Suk Jin only grows more offended. 

“This is ridiculous! How can you remember and know Jae Suk so well but not know me?” 

“Jae Suk Oppa took care of me when I was young and bought me many snacks. What did you do?” 

“Whose money do you think he bought those snacks with?” Suk Jin points at Jae Suk with a wronged expression. “He stole it from me and took all the credit!”

“Really?”

“Chamna... I really can’t stand this Hyung,” Jae Suk points back at him. “When did I steal from you? You had no money for me to steal, what are you talking about?”

“Keep quiet! It’s all because of you that Ji Hyo doesn’t remember me!”

“Hyung, she doesn’t remember you because you never made an impression. You should’ve been nicer to her! Just be nice to her from now on, or she’ll forget you again in this very room.” 

“Ah, that’s enough!” Ji Hyo interrupts in frustration. “You’re both being very annoying. Is there anyone else living here? I need to know whether it’s safe to take a nap now. I’ve had a very long day.” 

“Noona, it’s not even noon yet,” Kwang Soo interjects. 

“You want to get hit again?”

He looks like he wants to argue this, but decides against it. “No.” 

“That’s why, you should just stay still. There’s four bunk beds in here right? So there should be two more people? Or are those beds not occupied yet?”

“No, they’re occupied,” Se Chan answers her, without being annoying like Kwang Soo was. “You haven’t met Haha and Gary Hyung yet, they’re not here right now because they’re helping Jong Kook Hyung with some things. They’re kind of his lackeys.” 

“What kind of a name is Haha?”

“His real name is Dong Hoon, but sometimes people call him Haha because his face is so ugly you can’t help but laugh,” Jae Suk wittily says. The others all laugh a lot at this, only for him to continue, “some of you are laughing very hard, but your looks are even funnier than Dong Hoon’s?” 

The laughter dies down eventually, some of them quicker than the others because they know Jae Suk’s backhanded insult was directed at them. 

“By the way, who is... Jong Kook?” Ji Hyo tentatively asks. “Why does he have lackeys? Is he a mob boss or something? Does he live in this room too?” 

A collective sigh is heard throughout the room. 

“He’s the commanding officer of this camp.” 

“He’s in charge of training the recruits. But it’s less training and more... constant punishment.”

“Except he doesn’t think of what he makes us do as punishment.” 

“What...” Ji Hyo nervously trails off. “It’s that scary?” 

“He likes exercise and pushing his body to the limits and all that. He’s also very fussy. Such a fussy man. He nags so much. He’s like a coach and a mother-in-law,” Suk Jin comments. 

“Hyung, how could you insult mother-in-laws like that by comparing them to Jong Kook?” Jae Suk says, teasing Suk Jin again. “But really, he’s not all that bad. If you get on his good side, he’ll be very good to you. If you get on his bad side though...” 

“No, being on his good side can be pretty rough too,” Se Chan admits, and Kwang Soo nods along in agreement. 

“What’s this supposed to mean? Are you also one of his lackeys?”

“Yeah. He has several of us. Gary and Dong Hoon Hyung are kind of a set. Se Chan and I are another set. We kind of rotate to keep our sanity and to give Jong Kook Hyung a variety of personalities to keep him entertained.” 

“What?” Ji Hyo scoffs. “Is he a soldier or a king? Why does he coerce people into doing things like that?” 

“Ji Hyo Unnie, don’t get the wrong idea,” So Min speaks up. “It’s true that Jong Kook Oppa is the worst, but he’s also the best. I feel safer here than I would in another stricter camp. Another girl snuck in here as a recruit and he found out, but he chose to protect her instead of punishing her or her family.”

“Oh?” Ji Hyo’s heart relaxes. “Then, does he know that you’re not a man either? Can I come out to him then?” 

“No, he doesn’t. It’s best not to put him in such a difficult position. Besides, there’s so many men in this camp. If I came out, I would be harassed all the time.”

“So Min-ah, I think you’d be fine even if everyone in camp knew you weren’t a man,” Suk Jin teases, receiving a sullen response from the young woman, who insists she’s pretty, which Ji Hyo a