It had been two months since those ads first started haunting you. Everywhere you looked, you heard them mocking you, trying to lead him away from you despite how desperately you tried to guard him against them. At the end of your Spring and penultimate semester, you decided to move away from the dorms and into what you had hoped would be you and Seongwha’s future home, a quaint apartment complex right across the street from campus. While it was not glamorous, it was whole, completed by Seongwha’s late nights glued to his papers and work, completed by his small snores, completed by his beaming smile whenever he walked through the door to see you. You didn’t ask for glamour and neither did he. You both simply wanted a family and while that would take much time and planning from now on, the foundations were at least set; the trust, the love, and the vulnerability were there. You had built your own world for yourselves, funded by ridiculous amounts of loans that would easily be paid off with the professions you were pursuing, but maintained through mutual trust and understanding. Unfortunately, soon, the walls of that world that seemed so far away, so untouchable closed in and crashed as you could no longer escape the dark world that was flowing in so violently in the form of a simple, white envelop addressed for Park Seongwha.

            The summer sun was bright, occasionally eclipsed by the towering trees that lined the winding walkway to your apartment unit as you trotted to the mailbox on the other side of the complex. Seongwha would be home any minute from his paid internship at the rocket building facility less than half an hour away. To you, time stopped flowing as you stopped to pet one of the local stray cats, basking in the sun’s warm rays, heart light, mind empty. To him, time was of the essence as it constantly mocked him, made him feel every moment he was not with you as he shoved all the safety papers back into the drawers of his desk and clocked out. Time was cruel as it was on neither of your sides. Like the world that you tried so desperately to keep at bay, time marched on, on its own track regardless of who tried to stop it or who tried to enjoy it. After what seemed like an eternity, Seongwha was in his car and you were heading to the mailbox once more, snapping out of the beautiful daze you had let yourself fall into. You finally made your way to the mailbox, not at all concerned with time and wanting only to see his face as he sped through the streets wanting to do the same. You gingerly inserted your key into the tricky keyhole, wondering if the art supplies you had ordered off of Amazon had finally arrived. He narrowly avoided an accident caused by a distracted driver who was incidentally checking if their package had arrived. You reached inside as there was no box, dreading what kind of bills would appear this time. He reached a red light, wondering how long one red light could truly last. He was a mere fifteen minutes away at this point.

            No.

            You ran back to your apartment, tossing your keys and the one envelope on the table, staring at it in horror and disgust. He crept past the accident, glancing at the gruesome in silent awe and pitiful anguish. The world was here for you, reminding you that it didn’t cease to exist just because the two of you were happy, were away from it. Like both of your fears, anxieties, and insecurities, the world was there, the world was real, and it could not be stopped by pretty walls and muted feelings. He was now ten minutes away and your mind couldn’t stop your heart from pounding.

            Park Seongwha it read with the official stamp of the U.S. military.

            You would burn it. Seongwha would be curious about the smell. You would hide it. Seongwha would find it. You would shred it. Seongwha would be curious about what it was. All of these were all too easy to do, all too easy to lie about, but could you bring yourself to lie to the beaming smile that walked through your door, to the pair of strong arms that embraced you, to the prattling mouth that was happy to tell you about all the wonderfully complicated things at work? You wanted so desperately to lie to him, but to lie to him, to have him refrain from the draft was certain imprisonment or even death. With the increase of war, the draft rules had increased exponentially compared to the draft for the Vietnam War so many years ago. Now, it was enlist—or apply—or be sentenced to harsh imprisonment. If someone was able-bodied and the walking definition of the American Dream, to dodge the draft would mean to drop his life. If someone didn’t want to fight for his country, the country would not want to fight for him to be alive with the possibility of him away its resources as an old man while the young men died. Surely, there were taxes and public services, but the ultimate sacrifice, the one the country so often and recklessly demanded was a life and now, it was demanding Seongwha’s. To send him was to kill him. To keep him was the same. You would have to tell him. You would have to take that chance. You were sick to your stomach. He was now five minutes away. You didn’t know what you could say.

            “Honey, I got the mail for us. It-it says that you’ve been drafted? Are you going to go?” she asked, frightened, shoving the crumpled paper into his chest and he hugged her.

            “Of course, honey, what do you mean? I have to! It’s my civic duty,” he replied indignantly, shaking her slightly so she relinquished the slip she had tried to hide, tried to destroy.

            “But what if I don’t want you to go? What if you can’t?” she asked, hopefully, expectantly.

            “It’s not a question of if you want me to go and don’t be so selfish! Why wouldn’t I be able to go? I’m a grown man and now I think it was about time that I fought for my country,” he asserted proudly though his heart was beating out of his chest, his mind was empty. He didn’t mean what he said. Why fight for a country he had to so desperately fight against to get to where he was, to be happy?

            “But what about the children?” she murmured, their grins warming her, warning her.  

            “Honey, I will come back to you and them, but it’s not about me right now. It’s about what a humble man like myself can do for this country. This is not about us, this is about US,” he reminded her. “I would be nothing if I didn’t come back to you,” he cooed, wrapping her once more in his arms and bringing her to his chest. A single tear trickled down his eye as he stared off, the bright flashes of grenades, machine guns firing, and flamethrowers burning his eyes. He shuddered at the sound of bombs, the frantic barks of his commanders, the wails of agony from his falling comrades. She whimpered like the children would, she bawled like she would at his funeral, she hurt like she would for the rest of his days if he didn’t come home.

You tried shaking the thought away, confounded by the faces you had seen. They seemed too vivid yet too novel to be a daydream. The feeling hurt too much to be false. The woman was in the corner dressed in black, weeping yet trying to stay composed for the children, now both young adults that looked about your age. She was old, her face was tired, but she looked like you. She tried speaking to you, moving, but nothing coming out. Her son whispered something that seemingly calmed her down. You wanted to speak to her, ask her what had happened and how she got through it though you already knew the answers. He had died and she didn’t. You also knew, as the front door rattled with the insert of his key, that she wasn’t real, that she was only a vision, perhaps one of what was to come or what had already come to so many families before you in the age of war. Whatever she was, you wanted to ask her for advice, ask her for anything, but she had disappeared with his stepping through the door. You were on your own.

“Hello, darling~” he beamed, rushing over to the couch to whisk you into his arms.

            “Wh-what has gotten into you?” you asked, baffled. “How was work? I take it good with an attitu