12 years old

            In 7th grade, the students must have an obligatory military training. I was so excited to do it with Jinyoung.

            I liked military trainings. I liked to be pushed to my very limit constantly. I always did my best, and I believe I was good, even if I had never gotten praised: the trainers kept yelling at me so that I keep pushing myself. I knew it was their way to show me they believed in my strength and determination. After all, I was the son of my parents.

            As for Jinyoung, it was harder. He was thin and frail, he had no cardio and honestly, he wasn't really strong either. But he was smart. He is the one who had managed to start a fire for the first time. He always knew where to go, where to hide, when to attack and how to do it. He would protect our team with his strategies, and I would protect our team with my rapidity and strength.

            Once, as we were walking on our knees in the mud while singing military songs, I fell over a nail. The trainer yelled me to get back up because my fall slowed the others behind me. Jinyoung extended his hand as he asked me if I was okay. The trainer hit him behind the head with his gun to tell him to shut up, so I only looked at him to let him know I was okay. My knee was in pain, but it was tolerable. I got back up without looking at my wound and kept going to avoid slowing down the others. I noticed later that I had bled a lot since my pants were spotted with blood, but I hadn't had time to look at my injury for too long. We still had to run a few kilometers under the rain and carry logs on our shoulders. It was tolerable.

            My face was covered in mud, my knee was covered in blood and my legs were covered in soil. We were all dirty, but Jinyoung insisted on getting me cleaned up. We usually didn't take showers: we only had one opportunity to wash ourselves, when we had to swim in the freezing river of March. I had to admit that my injury was getting more and more painful. The nail on which I had fallen over had completely torn the already sore skin around my articulation and the dirt seemed to have made it even more painful. But I couldn't be so weak and selfish in front of the trainers. So Jinyoung shyly asked them if I could get soap and water to clean my wound, which made them burst into a laugh. Without hearing their words, I saw the man in uniform nod with a smile before leaving and coming back with a water hose. He placed it a few inches before my friend’s face, then all I saw was the kid being pushed backward by the strength of the pressured water.

            “Who else want water, huh? Oh, it's you, the coward who's got a lil' paper cut?” he yelled, nodding at me. “You're the selfish one who wants all of this country's water right?”

            He flooded me from head to toe, taking me aback. The water was so cold that I lost my balance. The man directed the water on my wounded knee and the intense feeling of sting made me bite my own lip to blood in order to prevent myself from screaming.  

            “Who's thirsty now?” he continued, laughing.

            Since no one dared to look at him, he put the hose where he had found it. I wiped my face and my tears by the same mean as I got back up immediately in a salute. I saw Jinyoung getting up more slowly, but doing the same. We were yelled at to go to bed and the evening ended like that.

            The following days, Jinyoung noticed that my state got abnormally worse. I could not eat anymore; my knee was still as painful, and I had nausea. I kept doing what I was asked as well as I could despite all. Before we went to bed, my friend shared his worries with me.

            “Why is your wound so gross, that's not normal… It hurts?” He whispered as he tried to touch my knee.

            “Of course it hurts,” I groaned as I pushed his hand away.

            “Relax, I'm just trying to help you.”

            “I know but the last time you ‘helped’, you made it worse.”

            “Y'all shut the up back there!’ another student yelled from the back of the tent. 

            Jinyoung sighed before wishing me good night and rolling on his side to turn his back on me. I told myself he had no reason to worry and that he should mind his own business, until I almost died the next day.

            Usually, I am the first one up as soon as the sun rises. The others seem to have a hard time to wake up in the morning, but I like to make the instructors believe I was always ready to fight. Except that morning. Jinyoung had to shake me up. It was probably late, because he was looking around him nervously. I could barely move. I was drenched in sweat and was shaking. I took Jinyoung’s hand firmly and told him I was not okay. I was scared. I did not want to get punished for being sick.

            “Jinyoung go with them, I'll follow.”

            “Jaebeom, I'm not leaving you! What's wrong where are you hurt?”

            “They'll hit you or worse Jinyoung I'm sick, leave me alone.”

            “Lim Jaebeom, Park Jinyoung! Get out of there immediately!” we heard someone shouting from outside the tent.  

            “Come on, get up Jaebeom you can do it,” my friend whispered quickly as he took both my hands to help me get up from the ground.

            He managed to have me stand with a lot of efforts. I did not even hear the instructor come in before I fainted.

            Waking up was pretty brutal. An old man was holding my eyelid open with his finger while moving a light from left to right in front of my eye. I did not know what was going on around me. I heard Jinyoung’s voice screaming stuff I could not understand, the old mand tried to bury his voice, the instructors shouting at Jinyoung to shut the up before they shoot him, but no one was talking to me. No one was telling me what was happening.

“If he dies…”

                                                                                                                                                                      “Shut up!”

                                                           “I must stay…”

                                            “Maybe it's…”

            “Go back with the others before I…”

      “No! I stay with him!”

“Tetanus… His parents…”

                                                                                                  “What's wrong with him?! Tell me what the is going on!”

                       “Do you want the police to come? Do you want…”

                                                                                                                                                            “What the hell is he doing?!”

            I looked everywhere around me, unable to speak or move. I heard someone screaming out of pain, and I feared it was Jinyoung. I wanted to say his name, to tell him I was okay, although I was not sure of that myself. Then I only saw darkness.

***

            “You have an infection. You will be able to complete your military training in a few days without lagging behind.” explained the nurse as she pushed the needle deep in my veins, leaving a burning feeling growing in my arm.

            I nodded, a bitter taste of blood in my mouth. Someone wailed of pain in the room, and I flinched. I wanted to throw up. She wiped the needle with a dirty rag a put it back in her lab coat’s pocket after injecting me.

            “Where is my father?”

            “Your parents could not leave work. Since you’re okay, they don’t need to come.”

            I nodded again. Right, they didn’t need to be here. I had heard many things about countryside clinics, but this was a bit unsettling to witness. The room was full of beds, filled with people, who seemed so fragile; frail was not enough of a word to describe how hollow their eye sockets were, how pale and almost yellowish their skin, their arms like broken branches and their bones moving under their skin as they coughed. But I couldn’t stare too long as the kid being opened up in the corner screamed again, making my ears ring.

            “What in the world are they doing to him?”

            “A student at camp tried to cut his fingers off. They had to amputate.”

            I felt the blood rush away from my face. I couldn’t see the boy hiding behind the horde of doctors, but I knew they had a hard time pinning him to the bed, and from what I heard he kept slipping into unconsciousness and waking up during the procedure.

            “Is he in my class?”

            “I don’t know. You can go see if you want. When you feel good enough to walk, we would need to give the bed to somebody else, you understand?”

            I carefully stood up and let her help me on my feet. I was too proud to admit it, but I still felt weak, as if all my muscles were soar, and I had troubles straightening my fingers for some reason. Once I felt safe on my feet, I gently pushed her hand away so she knew she could go treat other patients. The floor was annoyingly dirty, and sticky. Sand and dirt would get stuck on the sole of my feet as I walked, and I had to stop and wipe off the fresh blood I had just walked on. I walked to the corner of the room, and some doctors had left already.

            “It’s over, kid, you’re okay, you did good.” said a female nurse as she wiped his forehead, breathless.

            I couldn’t see his face well behind her, mostly because I couldn’t look away from all the blood around the bed.

            “Can we get him some water?” she asked to her colleague.

            “We don’t have any.” the male nurse muttered as he wrapped the bloody hand in a cloth, and I didn’t want to watch, so I looked away, and caught his eyes when the nurse moved slightly.

            No. Not him.

            “Jinyoung?”

            I stopped talking upon looking unwillingly at his right hand in the bloody bandage. His hand had only two fingers and a thumb. It took me a while to realize that two fingers were missing from his hand, the hand he would use to shoot.

            “You okay?” he let out between two shallow breaths.

            “What have they done to you…”

            “I wanted… to make sure. They wouldn't… let you die,” he struggled to say with a tired smile.  

            “What?”

            “They… they wouldn’t let me come…”

            “Y-you didn’t have to, even m-my parents aren’t here.” I said, refusing to believe he had done such a thing.

            “I couldn't… let you go… not without you,” he said as his breath double-hitched, and his eyes rolled back, and his head fell.

            “Jinyoung!”

            I rushed to his bed, but the nurses stopped me, saying he should rest, and that fainting was normal. I had to return to my bed, but my bed was already taken.

            I went outside, because I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to have my mom with me. I wanted to go back in time. I sat next to the entrance door and hugged my knees, as if they could serve as a shield in front of my heart. If Jinyoung couldn’t be a soldier what would he become? What would we become? I let water fill my eyes, and overflow slowly, as I watched a rat nibbling on the eyes of a dead body in the growing pile next to the door of the clinic.