UNFED

It was 2:00 p.m.

Park Jeong-su ate his meal. It was his last meal. Fried eggs over rice that Lee Jae-in had procured through Loro. It was simple. Park Jeong-su ate quickly. It was a soldier's meal. It wasn't about savoring the flavor; it was about refueling.

After finishing, he set down his bowl and said,

"That's it."

Hoon was sitting across from him. He didn't speak.

Park Jeong-su sat down on the floor. He stretched his back. Just like Hoon had done. Just like Lee Jae-in had done. Before closing his eyes, he glanced around once. It was a corner of the shared workspace. People were passing by.

Park Jeong-su didn't seem to mind. A soldier could sleep anywhere and concentrate anywhere.

He closed his eyes.

Hoon said.

"Start with your breathing."

Park Jeong-su did as he was told. He got it right from the start. He matched the instructions on the first try. He was in great shape. It was a body honed over fifty-nine years. Even his breathing was different.

Hoon stepped back and leaned against the wall.

* * *

[ 12 Hours ]

It was the first night.

Park Jeong-su didn't make a sound. He didn't cry like Lee Jae-in. He didn't scream like Viktor. He didn't slip in quietly like Amara or Priya.

He just sat there.

His body trembled ever so slightly. It was barely noticeable unless Hoon was watching. But Hoon knew. Something was rising up inside him. Park Jeong-su was suppressing it. In the manner of a soldier. He was a man trained to control his emotions.

Hoon approached him.

"Don't hold it in."

He said in a low voice. Park Jeong-su reacted. His eyelids fluttered.

"If you suppress what's rising, it'll take longer. Just let it be."

Park Jeong-su opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it.

Hoon stepped back.

A moment later, the tension drained from Park Jeong-su's shoulders. It was only a slight shift, but to Park Jeong-su, it was significant. Hoon had rarely seen that man lose his composure in all his years.

* * *

[ Jeong-su's Hallucination — Part One, 20 Hours ]

It was a coastal village.

A small island village called Deukryang-do, off the coast of Goheung, South Jeolla Province. The place where Park Jeong-su was born. He lived there until he was fifteen. There were tidal flats.

The place where he used to catch clams. At low tide, the mudflats would be exposed, and the neighborhood kids would run around.

It was low tide now. The mudflats stretched out before him. He could smell it. The smell of the mudflats. The smell of the sea. The smell he remembered from his childhood.

Park Jeong-su stood on the mudflats. His feet sank in. It was squelchy. The sensation felt real.

Hoon was there.

It was eleven-year-old Hoon. It was the first image Park Jeong-su had of Hoon. A boy who had moved into the neighborhood. He was short. He had big eyes. He was sitting alone on the mudflats, looking at something.

Park Jeong-su approached him.

Hoon looked up. He saw him. And he said,

"Catch a crab."

"Catch a crab?"

Those words were the beginning. The two children caught crabs together. A crab was caught. It ran away. It was caught again. The two children laughed, knee-deep in the mudflats.

Park Jeong-su realized now that he had missed that scene. He hadn't missed it once since becoming an adult. But now, he did.

He hadn't known, until this moment, that a memory could simply be waiting somewhere the whole time, untouched for forty-seven years, exactly as he'd left it.

On the mudflats, Hoon said,

"I'm going to Seoul."

Park Jeong-su looked at him.

"When?"

"After I finish high school."

Park Jeong-su looked at the tidal flats.

"What about me?"

Hoon said.

"Where do you want to go?"

Park Jeong-su couldn't remember what he'd said back then. Had he said the army? Or had he said nothing at all? He couldn't remember. He had spent forty-seven years not wondering about it, the way a person stops noticing a scar they've had since childhood.

But now, in his hallucination, he was asked that question.

"Where do you want to go?"

Park Jeong-su thought for a long time.

He could smell the mudflats. The wind was blowing. He could hear seagulls in the distance.

And he said,

"Where you're going."

The words came out of his mouth.

It was a child's voice. It was something Park Jeong-su had never said in his entire life.

Eleven-year-old Hoon looked at Park Jeong-su. And he smiled.

The wind blew across the tidal flats. The sound of seagulls could be heard. The sound of the waves was in the distance.

* * *

Tears streamed down Park Jeong-su's face.

Silently. Hoon watched. It was the first time in his life he had seen tears flow from Park Jeong-su's eyes. He hadn't even seen them when he was a child. Growing up together in the coastal village, he had never seen Park Jeong-su cry.

Hoon didn't say a word. He didn't even go near him.

Park Jeong-su had to get through this on his own.

* * *

[ Jeong-su's Hallucination — Part Two, 48 Hours ]

It was a military uniform.

It was the training ground. It was when he was first assigned to the 707th. He was in his late twenties. He was with the other soldiers. It was training that never ended.

His body would reach its limit, then recover, only to reach it again and recover once more.

The sensations of that day came flooding back. The burning in his muscles. The shortness of breath. Yet he couldn't stop.

But something was strange. He wasn't hungry.

In military training, hunger was a daily occurrence. When pushed to the limit, hunger was all there was. But now, in this hallucination, even while going through that training, he wasn't hungry.

Park Jeong-su ran. He raised his rifle. He crawled. He stood up. He wasn't hungry.

Then he noticed something else.

Without hunger, the fear was different. In extreme training, half of the fear was linked to starvation. The terror that washed over you when you could no longer endure. That was gone.

All that remained was his pure physicality. It was the training itself.

Park Jeong-su kept running in that state.

He didn't stop.

He knew in his bones just how different it was. He had spent thirty years measuring his own limits by exactly that fear—the moment hunger turned into something close to panic, the line past which a body stopped obeying orders.

That line had simply vanished, and what remained on the other side of it felt, for the first time, entirely his own.

And he realized one more thing.

For thirty years, he had fought for his country. In that fight, hunger was always present. Maintaining supplies. Not going hungry. That was half the battle.

But if there were no hunger...

He could fight for something greater.

Something greater than the nation.

That was the "humanity" Hoon had spoken of.

In his hallucination, Park Jeong-su understood the weight of those words with his whole being for the first time.

* * *

[ 72 Hours ]

It was the dawn of the third day.

Park Jeong-su opened his eyes. Quietly. It wasn't sudden. It was as natural as waking from sleep.

He looked around. A shared workspace. It was early morning. There was no one there. He could hear the sound of a generator. He could hear the sound of the river.

Hoon was sitting across from him. He had dozed off for a moment and had just woken up. He looked at Park Jeong-su.

Their eyes met.

Park Jeong-su said,

"I'm not hungry."

Hoon said.

"Yeah."

Park Jeong-su processed that fact for a moment. Then he said.

"This is real."

"It's real."

Park Jeong-su tried to stand up, but his legs trembled, so he sat back down. It was only natural, having been seated for three days. On his second attempt, he stood up. He didn't hold onto the wall. He stood on his own.

He walked outside. Hoon followed him.

It was dawn in the basin. The stars were still out. The mountain ridges lay in the darkness. He could hear the sound of water.

Park Jeong-su stood there, listening to it. For a long time.

Then he said,

"Did you see the coastal village?"

Hoon listened.

"When you were eleven."

Hoon looked.

"The day we caught crabs."

Hoon remembered that scene. Vaguely. He didn't know exactly when that day was. But he remembered catching crabs together in the tidal flats.

"I remember."

Park Jeong-su said.

"You asked me there. Where do you want to go?"

Hoon listened.

"What did I say?"

Park Jeong-su paused for a moment.

"Do you remember?"

And he said,

"But in the hallucination, I told you. I said I wanted to go where you were going."

Hoon looked at Park Jeong-su.

Park Jeong-su looked up at the sky.

It sounded like the kind of thing a man says only once in his life, and only when he no longer has anything left to lose by saying it.

Hoon said,

"It's not too late."

Park Jeong-su looked at Hoon.

"You just got here."

Park Jeong-su thought about that for a moment. Then he nodded.

"Yeah."

That was all.

The two stood side by side, watching the dawn over the Caraballo Mountains. Just as they had done in their childhood seaside village. In silence. Like people for whom simply being together was enough.

The eastern sky began to brighten.

Park Jeong-su said.

"I'll come up with the plan."

Hoon looked at him.

"You decide the direction."

That was the division of roles between the two of them. And it was their first promise regarding what lay ahead.

Hoon said.

"Thanks."

Park Jeong-su said.

"It's fine."

The sun began to rise. Over the ridges of the Caraballo Mountains. The sun was rising over these mountains again today. It had been that way yesterday, and it would be that way tomorrow.

Gong had grown by one more person.