2

Hyuntae Kim

Feeling around cluttered cargo pockets, Hyuntae searched for chocolate. Finding none, he frowned and checked his watch. ”Five forty-two,” it read. The Quartermaster’s rep would arrive any minute to refill the vending machines.

Red lights flickered and Hyuntae blinked his eyes tightly shut. He sighed. He hated this place—the building, the base, the Corps. It was awful; all of it.

He felt deceived.

As he sat some time ago sketching at Gaudian architecture, a statue of a man had approached him and asked, “What are your plans for the future?”

“Buildings!” he had said, still daydreaming of architecture erect upon mountainous foundations like monuments to all mankind. Threads of humanity interwoven unto cityscape tapestries and embroidered upon with buildings. Against a dreamlike backdrop his recruiter had struck an unforgettable pose Hyuntae would never forget.

He followed the golden hands of his wristwatch as they circled endlessly. Antipodes away, he still wore his family’s disappointment on wrists too small to feel ‘manly.’ As their hands struck six and twelve, he sighed and thought. Sadly, “The quartermaster is late.”

* * *

Sat upon the rec room’s smelly couch, he watched the lights come on again, and again. Each minute he assured himself, “Surely the quartermaster’s will be here soon.” For several minutes, he waited there, until he rose from the couch to stretch. Then he waited for several more minutes.

He was just about to leave when the quartermaster’s rep arrived with a cart laden by Smart-E’s, Bepsi, and so much more.

“Don’t you finish at six?” the rep, Jensen, asked.

Hyuntae stirred with nervous discomfort at the rep’s unexpected attention. “Couldn’t he just fill them and be done with it?” he thought, fiddling with his pockets.

Jensen shrugged at the silent CQ guard and went on with his duties.

Hyuntae hungrily watched. “No Milky Whey bars?” he thought, then said.

“Dunno- le’ me check,” Jensen shrugged, and read over his daily manifest. “Doesn’t look like it.” He glanced at the vending machines. “I’ll put in an order though I think Supply is out.

“Guess we’ll go hungry!” he laughed, joking about the famine.

Licking chocolate from his molars, Hyuntae stared at his pockets.

Jensen swiped his thumb across the Digi-Print Scanner and smirked. “Here; catch!” he said, tossing a handful of Sniggers Fun-Sized Bars over, “My treat!”

Hyuntae fumbled to catch the chocolates. Their packaging crinkled against his chest as he pulled them into himself, dropping a few in the process. “Th-ank you… .”

With jerky movements and anxious hands, he scoured the floor and pocketed them. “Th… ank you,” he began, finishing with a thought.

With one final “thanks” Hyuntae scampered away.

* * *

Hyuntae shivered. It was colder outside than he was used to. After all, he was raised on a desert island named California; and despite the many mounting months marking his arrival at the Kreyan Demilitarized Zone, he had yet to acclimate to the weather.

He blew his colds hands, not knowing a better way to warm them, and walked from the barracks to the bus station next door. A he arrived a bus was leaving. He ran to catch it but was failing until some hundreds of meders later the bus driver saw him and stopped.

“Sorry ‘bout that; didn’t see ya!” the bus driver said as he scratched under his shield-side ear. “It’s the first one ya caught, yeah? Well be seated then,” he gestured, resting a hand on the gear knob.

Spotting an empty seat in the back by a window, Hyuntae sat there, content to stare out from it as he decided where to go eat.

Like bitter scenes from a boring movie, he remembered when his recruiter had finalized his enlistment into the Amricean Army Corps of Engineers. “You’ll be a builder,” they said. “An ACE. You’ll see the world!”

Since then, the only building he had done was done in his bedroom unit, modelmaking with his laptop and 3d printer. The last time he had used his creation magics was in training. What torture it had been for Hyuntae when they shipped him to Kreya’s blasted winter DMZ. Where they had promised great sights and creative opportunities, he saw nothing but budget construction and boring building plans. There was no joy in it, and joylessness sucked vacuously at his emotions, tearing him from his better parts.

His energies drained unto apathy. His routine staled and the echo of his thoughts dulled as he laid himself down to sleep in tepid sadness.

He reached into his pocket, again searching for chocolates.

To his surprise, he found one last Milky Whey bar. Perhaps he’d picked it up unwittingly among the scattered Sniggers. Inspecting its shiny metal packaging, he found no reason to abstain, so he ate it. Yet, as he chewed, it felt amiss: its chocolate exterior had a powdery texture; its nougat was unforgiving; and its caramel had crystalized heterogeneously.

Hyuntae narrowly resisted the urge to spew vomit and was glad for it as the person seated next to him looked over with unease.

At the next stop, his neighbor rose from their seat and left, leaving Hyuntae alone with selfish thoughts.

“Was it me?” Hyuntae wondered. “Did my nausea scare them? Or maybe my eating habits were why?”

Hyuntae wrestled with these thoughts until, some stops later, a frost collared man arrived and took the empty seat next to him. It was then that he noticed how silent the bus had become. A heavy mood weighed down upon his shoulders and pressed his spine to lean and stoop like a man made squat by age.

Each passenger seemed to feel this, too, except the mysterious stranger who was now his neighbor.

Hyuntae peeked from the corners of his eyes to inspect the frost collared man, only to find their collar was no longer frozen nor damp. Instead, an unsettling heat seemed to swallow their body, surrounding them like the ethereal wrappings of some portentous cocoon.

A profound forebode settled like pollen upon his whiskered face, causing him to spasm and sneeze.

“Bless you,” droned the man, as if by mechanical reflex.

Something unspeakable pinched at Hyuntae’s airways, and he struggled but to breathe.

When into the silence the man mumbled something precious, and with a squeeze of Hyuntae’s shoulder, calmed him. “I think I recognize you,” he said. “You’re the Cee-Cue guard- the one that ‘s always volunteers.”

Hyuntae was unsure how to feel at the stranger’s sudden accusation. He wondered for a moment if the man was no stranger at all; “Have I seen him somewhere before?”

It was when they turned their face to him and Hyuntae understood. “D- Sergeant Ditty!” he began to salute, but they grabbed him by his jeweled wrist and shocked him beyond surprise.

They sat there for a moment until in silence they agreed to remain. So they sat, and the bus returned to liveliness.