🔊 TTS Settings
Intro: A Night Good for Counting Stars
—7 months earlier—
“God, it’s fucking freezing. Hey, how much longer?”
At my question, my junior in the army breathed out a puff of white vapor and checked his wristwatch.
“Forty minutes left, Corporal Han Jiwoo.”
“Damn guard duty. It’s the age of cutting-edge technology — can’t they just replace all this with CCTV already? Who the hell would come all the way out to these mountains in Gangwon Province? Even North Korean soldiers would freeze to death on the way here.”
“Seriously.”
It was so cold that if you dozed off even for a moment, it felt like you’d never wake up again.
Deep in the mountains of Gangwon.
Because it was a winter night, the sky was especially clear, and with not a single light around us, the stars looked ready to pour down from the heavens. It hardly even felt like Korea anymore.
“Hey, got any interesting stories?”
“Did I ever tell you about what happened in Haeundae during my last leave?”
“You told me that one during our last guard shift.”
“Uh… then I’m out of stories.”
“What, your military service ends if you run out of stories?”
“Well, obviously it doesn’t, or we wouldn’t still be here.”
His joking reply made me snort out, “Fuck, true.”
“Corporal, hey Corporal.”
“What?”
Pointing toward the silhouette of a black tower looming in the sky, my junior asked:
“They say if you enter that tower, you gain superpowers. What kind of ability would you want, Corporal?”
“Superpowers? Hm… not sure. What about you?”
“For me, obviously every man’s dream — invisibility.”
The joke that followed was, unsurprisingly, the kind of filthy humor only soldiers could come up with.
Even perfectly normal guys turned insane once they entered the military.
Though this guy seemed especially insane, I had to admit his sense of humor was top-tier.
Still… superpowers, huh.
If I really got one, I guess I’d want something that let me experience things no ordinary person ever could.
Well, having superpowers at all would already be pretty amazing.
I looked up at the sky.
The stars were especially bright tonight.
A perfect night for counting stars.
