Dark Matter | JJK

52. At the Helm

"The ROK Army is full of cry-babies," Seungwon remarked, leaning against the bunker post as he shrugged off his camouflage uniform shirt. "Do you know why?"

The Special Ops officers lounging around the common dormitory paused in their actions - brushes in mouths stuffed with toothpaste and vests hanging halfway around their necks - waiting for the answer with such patient suspense that they might as well have been a bunch of fourth-graders.

Kim Taehyung rested his head on the pillow of his top bunker bed, grinning at the ceiling. "Because we call them the Infantry?"

A beat of silence, and then the room was abuzz with a flurry shaking heads and annoyed sighs. A giggle or two from one of the light-hearted chaps.

"How'd you get that, Tae?" Seungwon asked in surprise, as though the man had just derived Leibniz's integral calculus formula.

"Seokjin hyung," Taehyung said simply, shrugging. "Living with him can mess with your brain like that."

"I've forgotten what it's like to share a room with anybody that's not one of you bastards," Soobin commented with a scowl, filling his flask from the water cooler. More than just accustomed to his snarky behaviour, everybody knew that he secretly loved them all.

"Aw," Suho cooed from the corner, waggling his eyebrows dramatically. "If you're that attached, it's not too late to cut things off with your girlfriend -"

"You jerk -"

The emergency alarm suddenly blared from the ceiling, flashing the room in crude red light and bringing their playful banter to a standstill. Silence settled over the dorm, save for the gruff voice bellowing through the intercom.

"Disturbance at barricade. I repeat, disturbance at barricade. All cohorts to assemble immediately."

"Tell me this isn't just another drill so late in the evening," Seungwon grumbled, tossing his camouflage shirt over his head as the others in the room rushed to groom themselves to look at least presentable.

Taehyung jumped down his bunker, sliding his feet into a pair of combat boots and furiously tying the laces. "Doesn't seem like a drill to me."

Namdaemun, one of the eight old city gates of Seoul, stood shut for the first time in a long time, its twenty-two storey stonework pavilion devoid of movement. No automobiles cruised through its humungous, upended U-shaped gate, now barricaded with temporary metal doors.

Beyond the doors, however, the sight that greeted Taehyung's eyes nearly stole the air from his lungs. Even from a distance, the vehement calls of OPEN THE GATES! boomed over the barricade, urging him and his comrades to run to the alleviated platform above the gate that gave them a bird's-eye view of the region beyond it. A vast multitude of men, women and children had gathered on the other side of the barricade, stretching across the asphalt all the way to Seoul Station and covering an area of over a hundred yards and further where his eyes could not see.

"Good god," a soldier remarked. "They're the healthy citizens from across the country, aren't they?"

"So many? Our correspondents told us there were only a few hundred left outside the main city."

Taehyung snatched a walkie-talkie lying idly on an equipment desk nearby, depressed the push-to-talk button and switched the device from loudspeaker to microphone. "Kim Taehyung from Special Ops to BASE, do you copy? Over."

The sound of static buzzed over the line before a distorted voice reached his ears. "Inspector Park from BASE to Kim Taehyung. What's the update? Over."