They passed through the town of Gorizia and could see the houses had been hit. There stood two villas, dark as something dead; the river had risen up and overflowed so that the roads were very muddy and all the fields appeared as marshes in the dark. From there, they dispersed gradually.
Some went farther into base as others loitered, awaiting news of the offensive; Seokjin followed the muddy road to the villas and found the Major sitting with his head resting in one hand.
The major spoke to no one, to everyone, when he said, “It's bad. The worst since the start.”
“Sir?” said Hoseok. He mirrored Seokjin perfectly with his rucksack over one shoulder, his cap pulled off and held in one hand. “How bad is it, sir?”
“The worst,” the Major said. “I’m glad as hell to see you here. Oh, it’s the worst.” It was unnerving to see the dregs of exhaustion marred across his aged face. He was very tan, but appeared pale under the sallow light of the lanterns.
“But the summer is over,” the Major said. “I’m grateful for that. It was a hard summer.”
“Indeed, sir,” a soldier said. “We have made it far.”
“Nothing to get comfortable about."
The Major turned to Seokjin. He said, "Kim, take an ambulance up the road. There was a hit near the front.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I dispatched one already, but they may need help.”
He stopped to observe the troops before him. “Glad as hell to see you. Now get moving. We have an offensive to carry out.”
He left the villa and many troops followed, but Seokjin stayed back with Hoseok beside him.
He said, “Would you like me to come with you?”
“Why not?”
They moved over the embankment quickly to the vehicles and took their weapons and loaded the ambulance. Then they drove up the road. Wet leaves fell onto the windshield and would not blow away and it was too dark to see; but they drove up the road and pushed on until they came to an abandoned truck eight miles from camp. A short ways up the road they found what they had come for. Two wounded lay on the road as the driver loaded up the back of the ambulance. He took three wounded and told Seokjin that he did not need help.
“But there are civilians,” he said. “Up there, on the road.”
“What am I to do with civilians? I am not here for the civilians.”
“You must do something. We cannot leave them.”
“The hell we can’t, man. Do you want to bring civilians into camp? Do you want them to stay in the villa with the Sergeant Major? It is up to you. You take them, but I will not.”
Hoseok unloaded a stretcher. Together they raised one wounded from the road onto the stretcher and loaded him into the back of the ambulance.
“No!” said the driver. “Bring him into my ambulance. There is room. Then you take my ambulance back to camp and I will get the civilians.”
“you?”
“Yes . I will drive them to Portogruaro.”
“You’re an idiot,” Hoseok said. “The Major won’t have it.”
“Has he said as much?”
“No. But you know his temperament. It’s the middle of the night. We’re due for an offensive. And you want to go through the hills where the Germans are? Because of civilians? Sounds a little peculiar, doesn’t it?”
“Go with him,” Seokjin instructed. “Make sure he does not wander off. But you cannot take
to Portogruaro, it’s too far. You find somewhere closer where they can stay and you leave them there.”
“Udine?” the driver said.
“Idiot. Udine is too close to the front. It has been evacuated, surely.” Hoseok balked hesitantly. “You’re joking that I go with you. Tell me you are joking.”
“Go on.”
Hoseok sighed deeply with dissatisfaction, but went with the unnamed soldier at once. It was as they left that Seokjin lifted the last wounded onto a stretcher and loaded him into the first ambulance. Then he drove back to camp with a car full of the nearly dead. He did not think of the dead that lay unattended in the brush nor of the enemy that lay hidden in the dark. He thought of nothing, but felt very empty all the time that he drove.
At camp, he was approached by First Lieutenant Lucci who was a man with a gentle demeanor, approachable by nearly anyone. But to be approached by him was not something Seokjin thought lightly of. He gave his hand and followed the lieutenant into a large tent lit by lanterns where wine was poured and the offensive discussed.
Lucci said, “It’s nice to have you back with us. Did you enjoy your leave?”
“Yes, lieutenant.”
“Rested well?”
“Yes.”
“Feeling better?”
“Sir?”
“All right. Chatter aside. Let us discuss the morning. We will be leaving before dawn. How long does that give us?”
“About three hours.”
“All right. Three hours. You know what is to be done? You will take a small group to the outer mountains, closer to the border. Have you decided who you will take with you?”
“Jung, Carelli. Palo if he has not been assigned another group.”
“No assignments yet. You can have Palo.”
“All right, then, Palo. He’s a good shooter and I quite like him. Easy to get along with, doesn’t talk very much.”
Lucci nodded. “Listen well, too. Good choice.” He addressed the map on the table between them.
“So you take this route, through the mountains. Two other groups will leave after you. One before you. Only difference is Udine. You are the only group going through Udine. Then, we all met at the camp we set up near Tarvisio.”
“Tarvisio is awfully close to Austria.”
“Yes. That is the point.”
“We have taken Tarvisio already?”
“Setting up camp as we speak. Take your wine. It will take the edge off, give you time to sleep before we leave.”
Seokjin took the wine.
Lucci continued. “We will reach Tarvisio and by then the camp will have been set up. New base. Nearer the front. Able to win the war that way. Closer to Austria, closer to home, they will come from the mountains quickly that way and,” he motioned with his arms as if to say that is all. That will be the end of it. “We will shoot them dead.”
Lucci poured the wine. He said, “Do you think the war will end this year?”
“They say it will.”
“Every year they say this.”
“It cannot hurt to be optimistic, tenente. Perhaps this year they will be right.”
“Let’s hope so.”
They drank the wine and Seokjin was dismissed.
_______
“There’s something in our world that makes men lose their heads—they couldn’t be fair if they tried.”
That morning, an hour before dawn, Seokjin lay in a cot he would use only once. He struggled to sleep, for his heart was empty and he felt very strange. He could not remember the joy he had felt in Napoli, though he badly wanted to. Once again, he was a man at war; he was a soldier. No sooner could he recall the carefree moments beside the sea than he could recall the way he felt one year in the past. However, if he was to lie with his eyes closed, he could remember how soft Taehyung had been. He thought of that softness and of his singing. He thought of the cobbled roads that led to nowhere and heaved a great sigh as his heart filled to bursting. Why did hours feel like years and years like lifetimes? Perhaps, that was all it had been. A lifetime in the meadows. He had spent many lifetimes there. And now and now? Had it all come to an end as suddenly as he felt it had?
“Seokjin .”
Seokjin blinked open his eyes. “Yes.”
Carelli stood before him. He was agitated. His dark hair lay flat against his forehead and he was very sweaty. “Were you asleep?”
“No. What is it?”
“Oh, nothing, really.”
“Nervous?”
“Never nervous.” He came into the tent. “But I do feel a little strange. Do you feel it?”
“Yes.”
“It’s right here, right in the heart.” He touched his chest with the flat of one palm. “It strikes like a pain. What is it? Is it fear?”
“Not fear.”
“What is it, then?” But Seokjin did not have an answer. What is it, Carelli said again, quietly, to no one.
“Faust,” Seokjin said, for this was Carelli’s given name, “come sit with me. Tell me about
Roma.”
“Well, all right. If you really want to know. You do want to know, don’t you, Kim? You aren’t
only asking to be nice?”
“No.” Seokjin sat up and moved over to give Carelli room to join him. “Now, tell me. I didn’t
stay in Roma for a very long time.”
“You’re lucky, really. It was awful. Everyone was so depressed, they made me feel depressed simply being around them.”
Italian spoken by true Italians comes quickly like a stream and for Seokjin who could not seem to shake the omnipresence of sleep, it came much faster. He struggled to understand.
Carelli took Seokjin’s odd expression as disbelief.
“I'm honest ,” Carelli said. “I wanted to leave right away. I’m telling you, man, I wanted to leave right then. Very ugly. But I was there already and I did not think I would find anything better anywhere else. There was nothing to do but to drink and to sleep and to drink more so you could sleep more and then, in the night, you could hear the fighting very far away and see the light from the fires and hear the aeroplanes close enough to sound like the world was ending.”
Seokjin rubbed at his face. He jarred himself further awake. “There’s a bottle of rum in my
rucksack. Grab it and have a drink, then give it to me.”
Carelli did as he was told.
“You should have gone south,” Seokjin said. He drank from the bottle. “They’re optimistic there. They have a good time.”
“Napoli was nice?”
“Lovely. Made it difficult to come back.”
“Maybe you’ll move there when the war ends.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Seokjin took another drink, then gave the bottle to Carelli. “Put it back
when you’re done with it. I’ll rest now. Find Jung for me and tell him to get his things together.”
“All right.” Carelli rose. “I’ll wake you before sunrise.”
Seokjin fell quickly asleep. He slept deeply through the time he was permitted and woke with a pounding in his head. He dressed and with Hoseok and Carelli and Palo together, they left camp and followed the outer trail through the mountains. They were to go through the mountains until Tarvisio, but because Udine was a short day’s walk away, they would go until Udine and from Udine they would take two ambulances up to Tarvisio. Each man was rested and felt very at ease.
It was the promise of walking for a single day, then driving the rest of the way that made it easier to get started.
For a time, they did not speak. Across the fields that wound like streams and were deep with the water of the rains, fruit trees shed their color. There was no sound but the sound of their walking.
“I have not dealt with rain like the rain of Italy,” said Hoseok.
“It rains all over the world,” said Carelli.
“But not like Italy. I can not think of a place where it rains more than it rains in Italy.”
“London.”
“I have not been to London.”
“Paris.”
“I have not been to Paris.”
“You have been to Paris,” Seokjin said.
“Only once and not even for a day. It doesn’t count. Besides, I did not see the rain.”
“You’re a bore.”
“Go to hell, Palo. I wasn’t talking to you.”
As the highest rank, Seokjin walked at the front of the group, and smiled all the time as the
others bickered. He prodded lightly, “Do not mock our youngest.”
“Me? Are you speaking to me?”
“Yes, Jung, I am speaking to you.”
“You can go to hell, too.”
“Such a sensitive man. Palo—! Do you think Hoseok is sensitive?”
“Absolutely, sir.”
Seokjin grinned broadly over his shoulder. Hoseok would not look at him. “Tell me, where did you take your leave, Palo? Milano?”
“No, sir.”
“Roma?”
“He did not take leave,” said Carelli.
“Why not?”
“The British said the war would end this year. I didn’t think I ought to take leave if the war would come to an end.”
Carelli brightened with laughter. “That is no reason to stay! You wanted to say you won the war, didn’t you, Rinin? Took on all of Austria alone.”
“You’re being an ass.”
“It’s true,” Seokjin said. “You’re being an ass.”
“On the contrary . Is that what the French say? Au contraire. There are things to be learned about the British. If I believed everything the British said about this war, maybe I would have given up my leave too. But, the difference is, Rinin, I do not believe the fucking British.”
“The British are not bad,” Palo said miserably.
“No, they are not bad. But they are not right either. Never right. Maybe they were right once.”
“When?”
“Oh, I don’t know. When, Hoseok? When were the British right?”
“Never.”
They came up over the side of the mountain and passed under the trees where leaves stuck to the bottom of their wet boots; they could hear the coming of the trucks, far off on the trails. It was stupid to have brought the trucks through. Seokjin led them quietly away from the roads until they could not hear the trucks anymore. It was then he felt safer. And what a wonder it was to feel safe in those hills.
“Why did tenente not bring the horses?” Carelli called. “Why all the trucks? The noise is shameful.”
“There aren’t any horses to spare. They are all in Udine.”
“The hell with Udine. We should not go to Udine.”
“Do you know something I don’t?”
“No,” Carelli said. “Call it a gut feeling. Udine is shit. It’s gone to hell. I guarantee you. The last time I was there was before our leave and it was shit then. It will be more shit now.”
“We must go for the ambulance. They do not have ambulances in Tarvisio and they do not have horses in Gorizia.” Seokjin said.
“You think I don’t know? Oh, but us meeting in Tarvisio. . . how stupid it all is. We have not taken Tarvisio. There is no way.” Palo spoke briefly, very softly, like he did not want to speak, but felt he must.
“What do you mean? How do you know this?”
“Think about it. If we had taken all of Tarvisio, there would be a lot more than our army here. We would have the French and the British here. All of the goddamn United Kingdom on its way. But we have only ourselves and we are spread up in these mountains like guerrillas.”
“Faust.” Seokjin implored warning and the four men continued north to Udine in silence.
They walked all the morning and into the afternoon and came to the top of a very tall hill and from there, they could see the town. It was a dead town. From away they could see it lay open like a casket, usurped by the Austrians in the nighttime.
“Jesus,” someone said.
Seokjin Felt ill from hunger and from the sun and to see the town made him feel worse. He went down the side of the hill to the sparse shade of an apricot tree and stood there, trying to think. It was not long before he joined.
He pointed to Carelli before Carelli could speak. “I don’t want to hear anything you have to say right now.” Then he took his rifle from his shoulder and lay it against the tree. He lit a cigarette and sat in the shade.
“You have another?” Carelli asked.
Seokjin gave him the cigarette box and was happy Carelli did not speak more. They smoked in the humidity and the silence as Hoseok, who did not want to smoke, watched the sky.
He said, “It will rain again,” but no one paid him any attention.
Seokjin could not think properly. He knew they were to complete their route to Tarvisio, but
could not be sure there would be an ambulance left in Udine. If it had been a raid in the night, there would not be a medic to give him the keys.
“You can hotwire, can’t you?” he asked Carelli who responded with a nod. “So if there is an ambulance there, can you get it to start if we cannot get the keys?”
“Sure.”
But what of Tarvisio? No one dared ask aloud.
“Christ—!” It was Hoseok who spoke and he spoke with a hissing anger as if the word had
burbled up out of him with force. He dropped to the ground and dragged Carelli with him. He whispered for Palo to get down. But he did not have to speak to Seokjin, for Seokjin had seen before him the rows of soldiers in the town. They came out of the town in two lines with their rifles resting on their shoulders. They were Austrian. One could tell by the shape of the helmet.
The cigarettes were snubbed out. Seokjin lay on the ground with a man on either side of him and his rifle rested on the ground, aimed at Udine. The amount of soldiers in the town was not an amount that could appear overnight. It was obvious they had been there all the time.
“May I speak now?” Carelli asked.
“No. I never want to hear you speak again.” Seokjin looked away from Udine and to the west where the mountains were not as tall as the ones to the east. They did not provide the same coverage, but if they were to get around Udine, it would be through the west. He said so aloud.
“It will take longer to reach Tarvisio, but safer.”
“How much longer?” Hoseok asked.
“I don’t know,” Seokjin said. “Maybe another day. If we don’t get caught, another day.”
“Are there enough provisions?”
“Yes. Do you all feel fine?”
They agreed they felt fine.
“We go west from here and after we are far enough west, we will stop overnight and have
something to eat.”
“I wish we had come sooner,” Palo said, walking west.
“We would have had to get here a hell of a lot sooner than now. Not even just one day. Maybe a whole month sooner.”
“Yes,” Palo said. “I know you are right, but I was looking forward to the ambulances.”
It was because of the rain that the light of the sun died quickly that night. Seokjin thought of what Hoseok had said and thought him very right. He could not remember a time he had seen such rain as the rain of Italy and deeply wished it away. The roads at the end of the mountains were muddy and hard to wade through and the towns they passed stood as dead as Udine.
It was not until night came and the first of the hunger pains began to strike like a blow to the head that Seokjin accepted they would not make it much farther in the night.
“There is a cowshed, about two kilometers east,” Carelli said. “Perhaps a little less. I saw it in passing.”
Hoseok asked, “Do we want to go back the way we came?”
Seokjin sighed and closed his eyes. He was tired. His men were tired. He could feel the
tiredness falling over them like soot. “No. We’ll go forward. We passed a town, there will be another town.”
They came down out of the mountains under the cover of night and took to the roads and then into the brush and walked beneath the bare trees with the sky between the branches, grey as something dead, and passed along the railroads. The railroad had been blown up along the tracks and debris and metal stretched upward as hands came out of the earth and the men walked over them as if not seeing them. They followed the night and the silence and did not speak, for hunger and sleep was all each man could think of, and they did not care for the skyline that stood on fire from the fighting.
“Sir,” Palo called out. “There is a farmhouse. There,” he pointed between the trees and Seokjin could see the roof of the farmhouse through the branches. It was not far.
Once at the farmhouse, they climbed up a sturdy ladder to the rafters of the house and pulled the ladder up beside them on the landing and it was there they ate and drank and did not speak until they had all eaten. They finished the rum and the cigarette box was passed between them.
Palo, who did not smoke, declined the cigarette.
“Why do you not smoke, Rinin?” Hoseok asked. He lay with his head on a stack of hay.
“You’re the only man I know not to smoke cigarettes.”
“I don’t mind pipe tobacco, but cigarettes have a strange taste.”
Carelli thumbed his nose.
“Go to hell, Faust,” Palo said, getting sore.
“Don’t get sore,” Carelli laughed. “I was only kidding you. Come on, Rinin, don’t get sore.” He pulled Palo to sit beside him and sat with his arm around his shoulders, smiling all the time.
“If you don’t like cigarettes, I don’t give a damn.”
Seokjin paid their antics very little mind. He sat in the rafters, looking out of a hole in the roof where the roof had been stripped away and where the sky peered in like an all-seeing eye. He watched the sky and the stars and thought of the sea. He would not allow himself to think of Taehyung so thought of the sea and the boats and of the city he had left behind. He felt very unhappy.
“What about you, sir?” It was Palo who spoke and Palo who looked up at Seokjin eagerly.
" No."
“Are you married, sir?”
“No.”
“Carelli is married. Did you hear?”
Seokjin looked over the three men on the landing. Then he looked back at the sky. “I would think a man who is married ought to be home with his wife, not out fighting a war.”
“I am fighting for her freedom.”
“Do you have children?”
“One. A little one. Turned three last month.”
Seokjin lit a new cigarette. “You should be home then. Why don’t you go home?”
“If I could now, I would.” Carelli laughed and was joined by Hoseok who lay with his arm over his eyes as if to sleep. “Wouldn’t you, Kim?”
“Yes. We all would.”
“Not me,” Palo said.
“That’s right. You haven’t been here long.”
“Since the spring, sir.”
Seokjin went away from the rafters and lay down beside Hoseok . It was then he covered his face and tried to sleep, but the dark brought the night and the music and the cobbled roads. It brought Taehyung, bright as any star, behind the fluttery blackness of his dreams. He could not sleep and so drank the rum until sleep pressed down on him as heavy as the night, but the rum did not take away the dreams.
He dreamt of Taehyung. He dreamt of his face against Taehyung’s face and of
Taehyung leaning over him with his mouth against his skin. He came in the night as he had never come before and came vivid as the morning sky, phosphorescent and beautiful, like something long forgotten unearthed again.
We should have gotten out when we could, Taehyung said. We could have left and never come back. Would that have made you happy, love? But it was a cowardly thing to do. I cannot be cowardly before death. You understand, don’t you? Don’t you. You must understand. He reached out in his dream and thus reached out in reality and woke with a start as his hand brushed the dry hay beneath his head. Seokjin dropped his head against the ground.
“You were speaking.”
“Why are you awake?”
Hoseok looked across the dark from his place in the rafters. “Wanted a smoke. It’s almost dawn. You ought to go back to sleep.”
“What was I saying?”
“I couldn’t hear it well, but you spoke Korean. Who the hell do you speak Korean to besides me?”
He smiled in the dark. “Or were you dreaming of me?”
“Go to hell.” Seokjin rolled over and tried to sleep again, but he could not fall into a deep sleep.So he lay on the ground in a trance and did not move until he felt the warmth of the rising sun. He let the warmth wash over him and rouse him and then he sat up in the rafters and woke the others.
They ate together in the rafters, watching the fields and the meadows and all the dying of the trees through the striped roof, then crawled down from the landing and crossed through the fields to the west. They were slow to wake and so talking ceased for most of the morning until they came across a line of abandoned trucks within the trees. There were no soldiers in sight.
“Are they ours?” asked Carelli.
“Looks that way,” said Hoseok.
They went down the road into town and passed the abandoned villas. Seokjin thought of the civilians that had lived in the houses and felt a hatred for the Austrians. But once the hatred had passed, he felt only ashamed.
“I think it is funny you joined this army,” said Carelli. It was not clear whom he spoke to, but it was Palo who joined him.
“Me too.” He spoke to Seokjin, “Have you always wanted to fight in the army, sir?”
“No. I had not thought of it before the war began.”
“Me either,” Hoseok included. “I thought nothing of fighting. I never wanted to fight. Our country does not fight.”
“Not yet,” Carelli said. “All countries fight sometimes. That is what I have learned from the war. Italy would not fight, but alas. . . take a look at this. Look at this now. We are at war.”
“Let’s talk about something else,” said Hoseok. “I am tired of talking like this all the time. Tell me, Faust, when did you marry your sweetheart?”
“When I became a man. I did not want to lose her to another, so I married her right away and we spent three years together before I left.”
“You don’t strike me as a romantic.”
“I’m not. But I love her.”
Seokjin smiled from where he listened at the front of the group.
“And you, Jung?” Palo said. “You are not married?”
“No. Don’t believe in it.”
“How can you not believe in the holy matrimony between man and woman?”
“I think you are mistaking me for Seokjin Now.” They all laughed except for Palo. “I don’t give a damn about man and woman. But it is Seokjin who is against it.”
“What do you mean?”
Carelli sighed. “He’s that way, you know?” When Palo did not speak, Carelli made a motion with his hands.
“Oh?”
Seokjin felt Palo staring hard at the back of his head. He looked over one shoulder. “You really didn’t know?”
“No, sir. Is that why you aren’t married?”
“I will be married after this mess. When I go back home, I will marry.”
“So you are in love?”
“He fell in love in Napoli,” said Hoseok, “by the sea.”
“I see,” Carelli said. “I understand now. I could see it in your face when you returned from your leave. I thought, maybe, you missed your country, but that is not it, is it? You are missing…. Your heart... It is hard when a man misses his heart.”
Seokjin stopped suddenly and placed a finger to his mouth. “Do you hear that?” They listened.
“It sounds like gunfire.”
“From far away,” said Palo. “There is something else.”
It was the sound of a river to the east. The fruit trees had dispersed and left the men in the open meadow surrounded by the sky and the land. One could see, slightly out of sight, the water of the river rushing up to meet the land. What had once been a dry riverbed now overflowed greatly with the rains.
“Can any of you see if there is a bridge over the water?”
“We are too far to be sure, but I think so, yes.”
“If there is, it could be wired.” Seokjin listened for the gunfire, but could not hear it well anymore. “We ought to cross the bridge. It will be wired for the weight of passing trucks, not of single men.”
They walked beside the river that ran to the north with rushing water that burst up over the
riverbank as if it was alive, spitting fire all along the muddy banks. It was impossible to hear over the water and so Seokjin spoke with his head bowed between them all, shouting carefully at the side of the bridge.
He said, “I will pass first, then Faust, then Jung. I want you, Palo, to bring up the rear. And all the time you keep your eye that way,” he pointed west. “The gunfire came from the west. You keep your eye that way until you pass the bridge. On the other side, we will keep east until Tarvisio.”
Palo gave a sign that he understood.
Seokjin started across the bridge. He could not see if there was a trip wire or an explosive, for the river ran high and he waded through the water as if wading a marsh with solid ground. He felt the chill of the water and did not feel the panic inside him but knew it was there by the way his hands shook. He thought it would not be so bad to die on the bridge. If he was to die, then to die suddenly would not be bad. But that was no way for a soldier to think. He cursed himself and looked across the meadow to the mountains and saw the rain was coming steadily again. It would flood the fields and the river would rise very quickly. It would be worse to drown than to die on the bridge.
He reached the end of the bridge and waved for Carelli to begin crossing.
He came gradually, then suddenly, as if being on the bridge brought him great harm. He blushed shamelessly when he reached Seokjin’s side. “The river is unsettling.”
Hoseok began to cross. It was when he reached halfway across the bridge that he cursed loudly, able to be heard over the roaring of the water. He dropped quickly onto the bridge with his rifle positioned. Seokjin dropped onto the ground. Carelli was short to follow and it was because of this that he was shot through the back. A burst of gore like shrapnel came from the center of his chest. There was enough time to register the pain and then he fell and lay quiet.
A truck came up over the hillside, driven by a German soldier. He was alongside two Austrian officers. They came quickly over the hillside with automatic weapons that fired rapidly, digging holes into the earth. Seokjin felt a sting in his hand and knew he had been grazed. He felt a pain in his arm and thought, perhaps, he had been shot. Then he shot the truck and flattened one tire.
Palo came over the bridge and fired. He shot one of the Austrian officers.
“We can’t take them,” Seokjin shouted. “They are coming too fast and they will kill us.” He crawled close to Carelli and touched his neck to find the pulse, but he did not find one.
He called to the others, “come here!”
Hoseok crawled across the ground to Seokjin’s side. Then came Palo. Seokjin fired a last
shot to the driver. He saw he had hit him, but had not wounded him badly.
It was then Seokjin shouldered his weapon and grabbed each of his men by the arm and pulled them into the river.
“Neither alive nor dead;
No one lets up,
No one wins.”