Episode 1. The Losing Squad Does Not Return

When they said new conscripts would be handed rifles on the first day, Han Gi-jun treated it like a training-camp joke.

The thirty-two recruits had only just been shaved. Their uniforms still sat awkwardly on their bodies, and their combat boots had not learned the shape of their feet. Before anyone was even assigned a bunk, the company commander marched them to a training ground below the hill. There was a mock urban combat block, a destination beacon course, and a muddy flag stand set up in a straight line.

"Welcome to the 31st Conversion Readiness Training Battalion."

Major Jeong Min-seok spoke in a voice that was too calm to be reassuring.

"We do not waste time here. Your aptitude is judged immediately. Three tests. Tactical simulation, destination breakthrough, and flag recovery. Squad score totals are final. Rankings will be posted at once."

Someone in the back muttered, "What is this, a game show?"

Gi-jun thought the same. Laser-tag rifles, obstacle runs, a flag at the end. It could hurt, but he still assumed day-one training was mostly theater. The recruits were all half frozen and half smiling.

His own unit, Squad Five, started badly and only got worse. Park Yong-hyeon, the loudest man in the squad, talked like a leader without ever looking over his shoulder. In the first simulation, Gi-jun entered the mock classroom building first, but two men who were supposed to follow him drifted down the wrong alley. Their flank opened and the score board screamed penalty tones inside their helmets.

The second test was uglier. They had to carry a mock ammunition crate up Signal Hill before the timer expired. Choi Byung-woo twisted his ankle on the mud slope, and Yong-hyeon shouted for everyone to drop him and keep moving. Gi-jun could not do it. He hooked one handle of the crate against his shoulder and dragged Byung-woo by the arm with the other hand. Squad Five crossed the line two minutes late. Major Jeong looked only at the ranking panel, not at the limping man who had made the delay human.

The flag recovery drill finished them off. By the time Gi-jun grabbed the pole, another squad had already boxed him in. His helmet filled with rapid hit tones. The scoreboard updated with a cruelty so simple it looked almost administrative.

Squad Five. Last place.

After the drills, everyone took off their helmets and laughed from pure relief. Someone joked that last place would probably scrub toilets. Someone else said it would just mean double laps after dinner. Gi-jun forced a laugh too. That was easier than admitting how heavy the silence around the ranking board felt.

Right after evening roll call, the barracks speaker called their names.

"Squad Five. Nineteen-thirty. Move to the Sorting Hall."

It was the first time Gi-jun had heard the name. But several other recruits went quiet in a way that frightened him more than any shouting could have. From the far bunk, someone quickly made the sign of the cross.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Gi-jun asked.

The recruit beside him avoided his eyes. "I don't know. They said it's... tradition."

Tradition made the back of his neck go cold.

Squad Five was led not toward the parade ground but toward a low building behind the main compound. The Sorting Hall had narrow windows covered in frosted glass. A chaplain and two military police officers waited at the entrance. Stranger still, the rest of the battalion followed at a distance. Some came with their heads bowed. Some whispered prayers. Some wore the expression of people who wanted to witness the end because refusing to witness it would feel like a worse betrayal.

For one brief second, Gi-jun felt relieved. If everyone was here, maybe it really was theater after all. Fear conditioning. A ritual punishment. Anything but the obvious.

Then he stepped inside and smelled bleach, rust, and the dry animal bite of old rope. Along one wall sat stripped lockers with their labels peeled away. From the rear corridor came a repeating mechanical tone.

"Anyone requesting final religious rites may speak now."

The military policeman said it without emotion.

Gi-jun waited for someone to laugh. No one did. Jo Sang-pil dropped to his knees and vomited. Park Yong-hyeon whispered, "This violates every regulation," and then even his voice collapsed. Gi-jun understood too late that the whole thing was real, and because he understood it late, the terror hit him all at once.

The corridor was narrow. The recruits from the other squads had followed so close that the lines broke and mixed. One person cried. One prayed. One reached for a final handshake. In the confusion, Gi-jun moved sideways on instinct and lowered his face. If he matched the pace of the men around him, even the police could not tell immediately which squad he belonged to. A hand caught his shoulder once, but another body slid between them. He did not look back. He only kept moving until he found the darkness of an emergency passage and slipped through it.

Outside, he still could not run. Part of it was shock. Part of it was the need to see, because if he did not see it, his mind would spend the rest of his life insisting he had misunderstood.

He crawled through the drainage ditch below the slope until he found a window where the frosted glass turned the inside into blurred shapes. He could not see faces. He could see outlines in a row. He could see dark lines rising from neck level. He could see mouths opening in shapes the glass refused to name.

A short preparation tone sounded.

Then several footrests folded down at once.

The noise after that was not one scream but many kinds of screaming. Short bursts. Long tearing sounds. Voices choking on air that would never reach deep enough. Gi-jun dropped beneath the window and cried without making a sound. It was not only fear. It was the horror of realizing that people in authority had built this and still believed themselves rational.

By the time the sounds inside thinned out, the standard lights-out siren was echoing across the entire camp. To the rest of the world, it was an ordinary night.

Gi-jun ran. Over the drainage cut beside the fence, under the maintenance gate used by supply trucks, through the dark until the soles of his boots started splitting. He did not remember whether anyone called his name behind him.

From that night onward, Han Gi-jun became a deserter on paper.

But the last thing he truly carried away was not the word deserter. It was the line of necks behind the frosted glass, and the sound a system made when it chose to sort people instead of train them.