ᴛʜᴇ ᴄʟᴇᴀʀ ᴇɴᴇᴍʏ || ᴊ.ᴡʏ + ᴄ.ꜱ

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟐𝟎

Tuesday of their fourth-week hit and the lessons were only getting more intense on the brim of their fifth week.

San and Wooyoung were actually on okay terms but it was only due to the fact that they didn't have a lick of time to spend hating each other with the lessons and other new responsibilities they'd been given eating away at their souls and depleting any existing energy.

Everyone sloshed through the mud, thanks to the downpour the night before, on their way to the live-fire range, their rifles' draped across their shoulders and a hard helmet atop each of their heads, for their second day of practicing how to fire accurate rounds.

Yesterday they'd been taught how to clean, reload, break down, reassemble and conduct function checks on their rifles. It was a lot but they'd become accustomed to learning quickly at the camp, pushing themselves harder than ever before.

Taehyung's group, team two, led the way, followed by Kai's group, team three, which meant San would finally get to see Yunho again and he'd missed his friend, but that didn't mean they'd get to have any kind of interaction—he doubted it, actually.

The mud flew onto the front and backs of their pants as each soldier's large boots squished into the wet mush. It stuck in clumps on their boots and San imagined by the time they were finished they'd all be covered from head to toe.

He'd called it.

As soon as they got there, the boy's were sent to practice gun positioning that had them squatting or completely laid out on the ground, locks on so they couldn't fire, and after going over the positions a million times the instructors put stones on the barrel of the rifle so they could learn how to keep themselves steady and avoid shaking when unlocking the rifle and pulling the trigger.

Taehyung knelt down beside San on the ground, replacing his stone that had tumbled off thanks to his shaky grip, while beside him Wooyoung's stone had yet to leave its place on the steady rifle.

"I'll teach you a little trick." Taehyung had his mouth right beside the younger's ear, his low growl of a voice vibrating against it. "Take three easy breaths in and out, and on your third one, as the last of that breath flows out, I want you to pull the trigger.

Taehyung took each breath along with San after he'd finished explaining and the other could feel the tickle against his ear but, ignoring it, he let out his last breath, and focused solely on the air being released, pulling the trigger as soon as it had come to an end.

The stone sat nicely on the end of his rifle, undisturbed.

Taehyung walked away with a satisfied look on his face and after completing the exercise successfully a few more times, the muddied recruits moved up to the firing range.

A woman stood with a microphone, similar to the ones used for karaoke, funny enough, and commanded them to grab their guns.

"Grab the gun!" They repeated back to her, all of them exhibiting the proper movements to grab it with the proper form.

When they had the gun held upright in their grasp, the woman commanded loudly into the microphone for them to unlock their weapon.

"Unlock the weapon!" They moved again in a synchronized fashion—everyone but a few who got smacked a few times for being sloppy.

The trainees were each set up at their own shooting stations, lined up in a row that spread quite a distance. The shooting stations were simply a marked space where the soldiers could position themselves and shoot at the targets, which were paper signs placed on a plastic backing that stood in a large field. It was shaped like a body that would fall back when the bullet hit.