『JenSoo Short Stories』

There's a Sweetness in Hell (2/3)

Jennie stared at the battle plans that floated above the table, streaks of blue flew around that represented the path hundreds of troops would be making, a darker shade of blue ejected itself from the water, plainly showing itself as Caru's impressive navel force.

"Lieutenant," a voice said, "You'll be leading the 55th platoon."

Jennie glanced up from the table and onto the older man who sat uncomfortably in his chair.

"This doesn't seem right Lieutenant." Jisoo quickly added, Jennie glanced towards the corner of the room where she had begun to pace.

"General Kang," Jennie began as she pointed at the map, "This- This is a death trap."

"You're asking me to lead good men and women to their deaths."

His eyes widened before narrowing into a sharp line, his voice was rough and low as he spoke. "That was an order Lieutenant."

Her hand flinched from the map, "Your orders are forcing me to lead people straight into the pits of hell General. This isn't war anymore, this- This is toying with people's lives!"

Her hands ached, her trigger finger had been scarred to hell and back; her muscles throbbed and her ears shook when the familiar zoom of bullets ran past her. She was sticky, dirty and tired; her body was tired of the blood stains, tired of the constant ringing in her ears. She was tired of war, but most of all she was tired of fighting.

"We've been trying to retrieve Busan for months now and each time it ended in failure. They've completely locked themselves down, they've gained control of every militant base and now they're just as armed as we are," she sputtered, "There's no winning there- There's no surviving!"

Sharp muscle spasms ripped across his tight jaw, "We don't need to win, we just need to weaken them enough so the Carese navy can break through their barriers.

"Once they're in, the three million people that are starving in Busan can have a chance at surviving. This riot cannot cause three million casualties Lieutenant."

"There has to be a better way, a way that doesn't involve us leading our people into a death trap." Jennie stammered.

His dark eyes slowly met Jennie's, "There's no saving them without us losing ourselves Lieutenant. It'd do you some good to learn that."

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A sea of names floated through her vision as she held onto a heavy packet.

(Manoban Lalisa).

Jennie quickly flipped the page, trying her best to ignore the starry-eyed girl in the corner of the page.

(Bae Joohyun).

She flipped again and again.

(Kang Seulgi, Kim Yerim, Park Sooyoung, Son Seungwan).

"You're upset, would you like me to increase the amount of dopamine and serotonin in your system?" Jisoo asked softly as she glanced towards the large packet.

"No." Jennie mumbled back as she tossed it onto her desk.

"They're practically kids." she sighed after a moment of silence.

"Bae Joohyun is twenty-eight years old," Jisoo quickly corrected, "You're practically a child."

Jennie chuckled lightly, "This is coming from the person who's only a few years old."

"I was created twenty-three years ago, but I've only been active for a year." Jisoo corrected again with a smirk.

Jisoo's smirk faded and a quiet distorted sigh fell from her lips. "You're too young for any of this Lieutenant."

"You don't know half of the things I've done," Jennie mumbled.

Jennie knew she didn't have horns, but nothing pressed down onto her harder than looking into the eyes of someone who she was sure had a halo.

Jisoo's halo may have been shattered but Jennie's horns had stayed the same, dark and rough to the touch and heavy enough that she thought her skull was always a second away from collapsing.

"And if you did. You'd think this is just where I belong."

She fell asleep thinking that her home was never two levels and quaint kitchen with a fireplace to keep her warm, a mother's cheery voice to wake her and a father's lower one to lull her to sleep; it was the heat of a gun in her hands as dirt and dust coated her body, it was the sound of bombs dropping that awoke her and the distant sound of gunfire that hesitantly dropped her into sleep.

(And she thought if she had a home, it could only be worn down battlefields and rusty pieces of shrapnel).

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Jennie found reprieve in Jisoo's presence, in the way it was , her voice, but it wasn't her words. She spoke using words that Jennie had only heard from Chaeng and from the mouths of ancient scholars she had rescued from deserted towns.

(Jisoo said words like "humanity," and "metaphorical signals of hell festering within the human spirit," and Jennie always lost the battle to her worn-down smile while stars puffed from her lips with each sigh).

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When she collapsed onto her bed while the fabric of her universe was beginning to unravel, she couldn't fight her jaws from loosening and she couldn't flick away the bitter blots of truth that were tainting her tongue.

She found herself saying words and sentences she had exiled from her fearless world, the words stunk of a traitor, of a coward covered in fool's blood.

"I'm tired of this war- I'm tired of fighting for nothing." she huffed as she pulled pounds of gear off her chest and tossed them off of her bed.

"I know," Jisoo replied as she sat at the end of the bed, "Your muscles have been tighter than usual."

Jisoo glanced back at Jennie, her eyes were stained with vivid shades of red, the same red that once coated her hands and the same red that now filled the plush flesh of her lips, her once strong and high shoulders had now sank and hung low.

Jennie was never a traitor, never a coward and never a fool. She was brazen fire captured and stirred within human bones, she was a bright-eyed soldier who contained enough potential that it drowned out the soft pacifist that lived within her chest.

But she was wrong to ever think she completely submerged the gentle voice that always hesitated, always thought before she did; because she survived gunfire and floated up in a wreckage of good intentions and torn up tenderness.

A voice spoke that was too smooth to belong to Jennie's shredded throat and too thick with choked sobs to be Jisoo's.

"I'm so tired."

"I know," she echoed, her blue eye spun rapidly as she watched crystal tears fill Jennie's eyes while her body trembled and shook with each lung-tearing sob.

Jisoo stared back at Jennie, something deep inside her, something beyond the lights and pages of coding ached, ached the way Jennie felt when Lalisa asked if they were going to be heroes with stars blazing within her eyes and a smile that was brighter than sunlight reflecting off a gun; she ached the way Jennie did when Yerim's tears ran and blended with splotches of red, while it all poured down a pitch-black gun.

Heroes always died, Icarus fell, Achilles was shot with an arrow - no one caught Icarus, no one saved Achilles. But Jennie was not a myth, she was not a woman built of ivory and stone with liquid gold running through her veins, she was so beautifully human that Jisoo would let the world go to ruin before she'd ever let Jennie become a mess of bones and decaying flesh.

Heroes always died, but Jennie was going to be the first to survive.