Chapter 10

The End of Childhood

When the frenzy finally passed, the upperclassmen's relentless hazing came to an end as well—apparently satisfied that, whatever else had happened, we'd beaten Annapolis.

Of course, Annapolis was furious. West Point solemnly promised a "thorough investigation and strict punishment," vowing to root out the ringleaders.

"You guys, did you happen to make the flag dance?"

"No, sir."

"Right. Understood. Our fine cadets would never do such a thing."

The instructors conducted an internal investigation with eyes blazing—stern, solemn, deadly serious.

And yet, regrettably, they were unable to identify the culprits.

Under normal circumstances, the ceremonial cannon incident alone would have warranted a full-blown uproar. But the impact of the flag theft had been so overwhelming that the cannon business somehow slipped through the cracks.

After all, what could they do if they couldn't find the perpetrators?

"When we head to Annapolis next time, those bastards are definitely going to try to steal our flag."

"Whatever. I'll just sleep with it stuffed in my underwear."

"They'll strip your underwear off if they have to."

"Ugh."

Among the upperclassmen, you could occasionally hear murmurs—"Savage little chicks," "This year's freshmen are something else."

But no one exposed the truth.

Or rather, to be precise, the instructors didn't seem particularly eager to hear it either.

Now there was only one hill left looming ahead.

Midterms.

"Aaaaargh!"

A bloodcurdling scream echoed through the hall.

No doubt about it—that was the sound of someone being struck square in the skull by mathematics.

"Why?! Why does a soldier have to learn math?!"

"Math's the basics. Unless you want the men under you starving to death, you'd better learn it."

Ike replied to Omar's grumbling without even sparing him a glance.

"I… maybe I'm not American after all… Why is English this hard?"

"Pull yourself together! If you work at it, you can do it. You can."

I grabbed Dyke before his soul could fully depart his body.

As for me, I didn't really need to study.

If anything, getting first place and drawing too much attention—"Oh ho, an outstanding talent! Off you go to the Engineers, where only the chosen may tread"—that kind of horrifying ending was exactly what I wanted to avoid.

I had no idea what Senior Bennion had been saying about me behind the scenes, but every now and then an instructor or civilian professor would finish class, look at me gravely, and ask, "So you're the rumored second MacArthur?"

For God's sake. MacArthur's father was a war hero. Different spoons, different lives. He was born with a titanium spoon. I've got dirt.

I was just about to drift back into imagining myself firing clay pots in some primitive hut and scooping rice with both hands when the anguished howls from Dyke and Bradley yanked me back to the mortal realm.

"Omar."

"Yeah? What??"

"Screaming at it isn't going to solve the equation."

"If I yell loud enough, maybe a medic will show up and solve it for me?"

"They'll show up and dock you demerits."

Future General of the Army Bradley…

…was terrible at studying.

No, really. Shockingly bad.

To be fair, he studied even less after hanging around me. I'd been running around everywhere—of course he followed.

But the fact that he was actually at risk of failing? That was a bit of a shock. In the original timeline, how on earth did he become what he became?

Ike was solid academically. Weak in math, sure, but not failing.

Bradley was skimming dangerously low in math, English, and history—hovering right over the failure zone.

Van Fleet sat comfortably mid-tier, aiming for the upper ranks rather than just survival.

Dyke was in danger in math and English.

Anastacio was… a special case.

My goal at this point was simple: calculate roughly how much effort I needed to put in to park myself safely in the middle of the class.

And, as a bonus, make sure these idiots didn't flunk out before commissioning.

If Bradley got expelled after sharing this spectacularly chaotic cadet life with me, I might genuinely lose it.

They always worried about my demerits—but birds of a feather flock together. Anyone hanging around me was never going to have a spotless record.

So I carved out time, here and there, to tutor them.

Not because I was noble.

Just because if they crashed and burned, I'd be the one left holding the bag.

Just then, there was a knock at the door.

"Who is it?"

"Uh… is Kim in there?"

"Yeah, I'm here."

The door cracked open and one of my classmates stuck his head in.

"Well… I actually had something I wanted to ask."

It turned out to be Hubert Reilly Harmon.

Behind him stood our resident sourpuss number one, McNarney, wearing the expression of a man who'd just chewed on something foul.

"Hm? What is it?"

"It's about history."

"Why are you asking me…?"

"I asked the professor, but he said he was busy and told me to ask you."

"You're especially knowledgeable about Asian history, right? If he told us to ask you, maybe that means this exam's coming from that area."

What kind of nonsense was that?

Sure, that professor was one of the people who liked to toss around that "second MacArthur" line.

But even so—what kind of world is this, where you just dump your students onto another student like that? At least give me some bonus points if you're going to outsource your job.

Still.

My long-term ambition was to become West Point's rainmaker, Al Capone, Richelieu, MacArthur, and octopus-armed king of connections all rolled into one.

I wasn't exactly close with Harmon, and McNarney and I still had that awkward "cow staring at a chicken" dynamic going on.

Looked at from another angle, this was an opportunity.

"Fine. Come in. Let's see—where are you stuck?"

And so began my lecture.

"Listen! Our goal isn't to become well-rounded intellectuals absorbing knowledge evenly. It's to extract points. That's it. So what does that mean? We analyze the examiner's intent! What kind of question would our beloved old man write to screw us over? That's what you look at!"

"Oh… ohhh…"

"As expected of Yujin. Doesn't study much, still pulls good grades—so this is where all that brainpower's going."

"Tch. If you keep gaming exams like that, it'll bite you later."

Forget McNarney for a second.

I did want to hear the occasional "ohhh," but not in this direction.

For the first time, I began to seriously wonder whether my carefully crafted image might be collapsing right in front of me.

"Ugh. My head hurts. Let's just call it and turn in."

"Yeah. I'll wrap it up and go wash up."

"I should polish my shoes tonight."

"Can you do mine too?"

"Get lost."

Ah. What a place overflowing with brotherhood.

Whether the universe cared about my anxieties or not, midterms arrived with the end of 1911.

After several grueling days, the exams were finally over.

The upperclassmen roared "Freedom!" and poured out of West Point like the outgoing tide.

First-years, of course, were the exception. Little chicks don't get to go home.

"Whew… Barely scraped by."

"Thought I was dead for sure."

Ike and Omar had survived.

After the effort I'd put into cramming knowledge into those thick skulls, they'd better have.

As for me, I'd actually tried to lower my score. I thought I might've overshot and crashed straight into the ground—but in the end, I should've missed even more questions. My results were sitting comfortably in the upper-middle range.

We were talking it over when, all at once, we fell silent.

"Ah… ahh… aaahhh…"

There was a dull thud beside us.

Dyke had dropped to his knees.

"No… Mom… Mom…"

"Calm down! Dyke!"

"No! I don't want this! I—I—I…!"

Ike and James grabbed him, trying to hold him steady.

But Dyke was already breaking down, tears spilling as if someone had torn open a water skin inside him.

I quickly checked Dyke's grades.

Math and English.

Failing.

He was slated for dismissal.

A first-year retrieves the belongings he had entrusted to the Academy.

Returns his uniform.

Reclaims his civilian clothes.

West Point extends the courtesy of providing travel money home to dismissed cadets—but that very courtesy stings the deepest. A cold, needling reminder of failure that burrows into your skin.

Dyke rubbed at his swollen, bloodshot eyes and looked at us.

"What are you guys doing here…?"

"You think we'd just let you sneak out alone?"

Even as I said it, the words tasted bitter.

Of course he'd want to leave alone.

But we couldn't let him.

"Cadet or not, you're still our friend."

"..."

"Send us letters. No—give us your home address. We'll come visit someday."

"Get lost. There's no room at my place for you idiots."

"Oh? Really?"

I held out a pen and scrap of paper.

He hesitated for a moment, then took them and scribbled down the address.

"You know… almost nobody saw me and didn't call me a yellow monkey at least once. If I turn my back on a friend with such outstanding character just because he's transferring schools, then I'm the piece of trash."

"Make sure you write to us when you get there. We'll pass your letters around."

When Ike patted him on the back, Dyke's tears started spilling all over again.

"Yeah… I'll write. I promise. See you next time."

"You said it. If we don't get a letter, we're showing up with bats. So you'd better write!"

We figured dragging it out any longer would only hurt him more. So we shook hands and turned away quickly.

But even then—

Until we were completely out of each other's sight, both sides kept glancing back over our shoulders.

It was a rotten day.

There had always been dismissals here and there.

But most of them were due to injuries during training.

After sending Dyke and a few others off, we spent the winter in a subdued, awkward gloom.

Ike would sometimes mutter, "Maybe I should've spent more time with him…" and blame himself.

James clicked his tongue, saying he'd been too focused on his own studying.

West Point wasn't some cozy, comforting Hogwarts.

It was a place funded by taxpayers to train officers who would one day command the U.S. Army.

And if you didn't meet the standard, they handed you a one-way ticket home without hesitation.

One day, when I happened to run into Senior Bennion, I found myself asking before I even realized it.

"Does it not bother you… when your classmates get dismissed?"

"Hah. So you've reached that stage already."

"Have we?"

"Of course. And it's not something you overcome. It's something you get used to."

He ruffled my freshly cropped hair.

"You boys still have a long way to go. I'm already receiving notices of the deaths of seniors I once knew."

My breath caught in my throat.

"Seen from that perspective, this kind of farewell is almost welcome. The Academy judged that those friends of yours… weren't quite suited to lead soldiers into battle."

"But—"

"Tell me, what's more hollow than the phrase 'He died honorably'? If his lack of learning led his men to their deaths as well, do you think he'd be happy to be called honorable? Or would he suffer even in death?"

It was bitter, but I had to accept what he was saying.

This was a place where the word killed in action was never far away.

And what made it even more dizzying was the fact that the cataclysm called the First World War hadn't even begun yet.

Somewhere along the way, I'd started treating this cadet life like the campus romance I never got to enjoy in my previous life.

Sure, in my head I kept replaying the knowledge that World War I and World War II were waiting in the future—

But I hadn't seriously considered that I might die pointlessly in some nameless trench.

For a while, instead of staging grand escapades, we quietly devoted ourselves to studying and training.

After watching friends trudge home alone, it was hard to muster the same appetite for reckless challenges.

Winter ended.

Spring came.

And then summer—June.

Having secured promotion to second year, I was granted a brief return to my hometown, San Francisco.

At the station hung banners:

[Welcome! Stalwart Son of the Nation]
[U.S. Military Academy Cadet Yu-jin Kim]

The moment I stepped off the train—

I'd come intending to see my family's faces.

Instead, I froze on the spot.

"Hohoho, Yu-jin, you've arrived!"

Seung-man. Seung-man.

Where's my family—and why are you here?