The first time Sergeant Park Hoseok took a life, he was 620 meters away, and his file listed him as a CBRN/Tracking Specialist (CTS) attached to the 707th Special Mission Battalion.
His job wasn't to be a sniper. His job was to be a ghost. To use his preternatural sense of smell to detect chemical traces, track high-value targets through impossible terrain without being seen, and guide his team through threat landscapes invisible to others. The rifle was a tool of absolute last resort, a violation of his primary mission: to be unseen, to avoid engagement.
But the mission was compromised. Their high-value target was holed up in a remote mountain lodge. The lone sentry on the ridge had a radio. If he made his check-in, the target would vanish.
Hoseok’s team lead made the call. "Hoseok, you have the steadiest hands and the best fieldcraft. You're the only one who can get into position without him smelling you coming. You have the shot. Take it."
Because of course, Hoseok thought with a grim, internal sarcasm that had become his armor. My curse gets me into the perfect position to do the one thing I never wanted to do.
He became a shadow, using his nose to navigate upwind of the man, avoiding patches of crushed mint and damp earth that might betray his scent. He settled into the prone position, his body becoming part of the mountain. The sentry, unaware, lit a cigarette. The flare of the match illuminated a young face, bored, looking at his phone.
Through the scope, it felt unreal. Like a simulation. Exhale. Squeeze.
Crack.
A clean, clinical sound. The figure dropped. Radio silent.
"Target neutralized. Proceed," Hoseok murmured into his comms, his voice flat.
But his job as a CTS wasn't over. An hour later, as his team advanced to secure the lodge, he was again on point. His nose was their early-warning system. He was to scent for other guards, for tripwires, for panic.
He was the first to pass the body.
The wind shifted, curling down from the ridge.
And his nose—his brilliant, cursed, professional nose—conducted its own after-action report.
It wasn't just blood. It was the specific olfactory signature of a life abruptly erased.
The particular brand of cheap, citrus-scented soap. The stale, sweet smell of the cigarette, still clinging to his fingertips. The wool of his uniform, damp with night dew. And underneath, the creeping, cold, fecal scent of death.
His analytical mind, trained for threat assessment, now became an engine of horrifying empathy:
This man chose this soap. He bought that cigarette pack. He might have a sister who teases him about the citrus smell. A mother who washes his uniform with care.Hoseok had just, with one controlled motion, ended all of that. He hadn't just stopped a radio transmission; he had ended a personal history.
His stomach, already a tight knot of duty, rebelled. He made it to the tree line before doubling over, vomiting silently. He wasn't expelling food; he was trying to expel the knowledge his senses had forced upon him.
His team leader found him. "Get it together, Sergeant. It was a clean kill. You did your job."
Hoseok wiped his mouth, his hands steady from training but his soul trembling. He couldn't explain that for a CBRN/Tracking Specialist, the job was sensing the world in intimate detail. And he had just used that skill to experience the consequence of his own action in devastating, high-fidelity smell-o-vision.
He nodded, the sarcasm he was known for utterly absent. "Roger."
He was an elite soldier, a ghost, a specialist who could smell danger in the wind. But no training in the world could teach him how to un-smell the life he had taken.
----
The mission ended. The lodge was secured, the target extracted. Back at the forward base, the debrief was sterile. "Clean op. Good shot, Sergeant Park."
Hoseok gave a curt nod. He cleaned his rifle with impersonal care. He showered until his skin was raw, trying to scrub away the phantom scent of citrus soap and blood that clung to his sinuses. It never fully left.
This became the pattern. Weeks turned into months. His file grew thicker with commendations. CBRN/Tracking Specialist (CTS) Park Hoseok: Exceptional asset. Unparalleled detection rate. Cool under fire.
Each line was a lie that hid the truth.
There were more shots. More distant figures falling. More times he was the first to pass the aftermath, his nose forcing an intimate autopsy on the lives he had ended. A man who ate garlic-heavy kimchi. Another who used a floral hair pomade. Each one left a new, unwelcome scent-memory in his catalog of horrors.
He did his job. Flawlessly. He used his nose to protect his team, to complete missions, to be the ghost they needed. The military had taken the boy who loved Pororo and forged him into a soldier who could track a target by the smell of their sweat and end them with a bullet.
But he never got used to it.
The hollow numbness after the shot never stayed. It was always, always replaced by the sensory ghost that haunted him later. The guilt was not abstract; it was a specific, olfactory haunting. He didn't dream of the faces; he woke up smelling them.
Finally, a break. A precious 72 hours of leave.
He didn't go out drinking with his squad. He took the earliest train, then bus, then walked the familiar path to the small apartment above the ramyeon shop. The smells of home—broth, garlic, his mother's perfume—wrapped around him, a soothing balm and a painful reminder of everything he was fighting to protect, and everything he felt he was losing inside.
He stood at the door, his duffel bag heavy on his shoulder, his body humming with a tension that never fully left. He had taken lives along these days. He had done the duty forced upon him by his gift and his father's legacy.
And yet.
He took a deep breath, and the scent of home finally, fully, overwhelmed the ghosts in his nose. His shoulders, held in a permanent, tactical brace, slumped a fraction.
He was Sergeant Park Hoseok, elite CTS operator.
But here, he was just a son who had never gotten used to it.
He raised his hand and knocked.
